Feral

There's a wolf eating its way out from the inside.

I know that sounds ridiculous. It is ridiculous. But it's the only way to explain what this is.

I feel like I've always had an "otherness". Sometimes it's been my strength, my solace, and sometimes the source of my solitude. Like there was something inside me different to the insides of most people. Like other people were more natural than me. Like I've only got one foot in reality. Like there's something wrong with me.

I put it down to being semi-Nordic and magnolia-nomadic and more interested in books and thread and crayons and woodlands and secret places than TV and magazines and sparkly shag bands. But now I know that it's all the wolf's fault.

This wolf has a name, by the way. She's called Ylva. She clambered inside me when I slept my first baby sleep and has lived there ever since, pacified by human food and a sedentary life. I've been eating too much for the last 20 years to keep the wolf calm and caged inside my fat, still body.

The thing is I'm kind of sick of having a sleeping she-wolf occasionally rearing her drowsy, snappy head full of teeth. This domesticated lap-dog needs to take me over, and she needs to be smoked out, starved out, coaxed out. She can eat her way out from the inside, but that won't happen unless she's really hungry. And that means I can't feed her as much as I used to. No more eating for two. This is all about survival and becoming. It's not a transformation, she's been there all along. I'm just letting the wolf loose.