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animal_quillsIt seems a little thin in some places as I skim over a few things, so it needs some tweeking, but I wanted to get it up and out there. Comments and critiques are welcome, of course. thankyouverymuch!
It is an idyllic Iowan afternoon in the middle of August. The grass is green, the sun is shining, and I am eight years old. My friends are waving goodbye as they speed away on their bicycles, my brother is gone for the afternoon with his friends, and my mother is inside caring for my baby sister while watching the afternoon soap operas inside. At last, I have some time alone.
I like having friends, and I like playing with them, but I am a solitary creature at heart. I need my time alone, especially after I've been around other kids for a while. The Johnson's old Willow tree is the best on the block for climbing, and since they moved out two months ago, I can do it without getting chased away. I go there, now.
I grab hold of the lowest branch and brace one foot against its thick trunk, stepping up and hooking my leg around the limb. Up a few branches is a comfortable spot where the limb comes away from the trunk in a gentle angle. I've spent half my Summer napping away here, under the canopy of the willow tree, blissfully alone.
As I seat myself on the limb, stretching a bit before I curl my knees under my chin, it happens again. I close my eyes to soak up the sun on my face, and I feel things that I know I shouldn't. My arms - the perfect pink and hairless arms of an eight-year-old boy - are covered in lush brown fur. Claws jut out from the fingertips, and sharp teeth fill my mouth. This has been happening all Summer long. It only lasts for a few moments, but it happens several times a day. I know that it should frighten me, but it doesn't. Thinking about my "fur" or my "claws" doesn't seem any different to me than thinking about my toes or my nose.
I remember this as the day when it began to dawn on me that I was different. I had just spent the better part of the morning with my few friends, and it had occurred to me that none of them felt things like this. They didn't stare at their hands, looking for claws that weren't there. They didn't growl at random moments, which was something I'd gotten funny looks for, that very day. Curling up on that branch and closing my eyes against the sun, I realized that I had better keep this quiet until I get it sorted out. It was like having a secret friend. There was a beast inside me.
I also remember this as the last happy memory that I would have about "the beast" for another thirty years, or so. Once school started, a couple of weeks later, things started to change. Even though I could easily accept that I was different from the other children, I was the only one. The others started to notice things. There were other differences between myself and the other kids, but the beast was the one that showed the most, I think. I didn't really know how I was supposed to act, so subtle things about the beast would slip through. Despite the funny looks, for instance, I would still growl without realizing it. That alone was enough to get the other kids talking, and then taunting.
It's when I started to get frustrated and angry that I started to be afraid of the beast. The others had decided that I wasn't "normal," in that way that kids do. Like kids, they didn't understand, so they pushed me away. I wasn't included, anymore. Like any other child in this position, I got angry. One day, one of the bigger kids started pushing me around, calling me a "weirdo freak," and inspiring the other kids to laugh and point. Yes, these were kids, and yes, I probably shouldn't have let them get to me, but I was eight, and I still didn't understand why I was suddenly a pariah. In fear and frustration, I lashed out at the boy.
I don't think it occurred to me, that first time, to be worried that how I lashed at him was a problem, it just got the kid to stop. Rather than simply pushing back, or balling my hand into a fist and punching him, I curled up my fingers and pulled them back, pointing my fingernails forward in a claw, and scratched across his face, growling loudly. It didn't hurt him at all, and he laughed, but he and the other kids did go away, although they were all laughing, which made my face burn with shame.
I grew to hate the beast, just as I grew to hate being different. Being different meant being alone, and the beast was the clearest sign that I was different. I hid him away whenever I could, but when I got angry or frustrated, usually from the persistent taunting of other children, it would leap out. These moments of acting out - of defending myself - became the most "beast-like" times. I'm not sure how to explain it except to say that when I was a child, it felt like forgetting to be "normal." When I was angry and afraid, I stopped covering it up and let go of hiding it. I used to try making a fist, but it never felt right. The claws that weren't really there felt strange like that... like they were piercing through the skin of my hand. When I was angry and in a fight, it just didn't work, so I would go back to making a claw. When the fight was over, sometimes I was the victor and sometimes I was the loser, but I was always ashamed. It only convinced them to laugh at me all the more, and reminded me that I didn't fit in. I wanted very much for the beast to go the hell away, but was afraid to talk to anyone about him.
