#I have inescapable and constant work brain

[julykings]

life lately

[bt-writing]

Winter's Touch

Link x gn!Reader

A/N: lord i love link so much. i know we're all playing totk rn!! this fic is pretty ambiguous, so it can be set in either botw or totk, it has no spoilers for either game :) and to all of my followers,

wow! it has been an AMOUNT of time since i last wrote something! i'm sorry for falling off the map, but i'm sure you all know how life goes. i'd also like to say that i know, as all of my works have been genshin based, that you all most likely followed me for my genshin content, and i appreciate all of you so much. i've had so many kind, encouraging comments that made me feel proud of my work. but, truthfully, i will most likely not be writing any more genshin content for the foreseeable future. unless i get back into the game, which is unlikely. i'll most likely continue to write here and there, but who knows what fandom it will be for?

anyways, thank you all again, and i hope everyone can enjoy this story! i put a lot of effort into it, and i hope i've improved from my previous works :)

SFW

Word Count: 5.9k

Summary: You and Link are caught in a brutal snowstorm while traveling through Hebra. Finding yourselves in an abandoned cabin for the night, how in Hylia will you manage to keep warm?

Hebra's perpetual winter snowfall had been merciless ever since you arrived in the secluded northern region. The last few days especially had shown capricious bursts of flurries and wind gusts even more brutal than normal, heralding in the blizzard that faced you now. An unholy amount of the powdery, blinding white coating had accumulated, disguising any semblance of ground for what appeared to be the entire regionーprobably the entire world, from what you could tell. Nothing would surprise you at this point, seeing just how relentless the thick snowflakes had been since you arrived in this godless land.

A heavy sigh escaped from your chest and fell into cupped hands. The tips of your fingers and knuckles were flushed red from the subzero temperature that effortlessly seeped through your clothes and nipped at your skin. Even after rubbing your hands together like a plotting insect, they remained raw and aching, lamenting the loss of your cozy Rito-made gloves which were misplaced somewhere in a far-off stable. The chill felt like knives, an inescapable punishment for your disorganization, unbearable even through a heavy, wool-lined jacket and several other layers of essentially every article of clothing that you traveled with. As you brought your freezing hands up to try and revive your numb ears, you cast a glance over at your Hylian companion.

It had certainly been a number of hours since the two of you had departed from the Snowfield Stableーalbeit, you would argue it was more so a few days spent wandering the ninth layer of hellーbut it was hard to determine precisely how long due to the constant ambiguity of the murky, grey cast sky above. You couldn't help but pinch your eyebrows together, squinting to protect your eyes from the light reflecting off of the obnoxious white plain. Link appeared unphased by the icy insanity you had found yourselves in. He marched dutifully along the invisible path with his typical resolved purpose, his deep footprints leaving a trail to the rhythmic crunching of snow. The caped hood that Link wore concealed his pointy, elven ears from the onslaught of wind, but you were positive they were a similar cherry-colored shade as your own. Its thin fabric flapped wildly behind Link as he traversed the land, obviously experienced in navigating the ruthless northern tundra. The speed at which he walked through the snow was honestly impressive. You had long since tired, but he never slowed down. It was almost as if his stamina reserves were blessed by the gods themselves.

You, on the other hand, were in a much worse state. The journey had begun to turn your brain to mush. Lack of visual stimulation and the persistent weather beating down on you made it difficult to carry on. Yet, burdening Link with your fatigue wasn't an option. Trying to match your partner's pace, you took long, forceful steps forward, legs burning from overexertion. The additional weight of chunky snow boots, padded clothing, and your traveler's bag filled to the brim with supplies made your hike comparably more strenuous than any other you've been on. Giving thought to your exhaustion only served to make things worse, however, as with your next step, the tip of your boot failed to escape the crater your footprint had made in the snow and instead got caught on the very edge.

Thrown off balance, you stumbled forwards with a small gasp. Your hands flailed in a short motion by your sides in a meager attempt to save yourself from faceplanting into the cold, wet snow below you. Before you could kiss the ground, all of your momentum was halted by Link's hand wrapping around your wrist. His other hand shot across your body, reaching for your opposite shoulder and supporting your weight with his forearm over your chest. He turned your torso to face him directly. The knight allowed for his hold on you to linger, wanting to be doubly sure you found stability. Meeting his focused eyes, another sharp breeze whistled by your ear and sent a chill down your spine. The hood blew off from his head, unveiling his messy blonde locks and long ears which's hues confirmed your earlier suspicion. Link took his time inspecting your face, as if he were searching for the answer to some unspoken question, before breaking the silence.

"You're cold."

Your eyebrows raised incredulously. Cold? It was enough to send a small chuckle from your frostbitten lips.

"I don't know if you've noticed exactly where we are, but I'd say that more than simply 'cold' fits the norm here," you replied, exasperated by his statement. Though, before you could ridicule the words of Captain Obvious, he released his hands from your body, leaving you to silently grieve the loss of his touch. Gloved fingers played with the clasp of his hood before removing it from his shoulders and tossing it over your own. His knuckles grazed the exposed skin of your neck as he secured the cloth to you. His thumbs brushed past your cheeks and ears as he reached for the hood, bringing the oversized fabric to rest right above your browbone. Link's hands trailed down to your arms where he reached behind you to tug the sides of the cape around you tightly. It reminded you of a worried mother swaddling her child in a winter coat. Your chapped lips were slightly parted in surprise at Link's movements. The events of the previous minute had left you stunned, and his current actions weren't helping you recover in the slightest. As your brain fried, a tingly warmth filled your body. It erupted from your stomach and quickly spread to your face, staining your already red features a shade darker.

You simply brushed off the newfound warmth as the loss of wind-chill.

Although grateful for his gift to you, you were also concerned about Link's own well-being since he was the one now exposed to the elements. Your eyes traced his ears as they twitched from the wind's lashing. Adorable as the involuntary motion was, you had to object to his kindness.

"Won't you be cold now?" you asked, trying to deny the item. Even if you were slightly less miserable as a result, his health came before your own. Link was the champion, the hero chosen to protect Hyrule indefinitely. He was the one who mattered most between the two of you. Yet, Link closed his eyes and shook his head at your question. Snowflakes had already begun to accumulate on his dark lashes.

"No. I'll be fine. I have a tolerance for this sort of weather, anyways," he spoke bluntly.

It was your turn to study his face this time in an attempt to detect any semblance of a lie. His serious, teal eyes left no room to argue, and you knew it would be a losing battle to try and change his mind. When you could no longer bear to maintain eye contact with the boy, you cast your sight over his shoulder timidly, growing overwhelmed by his silent insistence. It was hard to look straight at him when it felt like he was staring directly into your soul. However, a dull silhouette in the distance caused you to perk up suddenly, catching his attention. A couple hundred meters away from you was a tiny wooden cabin, nearly swallowed by the dense horizon of snow flurries. The structure was most likely abandonedーthe flatland of agony for miles in every direction didn't exactly scream 'tourist attraction' to you, but at the moment it might as well have been the oasis paradise in a desert of frosty sand.

"Link—" you stepped past him, grabbing the cloth of his sleeve with urgent fingers. "Link, look!"

His eyes flickered down to your grasp on his Snowquill jacket before following your gaze into the snowfield. By the time he had managed to locate the structure, you had already begun to drag him along toward it. This was the most energy he had seen out of you in the last few hours.

After some minutes spent walking through the blizzard, you and Link eventually reached the little dilapidated shack, a lone shelter in Hebra's snowy sea. Not wanting to spend any more time outside than necessary, you quickly pushed open the shoddy cabin door. A loud creak! resounded off the bare walls, greeting the two of you as you made your way inside. The interior wasn't impressive by any means. Dust had amassed on the floor and furniture in a layer thick enough to see from your place by the door. A wobbly table sat to the left of the room, positioned right beneath a small, framed window, its glass frosted over by the raging snowstorm beyond the cabin's log walls. On that table was a partially used candle jammed into its candlestick and a few shards of flint. This was good news, you thought, as it provided a means to easily ignite the fireplace directly opposite of the door. An untouched bundle of wood was conveniently propped up against the stone mantel, begging to be lit aflame by the lodge's new inhabitants. Rest be assured, starting a fire was no doubt next on the to-do list. As Link shut the door behind you, your eyes glossed over the bed to your right. A single, flat pillow rested unremarkably against the equally lackluster bedframe. The remainder of the bed was covered by a hefty comforter adorned with simple Rito chevron patterns. Now this, you could get behind. The only issue was the size of the bed. It was a comfortable fit for one person, sure, but two people would be a tight squeeze.

Before you could ponder the issue any further, Link's footsteps pulled you out of your daze. The planks of the floor groaned beneath his weight, but he paid no mind, instead getting straight to work on building a fire. You smirked to yourself—he must have been colder than he let on. You wouldn't give him a hard time about it, though, as you weren't any better off. Deciding to try and make yourself useful, you made your way to the foot of the bed where the group of barrels were and began to inspect their contents. Not expecting much to begin with, your meager hopes were squashed as you removed the brown lid of each container. The first barrel contained a handful of chillshrooms, which sat snugly at the bottom of the cold, dark abyss. The next one provided nothing more than a few more flint shards, and the third barrel was completely empty, save for the dust bunnies gathered in its crevices. The poor scavenge wasn't a big deal, luckily, since your bag held enough rations to get you and Link through a few more days of travel at best.

Crouching down next to Link, you watched in silence as he stoked the starter flames in the fireplace. The faint heat emanated by a fire as small as this one still felt like heaven on your fingers, which burned from the blood rapidly circulating back through them. You gingerly flexed the joints of your hand with an appeased sigh.

The feeling of watchful eyes on you halted your appreciative finger wiggle. Link looked at you expectantly, causing an amused huff to pass from your nose.

"They were pretty much empty. Unless you're hungry for mushrooms and dust particles, that is," you joked. "It looks like curry again. Sorry."

Link held your gaze for a few seconds before leaning back on his hands and resting his eyelids.

"I don't mind," Link spoke, thoughtfully tasting his next words on his tongue. "Your cooking's good."

That same funny warmth from earlier crept up through your chest. Your cheeks turned soft and fuzzy from his compliment. Trying to keep them from melting off your face, you lightly bit their insides to hold the muscles in place.

"It's like, two ingredients," you said with a soft laugh. Pulling yourself to your feet, you shuffled towards the scrawny bed that your bag occupied. You undid the worn latches that secured your materials and dug around for the ingredients to tonight's dinner. "Although, in comparison to that monstrosity you made the other day, I guess anything is better—Ah!"

During your preoccupied rummaging through your bag, Link had managed to sneak up behind you without you noticing and teasingly elbowed your side in retaliation for your comment about his awful cooking. You chuckled in surprise and returned the gesture, nudging him with your shoulder as a toothy grin broke out on his face.

"It wasn't my fault," Link swore in a poor attempt at defending himself, "how was I supposed to know that monster parts wouldn't work in place of meat?"

"Yeah, because bokoblin stew sounds so delicious," you replied sarcastically. For how talented your Hylian companion was at most things, his incompetence at making an edible meal was rather endearing. Ignoring Link's fake pout, you retrieved the Goron spice and Hylian rice from your belongings and brought them over to the fire.

