juushika

I encountered a discussion on why-animals-do-the-thing about bi/pan/trans/ace/aro animals, or rather, about the non-existence of cis/straight animals, and how gender identity and sexual orientation work in the animal world, and the relationship between biology, gendered pronouns, and anthropomorphization, and nothing has ever better articulated my gender identity.

I've discussed my pronoun use before with a tl;dr of "female pronouns are convenient and acceptable; non-gendered pronouns are equally accurate: because I'm a cat and cats don't have genders, and using these words isn't the same as embracing their connotations"—which has always been about as close as I can come to a gender identity. I present as cis female due to my body shape/the clothing that flatters in & in which I feel comfortable, but don't identify anywhere on any human gender spectrum. My spay/neuter status as a desexed cat has always been the defining factor of my identity—and that's not even a measurable real thing; it's complicated, it has no particular overlap with human gender identities or agender/genderqueer experiences, and more to do with the way gender (doesn't) work in animals, particularly desexed domestic animals.

I'm quoting that post here, for my own record keeping and future reference, with all credit to anon submitter and the parent blog. I just want to make sure I never lose it. It's such a good post! The personal connections I make to therianthropy/my gender are a smaller, secondary conversation, but it was elucidating to see these things laid out and they helped explain some of me to me.

( Read more... )

I made an unusually long visit to Corvallis, because I hadn't seen Devon for a while and because I was making a trip with my parents to go to Ashland and see some Shakespeare (!! !). I usually travel by train, but Devon and I drove back up today because he had to pick up a friend from the local airport.

This is the sort of thing that only I could do:

As we approached the airport, Devon called his friend to let him know we were running 20mins late on account of traffic. I was unsure if this was traffic-traffic or "traffic"-traffic, as we had stopped for dinner along the way and I legitimately did not remember any traffic congestion. It occurred to me that if it were white lie-traffic, I was complicit in a white lie! so I queried Devon. Devon recounted for me the three (3) episodes of stop and go traffic that resulted from some broken-down cars, which occurred approximately when I was talking in depth about 1) the abuse of Malvolio and its end-game resolution as appeared in this production of Twelfth Night,* 2) the way the B-plot was weighted against the A-plot in Twelfth Night, the ways they were knit together, the depth given to the B-plot, 3) the overlap of an actor in Twelfth Night and Hamlet, and as natural segue, 4) which was the more successful production of the two (spoiler: Twelfth Night), especially in conceit, but 5) that this was one of my very favorite Hamlets.**

Which makes these things the take-away:

My memory is so spotty that I can entirely forget not one, not two, but three separate repetitions of the same event.

I am so engrossed in media criticism that I can carry on a one-sided outpouring of Shakespeare Thoughts that lasts through at least 20-mins-late worth of traffic.

My compulsive honesty is so intense and deeply ingrained that even being adjacent to the possibility of a small lie will cause me anxiety and require immediate clarification/resolution.


* As a type-A fellow antisocial uptight often-socially-corrected personality, Malvolio is one of my favorite Shakespeare characters and I am incredibly sensitive to how productions depict his abuse and its aftermath—whether it's played for fun, whether the audience is complicit, whether his "I'll be revenged on the whole pack of you" does or doesn't diffuse the anxiety of the realization that things have, indeed, gone too far. This one was handled so well! so explicit, so cruel, so unforgiven; he internalizes his enforced socialization, his "smile," but reclaims it, develops it into a tool to use against those that hurt him. It threatens to diffuse and then refuses to, so pointedly. It was all I ever wanted.

** I feel that too much Hamlet discussion and production is given to issues of is he mad or faking (& is he flippant or bereaved); in this production he was all, he was driven to an extremity of emotion and he was numb, impassioned but indecisive, feigning and sincere, sarcastic and authentic. He was complete. That is the Hamlet which makes the play endure, who engages our ambivalence and writes it vast yet sympathetic, and we see ourselves in him, and we fear him, and fear ourselves

I just finished rereading this! I frequently start lists of media-mentioned-in books I love, and now that I'm making those lists on OneNote via my phone, it's remarkably easier to complete, edit, and publish them! Bless. So:


Media and pop culture mentioned in The Cipher by Kathe Koja
(In order of appearance, except where references reoccur; including just about all media, but probably not exhaustive.)