I can't remember it, but somewhere in my early teens, I read an article about cancer and leukemia patients healing faster and better through visualization. It worked through deep meditation, the patients visualizing the individual cells of their bodies healing, one by one. I decided to try it, myself. By now, I had a good mental picture of the beast in my head. He had grown more and more angry over the years, just as I had. In my head, he was ten feet (about five meters) tall, muscular and broad, covered in thick brown fur, with four-inch long claws and huge pointed teeth. I wanted him to go away, because if he did, maybe I could fit in better. In my head, I wrapped him in thick chains and locks. I stuffed him into a steel cage, and threw him into the darkest recesses of my head.
From then on, whenever I felt the beast in my head, I visualized him imprisoned, screaming from his cage, the chains rattling, deep in the dark. It worked, in a way. I no longer felt the claws coming out of my fingers, or growled anymore... But it was tiring, somehow, and it didn't help much with the other kids. They just found other reasons to hate me, and I them. It wasn't until my senior year in high school that it all started to ease up as we all matured. But I kept the beast firmly locked away, still screaming for release.
For twenty years after graduating high school, I wandered in my life, doing different things, including a stint in the military. I traveled, seeing different countries, different cultures, different friends, different philosophies. One thing - and one thing only - did not change. The beast was still there, in his cage, in the back of my head. As I grew older, I kept expecting him to fade away and be forgotten, like an imaginary friend, or one of my fictional characters, but he never did. He was always there, and he was ... changing. Slowly, over several years, he calmed down, stopped screaming, stopped fighting, and started ... "talking" in a way.
I can look back now and understand that the beast wasn't changing. I was. The changes I saw in the beast were merely reflections of my changes, and his attempts at communication were my first attempts at real introspection.
In England, for the first time in my life, I had friends. I didn't do much with them, and felt awkward and clumsy with them since it was a new experience for me, but they seemed to take it in stride, and just let me hang and figure it out. Sometimes they would give me gentle hints on ... well, I suppose "etiquette" would be the word ... when I was clearly unsure how to respond to things like compliments, affection or friendliness. Slowly, thanks to them, I became a lot less paranoid about everyone. My chest stopped aching whenever people laughed around me. The beast stopped yelling, then, and ... softened, really.
I think that was when I started to expect the beast to disappear. I was no longer in danger, no longer afraid or angry. I think at that time I thought he'd always been an imaginary friend, there to protect me. If I wasn't scared or being beaten, anymore, then I didn't need him, and if he were calming down, then he would soon fade away, right? Nope. He stayed, still there in his cage, still wanting out.
Three years after leaving England, on a rainy January morning in the mountains outside of Albuquerque, I finally gave in to the last of my depressive urges. Life had been going steadily downhill for the last few months since leaving the Air Force. I had just lost the last of my friends and my home. In a deep depressive despair, I attempted suicide and had a near-death experience. I mention this only because in the weeks that followed from that, I had what I think would be called a cameo shift. For weeks, both the beast and I burned, inside and out. Neither of us seemed too concerned. It was cleansing, somehow. We were burning away the crusty, stifling filth of our past. The depression, the self-loathing, the self-pity... all falling away. I don't remember how many weeks it took, but by the time I stopped feeling the fire, I was reborn. In some way, killing myself - losing literally everything - had freed me. Maybe it was from realizing that all that negativity had nearly killed me, but it was all over, now. I could move forward in my life.
Again, I expected the beast to disappear. As part of an ugly childhood, I thought he would be burned away in the weeks of phoenix-fire, but no. He was still there, and he still wanted out. At the time, it made me uncomfortable, and I pushed him back into the dark of my mind.
From Albuquerque, I moved to Iowa City, Iowa, where my search for the presence that I had met during my near-death experience led me to learn of Wicca. In the Wiccan community, I found good friends, learned new ways of seeing the world around me, and met the woman I would live with for a decade. Witchcraft was useless at getting the beast to disappear forever, of course, but one day in '96 our local pagan group had a visit from three prominent pagans: Janet and Stewart Farrar and Gavin Bone. After a ritual which they led for us, Gavin approached me and advised me both that I should learn of shamanism, and that I was a bear.
He said the latter in parting, almost as an afterthought. He'd taken several steps away and just turned around, saying, "Oh, and you're a bear." Then he turned and I never saw him again. Looking back now, I'm not even all that sure he knew why he said it, that he simply followed some instinct that told him to say it.
