I had a very strange but surrounding dream. I was a werewolf. I could tell everyone around me was exhausted trying to understand and keep up with me. They were trying to get me to express myself, but in a human way, it was like being in therapy or full time care for what they viewed as like an autistic child (we all knew I was a werewolf though). I was handed between people for sharing caregiving duties, every now and then I was left alone but there was always someone in the next room. I didn't like to talk but I could hear every word they said, always talking About me differently than they talked to me. All I wanted was to be wild, for them to let me into the forest and back and really for them to just relinquish their grip on me.

I would often get scared when someone raised their voice (at me or others, even just in the parental way of "no, we don't do that remember?" or a little exasperated, and I would run off a short distance, like a few blocks forward or to another room or around the bridges in the garden, but I'd wait there because I was trying to be good. They'd always call after me and as soon as they'd death with whatever it was, they'd hurry up to me and I'd be afraid they'd be mad at me but also a little defiant. And inevitably they'd be a little relieved to find me but also so clearly exhausted to have to manage me, they'd exhale and not try to give me the same line of "we don't do that" but just redirect, like "come on, let's go over here" or "come on, don't eat that."

A few scenes I remember more vividly:

In some sort of hotel, and I did not want to be there. I hid in the luggage room (a large but empty closet) and curled up in the corner, knowing they'd be looking for me. It was a weird feeling, like I knew it wasn't truly hiding, and I wasn't scared in an acute way, more like there were too many people and I thought "hiding" or waiting in the closet would be best for everyone. One of the caretakers (brown/blonde, early middle aged woman) opened the door, turned to a kid (her son/daughter? Her friends'? There were two other kids around who were each "normal", one maybe 9 year old girl and a maybe 7 year old boy? Maybe a year older or younger each), and said something like "see? Look what you've done. This is why it's important to listen when I ask you to do something." It was something about the kids listening so we could check in sooner and I wouldn't run off, something like that. The message was "I can teach you (kid) to pay attention and stay close so I can focus all my attention on the werewolf, the one I can't teach." But I knew it wasn't that I didn't know what I was supposed to do, it's that what I was supposed to do wasn't in my nature. It became too exhausting to keep doing what I was "supposed" to do, a constant fight in my head.

A shorter one; I hadn't been eating and the daughter gave me a big bag of her favorite snack in an effort to get me to eat/help. (Her effort was definitely more of kindness than exasperation). It was like a huge multi-gallon Ziplock of some kind of trail mix or candy, crunchy and sweet, and they were pink, blue, and pretzel-brown. I ate almost the entire thing and carried it around with me as I explored the hotel (it was kinda like a resort? Pool outside, lots of people, etc.) and felt better than I had in a while, more energy. By the time Adult had found/caught up with me (and daughter, who had been "watching" me), I had eaten probably 90% of it. Adult said "what are you eating?" and when she saw she tried to gently but firmly take it away from me. I held the bag close and growled--not a warning or aggressive one, more of an expression of displeasure/annoyance, but she didn't seem to understand that as she jerked her hand back. Adult turned to child and said "you can't give him your food, he has to have his special food!" The girl pushed back a bit (more like talked back) saying "but I got him to eat, he wasn't eating anything before!" and I just kinda watched the two of them, wondering if I shouldn't have growled.

The weirdest and most vivid one; it was nighttime and Adult Woman, the young boy, and his father (clean shaven, kinda techy look) and I had all finally made it close to home. Woman and I were staying with them for a night. It had been snowing and it was a little chilly but not miserable. Suddenly the kid shouted "my phone! I forgot my phone! We have to go back and get it! It's a [fancy model number]!"

The man and woman kind of share a nervous look. She glanced at me, who was a few paces ahead and had stopped to wait for them, then back at the man. She had looked Off--maybe she was just tired, I thought? Kid says "come on, we gotta go look!" And father says "why don't we buy you a new one?" He looks at the woman. "It's always good to upgrade these things once in a while." That part was clearly meant for her not to feel bad. Son says in a very dramatic, kid-like fashion, "oh THANK YA GAWD!" and collapses in mock prayer onto his knees. Father scoops him up and we all keep going inside.

