I have recently celebrated yet another anniversary of my current vessel's birth. I am now 42 years of age and planted quite firmly into middle age, even if that is still only early middle age. I have quite recently had to come to grips with the realities of age, most noticeably health issues, but I have also noticed as I get older that there seems to be fewer and fewer therians my age out there. Do they burn out? Have they gone on to other things and left this 'fantasy' to the younger generations? Or have they more than likely, like myself, gotten way too busy with personal life to chat on frivolously about shifting, howling, and running with the pack? Have we all become (gasp!) Responsible adults?
I majored in psychology when I was in college. Mind you I didn't do anything with it as I never got into grad school, but I did learn a few things and one of the subjects was that of developmental psychology. This concept deals with the issues of how our consciousness develops and grows through various stages in our lives. The first stages are that of pre-birth and infancy followed by childhood. We discover who we are and try to form a sense of self as we enter adolescence. Early adulthood , from about 20-40, is all about forming relationships and social interaction. The state that I am at now and is the topic of this article is that of middle age, where we have supposedly 'settled down' and start to have physical changes be they menopause in females, andropause in males, or a plethora of various health issues and concerns. As a recently diagnosed diabetic, I know full well the gravity of health concerns at this stage. Finally there is old age, beginning at about age 60, where one looks back on one's life and sees what they have accomplished and starts retirement. Perhaps in 20 more years I will write a blog article titled "The Retired Therian".
So how do these various stages of development affect one's therianthropy? All I can say is from my own experiences and everyone is different of course. As therianthropy is mostly mental and spiritual, your personal experiences and psychology do affect it and vice-versa. How your body operates, and how you treat it, can also lend themselves to your personal psychology. I shall try to endeavor to show examples from my personal psychology and how they have affected my therianthropy to some degree. I will begin with high school and work my way to where I am now detailing how these stages of age have affected me and my therianthropy.
In high school I was a nerd, dweeb, geek, call it what you will. I was still trying to find a sense of just who I was. I got into the most geeky pursuit of them all, Dungeons and Dragons, when it was a big hit back in the 1980s. I was also a major computer geek and could make my C64 jump through hoops. I was also, as I always have been, overweight. Being a fat nerd boy was plenty of ammunition for others to use and yes I was teased and even gotten into plenty of fights. This pretty much ended by my later teens however. Being picked on and fighting I noticed a rebellious streak in me. More of a burning rage that would come out every so often. As one of the 'underdogs' I always strived to protect those who were not of the norm. I was still shy and reserved at this time, but I felt a particular longing to want to be the champion for us geeks and nerds. To be their voice, to 'fight the good fight'. This attitude towards the mainstream teens was not limited to just the jocks, but to their Barbie doll girlfriends as well. At this time I was growing more attracted to girls who were heavy like myself. Now this may have nothing to do with therianthropy, heck, I wasn't even awakened yet. But this shows you where I started to have a sense of myself of being the protective wolf even if I was still too shy to do anything with it.
I would not truly find myself until after high school and enter the hallowed halls of higher education. There was so many things I wanted to do I had no idea what to major in. I did the community college first, jumping majors for about 3 years. I was an engineer, then a chemist, then a physicist, then I gave up and just tried to get my A.A. Degree. When I entered University, I decided on psychology. All this time I was adding various bits and pieces of what I have learned into my personal philosophy. I was still quite shy and reserved in the late 80s and early 90s. Then I found something that would begin to open my eyes so to speak. I joined the Society for Creative Anachronism in the 90s and soon was interactive with a group of like-minded geeks. I got seriously into gaming at this time as well, I even moved in with a group of gamer geeks. I played everything under the sun and began to realize its okay to be different. It's okay to be a geek. I also got involved with wicca, witchcraft and the occult. Yes! These are MY people. Here is where I belong! One day a man by the name of Wulfe put a sword in my hand and said "Go play." On that day the wolf was finally released.