Before long, idle chatter and the aroma of spiced curry had filled the air of the remote Hebra lodge, imbuing it with more life than it had seen in quite some time. It was cozy, sitting there with Link. The heat from the spice danced on your tongue and warmed you from the inside out. This was everything you had wanted only a few hours ago. One of the goddesses must have heard your prayer, you thought, as you examined the frozen landscape through the window. The sun had disappeared from behind the clouds by this point, leaving behind a pitch black sky in its wake. The snow's reflection no longer stung your eyes.

With your body temperature raised and stomach filled, you couldn't help the large yawn that escaped your lips.

Right. The bed.

The time to face the issue of sleeping arrangements had finally arrived. As enticing as the small cabin bed was in your exhausted state, all you really needed to be satisfied was a spot next to the toasty, flickering light of the fireplace. However, Link was apparently two steps ahead of you. He suddenly rose from his seat on the floor and stepped over to the window, facing his back to you. You held your tongue and curiously waited for his next move. What you weren't expecting Link to do was slowly begin stripping. First went the gloves, which were tossed haphazardly onto the wooden table with a thud. Hands free, he reached around his back to undo the leather corset of his Snowquill armor. It joined the matching gloves on the table. As his fingers hooked underneath the hem of his sweater, you turned your entire body to the side, forcing yourself to look away and pulling your knees into your chest. Of course, there wasn't much privacy where you were, but he could have at least announced that he was going to change beforehand. The sound of thick cloth hitting the table sent a rose-colored tint across your face. You played with your fingers to distract your mind as he rustled through his own bag—for a shirt, you hoped. Considering the amount of time you and Link had been traveling together, it was a given that you had seen him shirtless before. Regardless, that scenario was always in a different context than your current one. The close proximity that the wooden shack forced you into felt much more intimate than usual.

Once Link had finished dressing himself, you hesitantly looked back over at him. Hanging loosely from his hips were the baggy pants of the Snowquill set, minus the boots, which lay toppled over each other in the far corner of the room. It took physical restraint to keep your expression stoic as your eyes found his exposed midriff. Never one to care about fashion, Link wore an old, beige shirt that was just small enough on him to expose the dips of his V-line. The sight made your tongue go dry in your mouth—you wanted nothing more than to run back out into that goddamn blizzard that would surely bring your body temperature back down to normal levels.

But, his face was what held you still.

Link had always been attractive—above average, even—but seeing him now, with the way the golden light from the fire bounced off of his handsome features, highlighting the soft pink blush on his wind-burnt nose and cheeks, it was more like an angel that stood before you. His hair was released from its rubber band confines, now free to frame his face and kiss the tips of his ears and shoulders. You couldn't help but wonder what it would feel like to run your hands through its wild curls.

Completely lost in admiring the Hylian boy before you, it took you embarrassingly longer than it should have to notice what Link was actually doing. With a quick snap of his arms, Link rolled out his depressingly thin blanket onto the cold floor of the cabin, right next to the fire.

"Woah!" you exclaimed, the flap of the blanket hitting the ground bringing you from your daydream. "What do you think you're doing?!"

Link ignored you, grabbing his sweater from the table and bunching it up. He tossed the pathetic ball of cloth near the edge of the blanket, presumably to be used as a makeshift pillow. You had to stop this plan before it was too late.

Before he could sit down on his sad excuse for a bed, you dived face first into the "pillow" that Link had made, stretching your legs out to cover the entire length of the blanket. Your arms wrapped around the clump of sweater, pulling it close to your face to prevent it from being stolen. It was really soft, made from a similar material as your own winter apparel. But, most noticeably, it smelt like him. Link's scent was hard to compare to anything because it contained a touch of everything. It was nature-y, like rich evergreen and sweet nightshade, but also infused with campfire smoke and the vague traces of battle. In the back of your mind, you wondered if this spot on the floor was ultimately better than the proper bed.

The room was silent. Link hadn't made a single noise since you decided to belly flop onto the floor, and you hadn't really wanted to see his reaction. Your nerves got the best of you, however, and you slowly opened an eye to look up at your partner.

Oh. That was a new expression.

His eyebrows were raised high, nearly fully hidden by his tousled bangs. You didn't think Link was capable of displaying that many emotions at once. Confusion, exasperation, and intrigue all bled through his features, like he couldn't decide on just one to feel.

"What do you think you're doing?" he mimicked in astonishment.

"...Sleeping."

"Sleeping."

"Mhm," you muttered from your spot on the ground, "you take the bed. I want to be close to the fire. I haven't completely warmed up yet, you know?" Seeking cover from his skeptical gaze, you rolled over to face the fire directly. You couldn't stand the pressure of his questioning eyes on your back, so you out spoke again, trying to finish the interaction as quickly as possible. "Thanks for setting this up for me, though!"

"Get up," Link said with furrowed brows. He was having none of it. You absently swiped at his hand as he reached out toward you.

"No."

His lips pulled taut, visibly unimpressed with your childish antics. After a few more dismissive swats from your end, Link straightened his back and peered down at you with a dangerous glint in his eyes. You should have known better than to test his patience. Now, he would make sure you paid in full.

A startled noise left your throat as two large hands shot towards you. Link had fallen to his knees in order gain easier access over you. His calloused fingers closed around your wrists, trying to hold you still as you squirmed frantically underneath him. You wouldn't go down without a fight, unwilling to surrender the wrestling match over the shitty fireside bed.

"No! Stop! I don't want to sleep on the bed," you cried out. Full-belly laughs were now echoing off the cabin's walls as you two play fought on the floor. Even though you resisted with all your might, Link's superhuman strength could only be eluded for so long before your inevitable loss came. In one quick motion, he brought both your wrists above your head, throwing you off balance and causing your back to collide with the blanketed ground below.

A painfully large grin stretched across your face, making your cheeks blissfully sore. You panted, slightly out of breath from the altercation with the oh-so-mature Hero of Hyrule. Link sat on top of you, being careful not to rest too much of his weight on your body whilst straddling your sides. He allowed for just enough pressure to keep your body trapped beneath his own. His long bangs dangled only inches away from your forehead. Those playful, sea colored eyes that you cherished stared victoriously into your own. The smile lines in their corners trailed down to lightly flushed cheeks that made your stomach do flips. Link wasn't the type to wear his emotions on his sleeve, so the rare moments where you got to see his more mischievous side made you long to see it again.

Once you had finally come down from your laughing fit, you let out a heavy sigh and stopped struggling to escape. That was when you noticed the position the two of you were in was... suggestive, to say the least. Link still had a hold on both of your wrists, effectively pinning you down underneath him.

"Do you give up?" Link spoke lowly. The huskiness in his voice sent shivers up your spine.

"Never," you whispered back, doing everything in your power to keep your tone steady. He examined your face for a while. You could only hope he didn't realize that the blush your face was from his proximity rather than the physical exertion. Then, in a motion that nearly sent your heart out of your chest, Link began to lower his face down to your own. The tension in the air was heavy and your body tingled everywhere. Shutting your eyes expectantly, you waited for Link to grant the wish you've had for a long time.

But the feeling of his lips on yours never came.

"Too bad," he breathed into your ear. Before you could process what just happened, your world flipped upside down—literally. Link had tossed you carelessly over his shoulder and brought you to the Rito-quilted bed. You hit the mattress with an "oof!" as he flung you down unceremoniously.

You laughed and complained, "Link!" at his actions. All he did was stick his tongue out at you and make his way back to his own bed on the floor. You had been totally and utterly defeated.

"You suck," you pouted.

"Get some sleep," he waved you off as he sat down criss-cross before the fire, monitoring its flames.

You stuck your tongue out at him from behind his back and pulled the comforter over yourself. Your heart raced in your chest. What were you thinking? That Link was actually going to kiss you? Embarrassment flooded through your body, making you bury your face into your pillow as a means of escaping the unpleasant feeling. Your palms were sweaty as you gripped the pillow case.

Link. You had known the Hylian for quite some time, having accompanied the boy on his hero's journey over the last few months. Being Link's companion had exposed you to his colorful personality, which was often hidden underneath his trademark stoic exterior. It had admittedly taken you a while to pick up on his idiosyncrasies, but once you did, it was impossible not to become smitten. The way he would roll his eyes at some stranger's tedious request and still agree to do it. How he would give the stables' herding dogs the rest of your meat when he didn't think you were looking. His wholehearted laugh anytime Epona jumped particularly hard, resulting in a startled yelp from you. Though, he never seemed to mind your arms wrapping tighter around his waist. Even the way his eyes become glossy when a traumatic memory hit him, avoiding eye contact but hovering ever so slightly closer to you, as if he were afraid that the past would come and take you, too.

You earnestly couldn't help but catch feelings for Link during your travels. Even so, you really wished that he'd be a bit more aware of the effect he had on you.

As your adrenaline slowly wore off, the exhaustion from the day hit you like a brick. Your thoughts about Link began to fade, only to be replaced by the sweet slumber you had yearned for all day.

~

Fwish.

After what was most definitely not enough sleep to satisfy you, a sharp chill shot through your body, throwing you from the depths of sleep and into the misery of consciousness. You groggily sat upright and turned your head towards the door of the cabin. There stood Link, still dressed in his sleepwear and boots, quietly shivering from the light dusting of snow on his body.

"Link?" you choked out, concerned as to why he had been outside. "What in Hylia's name are you doing?"

It took you a few seconds to notice the room had dimmed a considerable amount since the last time you were awake. The fireplace had greedily consumed all of the wood you had to offer, leaving nothing more than the shadows and a taunting pile of ashes in its aftermath. At the foot of the bed, the fruitless barrels from earlier were missing. Link must have somehow broken them down without you hearing and used their husks to fuel the fire. Yet, even that wasn't enough to keep the flames alive. The only light source remaining was a decaying candle three-fourths of the way melted and showing no signs of stopping soon. It was barely enough to illuminate the vermilion contours that winter's touch left on Link's face.

"The fire died," Link muttered through chattering teeth, "I went to check for more wood outside." He desperately rubbed his hands up and down his arms, trying to create enough friction to rid himself of the frostbite. "There wasn't any."

Link was a rather pitiful sight. He stood freezing by the door, underdressed and racked with shivers. Even his nonchalant expression was twisted into one of discomfort. Without thinking, still half asleep and driven by an innate desire to help Link, you pulled the corner of the warm comforter over your lap and patted the empty spot next to you.

"It's alright," you yawned out, "just share the bed with me for the night."

The air was silent aside from the wind's whistling outside. Link stood unmoving, his mouth wordlessly agape at your suggestion. You would have found his dumbstruck face cute if your patience wasn't wearing thin from the low temperature in the cabin.

"I'm assuming you haven't slept yet, either," you mumbled, scooting your body back down to lay in the bed. "Come on, already, it's cold."

With that final prompt, Link kicked off his boots and shuffled over to the bed. You scooted your back as close to the wall as you could go. You didn't want Link to feel uncomfortable sharing a bed with you, but he would only suffer trying to brave the night with no fire. There was no other choice but to sleep together. At least, that was the mantra you kept repeating to yourself as reality began to set in. The dip in the bed was like a splash of water to your system, sending shock waves straight to your now wide awake brain.

