I had a really interesting exchange with  mx_scade in my previous journal, and it's got me thinking—never a good thing, natch—about why I'm on FA and why I'm interested in transformation and costumes and why I react the way I do to criticism and all sorts of junk. I really try to resist the temptation to talk about myself in my journal and keep the topic kinda participatey for the comments, but in this case I do want to take some time to introspect, because I think in a lot of ways we're all in the same boat, we can learn from one-another.

Up until maybe college, I've had to live with the repercussions of being kind of a spaz when I was a kid. I was, and still am, what they refer to as a "high reactive". I react with almost violent emotion to new situations, which makes me a very anxious person almost all of the time. Making a good first impression with strangers kills me. As a kid, they said I was "sensitive", but the less polite way to say it would be that I was a crybaby. I might have ADD, I dunno, I've never been diagnosed officially, but the fact of the matter is that I get absurdly discombobulated by novelty, for better or for worse.

Luckily though, I have a saving grace. I react to fear by becoming obssessively fascinated by the things that scare me, because knowledge helps me to overcome the loud, booming voice of my amygdala. And gosh, there's nothing like understanding for overcoming fear! It's a lesson hard learned, to be sure, but every single one of my childhood fears were destroyed by yours truly in a committed campaign of research. I was afraid of bats, so I made a documentary movie about bats for school. Tornadoes too. But when it came to the everyday forms of social anxiety, there was no such outlet. I already had this reputation of being wildly emotional and histrionic and taking stuff way too personally, and testing my social limits just made me seem like even more of an alien. It was like I was being shadowed by this weirdo past version of me that was just committed to sabotaging every social interaction I had. My classmates were convinced I had no friends because I had no interest in befriending anyone I'd have to be stuck with for 5-6 hours every weekday. My friends were all outside of school, or else they were from other grades and we'd hang out on the playground. On the playground there wasn't this sense of being trapped with my reputation.

I really hated my rep and so it was no wonder that I mostly stuck to playing games where I could pretend to be someone else, something else, upon which nobody could place any sort of expectation of what constituted normal reactions or behaviour. I thought that if it were only possible to literally turn into something not human, I would be set. There would be no more expectations that I act like all of these other human beings who seemed perfectly capable of controlling their reactions to stimuli. I didn't think of myself as a bad person, I was reacting to stuff in the only way I knew how, and yet everyone around me went out of their way to let me know how much of a freak I was. I got bullied a ton. I once confessed to a girl in elementary school that I had a crush on her, and she literally screamed and ran away. It only helped to fuel my self-hatred.

So I started fantasizing a LOT about these sorts of scenarios. In highschool, one of my closest friends confessed to me that he was a werewolf. You know, a "therian". After some initial half-hearted skepticism, he convinced me that he was awakening to the power to physically transform himself into a wolf. The reason his arguments were so compelling was mostly because I wanted to believe him so bad. It hit so close to home. I thought that if he was successful, it would prove that transformation was possible. Naturally, he was never successful, although we did succeed in some pretty heavy self-hypnosis.

I had never been much interested in sex, though I knew it existed from a very young age. Maybe too young, in fact. My parents, being progressive, gave us all of the gory details the moment that we were curious. It wasn't enough to say that babies come out of mommies when mommies and daddies love each other. Nope, I apparently learned about erections and everything. It wasn't gross, in fact it was presented in such a clinical, matter-of-fact way that I was eager to rope my sister in, to the horror of both of my parents, who were all to happy to tell me about the birth defects that could result from incest, let alone the social awkwardness. So I tried to get a non-relative neighborhood girl to try the sex thing (I was maybe, uh, six or so) and uh I'll spare you the details but pre-pubescent sex is basically a non-starter for a variety of reasons. I only mention it because I think it initially cemented this idea of vanilla sexuality as a vaguely unpleasant phenomenon and therefore it was Not For Me. Going to a Catholic school, I thought nothing of the sexually repressive environment. I was a great kid when it came to Catholicism! I didn't really have sexually unclean thoughts, I didn't lust after any girls... super chastity! Unfortunately, it seems like that's the recipe for developing a fetish.

Normal people, I suppose, fantasized about sex a whole bunch. You know, you have this strange, hormonal attraction to other people all of a sudden, and you're curious. You play doctor, you find your first porn, that kind of thing. I wasn't fantasizing about sex, I had pretty much given up on the idea that any girl would like me, and being a homo faggot queer in a Catholic high school would pretty much mean that my life was over, and when the fantasies about transformation suddenly started turning me on I didn't even notice. I thought, honestly, that during puberty you got boners for no reason whatsoever all the time. I didn't ever associate the fact that I was getting boners whenever my thoughts drifted to changing.

When  astolpho came out as a babyfur it was the kick in the pants that I needed. It finally clicked, no more hemming and hawing and denial. I would think about transformation, and I would get a boner. It was thoroughly consistent. I had a transformation fetish. Not just a kink, but a full blown paraphilia for turning into things, no arousal response at all to the thought of rubbing my vile mucousy bits against anyone. And, you know, I didn't want to have this happen! I was so mean to pervs before I came out to myself. I was in denial. It's not easy at all to be a sexual deviant. You never get acknowledged by society ever except in the context of being kind of a freakshow. I love what I am, even though I'm weird! Nevertheless, I would rather not have to put up with constant mockery just so that I can be myself.

All I want is to be accepted for who I am despite the fact that yeah, I AM a bit of a freakshow. I gravitate toward freaky stuff because that's the way I feel about myself, but the outcome I look for isn't to have my freakiness acknowledged. Fuck, I kind of hate having my worst fears confirmed. I want to be liked, just like everyone else, and I want people to get over their preconceived notions and see past all of my strange behavior and see that I'm a pretty okay guy! I love my friends, I love talking about intellectual shit, and I'd like to think I have a talent for endless sympathy, even though I can get pretty self-centered. In my fantasy world, sure I can get turned into, I dunno, a scary clown or something equally traumatic, but under that skin I'm still me, and the people who can overcome that fear are the people I know I can trust. People who won't make fun of me, who'll see past the transformation.

When I was younger, I was really affected by Disney's Beauty and the Beast, when Belle looks into the Beast's eyes and recognizes his former humanity. Sure, it's totally corny, but I think it underscores why I do the things I do.

As a postscript, I should mention that being on FA has helped me a great deal, and it's not just because I'm just posting shit. All of my friends have been so supportive and helpful and sympathetic and you mean a lot. I never thought I'd even be in a relationship but I have a deeply caring man with whom I share a great deal of love. It's progress, and I can say that all of this social anxiety shit is increasingly in the past and I'm becoming a more confident person as I sort this stuff through. So <3