A New Devious Chapter

 At the beginning of the month, Squishy was supposed to spend a weekend with the gnome.  A short, normal weekend that initially I was planning on just spending time getting ahead on creating things, because I want to have things done through my trip out of the country fairly soon.  Rabbit wanted to try and move things around so that he would have the chance to go fishing, and so I suggested that so long as I could go home early, I could spend most of the weekend with him.  I would just need to either bust my butt to get through editing, or he would need to make a little gremlin cubby for me to be able to record. So I packed a small bag, and tried to spend some time at his place getting some little things done.  The Saturday that I was at his place, while he was at work, I get a message from the gnome.  He says that Squishy doesn't feel well, and I recommend that she take a test.  Before he even told me that she tested positive, he said she could quaran...

 In all my back and forth with Instagram, I've kind of settled into mostly using it as a way to find cute things to send to Rabbit.  Some of them are flirty, and some of them talk about aspects of relationships we identify with in good ways, and once in a while things about healing, which we're both still very much doing. And one day, while sending silly things about butts, I found a video that simply mentioned "Who you are now, is who would have made you feel safe as a child."  As I sat with it, tears came to my eyes, and ran down my face.  I only really let myself think about it for a few moments at the time, but it was true. I grew up having no idea what safe was.  That feeling on eggshells was normal, and having to hide everything about myself.  That sharing things got you harmed, and that everyone was in a position of power over you.  I've grown up learning how not to be.  How to create a balanced space.  Wanting to be nothing like the p...

 February really was full of a lot of hard talks with Rabbit, where we both wound up in a processing space to understand everything that the other had been through.  It left us feeling closer, but drained, and wishing just for some boring time together. One of those times was my sharing how I found out about the gnome cheating on me, the lies inside of that, and the horrible things pertaining to it that just got worse the longer you looked at it.  We went into some of the abuse he put me through, how it's affected me in the long run, and how I deal with it now. And his first response while on the phone, was asking if he was allowed to cause him harm.  Saying that he didn't know how I wasn't expecting him to go murder him. So I told him, that while none of what he did was ok, and none of it is something anyone should deal with, I've used it as something to learn from rather than letting myself be a victim.  It's taught me in a way how to be a better person for hi...

 Since the start of the new year I've been slowly moving back toward all the habits I had early last year.  Because of the summer, being away from home, being more social, and starting a new relationship that is present and healthy, a lot of things went to the wayside in some bad ways.  There's also been some other happenings at home, that have really given a hit to my mental health, which also makes it difficult to do all the things I need to. Squishy has simply not been doing school work.  I'm constantly getting emails about her not handing in assignments, which only require her to push a button.  Most of the grades on the things she does hand in are good, so it's not that she doesn't understand, it's that she just doesn't want to do the work, and would rather play around on discord.  Because all the work is on the computer, it's at the point where I need to have her where I can see her screen to ensure that she's actually doing anything related to...

For years, I've written about how I see Valentine's as a day to show love for everyone in your life.  That it's important to me to remove the romance from it, and make love something to celebrate in all forms, and show that to anyone you care about. This year, I have a Rabbit who is silly, cheesy, and encourages actually observing and celebrating holidays together.  Something that honestly, I've never really had. We made plans to spend the weekend after the holiday together, because Squishy had a long weekend, and we've both had a lot going on.  It worked out well as far as I was concerned, because initially it was supposed to be a long weekend after over a week apart, due to his work schedule being messed with.  After the emergency with one of the dogs, it still worked in my head, because we would each get a chunk of time to get our own things taken care of. I was entirely prepared to spend Valentine's apart, and ok with it, because it was something I was used ...

 The week before Valentine's, I wasn't actually supposed to see Rabbit.  He had some weird days off, which messed with our schedule, and so we would have a full two weeks apart before I spent a weekend with him.  I was looking forward to a productive week, and getting through a ton of things so that I could feel extra caught up before spending time with him. And by now you know that didn't happen. Monday morning I tried to call Rabbit to help him wake up.  He didn't pick up at first, so when I tried again a while later, he answered, sounding exhausted.  He told me that one of the dogs was having a health issue, and so he was panicked all night. After looking some things up, and reassuring him that it wasn't what had happened with his previous dog, I focused on making sure he knew he wasn't alone.  As he got through the day, I tried to be present with him, and provide options, and help with all the steps in the process.  Once he was out of work and had ...

 I remember for the longest time seeing the idea of couples apps, and shrugging them off.  Thinking that I was above them, because I could manage a relationship myself, and that using any tools was a failure. And then I started thinking about ways to help Rabbit, and keep him on track, or provide some amount of accountability.  Initially, I had wanted a sort of shared to-do list.  Something I could add pertinent reminders to, that he knew we could both see, and so it would stay visible in a way that might keep so many things from falling through the cracks. So I went looking, and the majority of what I had found happened to be a relationship app.  I almost refused to even ask about any of them, because they seemed ridiculous to me.  As I looked at it though, it had all the tools I was looking for, as well as some other cute things.  So I tossed the idea at him, and while it took a week or so for us to get to it, because he still does have ADHD, we fina...