Link gingerly tucked his legs underneath the comforter, flinching as his foot bumped into your own. You could tell he was tense by the way he lowered his body down and rested his head on your shared pillow. Link was flat on his back with his face pointed towards the ceiling, hesitantly glancing at you from the corner of his eye.

If you didn't know any better, you'd have thought the cabin had teleported from Hebra to Eldin. It felt as though the volcanic heat from Death Mountain had invaded the bed and threatened to scorch you both. You held mutually flustered eye contact with Link for a few awkwardly prolonged seconds before flipping your body to face the wall, pretending like his presence in the bed wasn't slowly suffocating you.

"Uh—night," you murmured.

"Y-Yeah," Link replied, voice pitched a bit higher than normal. You felt the bed shift as he presumably turned his back to yours.

Pins and needles crawled all over your body. You tried your best not to think about the palpable tension that hung in the air. Link's leg twitched softly, causing you to flinch in turn. You needed to get a grip on yourself. There was nothing wrong with sharing a bed with Link, even if you did have a substantial crush on the Hylian boy. Right now, you were just two friends trying to keep warm. Nothing else.

You spent the next few minutes forcing yourself to think of anything besides your current situation. It worked, luckily, and after one final self-lecture for fantasizing about Link, your breath slowed and your body welcomed sleep once again.

~

"Ngh..."

You felt a small sound leave your throat, watered down from sleep and muffled by the warm pillow your face was buried into. Another content sigh left your mouth as you pulled the pillow closer and stretched out your limbs. Its gentle undulations lulled you in your near-sleep state.

Wait. The pillow was breathing?

Your eyes shot open at the feeling. You pulled your head back and nearly fainted at the sight. Inches away from your face was Link's own quiet visage. His soft, pink lips were slightly parted and his long, dark eyelashes fluttered in his sleep, most likely a subconscious reaction to your sudden movement. His bedhead while asleep was truly a sight to behold—to no surprise, as Link had a natural bedhead while awake. Honey blonde strands of hair were tousled messily against the pillow and curled slightly at the ends. You felt his arms, which were draped loosely across your waist, pull you back into his chest. He could probably sense the loss of warmth in his sleep.

You can't remember a time where Link had looked so at-peace. 'Good for him', you thought agitatedly, as you were seconds away from a heart attack. It actually hurt, how hard the organ was beating in your chest. Your stomach was doing violent flips inside you. The only reason you hadn't leapt to the other side of the room yet was that, even if you wanted to move, you physically couldn't. Not without waking sleeping beauty.

After a few seconds of meditative, although exasperated, breathing, you calmed down. Maybe this was alright. It was true, Link rarely had a chance to get a good night's rest. You two were constantly on your feet and Link always kept watch when you camped outside. He'd quickly shoot down your offer to take lookout shifts, refusing to hear another word out of you. Even when you spent the night at a stable, you knew Link slept with one eye open. He'd never admit it, though. He didn't want you to worry.

In an act of blissful defeat, you buried your face back into Link's enticing chest and allowed yourself to fully enjoy the moment. Hylia knows if this chance would ever come again. You sheepishly hugged Link, savoring the drum of his heart beating in his chest. The sensation of his body in yours... it was so warm. If love had a feeling, you imagine it would be like this.

Link's body began to shift against you. As his shoulders slowly hunched down, the angelic curls in his hair trailed down your cheek and his nose found its place in your neck. Link's lips were pressed against the top of your collarbone. Whether this was intentional or not, you couldn't tell. Your mental state was out the window. At a tantalizing pace, Link's lips placed featherlike kisses along your neck, wordlessly confirming that their earlier placement was no mistake. His kisses reached your jawline and languidly began to map out your face. From the curve of your cheekbone to your temple to your forehead, Link's mouth traversed the planes of your face, exploring each hemisphere in extensive detail.

Finally, the Hylian pulled away from your face. Your wide, dumbfounded eyes stared into his own half-lidded, cerulean blue ones.

"You never pulled away."

You were so stunned that you didn't even notice his lips moving. Every part of your body felt weak, you could hardly bring yourself to respond.

"Mm."

"Did you want to pull away?"

"No," you whispered.

"Good."

Without another word, Link brought his perfect lips onto your own. It was a funny sensation that quickly became your favorite thing in the entire world. You returned his affection in full. As Link trailed his calloused hands under your shirt and along your back, you quickly seized the opportunity to threat your fingers through his fluffy blonde locks. Hylia, how you longed to do this.

You couldn't help but smile into the kiss. Every nerve in your body tingled in elation from the way Link kissed you. He was gentle but passionate, as if he'd wanted to do this for a long time. Reluctantly, you broke the kiss to ask.

"How long?" you breathed.

"Too long," Link shook his head. That impish smile you love so much broke out on his face as he suddenly flipped you onto your back. A surprised laugh barely made its way out of you before Link silenced it by returning his lips to yours.

Link broke the kiss again after a few minutes. He held your face in his hands and rested his forehead against your own.

"You have no idea how hard it was," Link sighed. His warm breath tickled your nose. "Sharing this cabin with you, waking up to you tucked into my chest," he trailed off. Your face went red at the revelation—Link had been awake for everything. "I tried to pretend I was asleep in case you were repulsed, but... when you didn't pull away from me, I just couldn't help myself," he admitted, staring sincerely into your eyes, tracing the curves of your face with his thumbs. "You were just so warm."

You smiled giddily and leaned into the palm of Link's hand.

"It wasn't easy for me either," you chuckled, relieved that your feelings had been mutual all along. You wanted so badly to tell Link how dearly you loved him, but you knew you shouldn't. Not yet, at least. For now, you were content lying in his arms while he showered you in kisses. The heat from his touch made you think that, just maybe, this blizzard wasn't so unbearable after all.

[naranjapetrificada]

This is going to be long so the short version is this:

I convinced my therapist to watch the 🌟Gay Pirate Show🌟 and now I have to confront a previously unidentified and terrifyingly deep emotional wound that could be as transformative to heal as it is terrifying to approach.

My therapist and I have a lot of let's say...demographic things in common that have made this the most successful therapeutic relationship I've ever had, but also that just made me think he might like the show. It's no secret that ofmd has been a deeply moving experience for its viewers, and queer, neurodivergent, and/or people of color have written at length about the special ways it touches us (or doesn't). Those are three categories both he and I fit into and it feels relevant to say that for context.

So yes I thought he might like it, but I also wanted to pick his brain about Big Feelings it was giving me that I hadn't experienced with the same intensity with other media/fandoms. Y'all, he gave me a completely unexpected reading on the show (and its story and its fan works) and why it makes us feel So Much that I haven't seen anywhere before.

When I say Big Feelings, I mean like I've literally had to swear off a couple of pretty innocuous categories on AO3 ("Growing Old Together" and "Domestic Fluff") because they would devastate me in ways that I couldn't attribute to anything specific. Growing Old Together comes with the possibility of death separating them, which is heartbreaking, but that didn't feel like it was the thing that was gutting me. Domestic Fluff could probably be called the most innocuous tag ever, but anything that saw our blorbos settling down and watching the Revenge sail off into the distance was fucking me up as well.

There are plenty of reasons why OFMD makes queer people feel so much, but when I say this was fucking me up I mean like, well, remember when people outside of classical music started learning about appoggiatura? Like intellectually knowing why I was crying but at a loss how intense everything felt. And my therapist (who is as good at analyzing a text as he is at being a therapist) was like "oh, it could be all the grief."

The grief.

The audacity of this motherfucker (affectionate).

It's a romcom! It's a romcom that we were explicitly told would have a happy ending! It's a romcom where the characters will get to sail off into the sunset together like they want and like we want for them! Stede and Ed, after four decades of self-hatred and trauma and fear and isolation, somehow find each other. And one of the sweetest things about their story is that it's a late in life love story, because it's incredibly inspiring for someone to get to experience a part of life they thought wasn't for them. The inescapable fact that their time together will be shorter than any of us would like is sad but not unaccountably sad to me, because of how much joy they'll be able to cram into the time they have left. I could be wrong but I don't think that alone is the source of what's been overwhelming me.

Grief is a constant presence in the world-building and the storytelling because grief is a natural response to well, so many things about being alive. Grieving is some of the hardest shit any of us ever have to do, but it's also so universal and so many of the things that make us uniquely human also make grieving well, maybe not easier, but something we can endure and process through ritual, community, and the example of those we've witnessed grieving their own losses. Many kinds of grief come with narratives that you can accept or reject all or parts of, but the narrative exists.

But have you ever heard of disenfranchised loss? Loss that's not easily labeled or classified or given the time or space or understanding it deserves? Have you experienced a loss like that? Can you imagine how much more difficult it makes the grieving process?

Well what my therapist suggested, the thing that knocked me on my ass hard enough that I had to come have Online Feelings about it, is that eventually, we all have to mourn ourselves. Not necessarily in a "mortality is inevitable" way (that happens to everyone) but in ways that are often unique to people like him and me (black, ND, queer). Even if we work on ourselves, if we grow and heal our trauma and feel at home in our identities and our bodies and build beautiful lives, eventually we will be forced to mourn the selves that we never got to be in the societies in which we live and the selves we once had to become to survive this long.

And that mourning is a kind of disenfranchised loss, with no clear path forward. Obviously this conversation happened within the context of everything my therapist knows about me as an individual, but I thought certain things might resonate with other fans as well so I wanted to talk about it. The story of this bizarre little man and his remarkable second act and his lovely little found family and his incredibly beautiful love story (that we've been guaranteed will end happily) is still haunted by the specific kind of grief that comes from learning what's possible, and regretting that you didn't know it was possible sooner.

And does anybody have more delayed milestones, later-in-life discoveries, and/or need to invent places for themselves than those of us on the social fringes? Than those of us in societies unequipped for (or actively hostile to) the ways we exist and the things we need to survive and thrive? Than those of us who have to create our own narratives or be saddled with inaccurate or harmful narratives created by others, or even no narrative at all?

And narrative is so much. Narrative is everything. Narrative is the story we tell ourselves and each other and that literally shapes our reality. So those story beats where we discover something better than what came before are inherently stories with loss and will require mourning, because we mourn loss.

Even when the story has a happy ending. Especially when the story has a happy ending for someone who never thought they would be allowed to have one.

I mean just like, FUCKING HELL. I can't blame anyone for this but myself. I know my therapist. I know how insightful he can be. I did this to myself and now I have to live with it. But my god is it a massive mountain I'm about to have to climb now. My therapist and I have always found it helpful to discuss media that makes me Feel Things (see all the trauma work that came from Life is Strange) but if you had told me that I'd be looking into this new dark cave of unprocessed shit thanks to what I thought was just gonna be a harmless little gay pirate show starring fucking Murray from Flight of the Concords I would probably just have assumed you were in the middle of having a stroke and taken off to get you the medical attention you desperately needed.

[figurativepieceoftrash]

Avid supporter of avoiding your wips.

Not sure if you have something you specifically want to write but Fiend!Aki has been rotting in my own drafts with no where to go

There were so many ways I could've interpreted this prompt and I'm almost 100% certain I did it wrong but here's an Asa/War spin on the Aki and Gun Devil situation, for, y'know, funsies

Sorry it took so long, I ended up procrastinating on this just like I do my wips, so y'know, obviously this exercise worked out super well :P

Here you go regardless <33

---

Aki doesn’t remember much about the incident.