And I found the whole thing strange. A few thoughts that went through my head were "why would they buy a new one without even trying to find the old one? They're expensive!" and "Man, that kid is spoiled. But why wouldn't we all just get back in the car to look?" Then I remembered the woman's strange look at me, and I realized it's because they saw it as too much trouble to get me back in the car and keep track of me while also looking after son and looking for the phone. But didn't they know that of course I'd help? I'd take it seriously because I know how important it was to Kid. Did they think I couldn't or didn't understand what a phone was, or why it would be important to try to find it instead of replacing it? I was confused and unsure if it would be right for me to be insulted or not.

Then I realized something else--the father could have just taken his son back in the car and they could search, and the woman could stay with me. Why didn't they do that?

It was then that I realized what the woman's look really meant. When we'd gotten inside and put the kid to bed, the woman was also going to go to bed and the man would be looking after me the rest of the night, that's what the plan always was. But if Man was back at the hotel looking for the phone, Woman would have to keep looking after me until they got back. So the look the woman gave wasn't to me, it was to the man. She was begging him not to leave her to watch me because she'd already been doing it all day. And that's when my heart sank--to hear how much of a burden they really saw me as. That not only was the woman so exhausted from watching me, the man understood that feeling so well that he'd rather buy a new phone for his kid than make her watch me for an extra 2-3 unplanned hours.

I felt horrible, like I had been trying my best and was still that much of a burden, or like I had to try even harder even though I could barely act like myself as it was. I was silent the rest of the night and just sat on the floor, near the man but not too near, as he sat on the couch and had the TV on low. He checked in with me now and then, asking "you okay buddy?" and he could tell there was something wrong, but I felt dead inside and so simply nodded silently.

There was another caretaker, definitely more big sister type, and she was the only caretaker I actually kinda liked. She seemed to be more lenient, but the most important thing was she was less condescending. She didn't seem to doubt that I understood things or show some false sense of praise, like "good for you champ" kinda kid/fake praise. She was the only person I didn't feel stupid around; she didn't treat me like some kind of uncontrollable toddler who was just too weird or wild or not civilized enough to use human words like they wanted me to.

She was sort of like an English teacher, but it was very unstructured. We basically got to just hang out in this "study", it was basically a lot of old dark brown woods, bookcases with glass doors and intimidating books, and a big table in the middle with some wooden chairs around. We'd have maybe 2-3 hour sessions every now and then, probably on some regular schedule I just couldn't remember, and I actually looked forward to them.

She was meant to be teaching me English, but she seemed to be the only one to understand that just because I didn't like to speak (I mainly used noises) and I didn't write with a perfect Latin alphabet (it was a sort of rough combo of very sharp, scratchy lines and letters) didn't mean I didn't understand advanced speech or couldn't mostly figure out what text said, especially with context clues. So rather than focus on phonetics and ABCs and the way you'd teach language to a toddler, she'd mostly tell stories and then give me a written copy (stories about her life as well as fiction), or just let me play with pens on paper. One day I wanted to impress her so I tried to make my writing less scratchy and instead pressed the marker onto the paper and didn't pick it up until I'd finished the short sentence. It left a ton of ink on the page in my eyes and felt twisted and almost wasteful, but it was interesting. She caught me staring at it, sat next to me and said "did you just do that?" I nodded and she peered closer and said "wow, that's really beautiful. It says [dream redacted], right?" and I was a little flushed that she could read it.

The other thing about her was she was trying just as hard to learn my "language" or way of writing, and she'd practice it too. And whenever someone else would express disappointment, like "oh, he's still just on scribbles", she would say, "no, that's writing. It says [this]." And when others would look at my other lines and say "you're just letting him doodle?" she'd say "no, that's poetry."

There were a few other moments I remember fleetingly, like in the summer having a thick collar on and a long chain anchored to the wall or railing or something so I "could roam in the yard without running off" or having to be supervised. I kinda hated it because there was nothing to do, but at least I could be outside and alone for a while. I had used to be in a cage, with one person occasionally throwing me scraps, and that's why now I had a bunch of different caretakers who traded me around, and although they'd all express how horrible it was, the way I'd been treated before, I always had this little feeling that they'd rather have me locked up too instead of having to watch me all the time.

But the humans were the ones who decided they had to keep me out of the forest like this. They were always trying to get me to talk, to sit up straight and proper, to eat dry and tasteless human food, to be an obedient human child, even though I wasn't a child, and I wasn't human, and I never would be. And though I was afraid of being caged up again, I was more afraid that I might be slowly turning into what they wanted me to be.

back