From the epigraph: “Mukade”, Shikatsube no Magao (poem); Rick Lieder (author)
Wise Blood, Flannery O'Conner (novel); later, “The Enduring Chill”, Flannery O'Conner (short story)
Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll (mentioned multiple times, including: the Rabbit Hole, the White Queen)
Artists: Paul Klee, Francis Bacon, Hieronymus Bosch; The Garden of Earthly Delights, Hieronymus Bosch (mentioned in specific later)
The Twilight Zone (television)
Weekly World News (tabloid)
Typhoid Mary
Xanadu
Tabu (perfume) (some aspects of this list are weirdly exhaustive)
Films: Streetgirls II, Dead Giveaway, Dogs Gone Wild (cursory searching and common sense indicate these are fictional); later, also fictional: Booby Prizes, Mommy’s Little Massacre
Faces of Death, dir. Conan LeCilaire (film)
Wild Kingdom (television)
Art Now (magazine)
Artists: Caldwell (can’t pin down who this is), Richard deVore (Malcom’s mask is compared to these)
“Borscht Belt (Jewish comedy) parody of Hamlet (Shakespeare) doing humble”
Pied Piper
The New Testament: Peter on the water; the Old Testament: Shadrach
Romper Room (television)
Author: Ben Hecht; in the final epigraph: “Love is a hole in the heart.”
Vulcan (Roman mythology)
Cinderella
(Obliquely) Inferno, Dante Alighieri
Phantom of the Opera(’s face and mask)
“Saints and idiots, angels and children.” (“It’s a quote, you dipshit.” From where? I don’t know! Enlighten me.)


I started recording media mentioned in books because I'm a dork because, as I may have said about 40 times, using narratives to create or explain your narrative is my modus operandi and thus my favorite thing to see in narratives. (Narrative-ception.) There's a danger of creating self-referential and -congratulatory recursive narratives that require googling rather than reading because without immediate knowledge of the referenced material you're in the dark. That's occasionally lampshaded, particularly in books where the references are fictional and their excess is intentional (the navelgazing of House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski; the aesthetic and plotty footnotes of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Susanna Clarke).

But, more often, narratives about narratives do one or both of these things:

The references create a palate. I've described The Cipher's atmosphere and aesthetic as "thriftstore decadence" and the characters as "gritty dirty poor horror-kids," but what describes it better is the book's references: Alice's rabbithole as metaphor for the Funhole, the grotesque art prints cut from art magazines, Flannery O'Conner's heartless black humor and the parody-titled sensationalist films; the combination of sleazy and Weird is never meant to be pleasant, but it has as strong an atmosphere as the most stylized, idealized fiction.

and/or

The narrative not only extends itself to contain the referenced material, but builds a whole greater than the sum of the references. Reader, I adore this: texts played against each other, narratives that address the reader/writer/character meta-relationship. This was what made Fire and Hemlock, Dianna Wynne Jones, so exceptional. Polly spends most of the novel internalizing, creating herself around Tom Lynn, but he also challenges her when she merely regurgitates the influences he throws her way—Tom Lynn's creation of Polly extends so far that he demands that she create herself, a contradiction they must both confront in the denouement. Fire and Hemlock borrows structures and dynamics that Polly is unaware of (Four Quartets, T.S. Eliot; Cupid and Psyche); it's about the dozens of books that she reads and internalizes; it's about the story that she turns around and writes herself, and about the necessity and limitation of the inspiration she's taken from what she's read. And it's so good.