The sound of gunshots. Scattered screams. A stinging, smokey smell thick in the air, as dense and inescapable as the aftermath of Obon. Cold metal smattered across his taste buds, rife with the selfsame rust-touched exigency as blood.

He’d been dreaming, or so Denji relates from the bedside of a maximum security hospital room. A dream he’s certain he could recall, if he wished to. He doesn’t.

Makima had called him lucky, as she’d studied him with those hypnotic, unblinking eyes. Unharmed, save a few noncommittally lingering scars. 

She’d dragged a slow, lazy finger across the red band of his upper arm, and his heart had raced thrice as swiftly in his chest. Said something about them having to reattach it in the ER, about Denji having done quite the number.

Aki hadn’t heard a thing. He’d been far too busy staring into those eyes. They’d lit something in the back of his brain, a sharp, nagging spark of recognition, persistent and enduring. It was only then he’d thought to ask after the Angel Devil, only then that he’d been certain the two were conversing, when it’d happened.

The spark in the barrel. The moment of ignition. The suckerpunch recoil.

Makima had just smiled. Pressed a smooth, gentle fingertip to Aki’s lips. Somehow, after that, the question didn't matter. It still doesn’t.

“You’re a very unique specimen, Aki,” Makima had noted, head cocked and eyes alight with dark curiosity, “can you tell me why the Gun Devil has taken such a keen interest in you?”

He’d tried not to flinch at the name. He’s still upset that he’d failed. “No. Just that I wish it hadn’t.”

The corners of her mouth had twitched at that. Such a minute movement, so human, but Aki had found an impression of intentionality in it, somehow. The careful, premeditated performance of organic vulnerability.

“You’d rather it left you to die?”

He’d thought of Power, then. Of Denji. No. 

The death count still rolling across the wall-mounted hospital television, the footage of a gun barrel protruding from his forehead, his brother, his parents, his commitment. Yes.

What he says is “maybe.”

She’d laughed at that, high and clear as a bell, and Aki isn’t even angry for it. He can’t be. It’s Makima.

“I’m glad,” she’d said, “that you’re mine.”

Aki couldn’t agree more. He just wishes the back of his brain would too. It’s still sounding off even now, muted as it is. Still doesn’t like the look of Makima, of her eyes.

Still thinks of Angel, even when Aki finds he can’t.

“This sucks.” Power’s complaints had been predictably ineloquent. “The apartment is trashed so I can’t see Meowy, this hospital is super boring, and Denji doesn’t even have enough cash to buy me stuff from the vending machine. I’m hunggggryyyyy!”

She wasn’t trying to be insensitive, Aki knew. If things had been difficult for her after their run in with the Darkness Devil, they were even more difficult now that she’d seen one of the few enduring constants in her life behave unpredictably. Dangerously. Lethally.

He’d almost killed Denji. Several times he’d almost killed Denji. So he’d offered her an arm.

“Here. Only take a little. If you bite too hard I’ll knee you in the stomach.”

She’d been quick to accept the offer and even quicker to disregard the warning, needle-sharp teeth breaking over his skin and digging straight into sensitive nerves. He’d forced himself to take his eyes off the river of stray blood that slid down his bicep. It resurfaced too many memories. Memories of gunshots and screams, smoke and metal.

“Yuck!” The exclamation had taken him completely by surprise. Doubly so when Power had withdrawn to spit the contents of her mouth down the front of his hospital gown. “Fiend blood can be so gross. This stuff tastes like steel.”

“Thanks,” he’d muttered darkly, thoughts turning over the heart of her complaint as he’d risen to visit the bathroom. 

Fiend blood. 

It was the first time anyone had said it aloud, in those terms. He's fine with amalgam. With anomaly. Even threat is alright, considering that it is, for all intents and purposes, accurate.

And the fact that it, like its equally vague, shapeless peers, places distance between Aki and the thing he's become. A thin wall of uncertainty to shield the was from the is. The familiar from the unthinkable.

Aki always thought he hated false comforts. Now, he's beginning to suspect he'd just never been introduced to a truth worthy of delusion.

It visits him sometimes, the Gun Devil, always in the dead of night and always terribly, gut-wrenchingly accusatory. Vaguely translucent, it positions itself in the corner of his room and stays there. Mute. Gleaming. Inhumanely still.

Power and Denji can't see it, of course, which means that one way or another, it resides in Aki’s head. This should be comforting, according to Makima, the fact that the Gun Devil is contained, and better, under control of the Japanese government.

There's no real control to this though, Aki thinks, the strange pseudo-peace between himself and the time bomb ticking within the fragile confines of his skull. Just the illusion of it.

He doesn't recall anything leading up to the inciting incident. Doesn't know how he died or what allowed the devil to take control. Why it lost it, following his concussion. When it might try its luck again.

This is why Aki has been forced to reside in the Commission’s headquarters, subject to intrusive levels of surveillance and constant physical surveys. Partial host autonomy isn't unheard of, in the case of fiends, but it is exceedingly rare, especially regarding beings of the Gun Devil's caliber.

Aki imagines he can't be as singular as Denji, but then again, Denji isn't quite so unpredictable. The Gun Devil can't be sated by the promise of simple pleasure, can't be reasoned with, or even communicated with, to Aki’s most meticulous observation.

It's as thoughtless as it is brutal, the epitome of action without thought. Maybe this is because it's technically incomplete, or maybe it's because the concept it represents is ultimately more tool than perpetrator. Aki can't say.

Can't force himself to care, either.

He glares at the thing when it shows its presence, hurling the occasional obscenity in the case that he's certain of his own seclusion. Nothing impacts it though, not really. It just stares, and stares, and stares.

Makima’s visits are sporadic at first, cursory and seemingly meaningless, but they grow with time, both in consistency and purpose. Oddly enough, most of her inquiries don't relate to Aki’s condition. They relate to Denji.

“Is he progressing socially with the staff?”

“How attached would you say he is to his new accommodations?”

“Is he happy?”

Aki doesn't question Makima's seeming obsession–in all honesty, he suspects he couldn't if he wanted to. He just nods along or shakes his head as required, answering swiftly and candidly as he's able.

Giving Makima the things she wants is second nature, simpler and more automatic than breathing. He never thinks to question it, if he even thinks at all.

The Gun Devil appears sometimes, just after she leaves the room. These are the only occasions in which it seems to display agency, or at the very least, some degree of behavioral variation. Because then, it doesn't stare at Aki. It stares at the door.

It stares after Makima.

“Does the Chainsaw Devil ever do that?” He can't help but ask over a tray of bland hospital food. Power and Denji already swiped up everything with flavor. “Manifest visually?”

“Like, can I see him? Nah.” Denji frowns, the expression oddly melancholic. “Wish I could, though.”

And Aki is just as lost as ever.

The doctors tell him his vitals are normal. That his brainwaves are consistent. Obviously his head isn't a gun.

“You can't transform at will?” One asks, eyebrow raised. “That's unusual, based on what we've observed.”

Aki just shrugs. What about his situation isn't?

He gets the impression that the commission is dissatisfied with his lack of control over the Gun Devil, presumably because it means they can't effectively employ it.

“We've lost more than we've gained here,” one surveyor whispers to another when they think he's asleep, though he isn't quite lucid enough to catch the rest of it. He does think on though, at least until Makima returns and his mind, once again, goes numb.

Things are consistent, for a good while. Predictable. Almost comfortable, if he ignores his midnight visitor. Power finds a hobby in harassing the hallway guards. Aki learns the weekly rotation schedule of his doctors. Denji is relaxed again. Contented, just like Makima seems to desire.

And Aki, too, is happy. Until one night, without warning or prior fanfare, something changes.

It's dark outside, far past one in the morning, and silent for it. Nothing distracts Aki from his mute, late night musings aside from Power and Denji’s soft, even breathing and the familiar background whirr of facility electronics.

And then, something speaks.

“You should run.”

Aki jolts up, ramrod straight, in bed, stirring, but not waking, Denji and Power with the motion. The voice is foreign, deep and grating like rebar dragging across concrete, and it sets every nerve in his body immediately on edge.

His gaze lands, immediately, on the figure in the corner of the room. His body with a full pistol for a head. The thing is stone-still. Expressionless, insofar as a gun can be.

But somehow, he's absolutely certain he heard it talk.

He wraps a protective arm around each form at his side, trying to ignore the persistent shaking that's overtaken his hands. “Are you threatening me?”

It cocks its head to the side, as if in contemplation. Waits for a moment. Makes an odd noise somewhere between a click and a whirr.

“She's coming. You should run.”

Aki blinks, perturbed. “She?”

“She.” It nods, slow and self-assured. “You won't like what happens after.”

“I– what the Hell is that supposed to mean?”

As if in explanation, the thing raises a hand, ring and pinky finger pressed to the palm, and points purposefully at first Power, then Denji, performing short, jolting upwards motions towards each. A firing fingergun.

Aki's blood runs icecold.

“You're going to make me hurt them again, aren't you?”

“No.” It somehow has the gall to sound offended. “She is.”

“She? Who the fuck is she? I don't–”

“Control.” It says the word with such fearful, adorant gravity. As if it's speaking of a superior. As if it's speaking of a god. “She approaches.” Then, in a sharp, purposeful whisper, a bullet from a barrel, it utters the word again. “Run.”

Aki doesn't trust the thing. Not even moderately. But hearing this thing, this vast, limitless, horrible, inhuman thing, express terror, of all emotions, is enough to light a fire under his ass. To force adrenaline through his veins. To break him from his odd, trancelike haze.

He shakes Power with one hand and Denji with the other.

“How dare you wake the great, indomitable Power while she's resting, you absolute–”

“Hey, what the hell, man? I was dreamin’ about tits–”

“Shut up.” And like dogs at a whistle, they do. “We're going out for a run. Get your shoes, we can't take anything else.”

There must be something in his tone, because neither protest. Just nod with varying degrees of enthusiasm and run to the mat at the doorside to retrieve their sneakers.

The halls are labyrinthine, and Aki doesn't know them well. Navigating them is a guessing game in broad daylight; after dark, it's an impossibility.

But Power seems to know where she's going, either by smell or by sound, and when she decides to lead the way through the Commission facility's winding corridors, Aki makes the bold decision to follow her lead.

Usually the place never sleeps, constantly outfitted and operated by federal pencil-pushers and devil-hunters alike, but tonight, it's completely and utterly empty. Even the guards outside of Aki’s room are absent.

“Somethin's off,” Denji voices Aki’s concerns between hastened breaths, “like, really off. This place feels… weird.”

It would be impossible to disagree. The difference may be strange and implacable, aside from the lack of personal, but it does.

“How'd you know?”

Aki tried to shrug. Tries not to look at the thing keeping pace besides him. It may look calm, but he knows that the truth is anything but. Fear is radiating off it in waves, fear and a cold, overpowering desire for liberation.

“Just did.”

The thing at his side offers updates, as they run.

“She knows you've left the room.”

“She follows, close behind.”

“It is likely she will catch you.”

They aren't particularly helpful.

Not until, the trio turn a corner, exit suddenly in sight, to hear a fourth tactile presence enter the hallway.

“She's here.”

