Peek first:

Image updates as I make progress No end in sight to the doc & hospital stuff I'll update when I can, very sorry.

Well, most of the shows I like to watch have invented, or in some cases, evolved countless new ways to jump the shark. Seriously, I'm actually impressed by the degree to which they seem to have taken a chainsaw to the characters and stuck them in a great bloody blender. It's like a Dark Horse Daiquiri. It's been a really disappointing week both on the DVR and DVD, but I guess I'm grateful enough that I am seeing well enough to have my eyes offended by the insanely stupid turns many of the shows I liked are taking. It's sad when you begin watching a show deliberately suspending disbelief and treating it like empty fictional calories, lowering all your expectations and demanding nothing but entertainment-- and it still manages to disappoint you.

I can't wait for the off-season, for shows that have yet to receive the grubby melodramatic fingerprints of network executives. My imaginary Nathan couldn't be happier, of course, than getting to see new Bruce Campbell every week on Burn Notice, and so far psych is still holding strong. Hope that'll hold out for a while before someone decides, "A fan favourite must die" or "We should unkill some characters" or "A very special episode" is required. Eeee-yuck.

I'm keeping my thoughts on the lighter things right now, at least the thoughts that lead to typing. The rest are locked in a struggle with nature and genetics, and the less I think about that, the more I get done. My friends are awesome as always, and getting back in touch with some of the people who've been closest and most important to me has really left me feeling centered and satisfied despite all the crap I've been through over the last two years. I feel like I've struck a pretty good balance, and while there are still bits missing and a few broken jagged edges to life, well, I think it's like art really. Comes a point where trying to fix the imperfections destroys the whole thing completely. Trying to fill the empty spaces and mend the jagged bits has led me into nastier and nastier scrapes over the years, it's time to step back and let life set as is. It's a pretty beautiful picture, overall, and what I've got, well, I wouldn't trade it for the world.

Strip is up. I am definitely taking Sunday off.

It's good to be back in a groove again. It's a weird and disjointed routine but I've finally got a routine laid down around here and it's working out for me so far. Enough blather, back to work-- next strip has twice as many frames and yet I got it blacklined in half the time, go figure.

Strip is up.



Well, the week started off pretty upsetting, but I had the good fortune to be pretty caught up in some old friends who just resurfaced, some people I missed. I've been feeling a lot better since the spinal tap and putting that energy to use. Whee! I ended up much better off by mid-week, on all kinds of levels. This strip is pretty simple so I knocked it out in a couple of days, and I'm taking some good advice and getting my head back in the game.

Hey y'all. I gotta dig through the code a bit more but I'm more or less sure I got the place sitting stable. Like the mug shot? It's Cezanne. The old art wasn't me, and I'm sure the boss is going to do a new one sooner or later-- but to keep from holding things up I tossed her this so she could get to work on the strip.

The first thing I did was muscle out some of the unnecessary staff. I love that girl to pieces, I truly do, but she runs this place like a group hug. The only really useful people around here are the same two faces you've been seeing for years, and I ain't of a mind that needs to change. Fun as podcasts and music and features are-- and god knows I love 'em too-- the more people she has hanging around the more they slow her down. I'm stickin' to the background as much as I can, and pushin' her to keep her head down in the work as much as can be.

I ain't Jay, though. Props to the guy for coming up with this code, but if it were any more nested it would be hatchin' chicks. I'll do my best to keep it runnin' and even add to it if and when I can. But I gotta say, if we get thumped the way we did last time we got attention, my recommendation is gonna be to lose the unnecessary features and slim down to something I can maintain. Sorry folks, them's the breaks.

Anyhow, my next task is to get that menu bar fixed and restructure some of these pages, because a lot of the content is practically invisible the way it's put together now. As always, if the muckin' around breaks something or if you encounter a problem, send as many details as ya can to the webmaster email and I'll deal with it as soon as possible. Thanks fer readin' and keep the faith, folks. This cart's had its wheels off for a while and it's pretty well stuck in the mud, but we'll get it rollin' yet.

Sorry, this week got a bit nutty, have to go in tomorrow morning for some minor surgery and I'm still being put on interminable hold waiting for my doctor to stop keeping me in suspense about the results of my spinal tap. It's nothing really, just a case of the lab not sending the report and then the doctor not looking at it. I got a lot better right after the LP actually, and then a bit worse later on, I don't know how much of that is the crushing headache coming back after a brief respite, and how much of it is just me still being worn out after a 'vacation' that mostly consisted of being toted from doctor to doctor to doctor.