Most examples—often the best examples—do all of these things. In Catherynne M. Valente's engaging The Labyrinth, some references are in Latin; the fantastic The Game of Kings, Dorothy Dunnett, made me read it with google in one hand and book in the other. Both are exhausting, both are worthwhile. Caitlín R. Kiernan is (obviously) my favorite, because in this way her brain works like mine: her stories are a web of narrative influence, mentioned by name and date or casually misquoted; the way I process wolves/werewolves/black dogs is how her protagonists process their experiences, from their ancient failed romances to their trespasses into the bizarre: these external narratives have become their internal metaphors, necessary tools for interpreting the world. The Red Tree and The Drowning Girl in particular are stories about telling stories, by necessity, imperfectly.

(And all of that is who I am, and what I do.)

I've been thinking about my last (locked) post, and they've been thoughts like these:

Perhaps why it matters so much to me is that I hate to lie. I hate all lies, even little white lies, even pleasantries. I'm the sort of person to give an honest answer to a casual "how are you?", but I know I'm not alone in that. I'm also the sort that hates to give unmeant compliment or thanks, even for a well-intended gift; I have tricks to avoid the troublesome topic and say something true to say, instead.

Part of this may be an introvert's distaste for polite, small conversation, but at it root it's that I've lied too much already. Because of how I was raised, because of the culture I live in, because of the college I was attending when my mental health issues came on in full force, I grew up to believe that I couldn't say the truth about myself. Who I was—the underlying truth of my identity, the nature of my daily life—was socially unacceptable. If I didn't have anything nice to say I shouldn't say anything at all; the truth made other people uncomfortable, and giving voice to bad things made them real. "How are you?" was supposed to be "fine," but I rarely was, and that wasn't some silly nitpick—it silenced me, and made me feel isolated, unacceptable, profane, inappropriate, unwanted.

I've written before about the process of coming out of that—of the bus ride were I told my seat mate about my medication, and how it began a difficult and necessary trend towards honesty. I've talked about why it matters, about how the silence and shame and stigma around mental health issues can be as painful as the issues themselves. So now I try hard to be honest, honest about who I am and how I feel, but while I'm at it: fuck all the social niceties, the things I'm supposed to say. It's partially the principle of the thing, but it's also that it doesn't matter that these lies exists because we don't want to hurt one another—so help me, they do. Not talking about how fucking miserable I was at Whitman may have kept my fellow students comfortable, but it hasn't yet stopped hurting me. Telling someone I'm happy about something they've done, about a role they've played, tells them that they've done right and silences my experience as the recipient of things done wrong.

I don't need to go to the other extreme, to make every opportunity a chance to tell My Life Story of Suffering and Pain, to turn one holiday into a family confrontation. And I don't, and that's a good thing. (Although it does bother me that there is so much I still don't say. Not lying is still not the same as telling the truth. I'm too good at deferring, and I still feel so much shame about what I feel and do. It's hard to kick, you know? I've learned a lot of honesty and I'm learning more, but that's because there's a need to.) But I don't say things unless I mean them, even if—especially if—someone else feels I ought. That makes me selfish and ungrateful: so be it. It's about being selfish, about being ungrateful, about learning to respect myself.

Day One: Ten things you want to say to ten different people right now.


Day Two: Nine things about yourself.

It was hard to come up with nine things which were worth saying but hadn't been said a billion times before. Whether I managed to find that balance, I don't know—but they'll do. This has sat around waiting long enough.

1. I present as female, and am fairly content to be identified as female, but the truth is that I don't have a strong gender identity. I relate to some female social roles, and given my body type tend to conform to some aspects of female self-presentation. I relate to many masculine sex roles and some social roles. More often, and especially where my therianthropy is concerned, I relate to a null-gender, more neuter than gender-neutral. I find myself somewhere between both and neither, with twinges of gender-related dysphoria in both my physical body and my gender presentation; I wish I could toss out the entire idea of gender, but don't need to do that or to redefine how I present and am identified. In other words: this is just enough of a thing to bug me, but not enough to hold a candle to the more significant gender issues that others face, so I try not to fuss about it overmuch.

2. I read an average of one page per minute. This proves to be a reliable and universal estimate, as long as we're not talking verse or textbooks; it's also damn useful, because I can use pages read as an approximate timer.