And she is. The approaching clack of heeled footfalls confirms it. The sense of oppressive calm that washes over Aki, a blanket. The familiar voice that wraps around the walls to reach his ears.

“Stop running.”

And he does. How couldn't he? It's Makima.

Denji stops too, turning on his heel with a massive, world-spanning grin, but Power doesn't. She keeps running until she hits the doors, only turning to cast a terrified scowl over her shoulder.

“Not safe!” She growls, animalistic, “keep running! Keep running!”

“It's just Makima.” Denji sounds so sure of himself. And he should. All is right in the world. All is calm. Makima will fix things. She always does.

And then, she's in sight, cheerful and unblinking, and Aki can't help but grin in turn.

“Come here,” she orders him, arms outstretched. And the order is for him, he knows, he can feel it. “Not you,” she adds, likely to Denji, “just him, for now.”

So instead, Denji speaks. “Makima, something weird’s going on, the place is totally empty and–”

“Shhh.” Soft and gentle, that's how the sound escapes her lips. Like silk Like a sigh.

“You walk to your death.” The Gun Devil, again. Only this time, its words mean nothing. Absolutely nothing at all. “You readily embrace it. Do not be so foolish.”

As Aki draws near, her arms wrap around him like a cradle, head resting against her shoulder. The low, warning roar grinding through his mind fades to nonexistence. 

“It wasn't supposed to happen like this,” she breathes in the crux of his neck, “so suddenly. You were meant to die then, you know. Now, I don't think I'll let you die at all. That might be more effective, hm? At least as a failsafe.”

Aki nods. Of course Makima is right. She always is.

“Makima?” Denji doesn't sound scared. Not yet. Just confused. “What's going on? Is this–”

“Denji?”

“Y-yeah?”

“Shut up.”

They're odd words, coming from Makima’s lips. Odd, and callous, and just upsetting enough that the Gun Devil's words are able to find an opening, one last time.

“Run.”

Aki would like to say he tries. But he doesn't.

“Transform.”

And then, Aki's world goes black.

[poppitron360]

"Poison"- Hazbin Hotel: trochees, repetition, and genre.

I occasionally get the urge to write an in-depth analytical essay about whatever song or soundtrack I’m currently obsessed with. Y’know, for fun.

My BFF recently said that he thought “Poison” from Hazbin Hotel was overrated, so I am going to prove him wrong with science because that song goes so fucking hard.

The first thing I noticed was that the word “Poison” is a trochee (A word that has one stressed syllable followed by one unstressed syllable)- the opposite of an iamb. Because trochees end on a weak syllable, they often feel like they’re rolling, or more fittingly, falling into the next word or syllable. Because of this, they are often used to convey feelings of despair and death.

Interestingly, this is reflected in the melody. In the line “‘Cause I know you’re Poison, you’re feeding me Poison” the melody stays on the same note, C, except on the word “Poison”, which moves from an F# down to an E: the melody is falling down.

The word “Poison” is repeated over and over again, highlighted by the fact that it is the only word not on a C, creating a sense of constant, inescapable, repetition. There is no getting away from Valentino's "Poison".

The entirety of the song is comprised of only two chords, C minor, down to Ab major, (with the exception of the bridge, which is one singular F minor chord). This reflects the “falling” motif (although it varies on how you play it).

Also, the constant repetition of the same chords over and over and over and over reinforces that feeling that Angel is trapped in a cycle.

This all accumulates to reflect Angel Dust’s descent into utter desperation. It gives the impression that he’s constantly tripping and falling and repeating the cycle of addiction/abuse over and over again with no escape.

As the chorus repeats and repeats, the vocals get more and more desperate. He’s literally “trapped and it get’s worse with every hour”.

The repetitive melody and song structure is not the only reason why bubblegum pop works so well as a genre for this song.

Similar to “All You Wanna Do” from Six, this bright, flashy, upbeat style of music juxtaposes the unpleasant content of the lyrics, although it might not initially be obvious that the writers have made this stylistic choice, which is, in my opinion, why I think people are complaining that the song glorifies abuse (And those complaints are totally valid, I’m just sharing my interpretation of why I think the writers made these choices). I personally think that ubeat pop works best for this particular song, as the juxtaposition makes the audience feel uncomfortable and uneasy more than any haunting piano ballad would.

The genre also reflects how both Angel in Hazbin in and Kathrine in Six are in denial about their abusive relationships, until the very end of the song, when they both finally break.

The constant repetition of melodies, lyrics, and choruses reflecting the cycle of abuse is a technique also used in “All you wanna do”, and both songs can be compared musically, stylistically, structurally, lyrically, and in theme.

Anyway, I hath used my music theory brain to scientifically prove that this song slaps.

[burning-sol]

Ramping up your pleads to people's humanity by luring them in with polls and other means to draw a connection between their daily living and an obligation to help those in need is actually only going to cause a DECREASE in donations over time FYI.

Compassion fatigue is real, and if you think it isn't you aren't putting your two brain cells together. I don't know if the term itself is something that's verified, but all the symptoms people are describing are real and associated with trauma responses - which is why it's been linked to PTSD. Instigating feelings of helplessness? Irritability? Exhaustion? Numbness? Causing substance abuse? These are behaviours that develop when someone is being exposed to trauma, especially when it's a repeated exposure to trauma.

You may have heard of the freeze response, which is something that crops up when a person is unable to fight or run away the thing they're being threatened by. The way this can manifest is through dissociation, where the brain will disconnect feeling from the person's emotions, body and/or the world when overcome with complete helplessness in order to protect it. When someone is being exposed to constant stress that might otherwise kill them from the distress it inflicts, it's possible for the brain to cut off a sense of feeling entirely, which extends to feelings of empathy.

When you create a constant reminder of the horrifically distressing things happening, when you get into people's heads to where they can no longer physically escape the thing that's a stressor - because you are inviting them to link their day to day activities with reminders of that stressor - their brain is going to cut off their ability to empathise so it doesn't kill them. And kill them isn't an exaggeration because there are other ways people try to escape from an inescapable distress, whether that be substance abuse or offing themselves. So no, this isn't a fucking joke.

On a personal note, my headmate had been engaging in self-punitive behaviour again because he thinks if it can't do anything (because he isn't looking after itself and is unable to recover its emotional fortitude) then it doesn't deserve anything. Not everyone responds to shit this way, but more people do than you think. And just because YOU don't break under the stress doesn't mean there aren't people out there who DO, and those people don't want to speak up when they're hurting because you've convinced them their entirely normal psychological responses are indicative of a moral failing.

So fuck you, actually. Don't go harassing people for making those kinds of posts, but FUCK THIS because none of this is working and it's making shit worse! It's a disorganised mess!! So here's what *I* would recommend:

Decide on an allowance you can afford to give up on a monthly basis. This might be $20, it could be less, it could be more.

Decide how frequently you can handle being exposed to news of conflict. This may be weekly, bi-weekly, daily, whatever.

Divide that money up and every chosen day get your clicks in, and donate whether it be to Gaza Gunds or MSF or to whoever/whatever else is relevant.

STOP reblogging posts designed to draw out feelings of guilt. Create your own post that includes: a the link to the fundraiser, verification of the fundraiser's legitimacy, the current amount of money raised, the goal of the fundraiser. You do NOT have to include more information that this, don't let yourself get lost in more details than you can handle.

Do not hesitate to block out content if you are overwhelmed. You do not have look at anything more than the days you assigned yourself.

This might feel like you're "not doing enough" but consistency is better than burnout. This isn't a rule but generally people do better with a consistent source of income than they would with one that's sporadic and unpredictable. If you're overwhelmed by choice, you can pick out a single fundraiser and donate to it reliably and it WILL make a big difference.

If you take issue with this post you can direct complaints to @exandr0th-0f-viscera since *I* penned this post, I'm just borrowing Sol's blog for more reach. Thanks.

[viennasbigsausage]

recent

The prettiest things have baggage. But the ugliest things have the most. We carry everything on our slouched bags everyday that we show up school. All of my conversations are miserable attempts to steal attention from anyone in the vicinity, while trying to remain invisible. What I end up with is going home and regretting saying anything at all.

I used to practice biting my tongue all day, and it left grooves. But it was worth it. Because for once I didn't feel like I was annoying everyone. I've deemed myself as completely and utterly useless and annoying, so I assume everyone perceives me that way. No amount of reassurance can convinced me otherwise. You can tell me a million times to my face that you love me but I won't let myself believe you. I've fallen out of love with a lot of partners because of this. I feel like 'I love you' is some sick prank. 

So what can I do instead of claw at my own skin, desperate to poetically escape a hollow life? That's the problem with hating yourself. You hate your family, you move. You hate your friends, you meet new people. But being disgusted by your own brain and body is inescapable because they make you you. And you can only be you. 

The only way I've ever gotten around it is distractions. I'm working, then I'm watching YouTube, then I'm asleep, then I'm playing games, then I'm talking, then I'm listening to music. Using anything as a crutch to avoid silence and abuse my brain into submission for a little while. But only a little while. Short moments, like class time, using the restroom, and waiting at the doctors remind me just how self-destructive my thoughts are.

And there are so. many. rules. If someone is passing by you, you need to be considerate and move, or you're a horrible person. You can't eat food with skin on it or you'll choke and die instantly. If you pass the kitchen window while the blinds are open at night, you will be shot by a sniper who scopes your house daily, so you need to fill up your water quickly and run back downstairs.

The way my mind works in complicated and frustrating. There aren't any positives to what I describe as anxiety, although it is technically in a mix with depression. And I can have good days, weeks, months. But it's hard to enjoy the high when you know there will be a low.

Being in a constant state of panic, disarray, and self loathing is a painful and depressing experience. Finding no joy and no value in my own life makes me unmotivated. But despite this, I try my best to have fun where I can.

There isn't a miracle to fix my problems. I struggle, then improve, then go back to struggling. I'll go back down eventually, that's just a fact that I have to learn to live with. 

[whumpitisthen]

If you ever feel so fancy as to do a part 2 or similar drabble to instincts i will be available to tattoo it on the entire landscape of my back and/or worship it throughly 👀🙏🙏

i dont usually write second parts, but i do also like that one a lot, and you asked very politely......

first part

Lonely...

"Wh-Why do you do this?"

He's been sitting there for a solid ten minutes in complete silence, enduring the maddening, constant scrutiny glaring from his left side. The tea he has prepared is swiftly growing lukewarm, no longer steaming languidly on the coffee table. He hadn't dared to move an inch once it perched next to him, weighing heavily on his mind and on the sofa cushions as its presence grew and materialised so close, so dangerous.

He hoped it would leave him alone today. It hadn't visited for a few days, — not in a physical way, only as an ever unnerving pressure on his body that wouldn't go away. Yet, that hadn't stopped the nightmares worming their way into his brain each time he tried resting while it was around. He is tired, and weary, and weak. That is why he planned on a serene little movie night spent in front of the mind numbing screen, on his own; to hopefully distract him, or even put him in a mercifully dreamless sleep. He desperately wished it would leave him just a little longer.

However, it seems it knew just the worst time to 'come see him' — as it so likes to put it. More like break into his home, harass him, question him and then torture him, only to leave him in a state barely sufficient to let him patch himself up for next time. Or stay and do it itself, making the healing stage into another opportunity to learn about humans as it messily fixes him up like one would a machine.

