(Pack Pack Pack)

Sometimes you read something so profound, but you need time for it to settle into your thoughts to realize the true impact those words had on you. Sometimes things in life finally click a lifetime later.

Recently, I have gotten back into reading real paper books. Usually, it's an information-dense IBM red book, or a topic I found doom-scrolling that deserved a deeper dive. Wolfsong by TJ Klune is a book I saw in a small local bookstore and was taken by the cover. It seemed like a fun read by the blurb on the back, but I wasn't expecting the words contained within to root themselves deep into my emotional state.

Look, the book is extremely wonderful, and I could go on for ages about the little facets of how the characters all portray deeply emotional scenes with phrases that don't make sense until you've finished the book, or how the descriptions of the world itself give off such a calming and familiar vibe.

But what killed (read: healed) me was the themes of found family and love that roots itself to something inside you that isn't quite human.

If you couldn't tell by the title (or googling the book to just see it), the book is mainly about werewolves. The theme of a pack (pack pack pack) is pervasive throughout the book, and extremely important to understanding the complex relations you experience through mostly non-direct engagements. I think being a furry causes me to look a little "too into it" when it comes to talking about fictional animal relationships, but just bear with me on this one.

Humans have packs.

Not a particularly ground-breaking association to make, but to me, I can't say I've ever felt that way about my own family in the same sense a pack has ever been described in any sort of fantasy/fictional media. Throughout Wolfsong, you follow a character who, through no fault of his own, ends up by himself and is drawn into the confusing (and strangely physical) relationships of a family of werewolves. The feelings of the pack slowly start to bleed into the main character's psyche the more time he spends around them. And similarly, the more time I sat with the descriptions made of the pack and how they interact with each other, I started to feel a deep yearning. jealousy?

As an adopted child, I've never had a deeply intense connection with the members of my family (or at least what I believe should be the feelings one would have being born into a family, but that's a discussion for another time), and that has led, I think, to a lot of strife in my life when forming personal relationships with just about anyone. I have people in my life I care about deeply, but most of those relationships just feel content. They lack the depth of the pack described in Wolfsong - a concept that plucked at emotional strings I hadn't felt before.

I am a generally abrasive person, and that has just been the way things are. I've come to live with the fact that I don't carry spoken word well. It's something I work at every day, and every so often I overstep my bounds and need to reel myself back into the mold I feel I should fit... But, this generality of my life gate-keeps a certain level of connection I have with those around me, and greatly shrinks the pool of people I can say I get well on with.

Pack isn't just a term used to describe a (familial) unit; pack is a feeling. Pack is the threads of emotion that linger between you and those you dedicate the time to form bonds with. Pack is something you defend, but also know has your back if and when the time comes when you really need them.

Within the book, we follow the main character as tragedy strikes him, leaving him without a pack, not that he would have called it at that time, but in time learns that the family that had taken him in (and don't think this was a traditional adoption) was his pack. The character's realizations hit me particularly hard.

It takes a messy, confusing life to realize that family isn't blood, and love isn't always easy.

I've been searching for a real long time, a lifetime literally, for those people I could call my pack pack pack and, until I finished Wolfsong, I was blind to the fact that I already had what I seek. You see, throughout my struggles to relate, throughout the revolving door of people in my life, throughout my own perceived shortcomings, there was a group of people in my life that, given the chance, would be there should I need. And in turn, I would do my damnedest to help them should they need. These people never really gave me flak for the person I am, besides the very much needed corrections when they were warranted. Within these people, I have been growing into a better person.

Generally, the last few years of my life have been some of the most emotionally fruitful. Having people around who genuinely care, who see you as you, and give you the grace needed to learn how to be someone within the short time we all occupy together, really does an amazing thing for ones sense of self.

Who thought a soppy werewolf book would be the thing to bring me to my senses on that fact?

A Feeling of Sunshine

“So he pressed his forehead against mine and breathed me in and there was that sun, okay? That sun between us, that bond that burned and burned and burned because he’d given it to me. Because he’d chosen me. And I got to choose him back.” ― T.J. Klune, Wolfsong

Wolfsong also explores instinctual love and unwitting devotion - but I didn't relate to this through the main character's eyes.

For the longest time now, I have felt that my relationship had stalled out. Not because of any one person's fault, just the stresses of a life diverged has taken its toll on each of us. It's some of the most scared I've ever been in my life; I was terrified I had lost the feeling of the sun. But reading those words forced me to remember the day we met.

The day something in me broke.

I was a young man finally living alone. A few months had lapsed since my last job, and every day was becoming a longer and longer slog. And then one day a car pulls into my driveway, I had been nervous to meet the form stepping out, but wasn't expecting what I would see and feel.

Sometimes you just know, it's not a conscious thing. My heart started to flutter, my stomach dropped to a new low I didn't know existed, and the sun shone on my face.

Months of being bored, alone, and the lingering melancholy fell away. I felt the pull of something in me that wasn't quite human, primal even. I came on hard, in hindsight too hard, but there was something clawing at me saying, "You can't lose this one". Hairs on end, adrenaline pumping through my body, I held myself up the best that I could.

Suffice it to say, years later, we are still together. Something worked. Throughout all the ups and downs a relationship must be put through, we are still together.

Fast-forward to present day, we are about 13 hours by car apart. While I'm more than thrilled my sunshine is out there making the most of the life they have been given, there lingers the thought of "when are things going to change? When can I have the person I so desperately want to give my life to?".

It was luckily through my partner that I was introduced to the people I would later come to realize as my pack (pack pack pack). They keep me tethered to reality while I wait, wait for the day I can be reunited with the one that makes me whole. Given the distance between me and my light, I was lucky to have a group I could call my own.

Distance is not a barrier that can kill the warmth I feel with the one I chose, and the one who chose me. I'm not perfect, I'm not a catch. But I knew what I wanted, before I was even aware of it. And, there's there's nothing in this shitty, fucked-up reality that can quell the sunshine.

I used to think it was weird to say you'd lay your life on the line for someone. I'm not ashamed to feel it anymore. I may have been the person who came on too hard, the person who knew too early, the person who felt the sun shine on their face. But, there is one thing I'm certain about.

I haven't made a mistake.

Its funny how a fictional story can be the exact mirror you need to finally see your own life clearly.