3. I dislike unfinished stories. I rarely read or watch anything that isn't finished—I can make allowances for TV shows (single episodes of crime dramas which don't have strong overarching plots, or finished seasons of long-running series), but I won't read manga that's ongoing and will rarely start books with sequels still to come (and I may not even read books in a finished series). In part this is pragmatism: I don't like getting to the end which isn't an end, waiting for the real end to come isn't my strong point, and I like to consume the media that has my attention now rather than the one that caught my attention with the first installment two years ago. In part, it's fear: like everyone else that began InuYasha a decade ago, I know that a promising start can turn into a painfully long and mediocre story; worse, some strong starts never reach their ends. And in part, I just think it's lazy and selfish to string along the audience for one more season, one more sequel, another year of waiting, another bundle of cash spent, on something which may not turn out to be good after all. I can and do bend this rule, some of my favorite pieces of media actually break it, but for the most part: I dislike unfinished stories.

4. After a lifelong habit, I stopped biting my nails in a single moment. Devon told me that saliva weakens nails (a casual search backs this up), and that was sufficiently strong and logical reason to stop, which apparently was all I needed.

5. I have little connection to my given name. Jessica just doesn't feel like me. It doesn't feel like it's not, me, either; it is null. I have a stronger connection to my screen name because I chose it and have used it for so long, but I wouldn't pick it to replace my given name. I have some connection to my middle name (Erin), because of its relation to my Celtic heritage and red hair, but I wouldn't chose to go by it either. I've considered going by Jesse, which as my maternal grandfather's first name is the source of my given name, but I know most people would hear it as Jessie, which is too cutesy and familiar for me. Sometimes I sign myself as J, which is a happy compromise but obviously not ideal. None of this bothers me overmuch, but it makes me feel a little unconnected, unknown, freefloating.

6. I've always had a strange relationship with my singing voice. While my speaking voice is high, my singing voice is fairly low (for reference, I tend to find Maynard James Keenan's range a good fit). I've long been shy about my voice and unwilling to sing in front of others, and I tend to have difficulty finding notes when singing without accompaniment. But when singing along to music, I'm adept at harmonizing or dropping an octave to stay in my range, and I find the act of singing satisfying in a physical, almost sensual way. Falling in love with Florence + The Machine has taught me to belt it out, and for better or worse—these days I love to.

7. I don't visualize. I mention this upon occasion, because it greatly impacts how I take in and interpret stimuli—but only on occasion, so it's not a bad fact to throw into a list of lesser known things about me. Rather than images, I think in words, often in full sentences. I've explained this in more detail in this comment. I also have what is probably minor dyscalculia, which gives me some trouble with numbers and distances but mostly means that I constantly reverse digits. I have a bit of synthesia-esque cross-wiring, and so read color into scent and feeling and sensation into letters and words. I have minor facial blindness, and primarily use hair to recognize people (even Devon somewhat a stranger after a haircut). I remember specific, random events rather than general trends or long passages of time. Oh and also I think I'm a cat, and I'm diagnosed with depression, anxiety NOS, and agoraphobia. (Now I've certainly grown redundant.) I do not think that I'm a special snowflake and that the eccentricities of my brain are particularly remarkable or extreme; I do find them interesting, and think that knowing and respecting them aids and helps explain me.

8. I have problems reading sideways or upside-down. You'd think, given how intimate I am with words, that these things would be easy, but even on an angle I have problems. This means that I have to sit upright to read subtitles, which sadly makes the bulk of my preferred visual media a little more inaccessible.

9. I run a more-or-less porn blog on Tumblr. It's probably not the sort of images you're thinking, no matter how well you know me—which is why I don't link to or mention it. You probably don't want to know what is there. I wish it were more popular, but I find a lot of joy in this silly little side project—in ways that are meaningful enough to justify in-depth explanation, perhaps, some day.


Day Three: Eight ways to win your heart.
Day Four: Seven things that cross your mind a lot.
Day Five: Six things you wish you’d never done.
Day Six: Five people who mean a lot (in no order whatsoever)
Day Seven: Four turn offs.
Day Eight: Three turn ons.
Day Nine: Two images that describe your life right now, and why.
Day Ten: One confession.

