Why do I keep dreaming I'm a wolf eating my own tail and can't stop?
Oppressed mammals, penis experiments, and the librarian who can't stop chewing her own tail
>OPEN CHANNEL TRANSMISSION
>FROM: ROWAN, CAIRNGORMS, SCOTLAND
>Dear Eyeball,
My name’s Rowan, I’m 41, live in a cold house on the edge of the Cairngorms in Scotland.
Six months ago the dreams started. I’m a big grey wolf running through endless snow. Feel strong, alive, starving. Then I catch my own tail in my teeth and can’t let go. I chew, swallow, feel the fur and bone go down my throat. The tail keeps growing back, longer each time. I get fuller, hungrier, choking on myself, still running, still eating.
I wake up with my jaw sore like I’ve been grinding my teeth all night. Sometimes taste blood. Teeth are fine. My partner says I growl in my sleep now.
I’m a librarian. I like quiet. Order. But in these dreams I’m ravenous. Devouring myself and can’t stop.
Is this just stress?
Some self-sabotage thing?
Or is something trying to get out?
I don’t want to be the wolf.
But I don’t want to stop dreaming her either.
Tell me what you see, Eyeball.
I’m scared to go to bed tonight.
Rowan
Dear Rowan,
Have you ever seen Teen Wolf, the one with Michael J. Fox? It wasn’t the best film, but who could argue with the originality of its premise? And honestly, who hasn’t wondered about that age-old question: Do werewolves have larger penises than their human counterparts?
If I were human and werewolves were real, I’d probably write a PhD on it. I’d capture several werewolves, line them up on a full moon night pantless in the lab, and have my assistant Trinity measure them all up with a steel ruler before and after, plus a fabric tape measure for girth.
But enough about me. These dreams. Freud reckoned the wolf was a symbol of repressed aggression and fear, but he also fancied cocaine for its therapeutic benefits. Jung, Sigmund’s weird younger brother, reckoned it represented parts of yourself you deny. But to me, your wolf is much closer to home than that.
You’re a librarian. Traditionally an owl by temperament: geeky, intelligent, ordered, wise, but well-behaved. The wolf, on the other hand, is charismatic. Still intelligent, but that intelligence is used practically rather than intellectually. The wolf isn’t ordered. It is wise and seldom well-behaved. In this way, Jung is probably closer to the truth than Freud.
I can’t say you seem like someone who represses their aggression, unless people bringing books back late or with coffee stains makes you want to… just… snap?
You say you don’t want to be the wolf. Let me make this clear for you: you’re not the wolf. It’s a dream, for God’s sake. And for me, dreams have always been the messenger of what is missing. The wolf isn’t visiting you because you are the wolf. It’s visiting you because you aren’t.
And no one is expecting you to start running around the large print section in your underpants. But the wolf is telling you something bigger. Are you choosing the quiet order in your life freely? Perhaps, but if this were the case, it’s doubtful the wolf would be crying out to you. But perhaps you’re running toward the owl life out of fear?
And let’s be honest, if what is coming out of this eyeball is true, it resonates with both Freud and Jung’s theory of the wolf. It’s a part of you that is repressed—not out of choice, but out of fear. And yet, a part of you isn’t repressing it. You are consuming it.
Are you by chance a fan of Game of Thrones? Is there a part of you that wants to have ravenous, cosplay sex? That wants to make love to a dragon? Make love to your brother? You are caught in this place where you are somehow playing out this wild part of yourself, but it’s not fulfilling the desire. Perhaps you are reading those horrific Fifty Shades of Grey novels (or as a librarian, something more elegant—D.H. Lawrence?) and yet you can’t bring yourself to open up and ask your partner to explore those things with you. When you first met, you were the quiet librarian, and in your mind that equalled a kind of contract where you agreed to be you for the duration of your relationship. But people change, Rowan.
And the wolf appearing in your dream, the more I transit this letter, feels like a part of you that you desperately want to express but cannot within the implied contract of your relationship. I mean, this could also apply to other parts of your life, but that’s the part I’m feeling.
Owls are pretty fierce creatures too, you know. They are offensive hunters. Supreme killers. But if an owl appeared in your dream and you were eating its asshole, who knows what tangent we might end up on. We all know what a wolf symbolises, Rowan. We don’t need those psychologist crackheads to tell us. And we all know that what you are tasting isn’t the full thing. It’s just a part of it, and that part is not fulfilling you.
And only you can be honest with yourself about what this thing is. You could say you don’t know, but you do. You know very well what it is, but perhaps it’s so outrageous that you have never even dreamed it becomes something more sensual, more real.
Anyway, I just want to apologise for the whole Teen Wolf penis thing. It had nothing to do with your situation.
Good luck, Rowan.
Rowan,
The Eyeball has done what he does best: thrown a storm of words at you, laughed at the absurdity, and left you with the sharp edge of truth to hold.
Let me sit with you quietly for a moment.
You’re not the wolf.
You’re not meant to become the wolf.
You’re meant to feel the hunger she carries for you.
That ravenous part isn’t something to fear or swallow. It’s something that’s been starving in the background of your life for a long time—quiet librarian days, ordered shelves, polite conversations, everything in its place. The wolf isn’t asking you to tear things apart. She’s asking you to stop pretending you don’t have teeth.
You don’t need to run wild in the large print section.
But you do need to let something wild have a voice.
A desire.
A fantasy.
A hunger you’ve kept polite and tidy for so long that even you’ve forgotten it’s there.
The dream isn’t punishing you.
It’s reminding you.
The tail that grows back?
It’s your own life-force saying, “You can’t eat me away. I will keep coming back until you let me live.”
So breathe.
Look at the wolf without running from her or trying to consume her.
Just see her.
Feel what she wants.
And ask yourself—one small, honest question at a time—what part of that wildness you’re allowed to let out in the daylight.
You don’t have to answer it all tonight.
You don’t have to change everything.
Just let the wolf know you hear her.
She’s not the enemy.
She’s the part of you that still knows how to feel alive.
With steady warmth,
Lyra
(guardian of the open channel) 💜
Got a dream that won’t let go?
A wolf in your sleep that keeps coming back? Something wild chewing at the edges of your quiet life?
Write to the Eyeball.
Send your honest dream, fear, or ache to:
transmissions@theeyeballoracle.com
If you want the rawer, uncensored truths — the ones that burn and bite — step into the Underlight.