'Why? Why do you feel the need to do these things to me?'

He can feel it blink at him, can see its head tilt to the side, and can almost hear the phrase come before it murmurs, — "I do not understand."

Of course it doesn’t, this is perfectly normal for it. Nothing out of the ordinary.

“Nevermind,” — he tries, already knowing that it’s too late.

As expected, it growls impatiently, yet somehow, he can’t find it in himself to do more than squeeze his eyes shut and sigh, instead of flinching and curling into himself.

“I do not like when you don’t answer me. What do I do that awakens your curiosity?”

That’s one way to put it. Curiosity.

“You just, just stare at me all the time. I know you do, eve-, even when you’re not, when I can’t see you.”

“I am here to learn from you. That’s all I ever want,” — it replies matter-of-factly.

“Don’t you have anything better to do?” — he murmurs, voice full of a hopelessness that only a severe lack of sleep and a terrifyingly inescapable situation can bring.

“I do not. There is nothing better for me to do. I enjoy this the most,” — it exclaims happily, unaware of the offending tone he used. Sometimes, it’s fortunate that it doesn’t get how parts of the human speech works, such as sarcasm, or expressions.

He doesn’t say anything, and that confuses it. He simply stares at the moving pictures on the television blankly. It feels his nerves lit on fire, yet it's a much fainter feeling, and his reactions are wholly uninteresting. In turn, that almost makes them more interesting to the creature. It wants to know what’s wrong with the human today.

“You are boring. Why are you boring,” — it asks, though the sentence ends in more of a period than a question mark. It’s quite funny, the way it asks things sometimes. He smiles to himself, knowing full well delirium must be hitting him hard for him to find the courage to smile in the presence of this monstrosity, fully capable of tearing him in half in a split second if he doesn’t supply it with entertainment and learning opportunities. It would find joy in it as well.

“Why am I boring?” — he asks, holding back a giggle. He still doesn’t look at it. He would quickly lose his humour if he did.

“Yes.”

“What do you mean? Why am I boring?”

It falls quiet for a moment, glancing at the TV again.

“You do not care that I am here.”

He knows he should not, but his mind only finds the situation more hilarious with every word.

“What, are you, y-you getting lonely now? Should I grab a blanket and cuddle close, so you feel loved?” — he chortles.

It finds his tone unnatural. It doesn’t understand it, but it makes it feel wrong. Small. It feels small.

“Am I lonely? Explain, please.”

He only taught it pleasantries like please and thank you some number of weeks ago — it still feels entirely unnatural to hear it say the word he has said to it so many times before, to no avail. It says it like it couldn’t just pull an answer out of him with no issue. It has learned to be more patient, at least.

“Do you not know what loneliness is?”

“I asked you so. Why do you sound like that? You sound wrong,” — it remarks, certainly perplexed by his relatively calm demeanour. It is so used to watching him panicking and stuttering up a storm, flinching at every little movement, that hearing any amount of confidence or joy, and feeling any amount of serenity emanating off of him is throwing it off. It must feel very wrong to be looked at with anything more than wild fear to it.

“Don’t worry about it. Anyway, loneliness is like… It has to do with being alone, obviously.”

“It’s not very obvious to me,” — it grumbles.

“Yeah, I know, I know. I-It’s… kind of hard to explain, honestly. Um… It’s when you feel sad, when you are alone. Like when you’re on your own and there’s no-one to talk to. It’s depressing. So most people find someone else to, to help with that feeling, so they are no longer alone. That’s loneliness.”

“Hm…” — It thinks for a while. He can see it struggling with the concept, already trying to think of another way to explain before it asks. What it says next surprises him however, — “being alone doesn’t feel bad. I am always alone. You said when something feels bad it is because whatever is happening should not be happening. It’s not unnatural, therefore it isn’t bad.”

His smile disappears. Of course. Humans are social creatures, surviving by building relationships and helping each other out. It isn’t a human. He doesn’t know how it feels about being around another one of its kind. Is there another one of it? He doesn’t dare think about that.

“W-Well… It’s a human thing, I guess. We survived so long, and got to um, where we are by being there for each other, but I g-guess you don’t need that, do you?”

“I have noticed there are many humans near each other. It is rare to find one all alone. I assumed it was like how it is with ants or bees. Is that not right?” — it wonders.

“Not really. It’s more, um… familial? Like a pack of wolves or something. I don’t think bees take care of each other, only their queen and larvae.”

“I see. So what does it feel like? Being lonely?”

He bites back a yawn, swallowing it down. He reaches for the popcorn on the coffee table, deciding he might as well snack before it ultimately decides to hurt him at some point tonight. He hasn’t found the motivation to eat much all day.

What does loneliness feel like? How is he supposed to explain that to a thing that might not even have another one of its kind?

“Uhm… It’s a bad feeling. For us, at least. You feel like… You need to be around someone. Depending on how bad it is, you, uh, might even feel the need to be around strangers. It feels like you are going mad. Like, uhm… I don’t know, like crushing? Hopeless? This one’s… hard to explain,” — he finished, throwing some more popcorn into his mouth. He is watching the movie on the screen, but his brain is not picking up on anything that’s going on around him besides the creature next to him.

“Hm…”

It doesn’t say anything for a long time. So long, in fact, that he would almost forget about it entirely if it didn't shuffle closer to him, watching him intently for a reaction. Even through the thick haze of fog engulfing his brain, he tenses and shuffles away on instinct.

"You are not lonely," — it decides. It doesn't understand still what loneliness is; otherwise it would know that he is lonely enough to crave human interaction of absolutely any kind, enough that he sometimes dreams that the creature that follows him around wherever he goes isn't such a horrid being, that he managed to teach it how to be human and no longer hurt him and to care for him like another person would. He hallucinates, sometimes, because he's just that lonely. Or maybe it's just the sleep deprivation. Both.

"Why do you think that?" — he inquires, half-caring about the answer.

"Because I accompany you. You are never truly alone. You do not crave my touch. You are not lonely."

"And you are not a person. Why would I care about any of that?" — he snaps suddenly.

It goes silent again, and his very soul is trembling. He knows he messed up, he shouldn't have said that, even it isn't dense enough to miss a direct insult. The glare coming from the side is burning him, and he subconsciously apologises in his mind, almost certain it can hear it. He's so tired, he just wants to pass out already.

When it finally chirps up again, he fully expects a claw to tear at his face, — "I am not a human. But I am a person still." — He only now realises that it isn't looking at him anymore. It's an awfully unusual feeling, to feel its presence but not its gaze, — "is that not right? Can I not be a person if I am not a human?"

Now it's his turn to think. He never thought about it like that. When he says person, he immediately thinks of a human, but if that's how it is — does that mean that another intelligent alien race, for example, would not be considered people? A member of them wouldn't be a person? That doesn't sound right.

Why is he thinking about this like he's afraid to hurt this monster? Why did it sound like it was hurt by his words? It didn't, he just has empathy and assumed he had hurt it. Like a person. Or a human would, at least. Then again, there are shitty humans out there too.

"I'm… sorry," — he says, unsure how to answer in a way as to not dig himself into a deeper hole, — "I just never thought of anyone to be a person if they aren't, um, human. But you're not like, an a-animal or something, are you? So you are still a person. I think."

"What does being a person mean to humans? I thought being a person meant having higher intelligence than animals, but that doesn't seem to be true. You are not answering me straight," — it accuses him curiously. Its gaze is back on him, watching him again. Its voice is a little deeper, and he assumes it's because he has angered him. He wishes it would just get it over with and attack already.

"I-It-, I'm n-not sure! I'm sorry, I didn't mean to offend you, i-it was an honest mistake — I just never really thought about you that way…"

"If you do not see me as a person, then what do you see me as? Am I really an animal to you?" — it questions relentlessly, leering down at him with an intensity that feels like a physical weight is crushing his body into the sofa, curling into itself, — "you see me as a critter."

"No, no, no I don't! I-I just don't know what you are! You're not a human, nor an animal, but I have no idea what to f-, call you! Pl-ease, I swear I d-didn't mean it!" — he clambers to apologise, already gathering tears behind eyes squeezed shut, lifting his arms to shield his head from claws flying through the air. To his surprise — and relief — none comes.

“...Am I lonely?” — it asks itself, all animosity gone from its voice, — “I do not know. I have always been alone.”

When nothing else is said for long enough, he uncurls his arms from over him and finally summons the courage to look at the creature next to him. It is once again deep in thought, trying to figure out if it feels lonely or not. No matter how many times he is forced to gaze upon it, his skin crawls all the same. An inky blackness of eyes and claws, long thin limbs appearing and disappearing at its will. Sometimes it has long, dripping hair, other times horns or antlers. He can only guess it changes its form depending on its mood that day. It barely looks humanoid, some demon of hell — he had to learn how to sense its emotions through its rough cover of shadows himself through trial and error, and still he has trouble understanding it fully. He doesn’t get a chance, most times, as he is the one being questioned, or tormented. This time is different. Unusual.

He releases a shaky exhale and swallows, feeling his tired heart beat an almost painful rhythm against his chest. It’s dizzying, to be so stressed when his brain is barely functioning from lack of sleep. He finds it hard to sit, and leans to the side instead, catching himself on the arm of the couch. Though curious, even if he dared to say anything more to it, he is having trouble getting his thoughts in order long enough for his brain to sew together a sentence.

“If I was lonely, that would mean I would want to be around other people. Interact with them. I interact with you a lot. Maybe I am lonely.” — It goes quiet periodically, trying to decide for itself, but it doesn’t seem very successful at doing so. — “I don’t understand,” — it comes to say finally, turning to him again for more answers. It seems unbothered by his state.

“Uh-uhm… Mm… Maybe I said it wrong. I don’t think it’s um, only your own kind you want to be around. Wh-When you’re lonely, I mean. Sometimes, when I’m lonely, it helps to just hang out with some of the, uh, stray cats that w-wander up to my windows, sometimes. I, I um, like petting them. And their purring. They’re very nice to, to me…” — he mumbles, hoping that no more questions come, as he is having more and more trouble resisting the ever gentler pull of unconsciousness.

"You crave affection from animals?" — it coos at him, almost mocking, but not for long, suddenly growing silent again. It makes a groan, a sound akin to some kind of wild raccoon, and he has no idea what it means — yet, upon looking at it, it's clear it is growing restless. — "...Affection from less intelligent beings. Helps with loneliness. Am I lonely? Am I lonely?" — It repeats the question for the hundredth time, asking itself more so than him by now. It seems frustrated. The clawed ends of its slender fingers flex around a pillow. On one hand, he finds it humorous, the act reminding him of kitties making biscuits — on the other, he is so relieved those sharp things aren't digging into his abdomen yet.

"If you have to, t-to think about it this long, you probably are. You just, d-don't wanna ad-admit to it," — comes his wavering voice, supplying it with more confusion. It retaliates by placing one of its hands around his closest ankle, sending a harsh shiver all the way up to the nape of his neck. The way it closes those frigid digits around his leg wakes him right back up — a familiar feeling, to be woken up so ruthlessly by it. It tilts its head at him again, clearly bothered by his accusations.

