Severed Connections

Chapter One: Am I Alone?

(Author's Note: I wrote this years ago when I was younger, so the first few chapters are very emotional, emo as one reader called it, but at the time and now I felt it was necessary to make the character and story very vividly emotional to express what she was going through and to compare that to the future changes in future chapters. So please stick with me as I promise it will not be all doom and gloom in this book. I am back to writing after years of pending on this. It will get better, and the writing style will change after chapter six or seven since I haven't written in a very long time. Thank you for your patience and understanding. Also please note this story contains sensitive content.)

I don't belong. I want to – but I truly don't. I never have.

I've always dressed the same as everyone else. I've always taken those extra steps – joined track my freshman and sophomore year. I was a cheerleader as a junior.

None of it ever made me happy. Being in the popular cliques didn't make that feeling of emptiness go away. It seemed like the more I tried to hide that emptiness, the more it consumed me. The more it tried to push away everyone else – the more it turned me into this solitude adoring person I am.

Sometimes I wonder; is this a gift or a curse?

I can run faster than most. In the dark, I see better than I can during the day. Jumping over obstacles is of no trouble to me. I can eat all I want and never gain any weight – I have the largest appetite for meat out of anyone I've ever known. But even so, even with the few "perks" here and there, it doesn't make up for it. The way my stomach churns when I stay inside the house too long. That restless feeling I get when I feel a breeze or see the moon sitting boldly in the sky, as if calling out to me. I want so badly to call back out to it. But I don't know how. I don't know if I ever will.

If...there's a wolf inside me, why hasn't it...come out? What about a dramatic transformation? What about a full moon transformation? Aren't I allowed some sort of divine freedom in the body of an animal? I just don't understand. I can't understand why this spirit, this soul inside of me craves something it can't have. Is it all in my head? Everything would make sense if it was all some mental illness I could cure in a psych ward.

Whatever this is...whatever's supposed to happen... I hope it happens soon. I'm falling apart trying to appear normal. Trying to ignore the roaring keeping me awake every night, trying to rip through my chest. Even though I'm so familiar with the feeling, it's so foreign. No one should feel like this, right?

What if.... I'm the only one? What if, maybe a long time ago, there were more like me? Maybe packs of them. Colonies. Towns.

Every day I seem to grow more discontent with this life. As a senior in high school, I should be excited to get out into the world. Yet I can't generate any happiness – I'm too busy marveling at the fake feeling to it all. It doesn't feel real, and neither do I. When I wake up in the mornings, I'm just a robot. I go through the daily motions but nothing ever stirs inside me, other than the restless animal that can't be freed.

The mask I wear – when can I take it off and replace it with a genuine expression?