The Rabbit Den

my little gremlin grove • nonbinary • 26 • banner by the lovely @liketheinferno2

[jwritesposts-deactivated2026060]

I think about a time we were together, years ago. Not together, together, but we acted like we were. I wished we’d were. Part of me wants to believe in different circumstances we would be. It doesn’t matter as much now.

I went to see some friends for the first time in god knows how long. It’s a longer story to get into with why so much time had passed. To cut through that, I had admittedly been through a bit of a ‘shut-in’ spirit at the time, and she encouraged me to go out. She always did that, encouraged me.

My friends were in college at the time and I was going to hang out with them at their dorm, maybe grab some food and catch up about life. Her and I had meant to go to the same campus, her friend went there as well. It was convenient for us to go together and come back to my place afterwards. She had practically lived with me at the time. Driving her to work, picking her up, waking up next to her, feeling her hug me in the morning, before we went to sleep.. I could go on. Probably best not to. I was elated she did though, I never regretted a second.

Anyway, her plans had fallen through for the night, so she decided to stay at my apartment while I was out, watching her shows and just lounging until I made it back. Didn’t want to come out to tag along to mine. Invited her of course, but 'needed a night in’, she said. Found out later that she wanted to rearrange my apartment. I kept it that way even after she was gone. Until I was.

Clear night, still early enough that the twilight just dissipated. Stars barely starting to peek out. I’m on the road back, not 15 minutes away, and she calls me. Asked if I could pick up Wendy’s fries, adding ‘before you come home to me’ then she giggled and hung up. My heart jumped out of my chest every second for the rest of that drive. Ordered as fast as I could and sprinted up five flights of stairs when the elevator was taking too long. I still smile remembering how she said ‘damn did you run here?’ after I fell through the door, fully out of breath.

Over half a decade later and I can still hear the excitement in her voice when I told her I was home. That I left early because I missed her. God did I miss her. Hard not to. Not the same way I do now, with this grief and heaviness that tears my soul apart, but with an otherworldly eagerness I haven’t quite been able to muster since we last saw one another. She lit a fire in me that only the gods could snuff out. It still burns, a bit dimmer now, admittedly. Maybe it flickers a oddly these days. It’s there though, I can feel the way it warms my soul when I see a box of cookies with her name.

Makes me smile, thinking about how she toured me around the apartment she spent the night ‘revitalizing’, as she called it. Presenting everything with a grand gesture, throwing her arms towards it, like a showman would in the circus. The goofy expression on her face and the exaggerated way she brought me up to every little thing. I loved every part about it. I loved every part about you, in all your goofiness and care. More than anything I loved you. When the night came to an end, I gave you a key. I wanted you to stay forever. Guess I never got over that because I never asked for it back. I hope you kept it.

We never said goodbye. You left with a ‘I’ll see you soon, okay?’. My words back then never seemed to come out right. Riddled with anxiety about saying the wrong thing, I ended up never saying fully what I felt, and because of that, I didn't get the chance to say truly what was in my heart. I should’ve told you how much you meant to me, how much I loved you with every fiber of my being. I still do.

Wendy’s fries are still my favorite. It’s the closest I get to home anymore.

[jwritesposts-deactivated2026060]

I think about her, in the blanket of the night. Thoughts like these seem inescapable at times. Maybe it’s rather that I’m escaping to them. Reaching into the corners of my mind where our memories are kept, like tracing old scars. Remembering how they came to be, how they were. How we were. Trying to summon that feeling again. A sort of complex duality of joyful despair. Strangely comfortable, despite how much it hurts to find pieces of her still lingering in my soul.

I don’t know how to do it. To exist without this, that I carry. It doesn’t seem to work without it, nothing does. I doubt I could. The way this sits in the back of my mind, driving through the abyss of occasional storm cloud days in my mind. More than a distraction in most cases. Sitting there like an old wound, and every time it rains in my brain I tend to feel you there with me. Maybe a way for me to use pain as a motivator. Gods know that isn’t healthy, but when had I been, honestly. I wish I was, or rather could be. Not fully. I don’t know if that ever was possible, given all that has happened.

The road felt predestined in some ways. If it was, I’m glad it was paved in a way that let us meet. I’d suffer this side of it all again if it meant I could hear your voice once more.

[jwritesposts-deactivated2026060]

Writing comes sporadically, as anyone seeing this and the consistency (or lack thereof) with how I post could tell. You’d think that’s a good sign, that I write when I think about it, let it out, then go weeks without needing to again. Unfortunately that’s not the case. The thoughts are always there. Clawing at the back of my mind or trying to tear out of my soul from the prisons they’re kept in. Keeping it contained, this weight, this feeling, this love, this pain, it’s all unworldly difficult.

I try to let it out when I’m alone, through tears, writing, or, embarrassingly, self destructive behavior. That way, when I sit at a table with the people who have come to love me, this cloud doesn’t seem to be as apparent. Unfortunately it tends to be more prominent lately. I can’t tell if it’s because this part of me is larger than it once was, or if I don’t have the energy to keep it imprisoned anymore. I wish it wasn’t still stained on my soul. I am, however, grateful that the people who love me do so, despite my marred spirit at times.