Back when I was living in my apartment in Portland, down in a little one-bedroom basement place, I rarely saw the sun. I used to hide from it. Not just outdoors, bright-light sun—but everything down to the rays through the window. Only one small window stood uncovered by blinds; it was in the same room as my computer and during the day, I used to advert my eyes from that window, I used to pretend that there was no sun shining through. Seeing the sun cycles would be to admit to the passage of time and to the existence of a real world outside the confines of that small apartment—and at the end of my stay there, things like time and existence and reality were more than I was able to handle.

When I moved into the townhouse, windows were everywhere. My bedroom was on the second floor, white-carpeted and open and empty but for my spacious bed. Two windows shone sunlight into that room. I'd hang a sheet over the windows because bright light has always bothered my eyes, but I learned, living there, to lay in that diffused glow, curled on burnt orange sheets, reading sometimes, writing a little (although I did most of that downstairs), watching a lot of movies on my laptop—and napping through the days. I was recovering, then, from the low point I had hit before. I was not healthy, but those golden sunlight afternoons taught me that, for me, perhaps there was a sort of health in just curling up with a book or for a nap—and aiming to nothing more.

These days, the room I share with Devon is cornered on two sides by huge windows. One is densely blinded; one has blinds and I sometimes cover it with a sheet, and sometimes can't be bothered. A large flowering bush stands before that latter window, and it filters out most of the sharper light. I go days, weeks, at a time without thinking much on the sunlight that comes through. Sometimes when I leave the house, the brilliance of the light blinds and confuses me. But sometimes I long for the sun in the way that seems most strange for someone who rarely goes outside, who is afraid of direct light, whose eyes dislike even an overhead bulb. I don't long for the sun as my sister does: to have it on her face, warm and present. I long for its glow: for reflections in burnt orange, for gentle light and barely perceptible warmth, for the golden ambiance that only sunrays can bring.

I am healthier now than I have been for years—healthy as one can hope to be when one "cures" ills not by fighting them, but by giving into them. I have cut myself off from the real world so that things like time, existence, reality are not present dangers—so that they are optional, and therefore sometimes even desirable. Sun cycles rarely scare me, now. Nor need I try to recover (with the same desperation, anyway) from the time when they did. But the sun is still an unexpectedly blessed thing. I'm a night-beast, a pale- and thin-skinned being, suited for shade and dark; I still fear and hate direct sunlight. But that golden light, that ambient glow, holds me curled catlike: napping, maybe; amusing myself, perhaps; comfortable, warmed, calmed. I miss it in the winter, although I welcome Oregon's thick wet weather. I treasure it in the summer, although I hate heat. It is my pocket of safety, golden orange, recumbent, content.

I don't want to sleep tonight less because I'm wakeful (I am that, but only by fighting my tiredness), less because I'm anxious, less for what I have or feel—than for what I don't. I want to nap in the gentle sunlight, rather than sleeping in the blueblack of late night. I want that golden comfort calm. I know it's silly to stay up to sleep with the sun, I know that I could well regret it (I do lose a lot of time that way), but I get like this sometimes. I remember the townhouse, I remember that cream and orange bedroom, I remember when I realized there was a hope—if I chose to lay back and rest through the day, rather than trying to make something of it, I could, perhaps, be happy.

This post discusses my choice not to eat meat. Veg*nism can be a contentious topic, so if you'll take my personal choice as judgement of your own or a reason to argue, please do skip this post and avoid commenting!

I had a bite of meet about two hours ago. It was a meat burrito which I thought was a bean burrito—thought it was long enough to chew and swallow, although to my credit it's been 12 years since I've tasted red meat and nine since I've eaten any meat at all, so it's not a favor I can pretend to recognize. In fact, the whole incident was foreign to my tongue, my body. It still doesn't make sense.

