Happy New Year
It hasn’t exactly been “a year” since discovering I wasn’t alone in our brain, but the new year is a good excuse look back at how far we’ve come together, and where we expect to go from here. 9 months is not nothing, but there certainly are some things we haven’t figured out yet.
First, though, I’m proud of us for getting where we are today. Amy and I got along from the start and were happy to work together on anything we needed, and I’m grateful for how easy that’s made a lot of things. Not trivial, certainly, but we’ve certainly become better at communicating than we were at the very beginning. We’ve fallen into a nice routine, and we’re both really happy with the day-to-day. It’s been really, really nice.
It’s not just the two of us, of course. But Deca is easy to please. He’s a rare front, certainly, but he’s never minded. Sometimes Amy and I do worry about him but every chance they’ve had, they’ve insisted that everything’s chill. We’ve both had to try to stop projecting our own feelings onto him. I don’t think I’d be happy with his arrangement, but Deca is perfectly content, so I’m happy for him.
Over the course of the year, we did let more and more people know about us. It started with just our friends on fedi, which was definitely the most people at once but it was also the least scary. There were already plenty of systems in our circles on there, so we knew how Amy would be recieved when she showed up. The warm welcomes to both her and Deca were pretty much expected, but not any less nice. I’ve been really, really happy to see both of them go out and make friends there. Scarier than that was letting friends from our offline circles know. Exactly how well that went varied, but it was never bad. It’s nice for both of us to not have to hide that kind of thing when we’re with them. Amy and I even managed a cofront when going to see a concert with a couple friends, where I tried to take the backseat as much as possible. Amy hanging out in person with people I’ve known forever was really sweet to see.
On top of that, we’ve also been dropping little hints here and there in other online communities. How little they are depends, but we’ve gotten nice messages from people who picked up on them. By far the most blatant is that we’ve been dabbling in US newspaper-style crossword construction, and… talking about this at all is already a pretty huge spoiler for one of them, but if you want to check out what I’m referring to, it’s the second puzzle listed on this page. Good luck :3
Overall, 2023 was good for us. We do have some things to look forward to in the future, though.
In particular, all of us want our parents to know, but that comes with the reservations Amy talked about last time. Our decision for now has been to put that off until we don’t live with them. Not because we’re really afraid of how they’ll react or anything, I just think it’s a revelation that would benefit from having some space. If they could meet her and process that without having us around the whole time, I think that would be helpful, and I think it would be better for us to not have to be around for it. Maybe this is some kind of cowardice, but it’s the decision for now. Separately, I’d like to move out of here anyway, and I’d really love to have it happen in 2024. We’ll see!
There’s another thing for us to be thinking about in our future, and that’s the possibility of having a fourth guy in here. Shortly before Christmas, we played Undertale Yellow, a fangame about the last human to enter the Underground before the events of Undertale. One of the major characters in it is a bird girl named Martlet, who we had an immediate affinity to. We even made some jokes about whether we’d get her as a fictive. We’ve made those jokes a few times before, about characters like Lynne from Ghost Trick or Jade from Homestuck (I’m actually still pretty shocked we didn’t get a Jade). It didn’t really mean anything. Then, about a week ago, she fronted. Maybe.
It happened at night, in bed. Our grasp on identity is usually tenuous at best, then. Amy had kind of gotten sick of wondering if we were going to get a Martlet fictive and started trying to see if she was there, and at the time it felt like it worked. Then again, our identity then is hard to pin down at the best of times. Whoever was here, they chatted with a friend on Discord about maybe being new, and then we went to bed. In the morning, we decided not to call it unless she turned up again. That night, Amy tried to get her out again to see, and nothing happened. Eventually she gave up and went to sleep. We dreamed that we were chasing Martlet and she was trying to run away, scared.
That was extremely offputting, and we took a break from trying to see if she was there. Maybe none of it ever meant anything. Maybe she did front, and the dream meant nothing. Or maybe she fronted, and then grew scared of us later. I don’t know. I know that if she was here, she wasn’t scared at the time. That I’m certain of; not only do I not remember her being afraid, I do remember somebody making a post at the time about specifically not feeling scared. I don’t know what to make of it. But that’s something we’re going to have to figure out in 2024.
Overall, 2023 treated us well, and it was a great start to our time together as something I’m willing to call a family. I’m really looking forward to seeing what 2024 has in store for us.