A New Devious Chapter

 It's feels like everytime I look at Youtube, some other creator is pregnant or trying to get pregnant (while I'm here still hoping to not.) It doesn't really matter what genre they're in, so many of them are in various states of growing a human, and mentioning the things happening.  Among them, was one girl, in her early twenties, who tries to post a lot about body positivity, and everything with it.  And in one video, she mentioned that she has more stretch marks now, and that while she's working on it, she's finding it difficult to love her body while she's seeing them. It reminded me about how I felt during, and for the first few years after my pregnancy.  I hated seeing the stripes forming on my stomach, and then noticing them all over my body.  Where I had been making some progress with my dysmorphia, I had some of the worst body image issues I had ever had then, although I know it wasn't helped by any of the people in my life at that point.  I was...

 In general, I've found myself not bothering with true hate.  I've gotten mature enough not to let things bother me that, both out of preservation for my mental health given what I deal with more days than not, and because the energy spent actively hating something could be far better spent elsewhere. After the attack on the capitol at the beginning of the month, I was angry and afraid, to the point where I felt exhausted.  I wanted to hug Lux, and keep him safe.  I wanted to have some sort of space in the middle of nowhere, so that I could keep him and Squishy (and of course Oliver) somewhere away from everything for a few days. I was worried, and still am, but I felt more for the people I care about. Then almost a week later, I was scrolling through the news, and saw a headline that a man from many of the photos had been identified.  A man that was wearing a shirt that said "Camp Auschwitz".  And in that moment, my only thought was that I hope he's caught...

 Most mornings, in those few minutes between my eyes opening and braving the world outside my blankets, I will spend that time grabbing my phone.  I tell Lux good morning, and then check Twitter the one time that I will scroll through for the day.  And one morning, I found a post that woke me up better than any coffee. It was talking about how people who are abusive typically don't benefit from therapy.  That if anything, it just gives them tools to try and learn to say the right things to justify their behavior, and behave worse. As soon as I read it, and started poking through the comments, I was reminded of my last visit with Kitty.  How he would try and justify all of his actions as being healthy and trying to help people, when they made no sense, or weren't consented to. Things like my bringing the switch, and both he and Pyre wanting to try the ring fit.  When they finally got to it the last day, he tried to blame me for his not getting to it, because...

 Often, the start of winter is referred to as "cuffing season".  I talked about it last winter as well.  That time of year when people start to feel the urge to find some manner of partner, whether short or long term, to have through the holiday season, and over the winter, when we have less time to go running about. And topped off with the pandemic, and being less able to meet new people to latch onto, it creates a temptation to go back to exes, old partners, or find infatuation with past crushes again. So even though I am barely on social media, and make it a point to not contact the people who I know won't be good for me in the long run, somehow they've been popping up.  More than one person who I know has had feels for me in the past has sent a random message, wanting to reconnect to whatever capacity. And in most of their cases, they either have a partner, or are very recently out of a relationship (nothing like a test of compatibility to actually have to spend ...