I did, however, just sit through the much-hyped "Fringe" on Fox-- do yourselves a favour, watch Torchwood in the original. It is a much, much, MUCH better show. I'd give Fox the benefit of the doubt except for the fact that they ran a show lifted straight off Japanese TV immediately after. Okay, okay, they admitted it. My opinion had more to do with a gratuitous shot of a severed hand in a jar, among scenes yet to come. Fringe seems to be Torchwood with all the fun and sexiness bleached out, replaced with pregnant x-file pauses, a 30 second interval between "SHE'S A WOMAN IN A MAN'S WORLD!!!!" moments, and a heavy-handed dose of Homeland Security. Bleah. BLEAGH.

Seriously. Check Torchwood out. It is my single most favourite show in production at the moment, with the Dr. Who series it spun off as a close second. I've been lukewarm on the Doctor in the past, but they've punched up the pacing and paid a lot more attention to the character, it's a fun and clever show.

Okay, well, you don't come to me for TV ratings, I'm back to the drafting board soon as I'm allowed.

Well, folks, it was an interesting month. I got a spinal tap, an MRI, I got physio set up for later this month to combat the reasons I'm stuck with that cane; I found out a lot of things, but not everything, and sadly some things just aren't curable, at least not for now.

September is a little rough but I'm allowed to get drawing again-- not sure how well I'll adjust to going in twice a week to get procedures done at the hospital but hopefully they won't need to do that for very long.

After taking August off I feel more like I can do stuff again, but, it'll take me a while to adjust to Syl going back to school and actually get productive. New peek will go up ASAP. Thanks for the patience.

Just to let you all know -- I am making the Boss take a break for the next month or so, and she'll resume working when I go back to school after labour day. She just has too much stuff going on - a host of medical appointments and whatnot in August, as we're catching up on my not taking her to doctors during my summer job because they wouldn't let me take a #$*)@)#$* day off, plus we're trying to get her through the next stage in the divorce process, yadda yadda. It's just a little bit overwhelming, to anyone it would be but especially for her, and the poor dear is not coping too well with all the disruption and the stress.

So, in between doctors and divorce stuff I will try and make her relax and do fun stuff, and I will make banana bread and pasties and other such fun things. Plus, it'll be one of the last times I ever have an extended vacation, too, since it'll be bar exam next year and then non-stop work till, like, retirement. But, money! Money is <3.

Anyway, thank you all, as always, for sticking by us and being so patient. I hope at some point all the nuttiness will be over, it seems sometimes like it's been non-stop bouncing from one stressful thing to the next. But the current strip is a pretty sexxxay strip to end on (pretty Natham = yum!) for a vacation period, so, enjoy -- I know I could spend a month staring at that. (It's my desktop wallpaper so I do stare at it all the time, especially since my computer takes a year to load windows or shut down. Sad.).

We'll keep you posted and let you know if anything interesting comes up. In the meantime, I will be trying to make A relax and chill out for a month, which is kind of like trying to get a koala to, I don't know, move. Have you ever tried? They are so lazy, and drugged, and dopey. I want A to have a nice koala-month and hug a branch all August. She's worn herself out trying to work and she's been working so very hard, plus she's been trying her heart out to take care of me while I've been a stress bomb about work and other stuff and having constant freak-outs, and I am not easy to deal with when I am like that, let me tell you. It definitely hasn't been an easy few months post-moving with all the other stuff looming over, but we'll get a good chunk of stuff done in August.

Anyway, it's just been a string of hard years for her, with a lot of crazy happening, and she really needs a good solid rest. I will do my best to not be a complete stress-ninny like I have been for the past while, and just be all zen. Zen and the art of being like a koala! Awesometude. I will learn to hug tree limbs and chew leaves. Mmmmmm leaves.

<3 you guys! Have a good August and don't get too overheated! Pray for storms! I <3 the thunderstorms in this city, I truly do.

The shop is closed.

So, yeah. There were actually some good reasons that last strip took a month. Real dramatic ones, some of them, arguably interesting too, but I am so fried at this point I don't even know how to address them, much less share them. If I didn't have so much love around me I am pretty sure I would have just melted down completely a long time ago, there'd be a vaguely zombie-shaped stain on the kitchen floor and that would be the end of me.

Devon's turn in the short story spotlight, Undivided Attention (UDA), is now complete and available to members through the Story Time section of the forum. Since it's been so quiet I'm taking a break from the whole choose-your-own-adventure thing and writing a piece about Kha'arte (Envy). He's a neat character I couldn't put into the main story (he tends to grab the limelight and run away with it) but always wished I could spend a little time on.

