10 ways to describe my therianthropy
Feb. 3rd, 2026 11:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
professionaljaywlkerInspired from a writing exercise on tumblr that requested for student to write on a theme of their life in 10 sentences, again and again, never the same exact way. The author mentioned it made for better writing as it went on, so I am curious to apply it to such a theme. Don't expect very good writing.
1. I am a bird.
I was born animalistic.
Throughout my life, I experienced instincts my peers did not, I felt wings my peers did not, I felt like my body was not fitting right in a ways other children did not. I drew self-portraits dressed in scales and feathers, and I viewed myself through the eyes of dragons in stories I read. For very long I thought I was alone in this and prayed for something to put me rightfully back in another skin. While a teenager, I discovered communities of people who thought they were dragons and wolves and many other beasts. I also discovered many of the ways what I thought was wyvern-like was strangely bird-like, but not like any bird I knew of. I met many birds, from crows to falcons to cormorants and macaws. I met many other things too, flying and swimming and running but unlike me. I searched for something like me, cross-toed and sun-loving and feathered and fast.
Geococcyx californianus.
2. Absence of a bird
Today I woke up with no feathers to preen and no wings to splay to soak up the heat.
I did not need to chase movement to catch an insect or a careless reptile in the stones.
I did not coo, I did not clack, for there is no one who can answer.
I do not leave cross-toed tracks in the mud, nor do I see the warm toned dirt, the joshua tree or the red tailed hawk.
I feel no breath through my whole body for I am half choked by this strange body of mine.
I cannot raise my crest at you or pin my eyes, so forgive the impoliteness of my absent design.
I am the bird that lives in the negative space left in the corner of the eye.
I exist only in what I lack and what I miss;
But do not feel sorry for me, for I will still exist just fine.
With my nowhere-beak and my nowhere-calls, I am the nowhere-bird in human-shawl.
3. Are you even human?
Define human. I am a person. I am bodily Homo sapiens. I have two prehensile thumbs, I wear clothes, I listen to music and I make art. I love, maybe, I try. Yet I do not feel human. Can you feel human ? Does anyone feel human ? Is it not, by design, a human characteristic to be able to choose, to reject, one's species ? The question passes; I am a bird anyways.
4. In Memoriam
On March 2020, or perhaps 2021, I tried to kill myself. My view of time has been somewhat hazy ever since. It was an act of rebellion against life, against god, against every prayers I'd made to wake up in a body that is mine and a life that feels real. I stubbornly live and I stubbornly continue to refuse my body. I will hack at it and I will distort my skin and bones until it feels right, I will bring the scalpel to my skin in mock autopsy until I reveal all the synapomorphies that connect me to what I should be. Do you hear me ? I say to nothing and no-one, to what never answered. Do you hear me ? In another book, Sappho says "someone will remember us I say even in another time". Do you hear me?
5. Xerocole
It is 40°C out, and I thrive. The air smells of burnt dust and heat, the air is heavy against my skin, almost like swimming in water. My tail sways left, to right, to left, to right. I can feel the top of my crest startle up as a lizard skitters past, fleeing. I hesitate, but do not follow. There are plenty of things for me to chase here. No one can tell, that my beak is half open in a gape, that my wings flutter as I perch upon a stone. It is my secret. I pause, cock my head rapidly, as all birds do. Here, in the summer heatwave, for a minute, I feel whole.
6. Play pretend
I am twelve at the time. I boot up minecraft. I create an egg in beige terracotta, filled with water. I lock my character inside it, and start holding my breath as I switch the game mode to survival. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 8, 9, 10... I imagine myself in my eggshell, my lungs aching for a breath of air i've never taken, burning, instinct taking over. I break the shell. I gasp. My lungs hurt. I do it again.
7. Taxidermy
As a child, I was fascinated with parasites. I still feel fondness for them, who can survive only through other things. Later, I would start collecting feathers, almost by compulsion. I'd stare a little too hard at dead birds. I couldn't describe the feeling in my heart when I saw them. Perhaps curiosity. Perhaps jealousy. If I cut you open, dead bird, will I learn what's inside of me? Will you become part of me, dead bird, I feel like a patchwork of ill fitting things, can you replace the parts of me that were never meant to be? I can only know you in death, I harm any of the wild things like you by touch only, but perhaps, in your stillness, I will learn how to live as only me.