At the time, though, I didn't realize what it was that he was trying to tell me. Given his advice on shamanism, I thought he'd been trying to say that Bear was my totem or my power animal. Something about it, though, made sense, when I thought about the beast in the cage. Thick brown fur, sharp claws, pointed teeth, big, broad, and muscular. The beast was a bear. Knowing this, however, did not convince me to let it out. I still thought it was something other than me. Maybe it was something that was trying to help, but I still didn't trust it.
The years rolled by, and Amber and I divorced. We were still friends, and at first we thought it would be a good idea to live together in a two-bedroom apartment as friends, but that turned out to be a bad idea. We got on each other's nerves. The tension mounted daily, I got more and more frustrated, and the cage around the bear disintegrated.
Don't get me wrong. I never hurt her or abused her. I never would. But she would tell me later that I was ... scary. She knew that I would never hurt her, but I seemed to change when I was angry. I would seem larger and heavier and I would growl. She told me one day, while trying to explain it, "You really ARE a bear. It's not your power animal or whatever, it IS you." Something about that seemed to ring true, but I wasn't quite ready to face it. The idea that the bear or I had frightened Amber was shaming, again. It was like being a kid and feeling confused and lost, again. I hid in my room for most of the time, from then on.
Amber did what was best for both of us. She moved out. When she was gone, I decided that I was not going to seek out another lover until I'd done some self-exploration. It slowly dawned on me that I had never truly loved myself, and if I couldn't love me, then I had no right asking anyone else to.
To that end, I opened an account on LiveJournal. The first few days, I explored LJ's many features, including communities, and somehow found a community for people called "otherkin." From there, it was a short step to finding the therian community.
I don't think that I can describe in mere words the ecstatic joy I felt the first time that I read about animal people. Everything I read was intimately familiar. I was reading about myself through these other people. There were others like me! I nearly leaped out of my chair and danced! It was like being let out of a prison I'd been in all my life!
There were adjustments, of course, after I started to accept the bear as a part of me. For months, I had shifts as the new mental images of myself as both human and ursine tried to work themselves out. There were moments when I would suddenly feel the claws extending from my fingertips and it would feel so real that it almost hurt. My tongue frequently tripped over itself because I could swear I could feel the sharp tips of pointed teeth with it. In the end, the bear and I came to grips with each other. I no longer push it away, trying to make it something other than me, trying to be rid of it. The bear and I have always been, are now, and will always be one and the same, and I no longer care about being "normal" or being accepted. I am me, and that's all I need.
It is an idyllic Iowan afternoon in the middle of August. The grass is green, the sun is shining, and I am eight years old. My friends are waving goodbye as they speed away on their bicycles, my brother is gone for the afternoon with his friends, and my mother is inside caring for my baby sister while watching the afternoon soap operas inside. At last, I have some time alone.
I like having friends, and I like playing with them, but I am a solitary creature at heart. I need my time alone, especially after I've been around other kids for a while. The Johnson's old Willow tree is the best on the block for climbing, and since they moved out two months ago, I can do it without getting chased away. I go there, now.
I grab hold of the lowest branch and brace one foot against its thick trunk, stepping up and hooking my leg around the limb. Up a few branches is a comfortable spot where the limb comes away from the trunk in a gentle angle. I've spent half my Summer napping away here, under the canopy of the willow tree, blissfully alone.
As I seat myself on the limb, stretching a bit before I curl my knees under my chin, it happens again. I close my eyes to soak up the sun on my face, and I feel things that I know I shouldn't. My arms - the perfect pink and hairless arms of an eight-year-old boy - are covered in lush brown fur. Claws jut out from the fingertips, and sharp teeth fill my mouth. This has been happening all Summer long. It only lasts for a few moments, but it happens several times a day. I know that it should frighten me, but it doesn't. Thinking about my "fur" or my "claws" doesn't seem any different to me than thinking about my toes or my nose.
I remember this as the day when it began to dawn on me that I was different. I had just spent the better part of the morning with my few friends, and it had occurred to me that none of them felt things like this. They didn't stare at their hands, looking for claws that weren't there. They didn't growl at random moments, which was something I'd gotten funny looks for, that very day. Curling up on that branch and closing my eyes against the sun, I realized that I had better keep this quiet until I get it sorted out. It was like having a secret friend. There was a beast inside me.
I also remember this as the last happy memory that I would have about "the beast" for another thirty years, or so. Once school started, a couple of weeks later, things started to change. Even though I could easily accept that I was different from the other children, I was the only one. The others started to notice things. There were other differences between myself and the other kids, but the beast was the one that showed the most, I think. I didn't really know how I was supposed to act, so subtle things about the beast would slip through. Despite the funny looks, for instance, I would still growl without realizing it. That alone was enough to get the other kids talking, and then taunting.
