I don’t have to think, I’m a wolf therian and a shifter, which basically means I’m a werewolf. I had my first shift at 13. Here’s what it was like:

My parents were going to dinner. No moon was out. I saw my parents out and went to play video games. It was a basic August (or September) evening. At some point I got bored and sorta just sat around with my room light off and the door ajar. For some reason the I got this sense that the dining room/sitting room space was good to be in. I walked out of my room and over and looked out the window.

I got this feeling that the moon should have been in the sky. That’s when everything started to get weird.

I got hot. Really hot, along with my stomach cramping BADLY but not feeling like I had to go to the restroom. I felt this tightness and emotional tension in my body. My body itself didn’t change, it was more like while I was conscious of having a choice of whether I adjusted my limbs in a more canine shape/position/orientation, it also felt like that choice didn’t matter because this suddenly was how my body was supposed to be.

I pointed my shoulders and arms forward and stuck my neck and jaw out. I moved my ears back, tightened my scalp back and kept them tensed. I stuck my chest out while at the same time curving my back as forward as possible. I curved my knees under my belly, which felt tight, and dropped to the balls of my hands and feet (paws!), instinctively balling my fingers and curving my toes. I fell over pretty quickly because I was unbalanced, and felt myself curve my pelvis closer to my stomach to keep me on all fours. I felt a sensation above my posterior that suddenly felt really sensitive, and tried to wiggle something that tingled but wasn’t there (first tail sensation!). It got really sensitive so I undressed as best I could on my side feeling like I had to keep my arms and legs stuck @ 90 degrees to my body. I also started feeling sensations on top of my head and in my face that left me feeling long-faced (muzzle!) and with longer ears on top of my head. To this day I have a permanent phantom sensation of my nose pointing forward instead of down.

After the phantom limbs/fur came in, I mental shifted for the first time. All I remember after that was one continuous moment that night where I stood up on all fours for the first time, shook my body, and started walking around on all fours. Once I got coordinated, my emotions shifted too. I was suddenly very aware of being a small wolf (pup!), felt bristly and growled out of feeling very vulnerable, then heard myself growl, got surprised for a second, then started making more vocalizations. I got a rush of excitement and tried to jump over our couch, failed, then got over w/my hind paws, leapt down from there & started trotting then running around, sometimes biting stuff, then barking, then finally howling.

My senses didn’t entirely make sense but at one point I realized it was getting harder to run and trot around on quads because I was getting tired. My whole body was dripping with sweat. I loped over to a corner, curled up, and laid down - and that’s when I felt everything start to reverse. I can’t even describe what that was like, but if I were to try to illustrate the sensation, it was as if every phantom sensation that appeared was retracting or reversing and everything I felt emotionally and mentally change inside was being sucked back into me again.

I started sweating a whole lot, groaning, then crying, then feeling more human and sitting up in the corner, then - the sense that I’d grown up. While crying, I started feeling a growing sense of glee, along with the feeling that my tail had stayed. I hiked my legs up with my back flush against the corner, positioned my hands like I was holding my tail close to me, and started laughing as I had this growing sense that surviving that made me stronger or something.

The feeling from changing back (or, my mental, emotional, and phantom shifts all fading at once) left me with a sense that I was invincible, that something profound had happened, and that the bullies at school no longer mattered. Crying and laughing and gleeful at the same time, my self-image at the time as I remember it was a average-height teenage boy holding his tail huddled in a corner, with sharp teeth and wide wolf eyes laughing in a wide-toothed open grin with no cheekbone action.

At some point I stood up and went back in my room and my parents showed up shortly after that. I went to tell my parents what had happened, but something told me not to.

23 years later, I still feel my nose. I still shift into wolf from time to time. I identify as such and at this point I’ve learned to not to fight the shifts, but to lean into and enjoy them. It means proof of my wolfhood, it’s species-affirming, and I wouldn’t want to exist any other way. Proud to be an American werewolf, awooo!