Recently, I had a bit of a furry identity crisis. I had been asking friends who fit label and apply it to themselves about it for quite a while; I wanted to confirm if my presuppositions of what a therian is aligned with their experiences.
I found that it touched on a lot of aspects relating to one's internal sense of self that already converge quite heavily with furry, at least when it comes to inhabiting your own fursona... did I inhabit my own fursonas?

I definitely did at some point. Lucario is a fantasy creature that I felt very connected to, and through which I was able to construct a representation of myself that embodied that harmony between my humanity and animality. I did have a thing with bunnies as well, and Riolu was (perhaps still is?) a cute metaphor for a wilder, beastlier and more playfully sexual side of my psyche that I discovered after changing my HRT. They're also very adorable creatures and I desperately wish I had their fluffy ears and enchanting faces. And yet, I found myself separated from them.

I don't know when exactly it started, but at some point, the changes I made to my fursonas became more about what made sense or seemed interesting and compelling than what felt right and me. In identifying that I had an unconscious aversion towards using the first person for them -opting instead for "my lucario/riolu/bunny fursona"- I became aware of a growing disconnect between me and something that's been a very important part of my identity for almost half of my life!

That realization sent me into a bit of a freakout... at work...
Did I need new fursonas? Should I fuse them all? Do I need a new name, new socials? Should I just sleep on it and try to change my mentality around them?
I spent the last of my, fortunately uneventful, shift and the rest of the night creating proto-fursonas: I thought of multiple animals, monsters, pokemon, digimon, etc, and tried to see if I could somehow fit my heart in their conceptual bodies. If they passed that initial test, I would begin doodling whatever seemed right and representative of them; they'd get a signature pose, a hairstyle, a cock and balls, expressions, etc.
After an embarrassingly long time to be looking up different critters, I ended up with a lion, a boxer dog, an andean mountain cat, another bunny, a Torracat, and a Riolu with signifficantly more cat-like features. I noticed felines clicked with me in a way other species did not... which retroactively made me realize I have way more cat-like behaviours than I thought.

I felt fuzzy when looking at the andean cat (that's why it has ticker lines, I did those after the fact) and, after looking up feline-lucario hybrids, felt just as well when I doodled a kittycario of my own (admittedly, it took me a few attempts to find one I was satisfied with the design of).

Finally, I made a proper first drawing of the new lucario; something to say "this is what I am now".

So, there I am! Stretching to get a feel of a new design that's the most me it has felt in a while. As of when I'm writing this, I don't have a drawing of the Andean cat, but there will be.
I hope I don't close myself off again. My request to myself is that I allow for my fursonas to change moving forward, be it in species, design, or in my braaaainnnn.

and i'm 99% sure that brain has a lot of cat in it meowmeowmeowwr