thinking about werewolves and the concept of becoming a monster and discovering that something savage and uncontrollable exists within you and the potential that has to be a liberating narrative about growth and change and courage rather than a story about controlling and concealing it
Being a werewolf is about shame. I think it’s also about anger, trauma, not belonging, and the fear that you might be unlovable.
The shame of being a werewolf has to be that you were bitten by the wolf, and you survived. You survived because you became the wolf yourself. You are this terrible, monstrous thing, and the terrible, monstrous thing is you. It’s the part of you that survives the attack, and it’s terrifying that this is you.
I feel like werewolves are people who are very hurt. Not only that, they’ve spent their lives up to this point trying as hard as they can being whatever the opposite of a werewolf is—something tame, something yielding, something that’s not angry and unpredictable and bestial. But the Wolf is also them. Because no matter how much you don’t believe it, you want to make it. You want to survive, and you will fight so that you will live.
Or werewolves are people who are incredibly afraid. It’s about the inevitability of not being lovable; being a monster is unforgivable. It’s about the inability to withstand anything that will happen to you. It’s about your body betraying you. It’s about carrying a terrible and ugly you inside you, locked up where no one can see it, because the thought of anyone else seeing that you is unbearable. It’s about all of those things and more.
I think the Wolf is the part of you that loves you, unconditionally. It’s the part of you that bites when something tries to hurt you. When something tries to put you back in the place you’re supposed to be. Of course it’s scary. It’s scary to find that you are impossibly strong and maybe selfish, and that your self-hatred isn’t enough to save you from the savage, stubborn knot of self-love you carry in your chest. But it’s also the answer to that question: What if I am awful? What if I am terrible, too terrible to look at, too terrible to love? What if you are a monster? Well, what then?