8. Brood Parasite
I have a brother. It is curious for a bird to be born in the nest of a human, but Greater roadrunners are occasionally brood parasites, say ornithologists. I search articles upon articles to explain how a bird can be born with human skin. I learn of Ceyx and Alcyone and of the Swan Maidens or Philomela and Procne. At 7 years old, I wonder if I must die to gain my wings. At 23, I still do not know. I look at my brother, and I do not recognize the traits he shares with me. I wonder what he thinks of me, if he understand, on some level, that I am not human, or if I have him duped as any good parasite should. Can a nest parasite feel guilty, of the family it has duped to be born? I read articles.
9. "Truth"
I am a therianthrope because I am. I do not need to explain it. Even if I had never written a word of it, even if it had been my most well kept secret, even if I had never known the word, I would have been a therianthrope. I cannot imagine a way for me to be alive where I am not a therianthrope, because I was always a therianthrope, and the yearning in my chest has been a constant throughout my life. I will be a therianthrope when I do groceries as much as when I stalk lizards. I will be a therianthrope even if I die a human. I will be a therianthrope even if everyone I meet deems me a liar. I will be a therianthrope even if I give up one day, and decide to bury it in shame, because I was a therianthrope even before I learned that I had the option not to be ashamed. Therianthrope, therianthrope, therianthrope. I will be atherianthrope even if i repeat it until it loses meaning.
10. Finale
I am writing words on a screen. It is very much not what makes me feel most bird-like, yet it is the majority of what anyone else will be able to consume about what it means to be me. How do I transcribe into words things I struggle to even explain logically ? It is an obsession, to be able to capture what I mean when i say "I am a bird", into a way that someone who is not a bird could comprehend, to be heard, to have someone say "me too!". Would I even accept someone saying they were also a roadrunner, 23 years into being the only one ? Does it even matter, to think about it. Three sentences left. Two. Once this is posted, I will get up, and I will go outside, and I will sun myself. I will feel my feathers ruffle in the wind, and I will feel happy.
1. I am a bird.
I was born animalistic.
Throughout my life, I experienced instincts my peers did not, I felt wings my peers did not, I felt like my body was not fitting right in a ways other children did not. I drew self-portraits dressed in scales and feathers, and I viewed myself through the eyes of dragons in stories I read. For very long I thought I was alone in this and prayed for something to put me rightfully back in another skin. While a teenager, I discovered communities of people who thought they were dragons and wolves and many other beasts. I also discovered many of the ways what I thought was wyvern-like was strangely bird-like, but not like any bird I knew of. I met many birds, from crows to falcons to cormorants and macaws. I met many other things too, flying and swimming and running but unlike me. I searched for something like me, cross-toed and sun-loving and feathered and fast.
Geococcyx californianus.
2. Absence of a bird
Today I woke up with no feathers to preen and no wings to splay to soak up the heat.
I did not need to chase movement to catch an insect or a careless reptile in the stones.
I did not coo, I did not clack, for there is no one who can answer.
I do not leave cross-toed tracks in the mud, nor do I see the warm toned dirt, the joshua tree or the red tailed hawk.
I feel no breath through my whole body for I am half choked by this strange body of mine.
I cannot raise my crest at you or pin my eyes, so forgive the impoliteness of my absent design.
I am the bird that lives in the negative space left in the corner of the eye.
I exist only in what I lack and what I miss;
But do not feel sorry for me, for I will still exist just fine.
With my nowhere-beak and my nowhere-calls, I am the nowhere-bird in human-shawl.
3. Are you even human?
Define human. I am a person. I am bodily Homo sapiens. I have two prehensile thumbs, I wear clothes, I listen to music and I make art. I love, maybe, I try. Yet I do not feel human. Can you feel human ? Does anyone feel human ? Is it not, by design, a human characteristic to be able to choose, to reject, one's species ? The question passes; I am a bird anyways.