It's when I started to get frustrated and angry that I started to be afraid of the beast. The others had decided that I wasn't "normal," in that way that kids do. Like kids, they didn't understand, so they pushed me away. I wasn't included, anymore. Like any other child in this position, I got angry. One day, one of the bigger kids started pushing me around, calling me a "weirdo freak," and inspiring the other kids to laugh and point. Yes, these were kids, and yes, I probably shouldn't have let them get to me, but I was eight, and I still didn't understand why I was suddenly a pariah. In fear and frustration, I lashed out at the boy.
I don't think it occurred to me, that first time, to be worried that how I lashed at him was a problem, it just got the kid to stop. Rather than simply pushing back, or balling my hand into a fist and punching him, I curled up my fingers and pulled them back, pointing my fingernails forward in a claw, and scratched across his face, growling loudly. It didn't hurt him at all, and he laughed, but he and the other kids did go away, although they were all laughing, which made my face burn with shame.
I grew to hate the beast, just as I grew to hate being different. Being different meant being alone, and the beast was the clearest sign that I was different. I hid him away whenever I could, but when I got angry or frustrated, usually from the persistent taunting of other children, it would leap out. These moments of acting out - of defending myself - became the most "beast-like" times. I'm not sure how to explain it except to say that when I was a child, it felt like forgetting to be "normal." When I was angry and afraid, I stopped covering it up and let go of hiding it. I used to try making a fist, but it never felt right. The claws that weren't really there felt strange like that... like they were piercing through the skin of my hand. When I was angry and in a fight, it just didn't work, so I would go back to making a claw. When the fight was over, sometimes I was the victor and sometimes I was the loser, but I was always ashamed. It only convinced them to laugh at me all the more, and reminded me that I didn't fit in. I wanted very much for the beast to go the hell away, but was afraid to talk to anyone about him.
I can't remember it, but somewhere in my early teens, I read an article about cancer and leukemia patients healing faster and better through visualization. It worked through deep meditation, the patients visualizing the individual cells of their bodies healing, one by one. I decided to try it, myself. By now, I had a good mental picture of the beast in my head. He had grown more and more angry over the years, just as I had. In my head, he was ten feet (about five meters) tall, muscular and broad, covered in thick brown fur, with four-inch long claws and huge pointed teeth. I wanted him to go away, because if he did, maybe I could fit in better. In my head, I wrapped him in thick chains and locks. I stuffed him into a steel cage, and threw him into the darkest recesses of my head.
From then on, whenever I felt the beast in my head, I visualized him imprisoned, screaming from his cage, the chains rattling, deep in the dark. It worked, in a way. I no longer felt the claws coming out of my fingers, or growled anymore... But it was tiring, somehow, and it didn't help much with the other kids. They just found other reasons to hate me, and I them. It wasn't until my senior year in high school that it all started to ease up as we all matured. But I kept the beast firmly locked away, still screaming for release.
For twenty years after graduating high school, I wandered in my life, doing different things, including a stint in the military. I traveled, seeing different countries, different cultures, different friends, different philosophies. One thing - and one thing only - did not change. The beast was still there, in his cage, in the back of my head. As I grew older, I kept expecting him to fade away and be forgotten, like an imaginary friend, or one of my fictional characters, but he never did. He was always there, and he was ... changing. Slowly, over several years, he calmed down, stopped screaming, stopped fighting, and started ... "talking" in a way.
I can look back now and understand that the beast wasn't changing. I was. The changes I saw in the beast were merely reflections of my changes, and his attempts at communication were my first attempts at real introspection.
In England, for the first time in my life, I had friends. I didn't do much with them, and felt awkward and clumsy with them since it was a new experience for me, but they seemed to take it in stride, and just let me hang and figure it out. Sometimes they would give me gentle hints on ... well, I suppose "etiquette" would be the word ... when I was clearly unsure how to respond to things like compliments, affection or friendliness. Slowly, thanks to them, I became a lot less paranoid about everyone. My chest stopped aching whenever people laughed around me. The beast stopped yelling, then, and ... softened, really.
I think that was when I started to expect the beast to disappear. I was no longer in danger, no longer afraid or angry. I think at that time I thought he'd always been an imaginary friend, there to protect me. If I wasn't scared or being beaten, anymore, then I didn't need him, and if he were calming down, then he would soon fade away, right? Nope. He stayed, still there in his cage, still wanting out.