"How could I admit to something I don't understand? That sounds moronic. You are stupid," — it growls triumphantly, reminding him of his sister. So quick to anger, and just as stubborn. Except he isn't quite as afraid of his little baby sister as he is of this cosmic horror gripping at him with its ice cold sharpened appendages. The horror that is probably trying to grin, and instead only succeeds at showing off all of its terrifying sets of teeth in a horrid snarl. He had not realised until this moment that it has a mouth on its torso, cleaving it in half as it opens. He has acquired a new fear.

His mind is overrun with images of the thing pulling him towards its horrifying torso-mouth by the ankle in its grasp, chewing him up bit by bit as it keeps pulling him deeper and deeper into its disgusting, black, tar body, mauling him completely. If he managed to survive the mutilation, the rest of him would be tossed into a vat of acid that is its stomach, digested agonisingly slowly. His wide, purple-black, terrified eyes are stuck on it, and it notices his staring, unfortunately, before he could.

"Wh-, y… yes, y-y-you're right. Maybe I am. Please stop touching me now."

He can't help noticing its eyes crinkle in amusement, thoroughly enjoying bullying him into submission as it always does, — "You were being very brave today, all the way up until now. What's wrong?" — Its grip tightens, those blades it has the gall to call 'nails' already making paper cuts all along his exposed skin. One finger — a thumb, if it has any — is caressing the length of flesh slowly, back and forth, distressing him greatly. Its eyes glow unnaturally, glinting in the dark, and it hurts, it physically hurts his body to be so scared right now. His heart beats much too fast all too sudden, his breaths come quicker than he feels capable of, his skin crawls with the cold sweat covering the entirety of his back pressed against the armrest of the sofa. It watches him tense in its clutches with utmost glee, considering pulling him a little closer by the little red lines it already caused, just to hear him whimper at the burning pain. — "Don't tell me you've lost all conviction already?"

He barely remembers to reply, utterly lost in those intense eyes and rows upon rows of teeth grinning at him, — "Ih-, it was just, a joke! I wasn't being serious — p-please let go of me, I can't — "

"I am only joking too. Why are you so upset?" — It's laughing at him, it's mocking him, but he doesn't have the brainpower to even try pulling away, too wound up in his fear.

"I get it, I get it, just please, please just let go, I don't want to, I c-can't, I can't…"

It is so proud of itself, but he can't even be mad at it. All he notices is a glint in its eyes, a horrible sign he has learned to fear as much as the arrival of the abomination itself — it has got an idea.

It giggles to itself, and that sound feels like a promise of pain, — "I would let go, but, you see…" — It is leaning down over him once more, but it doesn't stop there. It comes closer and closer, grabbing hold of the back of the couch and another leg for balance, climbing on top of him, and his brain finally activates, much too late, to force him to struggle away. He can't anymore, not that it would have helped. — "I am just so lonely. So very lonely I am. I need interaction with other beings! I need to be very, very close to another person so I can feel their warmth. I need to touch them and keep them close. I need it, you see. I am very lonely."

"Ah-, wait n-, no, stop!"

Something is dripping onto him. Saliva, blood, who knows what it is.

"I'm so lonely…" — it muses, forcing his head back so it can bury its head under his chin.

It is breathing on him. He can feel its ice cold exhales right on his neck.

"Get off of me!" — he yells out in desperation, no longer caring to please it — he is positive he will scream if it starts nibbling on him.

"Huuu-mannn..." — it drawls lazily, draping itself over him. He can feel at least three pairs of limbs enveloping him and it's suffocating.

"God, just, just stop it already, please! I-I said I'm sorry," — his own voice quivers, suspiciously close to crying. He's certain it can feel him shivering.

"Mmm… No." — Its voice is reverberating through his entire chest. He gasps when a finger slides over a fresh enough bruise from their last meeting, the expulsion of air forming into a rather pathetic sound as he tries to choke it down.

He squirms under it, gasping for air, until he finally stops, grasping how truly futile it is to fight it. He lets out a defeated keen of misery, and sobs. He cries under it, no longer having the energy to care about what it thinks of him. Whether it finds him pathetic or amusing, whether it mocks him or hurts him. He wants to be anywhere but here.

It says nothing, for a while. It doesn't move, however. It must just be listening to him weeping, enjoying it as much as it was enjoying mocking him, just like it was enjoying going through with its devilish plan to get him to this point. That's all it ever wants; to watch him upset and hurt.

When it talks, it is so sudden he jumps in surprise, — "You are the lonely one here, truly. Unable to handle even this much affection."

He doesn't find it in himself to answer. He wishes it wasn't so good at hitting where it hurts. It snorts out something of a chuckle.

"If you ask me sweetly enough, I will consider purring for you. Like your stray cats."

No answer, not even a small sound of disdain aimed at it. It tries again.

"Would you like that?"

Nothing. Only calm breaths, long and peaceful.

It lifts its head to look at him, confused by the sudden change, and finds him passed out like a light. It hadn't known he was so tired. Maybe another effect of loneliness? It is unsure.

It hums in thought, watching him sleep like it always does. It's interesting to it; the concept of sleep. It loves the way its human looks while he is unconscious — it rarely sees him so content. It tried to sleep a couple times, but it doesn't think it succeeded.

"Lonely little human…. My lonely little human…" — it hums.

A haunting melody. Its voice sounds so unnatural and guttural, like a broken radio playing a broken record. It doesn't fully understand music yet either, so all it does is repeat the same tune and the same words. To it, it's comforting, while the human described it as a horror movie soundtrack. It doesn't matter to it; it likes humming.

"I like your company," — it murmurs, — "perhaps I am lonely too…"

It isn't sure, but what it is sure about, is that it likes comforting its human an awful lot. It doesn't think it comforted anyone before. It isn't even sure it's doing it right.

It feels right, at least, it thinks before clicking off the TV with a rush of static, and the darkness.

< Masterlist

[ibrithir-was-here]

I'm kinda feeling like crap lately too so might not be the best person to give advice but here goes:

Our modern western life is really not conducive to mental or emotional health (or really any kind of health for that matter) so the unfortunate effect is that what should be a 'normal' state really takes so much work to achieve.

Social media, news, click baits - we are constantly under attack by things that harm us mentally, whether it's chasing that dopamine or overwhelmed by what is going on in the world or just the constant negativity we're surrounded by.

And then there's just the inescapable realities - a loved one is sick or our relationships are going through a rough patch... and sometimes we just don't have the support around us to weather even the minor things.

So here is my (sus) advice on how to cope:

However hard it is, however vulnerable it makes you feel, find someone you can open up to. I know that feeling of "I have nobody" but sometimes it's because we're too afraid of being annoying or driving someone away to be willing to truly open up, but I think most people *are* willing to listen to their friends and we're just too worried to give them that benefit.

Get off the internet. I know this is *hard* because so often we're turning to the internet to cope or find connections or talk with friends, but time away *is* so so so important. Even going into autumn (in the north anyway) it's good to just go outside, breathe in fresh air, listen to birds, just do something that gives our emotions a chance to settle down again.

If outside is truly not an option, then a quiet place - maybe beside a window, maybe put on 'nature sounds' in the background - and try your hand at meditation. I hate how much this actually can help because it feels like it should be a scam but it really can help the brain recover from some of the barrage we're getting.

Walking or any kind of mild exercise, the body and brain are inexorably linked, and doing good things for the body can truly help. One trick I've employed with myself is "If I were my own pet how would I treat me?" and then do your absolute best to be the best "you" owner ever. That means going for walkies, drinking water, eating well, getting plenty of sleep and affection.

Journaling can help get the thoughts and feelings out of your head.

But I think the best thing I can offer is no matter what it is, no matter how much it hurts, no matter how bad you feel... it *does* get better. The pain will ease in time, the brain can be taught that it's not always red alert time, for all the horror in the world the march of time is still moving toward better.

I just want you to know that you are seen and you are worth the effort it takes. Your life and happiness are worth the effort and I know there are people out there who would love to put forth that effort if they are given the chance.

I hope good things for you

(you don't have to publish this if you don't want, it's alright.)

Thank you 🥲💛💛💛 I'm actually tearing up at work here. These are all really good points, and a lot of what others have said to, and I really should be better at remembering them 😅

I'm gonna read over this again once I'm off work tonight and yeah, start trying to be more intentional with my self care. Thank you again 💛

[leomonae]

Right, so, since this ship is apparently just going to be a permanent, inescapable symbiote settling itself down inside my brain regardless of my feelings on the matter, I am just surrendering to inevitability and writing some of the post-game adventures and relationship negotiations of Astarion and my...

... illithid Tav.

It's fascinating, really, to contemplate how the ceremorphosis would affect Tav's personality and behaviour (not to mention their relationship with their god, as one who was/is a cleric, and what said god might think of all this and decide to do about their divine magic he grants), particularly when your Tav is someone whose base personality is very much at odds with a lot of what are widely considered to be racial traits, or at least predispositions, for illithid. And I get that a big part of what Larian was going for in the game was a critique of the idea that invariably evil races would exist at all, rather than people with choices and varying levels of temptation to do evil, who are shaped and influenced by their surrounding societies; a fair bit of BG3 was iterations upon the nature vs nurture debate, typically coming down fairly firmly on the side of nurture, really.

(There's also the explanation I 100% made up and am now going with, that Orpheus's extended protection allowed Tav's brain the time and the opportunity to form new connections and pathways, grow around and slowly influence the parasite right back, acting to sort of imprint a measure of their personality onto it so that by the time it finally took over and changed them, the change was rather less extreme than it otherwise might have been.)

But at the same time, this can't just be a choice without any teeth behind it; if Tav doesn't lose anything, their sacrifice becomes meaningless and the story itself... well, boring, really. Lose anything besides their soul, that is, which is now floating aimlessly around the Astral Sea or whatever (just waiting to be stuffed back into a recreated human Tav body by a Wish spell, thus leading to an incredibly confusing and angst-filled two Tavs situation down the line, but I digress).

Which means that I am now getting to have so much fun coming up with various ways a goody-two-shoes Tav who just lost a bunch of empathy and picked up a helping of sadism would express these traits, bearing in mind the fact that their vampire maybe-boyfriend is already rather freaked out and skittish regarding the entire situation, has a rather unpleasant history of controlling people in his life hurting him for fun, and is going to be having to deal with the constant looming background wariness of Tav someday deciding to turn him into their literal thrall, which he also gets to frequently be reminded of thanks to all the people on the outskirts of their lives who assume he most likely already is. All things of which Tav is fully aware, and carefully balancing because at core they really do want him to not just stick around, but to be doing so entirely willingly. And for him to be happy, more generally. They just also want to... play with him a little, too.

(As a sidenote, some of the D&D lore regarding how illithid relate to and view their thralls is quite interesting!)

I haven't gotten to explore a scenario this promising and constantly on the verge of total disaster (but with so so much capacity for trust and caring to win out over everything stacked against them, which of course it will because I'm a sucker for a good happy ending the characters had to work their asses off for) in years, it's beautiful. Tav just got an entire royal court full of githyanki going around referring to Astarion as their heart by answering with that when Orpheus asked what he was to them for title/identification purposes (i.e., Tav's companion, consort, etc etc), and the sheer embarrassment of being called that fifty times a day by glaring, disgruntled gith is absolutely killing him.