Honestly, I'm exhausted, but still plugging away. Hopefully there will be more, and better, things to babble about later on. For now I just remind you that we are a few days away from closing the store, so if you wanted any of that swag it's about to be gone forever. Wish I could afford to get a few things myself, but, paying off the mess Jay made of it is going to be costly enough. Anyhow, I don't plug it for profit (no way we sell enough to actually overcome that debt and turn a profit) but because if I ever do get well enough to turn out for conventions anybody (with notable exceptions :P) who shows up with that stuff is going to get a squeak and a giggle. Times like this, when everything is a wreck, are when you find out who really likes what you're doing. Anybody can jump on the bandwagon when it's rolling, but when it's got one wheel stuck in a ditch and the oxen are sick that's when you see who gets out and pushes, and those are the people who make you feel like what you do matters in the world.

Peek first:

Strip is up. Final UDA segment went up on Tuesday.

Just another bit of prose, we're having a very good time around here composing them.

---

You were my summer smile in the winter mornings, smooth as the dark silk of my hair curling all around us. I would always toy with you, a predator with such helpless prey, striking all your softest places to evoke that perfect fear and endless longing in your dark green eyes. I breathed in that sweet mixture of agonized discomfort and velvet breathlessness that only I ever bring out in you, savoured your smoky-soft melody as it coiled around mine.

You who sweep away all the women you encounter, you who enthrall and devastate with just a flash of that heartbreaking smile. For them you are always all light. For them you are nothing but a dream come true, always enchanting in your seductive, easy charm.

A spiral away, a wheel loose to spin endlessly. I am always there, right before -- you can always feel it building, feel it rising, fight to quell the growing terror. Outwardly, the smile never leaves your face, never stops brightening the world and everything in it. Everything still falls so instantly in love with you, the ease of you, the effortless grace with which you seduce. You have always been every woman's dream of a golden prince, a Don Juan to carry them over every threshold they know -- and ones they never knew existed. They fall like rose petals at your feet, helplessly enamoured, hopelessly obsessed, and you love them all. You drink them all in, you capture their quaking hearts. You fill their days with sunlight and golden glory, you stretch your wings and the world shudders in heady, brilliant delight. But inside, I know it still howls - darker than night, darker than hate, the monstrosity that claws at your flesh even as you warm the world with your glow.

You are so breathtakingly strong, so capable, and yet so fragile -- a breath away, it feels, sometimes, from slipping through my fingers. How they have hunted you: drawn out the terrible dark in you, to watch you grieve, get lost in the shadows of other rhythms, to send you out of this world. How I have lain waste to all that has ever tried to do so, and how I will do the same for anything that reaches a hand out to you here in malice. How I hold my breath these long years, waiting for you to come to me.

We will protect you together, between us, as always we have. I will always find you. I will always be there, one step before yours, a beat before the last. So many broken shells shed for you, quickened by his desperate panic. The wild dark in me, the unrestrained violence to soothe you, to keep you steady -- the balance of a waltz we have always danced together, even as he balances us both. I will keep you safe with blood, I will keep you quiet with stone -- and stay you from the looming abyss, from the restless desperation that settles and whispers to you when I am not there to drown it out with my song. The shrieking in me stills your own; the vengeful wrath that curls up like bitter smoke to look into your pleading eyes, to keep you on a knife's edge between us, walking on the vicious-taut razor-wire that keeps you safest.

Hold fast to me, and the gift of me within and without you. Let it keep you safe while you are sleeping, before I have found you walking this savage garden. Let my song anchor yours, my summer child, my sun-catcher -- let it draw you ever nearer to me, until you are safe, enveloped in the dark of my wings once more.

These last few weeks have been unbelievable. Apart from some minor concerns (Baby is going to withdraw from staff, we couldn't find her anything to do that would suit her, but I appreciate the help and support regardless) it has been idyllic, which is odd and disorienting for me as much as it is welcome.

To have suddenly found not just home, but something that redefined my sense of home this late in life, is a strange and beautiful thing. I have been pushing myself to the breaking point coping-wise, I think because I want to spend every moment I can in this happy space, as though if I left it for even a moment, it might be gone.

A few months ago I would have flat out said that in order to do lineart I have to withdraw, shut everything out, and ignore the world. But the last few frames of the next strip, I actually did while talking to Bastard over my headphones. That is how calming and relaxing our smarmy Bastard is.

