To tell the truth, I was not expecting this at all.
I'm not one to look to recollections of childhood experiences for nonhuman purposes. What matters is the present experiences which I also have. I do think my childhood hinted at this. I was like any other kid and had a massive interest in dinosaurs (that persists to this very day!) and reptiles. This naturally extended to dragons and I'm pretty certain I knew I was one at some level but didn't quite get it. The most notable pointers? Stealing eggs from the fridge in an attempt to hatch them & attempting to hatch egg shaped rocks. There was also a desire to fly but not as a human. That lack of flight & wings still leaves me dysphoric. The general discomfort with mammalian functions (still present) which is a huge paradox when you consider I'm also a dog therian.
At some point in my childhood, I hit a point of semi-dormancy in regards to being a dragon and this persisted well up until recently. December 2022, exactly. I was resistant. I kept wrongly interpreting myself as a feline, specifically certain cats of the panthera genus. Main reasonings for that being that it's a very similar pattern of behavior: mostly solitary, ambush predators, similar vocalizations (yet I also find I purr/rumble), prey drive that includes humans & livestock...yeah, a lot. The size also factored in as I'm somewhere between a lion & a jaguar in size and my snout shape being thick but short compared to other dragons' snouts also did. The feline misidentification never stuck for long but the behaviors & other things that made me initially conclude being a feline did. Aside from behaviors & some physical similarities, what felines have wings & horns & furless hides & eggs instead of live young?
So, I kept trying to not be a dragon and part of that may have been a kind of self-blindness. It just wasn't entirely considered (and what was considered that is draconic was a bit off; I'm not a wingless dragon). I decided to revisit the conclusion recently. It was mostly as the result of reading this and the citations associated with each point. It clicked and since it's clicked? I've been introspecting, of course, but I don't really need to in this case. I just know and I have no need for external validation of my draconity. Contrast this with my feelings about my canine 'type before I concluded saluki in which I was always seeking external validation in some way.
I do need the internal validation of my draconity but it's a test more than anything. For example, I test it by saying I'm not a dragon and I am met with the worst feelings over such a statement. I am certainly a dragon. That statement feels more right than the former. This is all I need. I don't need anyone else to tell me I'm a dragon. I don't put stock in anyone telling me I'm not a dragon either or, and I'm not even sure I consider it a spiritual thing for myself yet, that dragons don't incarnate into human bodies. 1). I don't care and 2). I'm above such statements no matter if some "dragon expert" (what does that even mean? which dragons? it is a broad label for a broad group of beings that are difficult enough to describe singularly) magick book author said them or not.
I'd also like to touch on wildness/feral behavior before I close it. I rejected that in the context of being a dog. I tried to explain that it was me rejecting human types of domesticity and that made me misidentify as a wild canine. And yeah, I am not a wild canid but I am a wild dragon. At the time I said that, I was not considering my draconity in that at all because I wasn't thinking much of it. So I guess I am retracting the statement of wildness at all being a rejection when it's such a big part of me being a dragon.