I'm a vegetarian because I believe that there is, in this current day, no moral justification for me to eat meat—I have the resources to thrive without it, and don't believe "because it tastes good" justifies an animal death, the animal abuse that goes into most meat production, or the associated health and ecological issues. It's a personal choice and I don't pretend to make it for anyone else, in part because that's not my choice to make and in part because few good things result from going down that road. I used to be more of an activist and also more careful about avoiding contamination (like animal fats, or food that's come into contact with meat); these days, in large part, being a vegetarian is simply who I am: something I do by instinct more than conscious thought, a past decision that's created current habit. I just don't eat meat.

Well I'm sure as fuck thinking about the consciousness of that habit today, because I feel like I vomiting. The response is probably more psychological than physiological—one small mouthful is probably not enough to make me sick, even after so long without eating meat, although a few more bites might be; the disturbance is in my brain rather than my stomach. To Devon I described myself as "distressed"—I'm not anxious because this isn't anticipatory, the act is finished and done; I am unsettled and stressed in memory of it.

As a vegetarian out of longtime habit, I've more than once wondered why I chose not to eat meat—why that is who I am, and if there is still sufficient motivation behind the habit—if it is, in short, still a choice. Because memories of salmon still tempt me, and because it's too easy to get trapped in, and limited by, the presumptions of habit.

When habit creates identity, however, it has a certain aspect of validity. I've sat here for a few minutes now trying to come up with some vast and meaningful conclusion, the lesson this has taught me as if it were some great thing—but at heart it's simple: meat disgusts and sickens me*. I chose not to eat it for moral reasons and I still stand by those, but the choice has also become as innate a part of my personality as any other aspect could be—and even if it's something I sometimes take for granted, it is not an aspect that is weak or fleeting, but is rather so strong that betraying it makes me ill.

Because my upset tummy isn't improving.

Having reaffirmed that habit as a choice, I think I shall try to forget this whole episode. There's a certain comfort in the reassurance but the whole thing is still so unsettling that I would prefer just to be done with it.

* Not a valid explanation for every belief and behavior, but when it involves a dietary choice rather than something like social prejudice, I think it's fine.

I have lately been enraptured with these poetry readings by Sylvia Plath (starting with my favorite, Lady Lazarus):



( Daddy. )

Or, links: Lady Lazarus (full text) and Daddy (full text).

I love these poems because they are beautiful, of course, but there is more to it than that.

I stumbled upon "Lady Lazarus" two days ago after not reading it for years and was surprised to discover I still have it nearly memorized. When and why I learned it by heart I can't remember, but it is firmer, deeper embedded there now for having heard—dozens of times, sometimes on repeat—Plath read it. "Daddy" is incredible too, better also for having heard it—it's an auditory poem, thick with rhyme and halfway singsong as more than benefits its content. But where "Daddy" for me is a work of art and a window into Plath, "Lady Lazarus" peeks also into myself.

My suicidal ideation is purely that, just thought, just the idea of it, and it's usually fairly tame to boot, more a thought of "if I could die" rather than "how I could die." But for much of my life I've gone the way of a phoenix: living, glowing, burning, falling to ash, and rebirthing. I used to fight through my depression, fight the society that didn't suit me, until it all dragged me down in a burst of pain. Then I rose to try again—and fail again, eventually. The phoenix isn't reborn, small spring-fresh, wiser each time, able to live longer, burn slower; the burning is inevitable, and for me it came ever-faster, ever more painful. Which is why these last few years I've settled for something more passive, content not to try so hard and so not risk such spectacular failure. But the tradeoff is that the less combative life is less colorful: I do less and achieve less, so while I'm safer and happier living like this I do miss how I used to live and I idolize the pain that came with it as a badge of honor. In a way I mourn who I used to be—it hurt like hell, but it felt real.

My heart—it really used to go.

And other, pithy, bastardized quotes. "Lady Lazarus" is a part of me—the part of me that used to be.

