Lone Wolf, Black Sheep
Follow me, this gets deep.
Where I used to live there was a Wolf Sanctuary. I got to go there once I took my niece and nephew, I was always looking for interesting things for us to do when I got see them on a once a month or season outing. Wolf's Hollow in Ipswich, MA, this was around 2012.
It was exceptionally cool; the people were enclosed behind the fences with the wolves. A pack, the alpha just chillin happy to be used as a talking point. Another, laying fondly across his human while sat shaded under a tree. It was August and hot, and they prefer the cold. So, activity was low, and we got to see them relaxed and comfortable much like larger German Shepards.
They had a great informative and interactive experience for us, with a lecture, visual and howling. They explained about a solo wolf in a separate enclosure. They explained this, wolves exist as pack animals for safety, survival. They hunt, eat, sleep, raise kin, together and to do that effectively there has to be an order, and someone has to lead. Sometimes a wolf that was born into the pack wants to challenge that system, they want to lead, they want to be the Alpha. So, they challenge the current Alpha to a fight, and the winner takes the pack and the other can fall in line or go its own way.
Taking orders, is a humbling and unsatisfactory experience to an independent soul, especially one who has fought for freedom. So, the losing wolf can either go start a pack of his own or become what we know as the lone wolf.
Lone wolf is such a casual term, used so widely. I see an animal who has to work harder in every capacity, simply because they were born into a structure they didn't fit. And I see myself in that.
And so, I leave you with this, the next time you feel left out, or pushed out, and you feel like a black sheep, another term widely used to represent a metaphor connecting human to animals in an opaque way, think of the lone wolf and reframe yourself into a solitary power field.
A black sheep is housed in the group yet distinguished out. It is a constant reckoning with fitting in and standing out. Now I highly doubt sheep's notice the various color of wool they carry but they are known for submitting, to allow forced direction guided by two separate species other than them with no agreed upon communication.
This is insulting to people who have survived, left and transformed their lives from toxic abusive family and systemic system's. Yet society has to name them still, the never ending need to label and categorize, to degrade others in a low-level attempt to yield power.
These are the people who at one point will know themselves as the black sheep, they will walk that path. They progress in awareness to then challenge the system. A fight we now know can't be won. So, they walked away and remain solitary, or maybe they are fortunate enough to have come across one or more of their own.
Still, I roam, howling, hoping to call you all home.