it takes one to know one; reflections on my awakening
it started pretty simply. as a child i had a fascination and deep connection with animals of all kinds, from keeping slugs as a 6 year old, to holing up in the library to read an encyclopedia about cats. 14 years later and i now identify fully as a sheep. so what changed? rambling ahead and no, i won't shorten it :0P
age twelve, barnyard kids
as a twelve year old, i stumbled upon a book called the curious incident of the dog at nighttime - well, i say stumbled, i think my older sister would say snooped. while i now know that the book has poor representation of autistic people - and even poorer of higher support needs autistic people and their families - this book was nothing short of life-changing for a young, undiagnosed agnes. i began reading everything i could get my hands on about autism. and it was in 2016, in my local city council's library, forced to read a nonfiction book for once, that i stumbled upon what would become a book so instrumental to my identity that i still remember the title to this day: barnyard kids: a family guide for raising animals. as i flipped through the book, my eyes devouring the pages, i found the sheep and goats section. and this was when things changed.
age thirteen, autism diagnosis
then at age thirteen, i was diagnosed with autism after my request for a screening was granted by the local children's hospital, despite my parents' resistance. finally, it felt like things were making sense. my special interest in sheep - going strong for a year and a half by now, led specifically by some kind of unexplainable resonance with these ruminants. i had formulated a 10 year plan that would allow me to become a farmer by the end, and began to talk with people online about my connection to sheep, specifically finnsheep. but something was still off. i wasn't interested in keeping them. i wanted to be them.
age eighteen, so about the therian thing
i first discovered alterhumanity in 2022, when i was alone in a different state to the rest of my formal supports. this was a bad time for me. despite my general pattern of being in and out of the hospital from the previous year seeming to have ceased, this wasn't the whole story. so discovering alterhumanity (as i first heard therianthropy exclusively being referred to) i superficially interacted with the community, still ashamed to think that i could really just be a sheep dressed as a human. it was a shortlived interest and a month later, it was just another fleeting interest, despite the fact that it kept coming up in my mind. i did however, buy a valais blacknose sheep plush from aurora named benny. while i don't really have a connection to benny anymore, i still love him, and wish him the best, even if i wish i looked more like him.
2024. d-day
and then, on 31.08.2024 (31st Aug), i talked to a member of a discord i was in and saw the word therian in their strawpage. while i had heard it in passing before, i had never seriously considered that people i knew could be therians. suddenly it felt like knowledge i had repressed for decades came flooding back. from my obsession with animals as a child, to never wanting to pretend to be non-human becuase it felt too painful to be something i could never be, to my oldest special interest in sheep to my wanting to spend all my time learning and being with sheep - not as a human caring for them, but being recognised as one of theirs - everything suddenly came to me, as jarringly as a light being flicked on. and well, here i am. finally i have found a community on tumblr and neocities that reflects back to me what i have been seeing all this time. and who do i have to thank for it? my older sister, who explicitly told me not to read their books.
