Thanks for sharing all of that. I've always thought of TF as a way to escape from my body and humanity as a whole, but I've never considered it as a way to escape from physical and mental abuse. That puts a whole new spin on it, and I think it's beautiful in its own way.
So for me, the first time I saw sex at a young impressionable age was the sex scene in The Howling. I got turned on and assumed it was the TF and not sex that was the reason (I had no idea what these two people were doing rolling around on the ground on top of each other unless they were just hugging it out really, really hard). So my brain got mixed up at a very early age. I remember playing with action figures, mostly He-Man and Ninja Turtles, and arranging them in a line from characters that were completely human down the line to those that were animal-like. I would play a game where the characters would eventually "change" from one figure to the next. Actually, I still mentally play that game to this day when I'm bored at work or something.
Growing up, whenever I would get a pre-puberty erection I would ask my parents what exactly the fuck was happening and would be told not to talk about stuff like that. I remember once telling my mom that it happened whenever I thought about people turning into werewolves. I also told two friends of mine that it happened whenever someone was turning into something else in a movie. I really, really fucking hope none of these individuals remember that at all. I imagine they might suspect, as I kept renting The Howling and its horrible sequels and other movies that featured TF constantly when I was a kid. And in my mid-twenties I bought and read Gary Brandner's The Howling novel trilogy, which led to my dad asking why exactly I was doing that. I live in fear about someone in my uber-Christian circle of friends and family finding out about it.
Fast forward to my early 30s (I'm 34 now, yes ancient beyond all meaning of the word) and I got involved with a woman that I thought was the love of my life. I was open with her about pretty much everything except a few things (depression, a suicide attempt, and of course TF). When we were taking a trip across the country I let her know about all of this stuff. She was completely cool with it, even looking forward to some role-playing stuff. I remember her saying "I'm going to have such fun with you doing this stuff." I kept thinking that I had better stay with this woman for the rest of my life, because someone this perfect only comes around once in a lifetime.
Yeah, that didn't work out so well. She made it a point never to talk about it, despite me asking quite a lot if she wanted to. I was overjoyed just to have someone to talk to about it, even if we didn't work it into the bedroom or anything. I had just kept it to myself (aside from this forum and one other one, now long gone) for so long that it was just such a relief to talk about it, especially with someone who claimed to be very interested in it. But she would only talk about it when prompted and seemed very reluctant to do so. We even listened to Angrboda's excellent podcast together, at which point I could tell she was pretty weirded out. A few months later I found out she had a drinking problem (along with about a billion other ones--being in love with someone with borderline personality disorder is not easy). When she was drunk (and sometimes even when she wasn't) she would make really mean-spirited comments about it, which made me subconsciously pull away from her and back into the old standby of TF art and stories. Once I purchased the novel Warrior Wolf Women of the Wasteland (which was actually a pretty good read), not thinking anything about it. In hindsight I should have known this would be hurtful to her, but she went so far as to accuse me of "cheating" on her, which was I think a bit overboard. It came to a head once when she said that TF was something that could potentially lead to bestiality and that she didn't understand how someone that was interested in it wouldn't have a predisposition towards that. She even half-insinuated that some volunteer work that I did regularly at a local humane society might be because of an interest in that. Needless to say I am definitely NOT into that and fucking despise the idea of it (I guess that was so needless to say that I felt the need to say it. Anyway.). After we broke up after this and a billion other problems (after seeing two relationship counselors), I became--and still am--really reluctant to discuss this with anyone outside of this community. I really look forward to going to my first furry convention that has a TF panel (whenever that will happen) and actually meeting some people face to face that have this interest. Whenever that actually comes about, lunch is on me.
So, yep, there's my long-winded and pointlessly personal origin story. It's like Batman only with less dead parents and more werewolf porn. Hooray!