My 20s were some of the best years of my life. I was finding myself. I was becoming who I was meant to be. The 90s were full of optimism and hope. When the World Wide Web came on to the scene in the mid 90s I was all over it. I even got a job as a Web Developer. Thanks to the net I learned more of wicca. I was in contact with the SCA through newsgroups. I was even running games on IRC. I was in geek heaven! I even learned that it was okay to have a preference for large girls and that I was not alone. I also learned that I had a wolf totem, or medicine in me. I was still a practicing solitary at this time and I don't think 'therianthropy' as a word or a community even existed at this time, but still I understood that I was wolf. I was empathic, possibly telepathic, I could see auras, but was 'colour-blind' to them. I would howl and could feel a tail and ears on my 'aura'. So much was added to my psychology at this time. It was a wild and fast ride that ended too soon. But it was also the era where I met my heart's desire. I met my now wife of 14 years in 1997 and she too was searching. She was interested in something other than the religion she had grown up with. Something in her, just as like myself, was yearning for something more. When I told her of wicca she jumped right in. I told her of my 'wolf medicine' and for a time we thought she was wolf as well. We now know that she is a cat therian, tabby cat that is. She is also a Big Beautiful Woman, and the fact that I was physically, as well as mentally and spiritually attracted to her was a bit of a shock. She learned to accept herself as I learned to accept myself and we began our journey into the new century together.
If the 90s were a time of my rise, then the 2000s were to be it's decline. At 30 years of age, it just didn't click that I was getting older. At 31 however, things began to fall apart. I had lost my internet job by June of 2001 more than likely because of the dot-com crunch and outsourcing. It would be 7 long years before I would return to the IT field. Oddly enough I found a coven, or rather they found me, one week before 9/11. The events of that day will always burn in my mind as the day I 'full tilt shifted'. When I saw those towers get hit there was shock. When I saw them fall, there was rage! "Honey, something is happening, I have to go outside", I said to my wife. Before then when I shifted, it was always controlled. Usually brought upon by feelings of joy and ecstasy. Most often I would shift during a ritual with myself or the coven. I would feel power well up within me and I would release it with a howl. There would be other times I would shift when I hear of some wrongdoing. That was only simple anger and a reaction to something on the news, or if a friend was wronged in some way. Those anger shifts would calm down after a while. But this was much different. I was literally seeing red. The image of the falling towers still in my mind I ran out the door still in my pajamas and went to the back yard. Then it happened. The "Big Bad Wolf" started huffing and puffing. I was in what I call the "blood rage" and by Gaia those bastards were going to pay, with blood if necessary. I wanted to destroy. I wanted to KILL! The rage was so intense that I think I brought a tree limb down. I have never felt anger on this magnitude before. It was quite powerful and scary, and yet somewhat alluring. Yes, I have tasted the 'dark side' of my psyche. And what is more, I enjoyed it!
What followed next is a combination of good and bad, but mostly bad because I so desired power and strength that I would continue to dabble on this 'dark side'. Even though I was growing in the coven and learning more 'magick', I was also incorporating dark and self-destructive philosophies into my psyche at this time. I was combating depression from being unemployed and from the death of my mother as well. I wanted to get my job back in IT and was ready to do anything for it. A year passed, then two, then three. Still no IT job. I needed to get something else, and fast. I finally got a permanent gig with Wal Mart this would then add structure to my life that suddenly had no structure, only chaos and anger.
It was in 2004 when I started to emerge, albeit slowly, from my dark and emo period. I inherited the coven and soon learned of the therian community at this time. Once again, that light that I felt in the 90s returned. There were other people out there who felt as I do. Other people who fell they are an animal trapped in a human body. It WAS more than just a power animal, I WAS the animal! I also got heavily into the science of alchemy at this time and soon learned that the only thing constant in this universe is change and that our ancestors may have understood the universe a bit better than we do now. My spirit was healing and so was my mind. But I was still being quite abusive to my body. Even though I had managed to drop 20 or so pounds since the mid 90s, I was still eating bad things with impunity. I thought the weight loss was a good thing and my metabolism kicked in. I could not be more wrong. I held on to the belief that even heavy people could be healthy, but we were not being as healthy as we should have. In the 2010s the affects of age were in full swing as our bodies finally gave out. Fist with my wife, and then me.