Blunt is wigging us out by actually, you know, doing stuff. This shatters our view of webmasters forever. It is a strange, exciting and new condition to have one get things done. We're getting the accounts sorted and passwords changed, and we're going to close the store (link is right up above on our oh so effective menu bar) at the end of July. That's not something we say due to wanting you to buy stuff, just something we say out of wanting anybody who has been wanting one of those products to get them before they're gone. I don't intend to put them back up, I'm not even sure where the original media files for them are. Jay left the accounts messed up and we not only ate our profits because of it but ended up in arrears. So we're going to shut it down, pay it off, and regroup-- come back some other time when/if people want products.

Bluezombie has been amazing, and wants to make the living situation permanent. Apparently she likes collecting retard artist geniuses. She's eyeing another one right now, in fact :P But I'll always be the first! Syl has less time now, though, so the colouring will take longer-- which won't matter because I am hanging the paper for the next strip tonight :D We'll get a good rythm going, I can tell already. Without the chaos factor in life I can actually waste a lot of time and still get things done, the only thing slowing me down right now is a bunch of lockups from being in a new environment.

I cannot begin to describe how nice it is to live with her. We play games, we laugh our heads off, we dance. We invented a new kind of cookie, the 'Cheesecake Shortie'. Well, new as far as I know anyhow. We make perfect medallions of beef forestiere and screw up soup. Above all, we live without either of us trying to undercut the other, which makes it paradise compared to the recent past. So, right now, life is perfect-- it's a welcome relief after so much tumult.

Whatever I've been through is worth it. It's brought me to this, to these people, to this place, to this fate. Growing up, I was never home, home was never anywhere safe or comforting. In that marriage, I was never home, home was always tense and confusing and full of lies. But this, this quiet place filled with people who take care of me, this is home. This is a place I can rest, where I can feel comfortable, where I do not have to navigate tricky games or worry someone will get mad at me for not being able to be touched or talk. This is a place I feel wanted, a place I can actually sleep, a place always want to wake up to. Home. I am home at last. And I am happier than I have ever dreamed I could be.

Greetin's all.

First of, the Boss lady has finished up the latest strip, so head on over to the page an' check it out. I'll wait until yer done.

Wow. That was mighty quick. Y'all must read faster than I do. Anyway, we have an announcement about th' store. We're goin' to be shuttin' th' old store down at the end of July and all the products that are there are bein' discontinued. See, the last guy that tried to fill my shoes let the store lapse and get in arrears, so we're lettin' y'all have one month to buy anything you might want and try to get as close to a zero balance as possible before we close it down and these items go th' way o' th' dodo.

You know what that means, don'tcha? Everythin' there will be collectors items. :) I'm told that th' mousepads are especially good.

Once things get rollin' again we will be opening a new store with all new products an' I'll be asking y'all fer suggestions fer new products. Keep an eye on th' forums.

Sorry I got stuck again! I sang you a song to make up for it while I was insomniac last night but still couldn't organize my thoughts. Right click here and please save it to your own hard drive if you want to listen to it more than once. Feel free to give it to whomever you like, just don't alter it or rob us of the credit, k?

Also, UDA went up, sorry for the delay, but at least it's a nice long chunk of the story.

Strip is up.

It's dark in here. I can see the stars shining just outside. I can see tomorrow, and the the words we dodge like bullets ricochet unpredictably. At times they cut me to the bone with the deepest affection, turned in against myself because I'm too wounded to believe in the fragments, to piece anything together that comes to me broken anymore. I want sense to come in hot iron brands, pressed in clear and indelible-- at times it seems I only listen to my scars anymore. But the fragments burrow, they tunnel, they careen into every corner and everywhere they touch they draw blood. They bring blood back to a dessicated form.

Through the endless dark there was always a song that fought to be heard, and my song became yours long ago. You caught my name in your breath and spilled it back in hour after hour of sweet sorrows. We did, didn't we, until the dark had spread from there to here and the sun was for a few more hours dispelled.

So safe you fold me in the arms of friends. You were the one who brought us all together, you were the one who drew us all outside our skins. My angel, my sweet and broken child, the dream I curl around when I have no words and no voice to speak them. There in the silence you found me, there shackled to the panic. There with eyes lowered and wings tucked away you reached in to let me go. There in the silence the scent of you lingers, the echo of a long-forgotten beat that carried my heart from moment to moment and from my day to yours.

I'll spin your story again, golden angel, I'll furl it out for you on bright warm wings. I'll sing to you in words of light again, seek you out in the quiet spaces and draw you in until you come and rest here for a while.

Your story will go on.

