The Beginning

Everything was going smoothly for the most part. We were saving up money left and right, from Catherine's job working at a waitress and me...well, I was a full time student. No one was hiring, and I had to stick to going to school, since I was doing very, very well in my classes. When I approached Catherine about working part time with her, she said that she could handle it for the time being, but mentioned that me working with her over the summer would be a good idea.

A few months went by, and come the cooler months and we kept what we had to have and scrapping anything superfluous. We decided that going to California to get married wasn't needed; since we had closer alternatives, like Vermont or even Washington DC. So the idea of going to California was discarded.

After much discussion on the topic of surnames, Catherine decided to take on my own, citing that she always thought it was pretty and very romantic. Even better, we thought it would be really neat to put up a YouTube channel under the name of 'Rose Valley' as a video log of our lives together. It would serve as a virtual memory book for all our friends and family.

But...

In all honesty, I can't really pinpoint when things started to go in a strange direction, or how I started to notice. I just did. Suddenly Catherine began to exhibit strange new characteristics, some of them so subtle you wouldn't even notice, no matter how long you had known her. I feel like such a fool for not seeing it all sooner.

I can remember one day where Naomi took us all out to the park woods for some time together, and for her to sketch some trees. Everyone else, including myself, had no problem with it, as we always loved taking long walks along the paths. Catherine, however, stopped dead in her tracks and refused to go inside. She said that her legs hurt from walking around campus and wanted to stay near the playground. So she and I remained on the swings talking about how wonderful out lives with be and what we were going to do. Catherine said she wanted a little playground for our children, which I thought was a cute idea.

Catherine never went into any sort of forest again, not even the place where we walked on our anniversary. She always came up with some excuse to not venture in, and soon she didn't even like playgrounds anymore. But none of these new dislikes were in your face, and she remained my wonderful fiance Catherine.
But she used to love forests...what happened?