I could sit here and blame my upbringing, devoid of love that so many others had in their lives. Rather, to take it a step further, probably am realizing that it was filled with a certain level of hate positioned towards me. That when I finally felt it for the first time, a love delicately shared, just under two decades in, it was like a hot iron pressed against my entire being. Me, someone without a shepherd. Forever marking itself onto who I am. Branding me with that feeling, knowing it for the first time. Having someone there who cared in ways I’d never experienced before. Because we all need that, don’t we? Someone to look to, in the most difficult moments. Someone to look at us, past our pain and the suffering, at who we might be underneath the scars. And gods, the way she looked at me will forever be seared into my mind.

There is no good answer for why I continue to feel the way I do. I’m no lost lamb, nor a ship without a sail. I’m proud of who I’ve become, most days at least. And yet, this feeling tears its way through my body night after night, day after day. There was a time it didn’t, that I could go months without thinking about it more than a flash of a moment, or her name sparking a strange, saddened smile across my face. Why was that the case? Did I have better control, or was I previously more preoccupied with other parts of myself in greater pain? Does it have to do with the fact that, for the first time, genuinely in years, I’m allowing myself to be vulnerable again? Or is it this writing that I find myself doing, instead of ‘letting it out’, this act is pouring gasoline on a spark that’s now found itself burning down the forests of my mind?

I couldn’t tell you. Hell, I don’t know what to tell myself. I don’t want this, I wish to be free of it. Though it’s not entirely all true. Part of me does hold onto this at least. I think a fair portion of my mind tends to sit with this pain and use it as my own psychological cat o’ nine tails. Maybe it’s the hope that if I grip it tightly enough, serve enough self imposed penance for uncommitted sins, that it can come back. The love once felt, different from that given to me by my friends, that is. That enduring enough pain will make me worthy of a wholehearted love once again. A romantic love. That I can be wiped clean of the pain others sentenced me with, by replacing it with something self imposed instead.

It has been said that ‘The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places’, but gods I do not feel strong, nor broken even. I feel utterly destroyed many days and many nights, and the fates will do what they must, though, I fear for me ‘there will be no special hurry’ [Hemingway, p.239].

[jwritesposts-deactivated2026060]

My thoughts seem to drift to you, lately in the moments of in-between. Mowing the lawn, folding laundry. Sometimes when I make the bed in the morning, and tossed enough through the night, there’s a second imprint there. For a brief second I live in a world where that other divot yours. I smile, before letting reality fade back in.

Those moments, the ones in-between, tear at me the most. Wandering thoughts hoping that if I look over, you’d be there, planting flowers. That you’d walk in and laugh at the colossal failure of me attempting to fold a fitted sheet. I miss the way we laughed.

I’m not idealistic either. I know there would be arguments, there’d be annoyances, we’d each get bent out of shape about something here or there. Par for the course. We had our own when we did exist together. Granted, I took a lot of hits by the end, and accepted plenty I shouldn’t have. Took responsibility for far too much too. You were right to call me out on that, I was destroying myself. Doesn’t make me innocent though. Even though I took on more than I should’ve, I still had my missteps. Blame goes both ways. Made my own mistakes. I wish I got the chance to clarify, and apologize, to share what I truly meant. How much you meant.

Even still, I know now I deserve better. But when my mind wanders, the person it hopes to see out of the corner of my eye is a version of you that is gentler. Maybe that’s the stupidly idealistic part of me that exists. Either way, for whatever it’s worth, I really hope you are doing better.

Of course it’s unhealthy to romanticize this aching feeling that sits in my soul. This version of you, the one that sits in the in-between of my mind, doesn’t exist. It never really did. Maybe there was a time you loved me once. Then again, maybe you never did. I hope that’s not true.

You once told me that no one, aside from me, loved and respected you simultaneously, ‘but even that wasn’t enough’. Maybe I hold out hope that one day I could be enough, however stupid it seems. Deep down I will always be stupid about you.

[jwritesposts-deactivated2026060]

Reasonably, I can’t just bury my head in the sand and continue to only write about the sadness in my soul and a memory of the past. There is a world right in front of me, in the here and now. One filled with love and understanding that is so immense. One I would be wrong to shut myself away from.

It comes in many different forms too. They say ‘to be seen is to be loved’. Lately I have felt seen, I can’t deny that, nor should I ignore it. Simple things. A friend told me they missed my laugh, after not seeing each other for some time. A barista remembered my order, and told me they look forward to seeing me next week. My gender identity (or lack-thereof) was acknowledged by a former coworker (and present day friend). In these ways, I feel loved. Maybe not in the wide sweeping romantic concepts I yearn for, but in smaller ways, where I exist in someone else’s mind, even if just for a passing moment.