I entered the middle ages in 2010 at the age of 40. Two years earlier I finally got back into IT and thought the world was my oyster again. I thought I was perfectly healthy since I had lost weight and kept it off for 5 years. Working with Wal Mart is very strenuous work. But when I got back behind a desk I started doing things to keep me awake that would have serious repercussions to my health. But the first hit was to my wife. She had been heavy all her life and been a smoker, but one day she couldn't get rid of a hacking cough. Little did we know her heart was slowly shutting down. She was having heart failure. She was taken to the emergency room and she was diagnosed with Congestive Heart Failure. I was devastated. My entire philosophy came crashing down around me. "Oh my god! We're old! Our bodies are rebelling!" I saw this quite erringly as a 'magickal attack' and researched it heavily. Because my wife bounced back from this quickly and was on her feet again in mere days we thought that the 'love and light from friends and family' healed her and removed the 'curse'. She quit smoking, but after a few months she decided that she was fine and was right back to her old diet with the salt and carbs. Mind you we have eaten a carb and meat heavy diet for years. It was cheap and I loved my pasta, rice and potatoes along with hamburger and chicken. Sadly, my wife would have another attack and end up in the hospital a second time. This time we realized that this was a 'forever' thing.
I had to come to grips that my BBW needed not to be a BBW anymore. She started her 'lifestyle change' immediately. We were buying more veggies and eating more salad. I however was still rebelling. I didn't have the heart problem, why should I eat like a rabbit? She also began a regimen of walking daily. Her goal was to get healthy and loose weight. But after 2 years, she still has only lost maybe 5 pounds. I try to reassure her that she getting healthier regardless. But I too was ignoring the signs my body was giving me. I would always break out in boils and rashes, sometimes they would infect. One day I had such a thing happen on my toe. I don't know what it was, it might had been from bad shoes, maybe a bad insect bite. More than likely it was from me scratching athletes foot. All I know is that the toe got so sore that it was nearly impossible to walk on. But walk I did, using that "lupine integrity" not to show weakness or cave in to anything getting in your way. I still had to work. Eventually after 2 excruciating weeks of this and the fact that it erupted into a deep bloody wound, it healed up. Little did I know that this thing could have easily become an infection and I could have lost that toe.
And now we get to the crux of the matter. Yes I have prattled on about my history, but that is yet another sign of the aging therian! It was soon my turn to feel my body rebel against its mal-treatment. Remember what happened to my foot? Well something similar happened 6 months later around Christmas of 2011 but this time on my head! It started as a red and rashy bump. I thought a spider had bit me. This thing then blew up, got infected and started draining blood and puss. It also was the most excruciating pain I ever felt. I have had tooth problems before this, but never had my entire head swelled up and burned like this. I was munching aspirin and acetaminophen trying to keep the pain at bay hoping that it would clear up. It did not. I waited like a fool after Christmas to have it looked at. I never liked doctors or the emergency room much and even more so after my wife's visits. But the pain was so bad, and the wound was so large that I had no choice. I needed to "sacrifice myself to the will of man" and surrender to the medical profession that through so many years I had learned to despise. This was part of my self-destructive philosophy I developed in my twenties and thirties. I had forgot to mention that my mother was chronically ill all my life and that may have had something to do with my hatred, not fear mind you, hatred for modern medicine. I still have misgivings about the modern American medical industry. But on that day I went to get treated. They admitted me to the emergency room on the spot and put me on a morphine drip. They then took a culture and I waited...