I am wrapped in love and comfort. I am quieted inside at last. These portraits are the first art I've been able to do in what feels like eons, feels like forever. I will not leave them blueline forever, I'm going to clean them up and properly colour them, but, until then we've all got the blues.

It's disorienting-- things are actually getting DONE around here. Jay made everything so difficult to get fixed/changed. Blunt has a day job and a bunch going on, so it might take a while to get to the stuff I've wanted from Jay for a long time, but he's already corrected some of the simple things, and we didn't have to plead for months to get it done. After Jay, that's amazing.

Bastard Zombie has some great ideas, many of which will have to wait till I get rolling and the hits pick up again. He's going to help us get podcasting again, not sure how often but it will help restore the happy family vibe around here. And trust me, the family is much happier now.

Baby is too adorable for words. She and her psychotic zombie cat play in the background of everything I do. I can rally a lot of strength just for the task of keeping her happy and safe here. Despite her cute appearance and somewhat idiosyncratic English, however, there is a sharp mind and a brilliant creature underneath all that softness, one I am glad to have nearby me. She's part of the impetus that got Jay finally removed from most of the site references and helped me start moving on at last.

I am tired, battered, and it's taking all of them to keep me from faltering under the pressure of having failed so hard in my expectations for this site. I just about burst into tears when I look at the fact that I haven't updated since November, the fact that it's been five years and I'm not even three arcs in. The zombies put a pin in that drama and just help me keep my eye on getting it all rolling again. I guess it's silly that a comic that almost never updates needs five people to maintain it, but seriously, I need each of them.

Jay made me feel so bad for needing anybody. He made Syl shoulder almost everything here. For a long time Syl and I did our best to keep each other going but we both got really discouraged. I'm glad we accepted the help. I can't describe how good it is to curl up in the shelter of loving hearts again. It's bringing my strength back-- it's bringing ME back.

I'm so very glad to have you all here.

I don't know if I expected him to shed a tear. After 11 years of devotion, I had a hard time thinking of leaving him behind. I didn't know if we should talk, or something, if we should sit down and say goodbye.

Then in the afternoon he showed up at my office door, all dressed up to go out. I told him I needed the hosting fixed, it was my immediate concern. He was unconcerned. He chirped something about sending another email, and then, "Bye guys!" He was going out, like it was any other day. We were leaving his life forever, he doesn't even know where we're going to live, and that was how he felt about it. Syl's six years of friendship, my 18 years of friendship, my 11 years of family devotion, and it didn't even make him pause.

I guess I should feel better, with proof that he's such a very heartless person, as if I needed any more. I guess I could cry, knowing how very much I threw away to make him happy and how much I feel the loss of all that time. I felt numb, really, kind of lost.

But that's okay, because my better angels were already ahead of me, calling me out of this place, out of the ruins he's made of my dreams. Two of them smiled at me from across the sea, literally singing to me from tomorrow and telling me to join them there. One of them smiled at me from across the years, reminding me how long he'd spent tracking me down again and how very much it meant to him that I had disappeared from his world without ever meaning to. One of them buried her head in my chest and asked me, did it really mean anything, all that service, all that sacrifice, all that time spent caring in vain?

And I looked into the eyes of my better angels, of the friends who closed in to surround me with love, and I said, yes. Yes it was. We've lost a lot, but what we've gained is beyond my ability to measure, and we owe him none of that, not one bit. I chose to walk away with nothing but a few belongings and my art supplies, wanting no part of him to follow me as I walk away from here. Everything that comes with me has been ill used and much abused, has endured rough treatment as have I. I do not find myself tempered, do not find myself strengthened in any way by the experience, only tired, only frail, only weary and ready to rest.

But the light that descends to comfort me sings praises to my devotion, to how hard I tried and how much I gave, to how well I bore up under so much strain. To sink into the arms of friends who love me and find in them my restoration is a beautiful experience, and the way they see me is something I might never have understood if I hadn't tried to the last, tried my heart out in every respect.

The site is in better hands, now, and as soon as I get the strength to I will introduce you to old friends who will become new zombies. I'm going to scour out some of the articles, that is my conceit but I am going to do it anyhow and anybody who has a problem with that is cordially invited to bite my metaphorical ass. I am not a blogger, I am not a wiki, I am not a scholastic resource, I will edit whatever I like.

I have already gotten my voice back, my capacity for thought has been strained to the limit trying to make sense of the senseless. I have high hopes for the future ahead-- my better angels will allow me no less. I have love, I have light, and I have a home waiting for me in the sky. I will sing to the thunder again, I will play with pigments, words and pixels, and I will peek out from under this pile of desperation soon enough.

