I am Santus, obsessive adherant of personal truth and warrior of love. More than anything, I want people to find who they are and to accept all types of love that come to them into their lives.
-Collapsed multiple-
When I was 12, in elementary school, I was very badly ousted from society. I slowly awakened to a world inside my head that I was at the head of. I would move people that I liked from the world into my mind, and then convert them to have ears and a tail. I was there with three shards of myself, a manifestation of my effectiveness, a manifestation of my desire for knowledge, and a creature.
It was a lot to have a whole world moving in my head at such a young age, so, together the parts of myself flipped the switch together to end it, to be whole.
-Therian-
At 16, I realized that I was some kind of creature. It was strong enough of a feeling to give me a shadow tail even then, and to do shifting. I did a lot of hypnosis when I discovered hypnosis so that I could less painfully maintain a sense of that. Over the years, as my sense of self shifted and changed, I felt the creature within me change to.
First I was a wolf. Very pack focused. I was always on the margins and alone and that hurt very much. I found furry and that made me feel less alone.
Then I was a wolf-cat hybrid. An acknowledgement of the intense sense of being selfish that had started to well up in me. I was terrified to not be a wolf, because I'd built myself up around it, but I could see it wasn't my truth anymore.
Eventually, the cat overwhelmed me, and I sat within being cat. I felt drawn to learn empathy and to forgive myself in therapy. Once I learned that enough, cat started to fall away.
Then I was a kangaroo. I couldn't figure that one out at first, but, I needed to accept that one of the biggest things about me is that I am motherly. That led me to accepting being bigender.
Once I did that, I felt like I could relax into being a fox, something that had always been an adjacent possibility for me, but had always felt distant because I had another thing to learn.
I am trying to listen to what fox is here to tell me. I think fox might be bedrock and the other things I felt were aspects of fox I needed to get through to be fox (abandoning shame, accepting femininity and motherhood, not being alone, understanding others).
Every time I change forms I have to get used to the changes that it comes with. I have accepted vastly different mes over time. It isn't just a character for me, but something my identity is deeply rooted in, and analog for my personality.
-Poly-
When I was about 18, I met a very powerful creature that invited me to come on a date with his partner and him. I wanted to go and explore that with them, but my parents shut me down about it.
After that, once I was exposed to the idea, I started seeing relationships around me differently. I started seeing love differently.
I reflected to myself that loving someone doesn't stop us from loving other people, and so the system of monogamy and our expectations about it must be wrong.
What no one tells you when you're starting out poly is that you end up spending large swaths of your life alone. I had a lot of issues that drove people away that I've since worked through.
I didn't give up, though. I kept hope alive within myself, kept searching, and kept learning from different partners things that I could love and value about myself and others.
Now I live a life full of love, though it had much struggle to achieve, with a lot of sexual and emotional openness.
-Trans-
Here at 32, it was finally time within myself, after all of that acceptance and fighting society to be myself that I now see the most heavy and powerful truth I've ever felt, which is that I am a woman.
I am practiced at the recontextualization from all my shifting. I am open to the sisterhood and connection by token of being poly. Just new kinds of love to understand and explore and feel.
What will life bring me next?
Why not find out with me?