Three years after leaving England, on a rainy January morning in the mountains outside of Albuquerque, I finally gave in to the last of my depressive urges. Life had been going steadily downhill for the last few months since leaving the Air Force. I had just lost the last of my friends and my home. In a deep depressive despair, I attempted suicide and had a near-death experience. I mention this only because in the weeks that followed from that, I had what I think would be called a cameo shift. For weeks, both the beast and I burned, inside and out. Neither of us seemed too concerned. It was cleansing, somehow. We were burning away the crusty, stifling filth of our past. The depression, the self-loathing, the self-pity... all falling away. I don't remember how many weeks it took, but by the time I stopped feeling the fire, I was reborn. In some way, killing myself - losing literally everything - had freed me. Maybe it was from realizing that all that negativity had nearly killed me, but it was all over, now. I could move forward in my life.
Again, I expected the beast to disappear. As part of an ugly childhood, I thought he would be burned away in the weeks of phoenix-fire, but no. He was still there, and he still wanted out. At the time, it made me uncomfortable, and I pushed him back into the dark of my mind.
From Albuquerque, I moved to Iowa City, Iowa, where my search for the presence that I had met during my near-death experience led me to learn of Wicca. In the Wiccan community, I found good friends, learned new ways of seeing the world around me, and met the woman I would live with for a decade. Witchcraft was useless at getting the beast to disappear forever, of course, but one day in '96 our local pagan group had a visit from three prominent pagans: Janet and Stewart Farrar and Gavin Bone. After a ritual which they led for us, Gavin approached me and advised me both that I should learn of shamanism, and that I was a bear.
He said the latter in parting, almost as an afterthought. He'd taken several steps away and just turned around, saying, "Oh, and you're a bear." Then he turned and I never saw him again. Looking back now, I'm not even all that sure he knew why he said it, that he simply followed some instinct that told him to say it.
At the time, though, I didn't realize what it was that he was trying to tell me. Given his advice on shamanism, I thought he'd been trying to say that Bear was my totem or my power animal. Something about it, though, made sense, when I thought about the beast in the cage. Thick brown fur, sharp claws, pointed teeth, big, broad, and muscular. The beast was a bear. Knowing this, however, did not convince me to let it out. I still thought it was something other than me. Maybe it was something that was trying to help, but I still didn't trust it.
The years rolled by, and Amber and I divorced. We were still friends, and at first we thought it would be a good idea to live together in a two-bedroom apartment as friends, but that turned out to be a bad idea. We got on each other's nerves. The tension mounted daily, I got more and more frustrated, and the cage around the bear disintegrated.
Don't get me wrong. I never hurt her or abused her. I never would. But she would tell me later that I was ... scary. She knew that I would never hurt her, but I seemed to change when I was angry. I would seem larger and heavier and I would growl. She told me one day, while trying to explain it, "You really ARE a bear. It's not your power animal or whatever, it IS you." Something about that seemed to ring true, but I wasn't quite ready to face it. The idea that the bear or I had frightened Amber was shaming, again. It was like being a kid and feeling confused and lost, again. I hid in my room for most of the time, from then on.
Amber did what was best for both of us. She moved out. When she was gone, I decided that I was not going to seek out another lover until I'd done some self-exploration. It slowly dawned on me that I had never truly loved myself, and if I couldn't love me, then I had no right asking anyone else to.
To that end, I opened an account on LiveJournal. The first few days, I explored LJ's many features, including communities, and somehow found a community for people called "otherkin." From there, it was a short step to finding the therian community.
I don't think that I can describe in mere words the ecstatic joy I felt the first time that I read about animal people. Everything I read was intimately familiar. I was reading about myself through these other people. There were others like me! I nearly leaped out of my chair and danced! It was like being let out of a prison I'd been in all my life!
There were adjustments, of course, after I started to accept the bear as a part of me. For months, I had shifts as the new mental images of myself as both human and ursine tried to work themselves out. There were moments when I would suddenly feel the claws extending from my fingertips and it would feel so real that it almost hurt. My tongue frequently tripped over itself because I could swear I could feel the sharp tips of pointed teeth with it. In the end, the bear and I came to grips with each other. I no longer push it away, trying to make it something other than me, trying to be rid of it. The bear and I have always been, are now, and will always be one and the same, and I no longer care about being "normal" or being accepted. I am me, and that's all I need.