4. In Memoriam
On March 2020, or perhaps 2021, I tried to kill myself. My view of time has been somewhat hazy ever since. It was an act of rebellion against life, against god, against every prayers I'd made to wake up in a body that is mine and a life that feels real. I stubbornly live and I stubbornly continue to refuse my body. I will hack at it and I will distort my skin and bones until it feels right, I will bring the scalpel to my skin in mock autopsy until I reveal all the synapomorphies that connect me to what I should be. Do you hear me ? I say to nothing and no-one, to what never answered. Do you hear me ? In another book, Sappho says "someone will remember us I say even in another time". Do you hear me?
5. Xerocole
It is 40°C out, and I thrive. The air smells of burnt dust and heat, the air is heavy against my skin, almost like swimming in water. My tail sways left, to right, to left, to right. I can feel the top of my crest startle up as a lizard skitters past, fleeing. I hesitate, but do not follow. There are plenty of things for me to chase here. No one can tell, that my beak is half open in a gape, that my wings flutter as I perch upon a stone. It is my secret. I pause, cock my head rapidly, as all birds do. Here, in the summer heatwave, for a minute, I feel whole.
6. Play pretend
I am twelve at the time. I boot up minecraft. I create an egg in beige terracotta, filled with water. I lock my character inside it, and start holding my breath as I switch the game mode to survival. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 8, 9, 10... I imagine myself in my eggshell, my lungs aching for a breath of air i've never taken, burning, instinct taking over. I break the shell. I gasp. My lungs hurt. I do it again.
7. Taxidermy
As a child, I was fascinated with parasites. I still feel fondness for them, who can survive only through other things. Later, I would start collecting feathers, almost by compulsion. I'd stare a little too hard at dead birds. I couldn't describe the feeling in my heart when I saw them. Perhaps curiosity. Perhaps jealousy. If I cut you open, dead bird, will I learn what's inside of me? Will you become part of me, dead bird, I feel like a patchwork of ill fitting things, can you replace the parts of me that were never meant to be? I can only know you in death, I harm any of the wild things like you by touch only, but perhaps, in your stillness, I will learn how to live as only me.
8. Brood Parasite
I have a brother. It is curious for a bird to be born in the nest of a human, but Greater roadrunners are occasionally brood parasites, say ornithologists. I search articles upon articles to explain how a bird can be born with human skin. I learn of Ceyx and Alcyone and of the Swan Maidens or Philomela and Procne. At 7 years old, I wonder if I must die to gain my wings. At 23, I still do not know. I look at my brother, and I do not recognize the traits he shares with me. I wonder what he thinks of me, if he understand, on some level, that I am not human, or if I have him duped as any good parasite should. Can a nest parasite feel guilty, of the family it has duped to be born? I read articles.
9. "Truth"
I am a therianthrope because I am. I do not need to explain it. Even if I had never written a word of it, even if it had been my most well kept secret, even if I had never known the word, I would have been a therianthrope. I cannot imagine a way for me to be alive where I am not a therianthrope, because I was always a therianthrope, and the yearning in my chest has been a constant throughout my life. I will be a therianthrope when I do groceries as much as when I stalk lizards. I will be a therianthrope even if I die a human. I will be a therianthrope even if everyone I meet deems me a liar. I will be a therianthrope even if I give up one day, and decide to bury it in shame, because I was a therianthrope even before I learned that I had the option not to be ashamed. Therianthrope, therianthrope, therianthrope. I will be a
10. Finale
I am writing words on a screen. It is very much not what makes me feel most bird-like, yet it is the majority of what anyone else will be able to consume about what it means to be me. How do I transcribe into words things I struggle to even explain logically ? It is an obsession, to be able to capture what I mean when i say "I am a bird", into a way that someone who is not a bird could comprehend, to be heard, to have someone say "me too!". Would I even accept someone saying they were also a roadrunner, 23 years into being the only one ? Does it even matter, to think about it. Three sentences left. Two. Once this is posted, I will get up, and I will go outside, and I will sun myself. I will feel my feathers ruffle in the wind, and I will feel happy.