I've been dealing with chronic lower back pain for the last nine years. The problems cropped up in my teens, and I have every reason (personal and professional opinion) to believe that they will continue for the rest of my life. My back pain originates from severe lordosis, which is commonly referred to as sway back: an exaggerated anterior curvature of the lower back. My lordorsis is so severe that, in my natural uncorrected posture, my lower back forms nearly a 90 degree angle. (See a picture of it here—I'm nude, but nothing sensitive is visible.) My lodorsis is complicated by 5 degree scoliosis (side-to-side curvature of the spine), one flat foot, and other minor body imbalances. I have been diagnosed (including x-rays) and have undergone a few months of physical therapy (including transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation) to prevent and treat my back pain. I have been dealing with it on my own for many years.

My chronic condition is a dull throbbing, which I've largely learned to ignore and only causes a mild discomfort. However, if my back is aggravated by any number of causes, often as simple as sitting or standing, the baseline pain level climbs and the throbbing is punctuated by sharper pain spikes and infrequent, stabbing spasms. My back is chronically tense and tight—to the point that it hurts to stretch, and I have low sensitivity in the muscles and partial numbness in the skin of my lower back.

Which is all to say: I am not a medical professional. My back pain is an individual condition with unique causes. However, I have a fair bit of experience for dealing with chronic lower back pain, and would like to offer some advice for preventing and treating it. Not all of this advice is correct or useful for everyone, but hopefully it can help someone. If I'm in any way unclear, feel free to ask questions! Back problems are painful and frustrating, and I would love to help others deal with theirs.

( Prevention and Treatment: some suggestions. Long, but hopefully useful! )

It's possible that there are other methods for coping with lower back problems, and you are welcome to discuss them in the comments. Questions and clarifications are also welcome. However, I'll mention one last time: Pain is a private, personal matter. Each suffer's pain has different traits, causes, and symptoms; each sufferer has different methods of coping and curing. The information and advice here is the product of my personal struggle with back pain, and I hope that it's useful to someone. Pain is emotional, frustrating, self-perpetuating—and always difficult. I wish the best of luck who those who are wrestling with this beast.

In trying to find a way to write this which was neither staged nor made me sound like a crazyperson, it became quite through and long. I could divide it into reasonably sized posts, but I might as well keep these first thoughts all in one place. By all rights, it is a bit early on to be writing anything at all, but these thoughts have been so noisy in my head that I needed to write them down. In writing them, I've also made sense of them—and so it benefits me, which was the point. Perhaps it may interest others as well.

I am locking this post, however, because the topics are still messy and quite personal, and while I am figuring them out—and coming to terms with the label—I want it to stay at least a bit private.

Therianthropy (therian: beast; anthropos: man) is the belief that one has an intrinsic, personal, internal connection to an animal or animals. Therians believe that for whatever reason (reincarnation, energy resonance, atypical neurology) that part of their core being/soul/identity is animal. Unlike a totem, which is external, the animal identity is an internal part of the self. Unlike "fursona", the animal identity (theriotype/phenotype) is not created but rather discovered, an aspect that a therian is "born with."

And I start that way because after months of viewing, in glimpses from the outside, I've finally taken the plunge and joined a pair of therian communities. I discovered the concept and groups by the blogger/pagan author lupabitch. I read therianthropy every six months or so, avidly tracking back through memories and taking in information. The concept certainly interested me, but I was somehow never brave enough to self-identify with it until now. But recent time spent with the boy, in Second Life, and in thought has lead me to actively, rather than passively, approaching the concept. But it scares me—because it is atypical, because it's hard to express, because I feel like it groups me in with some crazy things. For for all that, it feels right—and has felt right for some time.

I identify as a domestic housecat. (To say it simply.)

( Why I identify as a cat, and what therianthropy means to me. )

( Why I'm hesitant to call myself therian, and why I still will. )

( Where I will go from here. )

And so, certainly not in short, those are my first thoughts in this whole thing—as identifying as a therian, by name. I don't know how actively I'll post on it, of if I'll think that these careful, serious thoughts are lengthy foolishness in another week. I'm more than happy to talk about it, though, if anyone wants to—questions, concerns, clarification, the distanced option of someone not currently consumed by the subject. And beyond that, I should cut myself short before I tack on another thousand words, and end this here.

Partial crosspost on therianthoughts.