I still believe in love. Just not his.

As always, Aleph gets it into her head that she can overcome neurology and manage to work during the chaos and upheaveal of moving (and this time, also a divorce), and so she always tries her heart out. It is kind of like watching a kitten run into a wall over and over, and each time, it is SURE that it can break it down. It's very cute, but eventually, it's gotta be stopped before it hurts itself. ;)

All the disruption is just a bit too much for an autistic brain, and I really want to keep her from having too many meltdowns while she's struggling through all the emotional stuff as well. Moving is rough for anyone, but it's especially hard to feel safe enough to work in a space that's so temporary and so soon about to be dismantled entirely.

So, I am making her rest and TRY to relax for a few more weeks, just until we can get settled into the new place and things calm down a bit. Things have been pretty insane around here for the past few years, but I hope it all makes a little bit more sense now that the truth is out. I have a lot of hope for our new life, and I think it'll be a lot easier for A to work consistently when things are getting so consistently and so badly disrupted on a constant basis ><

Thanks to everyone for being so understanding, and thanks to the very sweet people who sent messages to me about the divorce. A's still going to work on UDA for the time being, but we'll be moving soon enough (19 days!) and I can't wait to get her set up in the new place!

We're going to spend our time with friends, and A is being well taken care of, never fear. She's going to need time to heal, of course, but we are deeply passionate about the comic, and we're going to work really hard to pull everything together and transfer everything over so that things run much more smoothly than they've been running the past few years.

Thank you all for your continued support and your patience, it means so very much to us. Be well! <3

I think one of the main things that was making the grief hard to deal with was the way I was trying to hold it all in. My marriage was so important to me, it was in every aspect of my life-- and I didn't know how to face letting people know it had fallen apart. Working for 11 years at anything and having it go down in Hindenburg-esque ruin, well, it is pretty damned humiliating.

It is a relief though, to find out that this wasn't because of my illness, and wasn't because of a failing in me. Once I got past the regret and the embarassment and the pain of loss, I felt almost guilty for the enormous relief that followed after. It felt like cruelty for him to say, this has all been a facade, a lie he told himself, a person he wanted to be. In the end it was kindness too, because if he hadn't owned up to it I would have felt as though despite all of my best efforts, all of my trying, I couldn't maintain a relationship after all. And this one, from which I had drawn so much foundation, more than half my life-- around two thirds, actually, now that I think about it, if you count the part we spent as friends-- well, if I couldn't maintain that it made me want to just draw away from all the other friends in my life before they turned out this way as well. His admission made it easier to let my true friends comfort me.

I'm angry now, and that's a relief, because it was impossible to think while I was in a crushed and numb space. I'm working, but very slowly-- still seized from time to time with the process of processing, still driven from time to time to get away from every reminder of then and remind myself that I have a life outside of anything he's touched. I'm done apologizing for that-- it's insulting to the folks who have been with me and stood by me even though they had no idea what was going on behind the scenes. I know their faith. I rely on it. I appreciate it deeply and will not cheapen it by pretending it needs me to herald and applaud it.

I am deeply, deeply grateful for a few people who very gently came to Syl asking for advice on how to approach me to comfort me about this-- I appreciate that respect so very much, and I'm sorry the right answer is pretty much 'just let her process it in her own way', because I know they are just trying to help. The heart behind the gesture is appreciated, and the comments Syl related to me were incredibly sweet. I promise, I will come to grips with this in time-- the next month or so will be tumult but our little apartment in the sky is so beautiful, and Syl and I have such a calm and happy family vibe, it's a good place to heal.

I am deeply, deeply annoyed at a couple of people who barged in thinking they knew all about divorce and all about what was going on. In all but one or two cases I understand that this is a simple misunderstanding-- in one case it was part of an ongoing pattern of seeing fit to tell the zombies who we are and how we think without bothering to consult anybody involved about what's going on. I don't think the person liked Syl's response to being approached that way-- I am not going to get wrought up about that.

So that's the situation and why things will be slow, but I got the UDA installment up and I am pecking away at the strip again. I figured I'd stop the grass shading and switch gears to wings, get myself out of the headspace I was in when the whole world went kerplooey on me. Hopefully that'll help me get over the loss of all momentum. Dunno. If it doesn't, well, we've been through slow times. At least the central reason for those slow times and overloads is about to be over.

