Hey all! If you’ve been following this account the past few weeks I’m sure you’ve noticed that I’ve been posting again. I’ve about reached the end of the short backlog I hadn’t shared yet other than this piece.

Several months ago I drew this artwork of Kali’s current design comforting little Kali from a long time ago. It was quite cathartic and brought up a lot of emotions. But I wasn’t sure what exactly I wanted to do with it at first, because posting it felt too sudden and scary. There was a lot of emotion behind it that I felt needed at least some explaining. And at some point I decided I did want to share it here. I’ve been doing a heck of a lot of self-discovery and therapy and piecing together a lot of things this past year.

I’ve been kinda half in, half out for a long while and I’m feeling ready to fully re-enter the community space now. And after all this time it feels very strange. My relationship with both the community and with my own little side has been really strained and I’ve spent a long time avoiding it. But within the past year or so I’m finally feeling ready to figure all this out. I miss it.

My old account over at Kalida is filled with sooo many memories. I occasionally go back and browse through it, even now. It’s one of the main reasons I’ve left it up after all this time. Overall, the period in my life that I was posting over there was a very authentic and happy time in my life. I had good friends, a partner, was living on my own for the first time, and had lots of energy I could put towards personal art. I was able to make connections and interact in a way that I struggle with today.

But towards the end of my time posting there I was going through some very rough transitions in life. Some of them I was aware of and some of them I was not. They all ultimately led up to me leaving and stopping commissions.

Anyone who was following me at that time may remember I went through a break-up in 2012, a few years before I stopped posting. I never talked about it then and that is something I regret, honestly. The situation that led to it was complicated. I had spent about a year getting close with Fink (my current partner) at the enthusiastic encouragement of my ex. Around this time I started to realize that there were some pretty unsavory and manipulative things happening due to my ex’s actions and choices and they weren’t changing (despite confronting some of them). I was put in some non-consensual and abusive sexual situations because of my ex. And I never talked about it with anyone outside of Fink. It was my first relationship and I was young, so I don’t fault myself for it. It was hard to grasp what was going on and do something about it. But eventually I was able to break up and get myself out of the situation.

The choice to leave that unsafe relationship caused a lot of waves in my life. When you go through a break-up you end up changing a lot of the friendships and dynamics you mutually shared. My ex and I were very close to several people in the community and I had a pretty tight-knit group of friends we both interacted with. When we broke up, things shifted. And I didn’t talk to any friends about why we broke up. On the outside it looked like I left my ex for another person. But the reality of the situation was I was leaving a relationship that was bad and jeopardizing my safety. I deliberately chose not to talk about it at the time. I didn’t want people to view my ex differently or disconnect with them, and I didn’t want attention on myself directly. I still felt a lot of doubt and shame about what was happening. But not talking about it instead contributed to me disconnecting. I found myself wanting to leave everything behind and start fresh. There were so many reminders around me of what had happened and what I had lost. I felt like a bad person for doing what I did. I felt really guilty.

I ended up disconnecting from nearly all the people I regularly talked to in the community over the next few years. I definitely have a lot of regrets about not fighting harder for my friendships at the time but I was really struggling. This in turn made it incredibly difficult for me to continue engaging with the community in general and it made working on commissions even harder. I ended up feeling really burnt out and unhappy drawing anything ABDL/babyfur related, especially because my friends were a huge source of inspiration for my art. I instead started putting my time into drawing artwork for a more general furry audience and made a new account around that time.

My loss of relationships and passion for artwork also left me feeling really disconnected from my little side in real life. It’s always been something that’s been a part of me. The most I did was take up the caretaker role for my current partner, Fink. Being a caretaker is an important thing to me too but it’s definitely not the only thing I enjoyed. Locking the little side of myself away was really damaging and I am just now getting back in touch with it 8 years later. It’s coming along with unlearning a lot of shame that I’ve built up about myself over the years and it’s been tough, but rewarding. It feels kind of like I’m starting back at square one from back when I first discovered ABDL.

Entering back into this community space is part of my journey to get back in touch with my little side. I really, really miss it but it feels so hard and terrifying to share this part of myself. It’s been a really slow process so far but I’m getting there. I drew myself as a bab again for the first time last year! And since then I’ve been able to draw for myself here and there. It’s the small backlog of art that I’ve been posting here! I’ve really enjoyed sharing it and hope to continue to draw and share more. I’m even working up to taking some commissions again here and there if people are interested.

Other things in my life have been going better too. I reconnected with a friend I lost all those years ago and that has been really wonderful. I’ve moved to a place I enjoy existing. I’ve realized recently that I am autistic and that has put so many things that felt wrong or confusing into a new perspective. I’m learning how to be more authentic and present again in my life.

I guess the main thing I wanted to say with all this is that I’m sorry for vanishing like I did all those years ago. I feel really bad about how it all went down and how I handled it, though I was doing the best I could with the knowledge and experience I had. I wish I had been able to talk about why at the time but the truth is a lot of this stuff I’ve only recently started piecing together. For a long time I wasn’t ready to face it and figure it out but I feel ready now. And I feel ready to talk about it and make some changes in my life. Going forward I’m going to continue maintaining, posting to and interacting with folks on this account. I’m going to do that alongside my current general art account too, so I might bounce back and forth between the two spaces! I’ve discovered both spaces are important for me to have. But I’ll definitely be around and present here in a way that I haven’t been in a looonng time.

If you’re here after all this time, thanks for sticking with me <3