The Difference a Month Makes

Last month, around this time, I was sitting in a homeless shelter typing up an update on the status of my ongoing melodrama with my reflexively abusive husband. Today, I'm curled up in my and my hubby's home and happy to report that the worst of the storm is past us now. No more 2:30am mornings, no more putting ten thousand miles on the car in a month, no more strangers touching my laundry in shared machines or my food in a shared kitchen.

I know what you're thinking, but he actually went to therapy and did the work and is still doing it. The devil doesn't bargain, but sometimes we have to face the fact that abusers aren't mythical evils—they're people with their own baggage to carry who aren't very good at it and often never learned how. Such was the case with my husband, and he deserves grace while figuring it out. Figure it out he shall; it's part of the deal, but he's doing the hard stuff and getting to the roots of it all.

I wasn't an innocent bystander, especially by the end, and have my own work to do. The Pixie is back in her metaphorical cage without the complex need for someone else to grant permission to let her out should the need arise. We're both medicated and therapized, and I'm neither disassociating nor depressed. I'm still starting a new chapter in my life, I just opted to take him along for the ride as long as he's willing to go where I'm headed.

My marriage is shifting from a stag-vixen poly dynamic to strict monogamy for the first time in almost its whole ten-year tenure. We got married in November of 2015 and opened the marriage the year after, evolving from a unicorn-hunting couple into something more fluid over the years that followed. The new and abrupt shift to monogamy is proving complicated with my compartmentalized friendship style.

I've ghosted The Ghost aka Voldemort (because he's he who must not be named in my house these days, maybe forever); as much as I can, anyway. See, I wrote another goodbye letter, but I don't intend to send it. I just needed to set the record straight about what happened in case by some off chance I'm wrong and it matters to him. Neuroses are a bitch.

More complex is my relationship with The Squirrel, my best friend and now previous part-time lover. While we were dating, we started practices as friends that now must be discontinued as tainted by their genesis. So far, these are coworking rides as I DoorDash and a horror-fantasy tabletop RPG called Mothership we've been playing weekly.

The RPG may eventually come back around as a family activity; the ride-alongs not so much. I have a compact SUV. There must be room for the Dash in a Dash-along. And I can still game with a Squirrel on SMITE, with or without The Hubby playing with us. My tags are epitomeslater (PSN, solo) and epitometruman (PC, with hubby) if you want to play with us, too.

Finally, I may not be DoorDashing much longer. I have an interview for a copywriting position on Monday—fingers crossed it goes as well as I hope it will. If not, I have been designated "would hire" by a local gas station so I'm just waiting on a first shift opening in one of three stores. Either way, it looks like my Dashing days are coming to an end.

Isn't it amazing what a truly remarkable difference a single month can make on someone's life?