Clearly the answer to that question is yes, so here goes. A couple of you out there already know some of this, but it'll be good to get it out in public at last. https://twitter.com/christawolf94/status/1356440973828571136

For as long as I can remember, I've wanted to be an animal. In elementary school I read the Animorphs books for the first time, and I very specifically recall wishing I had the power to morph: mainly into an animal form, but also into a girl.

My favorite character in the books was Cassie. Her parents were veterinarians, and her go-to battle morph? A wolf. This fascination with wolves stayed with me for years, leading me to reading every book on werewolves that I could find.

And when I eventually found the furry fandom, I tried other species for a bit (at various times, I was a fox, an otter, and a chakat) but by far the longest lasting was, of course, wolf. It simply felt right to me, just as thinking of myself as a girl feels right to me.

There is a word for this kind of deeply felt spiritual connection with an animal, and that word is therianthrope, or therian for short.

In folklore, the term is used to describe a physical transformation from a human state into an animal one. (The most well known version of this concept is the werewolf legend, or lycanthrope.)

As mentioned above, in more recent times therianthropy has come to define someone who holds a spiritual connection with a particular animal, and for fairly obvious reasons, lots of therians tend to also be furries.

But because I am me, I take things even a little farther than that. :P It's not enough that I feel spiritually connected to wolves, I want to *be* a wolf too. Preferably like the one in this picture.

This is why "Canis lupus sapiens" is the first line of my Twitter bio, I am describing not just my ideal self, but how I view myself in my heart. If my Twitter icon was how I looked IRL, I'd be the happiest person in the world.

Unfortunately, there's not much I can do about it. Gender dysphoria can be treated. It is possible for someone to transition from one end of the gender spectrum to the other, and it's a process I intend to start at some point soon.

There is not, however, anything like that for species dysphoria. (Which is what the last few tweets are describing.) IRL I'm like everyone else on this planet, a human. Specifically I'm a white trans woman of mixed but primarily Irish ancestry.

That's how I've always been, and short of a scientific miracle that we can't conceive of, it's how I'll always be. I know this and I've made my peace with it.

So, short of a physical transformation, I express my inner wolf in other ways: my surname, Mactíre, is the Irish word for wolf. My Twitter icon has been an image of my fursona for the entire time I've been here.