If only I believed in confession. If only I believed that I could come to Father to somehow absolve me of my grief, somehow take away my errors. If only I could sit myself down in a quiet little place, and say, forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It is worse, I think, to feel that I have done nothing wrong, that no one is angry at me, that I have placed every foot right and still ended up in a place I never wanted to be.

Forgive me, Father, I would say, for I have sinned. I have drawn so much validation from my marriage, and been so proud of how hard I have worked on it and found in it a safe place. But the God that I believe in would fault me none of those things. Forgive me, Father, I would say, for I have fooled myself for a long time into feeling as though the way I was being mistreated and outright sabotaged revolved around my own failings-- I, who promised to refuse any sort of self-delusion, used this premise to completely delude myself to what was truly happening in my life. But the God I believe does not offer me anger and absolution for this, only comfort for my grief at having led myself astray. Forgive me, Father, I would say, for asking those closest to me to trust this person that I myself didn't really know, for leading them to pour their hearts into helping and comforting someone who was not even appreciative of the help and comfort I offered. But the God I believe in only honours the faith with which we served such a person, the pains we went through to honour commitments that had never been honoured in return.

To assume responsibility for all this would be comforting-- it would give me the illusion of control. If it were my fault, then it would be something I could have prevented. There would be some error I could correct, some sin I could not have committed, some way all of this would not have been a waste.

I tried to take this in stride. I did. I tried to keep it to myself and contain it. But I have been too foolishly free with my personal life and as a result I would feel like a liar not correcting what I've said and offering the truth in its place. As much as I believed (or wanted to believe) that I had found a relationship that really worked, I had not. I was deceived. I am deceived still.

I say this having consulted him and cleared this confession with him, because for all my hurt I still want to serve my oaths responsibly: The reason I stopped working suddenly was that my husband no longer wants to be my husband. It was something I saw coming but tried hard to look away from. The worst part is that I am not being left for any failing in me, anything I could blame. I am being left because he simply wants someone else. He doesn't think that person is better than me, more deserving, or anything else. He doesn't even want to be him. He wants to change everything, walk away from everything, and go after something he wants more. He's been pretending to be the person I knew and loved, and for the past 11 years I have been a part of the role he wanted to force himself into playing.

It is much healthier to him, to me, to everyone around us for him to drop the facade and go pursue the life he wants instead. It is devastating to me to understand that the sabotage has been deliberate, that he has made a shambles of everything from our finances to our business to my health on purpose, all to try to drive me off rather than admit he is not where or who he wants to be-- that he is not even him.

It makes a liar of me, for I have always held him up as a shining example, always helped him maintain the lie. I cannot absolve myself of that easily, because I cannot ignore that I could have examined him more closely, could have taken responsibility for thoroughly examining the excuses rather than simply accepting them to maintain how I wanted to feel and believe. The person I gave all my heart, all my faith to-- he never existed. That breaks more hearts than mine, but they are better broken than left to dwindle and wither as mine has. So many people have suffered having to stand by and watch me suffer through this, unable to help me because by my oath they had to be put at a lower priority than this person who did not deserve their respect and did nothing to earn it. I have much to atone for with them, but for now they won't hear of it, and the fact that they are comforting to me rather than angry with me leaves me no absolution with them either.

A little more than 30 days to decide whose things are whose, six months before we sign divorce papers and I have to figure out how to live a life I systematically dismantled to make him happy. In 24 hours we went from this person I thought I knew trying to atone and repair the rifts made in our little family by all the neglect and broken trust to this person, this stranger, telling me that perhaps atonement was just impossible and we should go our separate ways.

Syl is taking me in, bless her heart, and I find great comfort in that. Right now I am curled around myself in shock and I can go no further than that. I have spent every day staring at the art and story for as long as I can, then, when the tears start rolling down too quickly to read or see any more, firing up the video games and doing what I can to find comfort in spoiling my remaining loved ones rotten. They have sat with me, talked to me, sang to me, cut loose with years worth of things they haven't wanted to say to me out of respect for the vows I'd chosen. I am cared for, I am loved. I know it. I try very hard to feel it. Mostly I feel numb.

I'm sorry. I've lied to you too, I just didn't know it. I thought we had a relationship forged in common trials and loyalty, I thought he was understanding when in truth he was just so good at managing facades and manipulating me that he convinced me how he was treating me was better than I deserved. The stress has been wearing me to bits and tearing me to shreds and literally destroying my heart, and throughout I have believed he was my ally, when in fact he was burdened with me and wanted to be rid of me. If only he had told me. All he ever had to do was tell me he wanted me to go. As helpless as I have seemed I would never stay in a person's life to obligate them to me. I have no fear of death, or harm, or deprivation, but I did, I deeply did have fear of becoming a burden to anyone.

