I've tried to write this journal six times, each attempt confusing in its own unique way. What am I trying to say? Who am I trying to say it for? I don't know.

But that lack of direction is kind of the point. What the hell has this year wrought?

I've been in a bad place since the end of June. This year was on track to be the most incredible, positive year of my life. My boyfriend and I got engaged. I landed a full time, permanent job that I really like. My fiance and I managed to buy an apartment. All of that by mid April. It was a rapid flurry of huge life goals, some of which were tiring in their own way. Apartment hunting for months, the process of moving and settling into a new job. It all takes a lot of energy alongside being positive, welcome additions to my life.

I was tired already, and then our neighbour found a kitten in their car engine. We welcomed Gizmo into our lives, he'd spent a lot of time on the streets and was definitely a handful but he brought so much joy too. We'd wanted cats for ages and it was so good to rescue a little guy who'd had it rough.

A couple weeks later came the end of June. I'd been burning out, I hadn't had a chance to properly recover from all the big changes and trying to get a street cat to adjust to a life indoors meant a lot of broken sleep. I'm bipolar, when I can't get consistent sleep the likelihood that I have a mood swing escalates. I hit a low mood, I was in a depressive funk for days. It happens, this episode wasn't that irregular and I was managing about as well as I could considering everything. That isn't to say it was a fine experience, it sucked. Tremendously. Episodes often do, but in the middle of this episode I got a big surprise.

For a year up until that point a very close online friend, my partner and I had been exploring some sexual openness over distance in the form of a pet relationship. It was just a facet of our friendship, some fun when the mood was right but it added to the significance of this friendship. This friend was a major part of my days, we'd spend hours chatting, often doing creative works for each other and I had a lot of appreciation for what our friendship was. My partner and I had just spent a few hundred dollars sending gifts to him too. Anyways, the news was that this friend 'might be' starting an exclusive relationship. I was blindsided, but it was fine. It was just a piece of our friendship that never had to stay. I couldn't really process it completely because of the episode I was having.

The news definitely made the episode way harder to work through. As part of there being a sexual component to our friendship, we had one rule - let us know if things are going to change. Last time he had a crush on someone, he told us about them for weeks and weeks. I felt secure in knowing I'd have time to adjust if things were going to change; I did not. Furthermore, the way he introduced us to this change was in 'mights' and 'maybes' to make it sound like it hadn't started. I didn't want to get in his way, so I said yep no worries and even offered some advice.

I wouldn't realise for months I'd just been discarded by a narcissist.

From the moment he told us about this relationship, he stopped showing any initiative in our friendship and friend group. The hours of chatting we used to do every day - gone, immediately. I was confused. What about the projects we'd started together? What about all the little social habits and details in our friendships we'd built up over the last 4 years? I figured maybe we'd done something wrong, so I asked him and was told nope, I hadn't done anything wrong but he had such a hollow affect. It felt like I was bothering him just by asking. He said he was just doing something different and asserted we'd still be friends.

He became a different person in an instant and I really struggled to make sense of it. But he promised we'd still be friends so I figure things will be okay. I waited for my mood to stabilise, did some reflecting and realised that I was hurt by this because I loved this person. He'd been such an important part of my life even before we started exploring a sexual element of our friendship. I conveyed this to him in a way that felt appropriate given the circumstance. His response was "haha aww, I'm going to save this message" with no real respect for my feelings.

Things were hard. I was confused, hurt and anxious but this was just the early stages of a months long saga. I put distance between us, and he messaged me during the distance to show how much he cared. He'd been working on projects we shared, he told me he couldn't afford to lose me as a friend. I gave more than I had to try salvage our friendship and he gave me false hope. I won't be going into details here, but he lied and manipulated me for months. He abused my trust, he gaslit me, he used his partner to help gaslight me, he pushed me past my breaking point and then claimed he was the victim because I wasn't coping with the abuse he'd given me. I'm sitting on a mountain of receipts. I hope I never need to use them, I just want this to be properly behind me forever.

He used his own mental health as a noose to trap me because I could still be useful for him. Everything about our friendship suddenly became warped around a visual novel project. It was the only thing through which it still felt like he cared about our friendship. I wanted things to work out so badly so I fell for it. Later, I would recognise the way he used our creative relationship as a trauma bond. He would reward me for being convenient by contributing to our creative relationship and use it to punish me if I was inconvenient, such as by wanting to talk about how much this whole ordeal had affected me.

I had health problems because of the stress this situation put on me. I had stomach issues, I had bouts where I couldn't eat. My sleep was ruined for months which in turn only gave me more mood swings. I was unstable, I spent months where for 12+ hours a day I was thinking about the situation and giving every shred of remaining energy I had left into trying to save our friendship. He was the only person I truly felt like I had a creative connection with, and over the 4 years we'd been friends he really became an emotionally significant part of my life.