"Sir you have a staph infection on your scalp that has developed into celulitus. We'll have to do surgery to remove the cyst. You are also diabetic."
Diabetes. That cursed word that I have heard in my youth as my mothers side all has it. I was so certain I was passed over this affliction, but yet somehow I knew. Perhaps it was the morphine but when I was diagnosed I really didn't care. My glucose was in the high 300s and my A1C was 11.7 meaning I had been diabetic for some time. And like most people who have it, I never knew about it and went about destroying myself with Krispy Kremes, Java Mosters and other sugar and carb laden treats. I was in the hospital for 6 days and went under two surgeries and a myriad of tests. I had my glucose tested constantly and learned how to inject myself with insulin. Once again I think it was the morphine, but it all didn't seem that bad. It was like I was fighting against the truth about my aging body for years out of fear, only to discover that dealing with it was easier than combating it. On that day I underwent a paradigm shift.
It was new years eve. 2011 was passing into that famed year of 2012. Was this truly the end of MY world? A world I had spent decades constructing. I wholeheartedly believed that I was the architect of my own reality. Things that I learned as I walked on the path of magick and the occult. But I am only a magickian and a therian, I am NOT a god. Even though I can 'bend the rules' to an extent. I am still bound by the natural laws of this universe. It is fine to have a philosophy that gives you strength and self assurance. It is fine to believe what you wish. But when that belief deludes you, then it becomes self destructive. I'm not saying that being a therian is what caused my predicament. It was being a FOOL that did it. I was so cock-sure of myself and soaring to the heights of the sky above that I refused to see what was happening down below. The hermetic axiom is "As above, so below" I was all about the above. But now I needed to integrate that with the below. And so on new years eve, I felt something change within me. For the days prior to this I felt separated. The spirit of the wolf in me seemed remote. But suddenly it returned with a vengeance. "I needed to leave the body so that it could heal", said a voice in my mind. "But as I am you, I will never leave you." Old Wolf then came back and I could feel the energy return. This time it was different. This time I would not fail. This time I would heal my body as I had healed my mind and spirit. The three parts of the whole would be united and the Stone would be complete.
I have been off insulin since Feb of 2012 and have not taken any more medications to date. I still check my glucose daily and have averaged abut 110-120 fasting with a 2 hour after dinner spike of not more than 200. They like you to be about 100 fasting and 180 spiking. I have been successful because I have cut all carbs from my diet. No pasta, no potatoes and no rice unless it is brown. I also have a bowl of oatmeal periodically to keep the cholesterol in check. I can have some carbs, but they have to be the RIGHT carbs. Thank Gaia the docs said my heart was fine and I had no high cholesterol which means I can still eat meat! I try to stick to lean red meats, lean pork and chicken as opposed to Italian sausage and fatty meats.I now eat salad daily and don't mind it so much as I once did. I've managed to get my weight down as well, I'm hovering around 200lbs now. I haven't been this small since high school. I feel much better and don't get as winded when climbing stairs or get panic attacks like I did at night. I can tell my blood pressure is doing good as the heart 'thumps' I once experienced are gone, and I can actually take heat and humidity without feeling exhausted. Sure there are good times and bad times but I have my diabetes under control, and I am not naive to believe that it will ever be cured, even by my will. This is yet another one of those 'forever things' that sometimes happen as we age. We must learn the lesson and continue.
My wife still does her thing but has now incorporated my diet into hers. Granted she still eats more carbs than I do. I flat out refuse to eat anything carby except in the morning when I can burn it off thoughout he day. My will is absolute. My wife is still big and I suppose she's okay with it. Doc says she's doing fine but could do better. People say I have done amazingly well and they are proud of me. What is my secret? Simple. I understand that the only thing that is constant in this life is change and...
I am an aging therian, and with that age comes wisdom, if we only stop to listen and learn the lesson.
Arcanus Tempestas Greywolf
14 July, 2012