Forgive me, Father, for I didn't learn much from my earthly father, and just as predicted, married someone just like him, and gave him the same blind, stupid, unyielding trust only to face the same result. Forgive me, Father, for shying for too long from the humiliation of having loved unwisely, and putting my friends through so much in the process of watching someone slowly demolish a person they trusted and loved. Forgive me for letting him silence me, dim my voice in this world, and cheapen my understanding of love. Forgive me for letting him play on every permutation of our past, for allowing that to blind me to the way he'd decided to live the last 18 years in complete falsehood. Forgive me for clinging so hard to a person I thought I'd known since I was 13 years old that I wouldn't notice that I'd never really known that person at all.

I know you're not angry at me. Just... forgive me anyway. It's easier to bear than pity. It's easier to bear than regret. It's weak to beg for absolution because comfort is just too bitter. I know I want there to be something more that I did wrong because it's harder to realize I put every ounce of everything I had into serving my part of the relationship and even admitted along the way that I couldn't take responsibility for both sides of it, that I couldn't make it work on my own. I wasn't even deluding myself into thinking I could single-handedly make a marriage work. The true delusion I clung to was that the husband I'd originally married was the reality and this manipulative person was a temporary malady brought on by my being ill and unsatisfactory. The truest delusion I clung to was that I somehow deserved what I was going through.

It's weak to beg forgiveness when I can't bring myself to face the idea that it was a waste, effort rigged against me from the beginning because I wasn't a person to him, I was a prop, an accessory to a con on the world around him.

But I feel weak right now. So, please, forgive me anyway.

Well, it feels sometimes like it will neveeeerrr be stable here at Malakh Studios, like one thing after another bounces us around and every time we think we can breathe for a while it goes boom! all over again. Right now, we are preparing to move again, somewhere closer to school for me and away from the middle-of-nowhere, and so obviously things are going to be a bit chaotic and hectic and whatnot around here.

Poor A's brain was just getting back into work-mode when all this stuff went kablooey, and so I'm having her just try and soothe the frazzled autistic brain however she can for now until we can get to somewhere more stable.

Things have been very stressy for a while, but I am confident that once we move and get settled in, A will be back to her old productive self - the A we watched work like a fiend all the way back in Arc 1 when the interruptions and stress weren't making it practically impossible for her to function at all. I think I can make a calmer and steadier environment for her to work in, so if you'll just bear with us a little while longer, I do believe things will get significantly better.

It might take a while, since we have a bunch of stuff to deal with and clean up around here, but rest assured, I will make a good headspace conducive to artsiness, and at long last her poor brain can relax and work like it used to. Candles and music and art and cleanspace are win!

We adore you guys, and are very grateful for how long you've stuck by us through all this craziness and unending interruption. UDA and the strip will resume when it is possible, but we love the comic and we love working on it, and we'll keep pushing through and keep working on it. It's very much part of our lives, and you can rest easy knowing we wouldn't ever give it up without an enormous fight - well, you'd probably have to kill us. ;)

Thank you all so much for being so patient and so awesome. Feel free to e-mail me if you have any questions or comments, as always, and I'll be around bitching about trying to find apartments during exam season on the forum. ;)

You guys rock. <3 Thank you all.

It wasn't something I could see coming, but it was something I knew would happen, if that makes any sense. It wasn't something I could prepare for, but it was something I was ready for just the same.

I don't really want to make public the massive upheaval that's just gone on, I will just make sure my readers know that it is a massive upheaval and much as I would like to just batter through the confusion it causes, I am going to have to concede to reality and let my autistic brain simmer on it as long as it needs to. It is a huge change to my life, my future, in some ways for the better but in other ways it's sad too.

Anyhow, I will get cracking just the second my brain gives way to my efforts, but right now I'm in a numb space and I haven't even processed anything that's happened since Sunday. I know I will, and then I will either cry or rejoice, probably both, and then I will put stuff up again. It's wretched that this couldn't have happened during the illness but I can see why those involved didn't want to spring it on me then. But, the end result of this is that in about a year I will have a much more stable, peaceful environment and far less interruption, so, it'll be good in the longrun. I'm a bit sanguine about it for that reason.

People are complicated and difficult to schedule, but, I'm still content and happy, because the people who love me will always be close to me and that's what truly matters. Just takes the poor broken brain a little while to catch up with the rest, and while it does, nothing else gets done. More ASAP.