I don’t know when I’ll put myself back out there again, romantically, that is. Maybe I won’t. But I’d be satisfied with a life that can only draw from love in smaller ways, like this. I’ve always been concerned about trying not to be perceived poorly, I’ve just assumed that I’m automatically seen as ‘bad’, and have to fight that perception and prove I’m ’good’ in some way. Then if I succeed in that, I’m not seen as the ‘good’ I’ve been clawing at trying to prove I am, but rather that I’m not seen at all.

There was a long standing fear in my mind: that I’m not thought about when I don’t exist in front of someone. Even still being in the room, if I don’t occupy a specific space directly in a line of sight, that, in their minds, I dissipate into nothingness. That I’m nothing to them. And I’ve sat and worried that I keep tidy rooms in my mind for people who wouldn’t give me a second thought. Sometimes so far as believing that I don’t deserve one.

I’ve obsessed over this thought, one where I am nothing more than a ghost in other people’s lives. And yet, I still put on a happy face when they come around. I try to act suave and enthusiastic. To entertain as the court jester and be worthy of their time, presence, attention. But if I don’t text first, if I don’t beg for plans, if I don’t respond immediately to texts, that it’s simply a matter of time before I no longer exist to them. That I fade back into the nothingness. That from the start, I haven’t been anything to them.

It’s less so these days, especially when those moments of feeling seen occur. Moments where I am remembered. And they dredge up something deeper, more than just a sense of recognition. Belonging. That’s what it is, as silly as that may sound. And as I grow with this, there’s a sense of self that takes shape. That, more than anything, I’m allowed to feel a variety of different ways about people, other than devotion to their existence. To check in with myself, and how these relationships impact me, rather than simply what I could be to them. That I don’t need to accept being treated poorly, just so that someone would be briefly entertained by my existence. That, for the people who do treat our relationship as fleeting, I don’t need to devote my time, presence, or attention to. That I can make choices of who to surround myself with, instead of accepting everyone into my life, regardless of how they treat me.

Those people I pick can be the ones I love, but more importantly, it can be people who love me in return. I don’t have to pick berries from a poisoned bush I’ve been fed from over and over. I’m not fated to destroy myself for another, I don’t have to be. And I recognize that was the reality that I made for so, so, so long. I never made choices about who I kept around me. I thought that I deserved the pain, the punishment, the destruction, and emotional whiplash. Yet, I can change that. There’s still time. I’ve nothing but thanks for the people who do love me and do care about me, because they’re the ones that taught me that. It’s not selfish to care about how I feel and make a decision based off of that. It’s not evil to say ‘this person treats me poorly, I don’t want anything to do with them’. And leaving doesn’t make me a bad person. It didn’t make them a bad person either.

I will continue to love (in all manners of different ways) everyone who crosses my path. I don’t think there’s a way to stop that. My soul won’t let me. I wouldn’t want to anyway. But I can be kinder to myself, and know that I don’t have to light myself on fire just to feel tangible for a few moments. Especially not for someone who doesn’t care if I live or die. The people who live in the corners of my mind should not only be the ones that I love, but the ones who also love me. Those who want the best for me. Those who care about me. And I have so many of those people in my life these days, I’m so immensely lucky to have them. So, I will continue to make tidy rooms in my mind, and I hope I make the right choices when accepting who lives there.

[loosened-seams]

lobber need a fucking break from it all

[ashtrayfemboy]

lobber…. he means so much to me

[the-ultimate-shima]

A recent sketch commission I did for a friend of mine on Discord, BrienneOfHearts! This guy was suuuper fun to sketch, big billowy pirate shirts are so fun to draw.

[the-ultimate-shima]

my first major character commission and one of my favorite pieces from the last few months! thank you for giving me the opportunity to create this guy for you, @ryocryte !

[the-ultimate-shima]

hello please clap for my dearest WoW character turned DnD character.....Phëne

[starriva]

POV: You’re Joanna Mason and that bitchy district 12 couple is had been mad at your for meddling in their nonexistent intramaritial affairs in that dumb ass elevator and they’re still serving rupaul levels of cunt at the interview’s while you’re stuck in a tree dress

Or POV one hour till the biggest news to hit Television since ‘ If she didn’t come here with me’.

[the-ultimate-shima]

ITS MY DEAREST FRIEND GO LIKE HER ART NEOW

[flohgna]

Here he comes!!

I'm not saying Haurchefant was specially created for me, BUT a himbo + knight + flirty + freaky + horsegirl AND he has a unicorn as a coat of arms?? Yeah.

[coldshrugs]

funniest shit i've seen in a long time

[liketheinferno2]

ThanUri for @scionsofthe7thdawn.etheirys.social thank you so much for the trust and patience

[the-ultimate-shima]

hello chat I uninstalld this app temporarily and then I forgot about it until just now!! uh....art will be posted prommy

[liketheinferno2]

Hey all, small medical crisis immediately after the holidays :[ Not expecting to fundraise the entire thing but I'd be really thankful for anything you can pitch in, ty. < This sentence is a clickable link.

[liketheinferno2]

Haurchefant's sweat kink and ponyplay thing actually great characterisation because being a guy from Ishgard who isn't hiding having several harmless fetishes perfectly explains why he's the only one there with a functional personality

[yamujiburo]

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