Meanwhile, he spread lies about me to his partner and the new friends he'd acquired in that relationship, he even went so far as to make up things I hadn't said just to have them validate his mistreatment of me. Eventually I had to cut him off before this situation killed me. I didn't block him because I had hope we could reconcile in the future. He sent me angry messages filled with vitriol, in one of them he called me manipulative among other harsh things. Hours later, he was apologising and saying he didn't mean any of it. Classic abuser shit.

It took me a week or two after that for the penny to drop. This was unfixable. I was beyond exhausted. I was fucked. It really wasn't pretty, I was a shadow of my former self. But the penny did drop. I'd known for some time that he had a habit of lying about details that felt unimportant. But there was one detail he'd lied about that had some knock on effects. See, when he was 18 he told me he was 19. That was in 2021. The sexual part of our friendship started in 2023 when I thought he was 21, almost 22. Turns out he was 20, almost 21.

I realised around his birthday because he mentioned his actual age and I was a bit confused, at the time I went back to check old messages just to confirm that yep he had lied about his age. I decided I wouldn't take an issue with it because I was understanding of his various social anxieties and I really appreciated what our friendship had become. In actuality, he'd love bombed his way into so many parts of my life. I keep wanting to add to this, to explain every little thing but it's just so much.

Hoooo how I wish I was better at putting my foot down and respecting my own boundaries. I wouldn't have engaged in a sexual relationship with him if I had known he'd lied before it started, or even if I knew his real age. 21 was a bit of a mental threshold for me, it was the point where I felt more comfortable being sexual with someone younger than me. I made exceptions for his lies, I figured I could understand it and that it was a one off.

It was not a one off. Suddenly I recognised the full context of our friendship. He'd been lying to me right from the very start. He'd been using me for years and as a result of his lies I'd been mislead down a path of emotional significance which he readily took advantage of. So I *really* cut him off. I blocked him everywhere, or rather, I thought I'd blocked him everywhere. I forgot to block him on FurAffinity because he hardly used the site. He sent me a fucking bizarre note. It wasn't abusive, more like admin work when cutting ties. I showed a friend who commented how the final line was like a narcissist's mask slipping.

I think everyone thinks they know what a narcissist looks like. I thought I did. I spent a few days reading up on narcissists and holy shit did I miss every red flag in the world. This guy had mirrored me in so many ways. Hell, I even started to see the ways in which he was mirroring his new partner before I even learned they existed. All those unimportant lies I chalked up to his poor memory and social anxiety suddenly painted a much stranger picture. He used my longing for a creative connection to control me and relished my support for him. I helped him build his art career, a sizeable chunk of commissions he'd ever landed came from me and my friends. I helped him build up his platforms. I was encouraging and kind and understanding. I was excited for his art, I celebrated his wins. I adored the illusion this person created, I truly did love the person he presented himself as.

And then he discarded me, just to leave me in the lurch because I still wanted his friendship and he realised I could still be useful to him.

With that note he sent me on FA, it became so overwhelmingly evident that this person never had a shred of respect for me. He'd grown so used to taking advantage of me he couldn't even perceive my boundaries when I slammed them in his face.

Wellp. It's all over now. I feel tired in a way that feels like it's permanently shaped parts of me. I have new trauma, I've already had too much trauma. I'm anxious about the lies he's spread about me. I'm full of so many churning emotions that even though it's been 2 months since I properly cut him out for good I'm still struggling. It sucks to look out across the landscape of the furry community and know that this person will always find their way to terrorise new people. They're a skilled artist and they've already gone through a few different identities, but I'm not going to open myself up to further abuse by calling them out. They'll just start over again anyways.

I am getting better. I take solace in knowing I've purged a parasite from my life. I take bitter joy in knowing I have genuine things in my life he can only acquire by lying his way into them. I'm not well. Some day, I will be again. I'm stronger than the hell I've been through, though I'm sure this experience will seep into my writing for years to come.

But it wouldn't be the end to this insanity of a year without more major life events.

The first, my childhood dog doesn't have much time left. He's lived a long life, he's loved, he's comfortable and soon it'll just be his time. I'm not sure I've even begun to process this one yet, but I've known it's been coming for a few years now.

The second, a week after cutting my ex-best friend out for good, we adopted a second cat. Macaroni. A sweet gentle boy whom I adore. Gizmo's calmed down a lot now too and has bonded so well with Macaroni, it's amazing to have these creatures in my life and I'm truly so thankful for them.

I'm going to be okay. I'm so thankful to my friends who've helped me through this. I can't even put into words how much of a help my fiance has been through all of his, but this experience would've turned me into mince if it wasn't for him.

2025 will be different. I will lick my wounds. I'll grow better defenses against these kinds of people.

Fuck anything or anyone for having that much power over me, I will experience the beauty of this world in spite of those memories.

I will grow until it's an insignificant speck in a life fuller and brighter than whatever pitiful shadow of my potential I became because of that experience.

I am a creature of passion and I will thrive in the joy of being.