*(This was also posted to Fetlife) I feel that this needs a preface — I don’t often write about intimate experiences and I don’t want to come across as boasting. Despite swearing-off New Year’s resolutions, it seems January, for each of the past two years, is a time of immense change for me and my relationships. January 2019 was a rollercoaster. Supremely-high highs and subterranean lows. I’ve learned a great deal about myself and my relationships; I’ve begun to tackle demons that have haunted me since childhood, affect how I see myself and inform how I approach relationships. In the process, I may have lost the chance to build a profound connection with one person who came into and left my life all too quickly (“O”). At the same time I have been growing, exploring, and evolving my relationship with “Sprite.” Alongside all of that, in the space of one month: I’ve found a new job that has me feeling happy and appreciated, dressed up as a Viking princess, had a failed attempt at an MFM that made Sprite and I both appreciate just how attuned and caring my ‘lost’ relationship partner was, reconnected with an old dear friend via an automotive crisis, reconnected with a college friend as a result of a facebook photo of my chest hair, and begun to explore the parts of BDSM that held both allure and anxiety.*