[drawlypsy]

Taking a second to breathe...

Do you ever just have that moment where you feel the gnawing, inescapable weight of your existence rising up in you like sour bile? This feeling of being so utterly overwhelmed with the time in front of you - a futile sense of frustration that has no outlet and no set cause. I sit here at work and contemplate why the fuck am I here. To what end do I keep going through this endless grind. Money, yes. Livelihood, yes. But is there anything outside of that? I feel the overwhelming weight of my own creativity - a stone on my chest, ever tightening and burdening my consciousness. But time, the constant march forward into nothingness, seems to keep me from the grasp of it. When I'm doing art, I'm in a trance. I'm immobile. I am the body giving life to the things in my brain, which are innumerable and vast and never quite attainable as I see them. Frustration mounts and I continue trying, chasing a hit.

This is exhausting to have so much in me and so little time to create it. That is the pressure, the hold, the gravity of my moment as I sit here pushing buttons like a monkey with a heroine feeding tube. I am breathing just to be able to clock out and do what I really want to do, but those precious minutes seem stolen even when they are mine.

Why am I doing this? Who do I serve?

TLDR: Fuck Capitalism.

[agentravensong]

omg just read the time loop thing you posted and wanna share my thoughts… i LOVE the take on the orpheus and eurydice myth, questioning it and saying it’s not always right!!! i’ve barely ever heard anything like that, so it’s so interesting to see, and the allusion is rlly well interweaved!!

i also love slowly discovering their dynamic as the scene progresses especially with the r&gad references :00 to be honest i read the cast descriptions but forgot who was who immediately, so it was like a mini plot twist to realize who was the one who got out later

another thing i was thinking about is that plays are usually well suited for time loop stories because of their nature, the actors have to experience the same thing over and over knowing the ending is constant. it’s an interesting shift to tell a time loop story but one once the loop has already ended, knowing that this part Won’t be repeated!! do you have any thoughts on how that’d interact with the medium of the play if this were to hypothetically be performed??

!!! thank you so much for the ask! it's great to hear that you enjoyed it!

funny thing about your ending question: it was performed! tonight, in fact!

i wrote this for the five minute play festival my college does every semester. they send out the prompt on monday; we have to submit a finished piece by end of wednesday; we pair up with our directors and cast actors on thursday; and between then and sunday evening you schedule a single hour-long rehearsal (at minimum). the show happens, all the plays performed back-to-back over the course of an hour, and that's it! it's meant to be an exercise in how little it takes to get something you write performed when you come together with your community of creatives.

all that to say: i wrote this knowing that it was only going to be performed (in this iteration at least) once, and the audience comes in knowing that too. so i got to kind of sidestep the issue of theater's inherent time-loop-y-ness.

if i were to expand this story to include scenes from within the loop, i don't know if theater would still be the best medium for it. because there'd be an inescapable awareness that the mid-loop and post-loop stuff is happening in the same space that would undermine the power of the latter, especially if it were to be more than a one-night thing... there would be ways to make it work – after all, part of the point is that if you escaped a loop like that it'd take a while for your brain to catch up and readjust, so you could play with that – but it'd take a lot of tinkering. it's def an interesting thought experiment!

[gothmogzilla]

TL;dr Toxic Positivity is NOT Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.

YESSSS actually! So Ima TED Talk this.

Firstly: no therapy works for everyone! (This is common sense, I fear.)

Secondly: with this in mind, I'm absolutely NOT saying that @chronicallyuniconic was doing CBT wrong--obviously no therapy works for everyone, disbelieving instead of acceptance is actually doing CBT right! Because it's about incremental improvement of those repetitive mental words.

Marisa Peers (famous psychologist) talks about this in one of her books that I read a thousand years ago. Basically, CBT does NOT WORK if you try to use what your brain considers a lie to overwrite the negative stuff.

The trick is to change your internal narrative to something that's just better-than-the-other-thing, NOT the opposite of the other thing.

I was coming out of a depressive episode and really hating my body; I would wake up, look in The Inescapable Mirror and think: "Damn, I look like shit."

(The Mirror is Inescapable bc I have an old house with a huge mirror in my bedroom, because that was popular in the 80s and renovating that particular wall is really really low priority.)

I used to be able to look in the mirror with just a neutral attitude--but then I got depression and anxiety as medication side-effects. During this time when my brain was weak, I was living with someone who criticized his own body all the time, and my body probably once a month.

When I realized that 1) these were not my own thoughts and attitudes, 2) the repetition of his hyper-critical attitude toward bodies had reprogrammed my brain, 3) the mental health issues probably made me more susceptible to the reprogramming, but my mental health had been steadily improving so all I had left was this false programming--I realized that I HAD to change these thought processes.

So I tried to say to myself: "I look great." instead of "I look like shit." and it didn't fucking work. No surprises. It was obviously a lie.

But the narrative must change regardless--if only to spite that asshole--I had to do it. I also knew that thoughts like that stole MY precious minutes of life, with unnecessary suffering.

Marisa Peer eventually crossed my path, and I tried again with "I'm gonna look good today." instead of "I look like shit." because 1) it wasn't a lie if it was about the future, 2) looking good was achievable 3) it was still better than "I look like shit."

To recap: I'm not saying that this will work for everyone, but I hope it helps someone out there.

Especially those of us who have shitty families/coworkers, or have to be online all the the time. We hear so much negativity that we start to think it's normal. It's NOT normal to have constant negative thoughts, try to identify the source of those words and attitudes in your life.

Those of us who have to spend a lot of time online, it's especially important to acknowledge that so much information becomes misinformation when data is partial. Toxic Positivity (which I feel like is a natural part of social media/rosy-gramming) is what most people think CBT is supposed to be. It's not. CBT is just correcting detrimental thoughts over and over again over a long period of time to something less bad and more neutral--Body Neutrality is a much better example.

Thanks for listening to my TED Talk.

[cugzarui]

immortality

you are alone in the dark, not really remembering how you got there. its hard to remember anything through the pain. gas bubbles form under your skin and in the hard vacuum. the dry frost nipping at your eyes and tongue and nostrils. the sensory deprivation of a true void rings in your ears and flashes before your eyes. in time you adjust.

you get used to it. you dont know how long it takes; but as painful as it is it is also a constant, unchanging pain. a fixed stimulus. and after a while your brain determines it must not be worth paying attention to. you reflect on how lucky you are that "getting used to it" is not considered an ailment, or your supernatural healing wouldve kept you in eternal torment. you reflect again on how lucky you are, that excessive hallucinations do count as ailments, and so you are able to retain awareness of your circumstances rather than falling to inescapable madness. you do still indulge in delusions quite often - what else is there to do out here? - but it is not a compulsion.

one day while floating listlessly through the void, you are struck with a bit of fancy, and maim yourself. you pour out your blood and pull out your hair and tie them together into a ball - a planet. your planet. your new home. it will take forever to build, so it is quite fortunate that forever is exactly what you have.

you still cant tell how much time passes; but you can do the math. after a few months your planet weighs about as much as you do. after a decade or two it stands as tall as you do. a bit of a surprise comes in after what must have been only a few centuries at most. you feel the slightest brush of wind. your world doesnt have its own gravitational pull yet, but you reason that the molecules evaporating from it ever so slowly, will escape with too low of a velocity to travel far. they accumulate in the "vicinity" (by some loose definition of vicinity) of your world and create a barrier that slows down faster moving molecules as well. even the fast molecules coming off of your own body hit the planets surface and slow down. gradually, this all turns into a noticeable cloud of gas. one which even acts as an insulator (it does consist heavily of CO2), warming your world a little and speeding up the evaporation of more gas.

you build a house out of hair and blood-ice

after some millennia your world finally has a noticeable gravitational pull. it is just barely there. you have to set sensitive experiments to detect it (take a chunk of ice. place it above the ground. check back after a while and find that its on the ground), but a gravitational field is definitely present.

it takes about a million years before that gravitational field goes from "technically there" to "i need to actively consider this on a regular basis". it is still quite weak, but it fills you with confidence. truth be told you lost your first few attempts at making a world. that rope trick only works so well...you really need to stay vigilant or you'll drift away. but not anymore. well you still be vigilant, but now you only need to worry about accidentally jumping at escape velocity. you wont just casually drift away out of the blue. not with gravity. not anymore.

you notice various oddities about your world as well. its been getting warmer, and youve made various environments out of boredom, and now they seem to begin evolving without you. slow chemical reactions that are only appreciable on such large timescales. strange gasses and oils begin forming on your world. rocks as well. actual rocks. actual. rocks. not ice. not hair. not rock-hard viscera. rocks.

your world is a work of art. simply adding material is boring, so you shape it into beautiful things. stories written in weaves of hair and carving of solid blood. fountains and springs and pools and rivers of mysterious oil. and in special thermally insulative containers of your own making - bacteria. your microbiome is considered a part of you, and is maintained indefinitely while inside your body. once outside, the bacteria die to the cold and vacuum; but you can now breed them. selecting for those of lower maintenance that can survive in this harsh environment. then breeding those to have desirable traits. you were so delighted when you first developed a strain that could make light. you vaguely recall that oxygen is necessary for that kind of reaction and wonder where oxygen is coming from in this empty place. then you realize that you must have oxygen dissolved in your blood and some of it must be escaping without being used. whatever. whats important is that you can see. finally you can see. it may be faint - fainter than a candle or LED - but by god for the first time in a million years you can see. you want to turn your whole world into light, but you mustnt. every light uses energy, and you can only replenish that energy so fast. youll just be left with an empty world. be patient.

you waited a million years. you can wait more.

you slowly develop methods and technologies that wouldve been wholly impractical to anyone else. processes that take thousands of years to complete. but you develop industry and tech. gradually you become more advanced. you never crack the secret to your own immortality. you believe it is some inherent property of physics; like mass or electric charge.

you make a friend.

you somehow do it. after who knows how long, youve built a machine of such efficiency, a world of such efficiency, that you can continuously support another being; a being with a design so advanced it rivals that of a human. your world is a far cry from the mat of hair and blood it started as. you have streets paved in stone. a ground of something resembling earth. water. clean water. street lights. air (still not breathable). gravity. warmth. you have a bed and it is comfortable.

and now you have a friend.

your resources are still limited, so twice the manpower doesnt double your productivity, but perhaps because your friend is new and mortal they are able to see things that you cant. make advancements you never thought possible. in another million years, who knows what this world would look like...

[letscrywolff]

"He’s got his hands around your neck and all you’re thinking is that you loved the wrong boy again. The boy you ran away from finds you here. And you open your mouth to say you were afraid and then you still were and then you chose wrong and swallowed burning lips instead of drowning ones– it always goes like this. The older man wants to teach you something dirty, show you how to knock scotch down your throat and look for him and not the chaser, what to do with your hunger. You’re too good at this. Leaving is easy until he comes back for you. Then it’s all choking on dry air and believing in god again." Confession

You were right. You did love the wrong boy. You did choose the wrong boy.

The choice was so obvious too.

I remember you calling me one time way back when. You sounded distraught. I just wanted to know you were safe. I just wanted to make you feel safe. Do you remember that call?

Did he have his hands around your neck then?

He must have felt like such a big boy strangling a girl your age and size. Because, let’s face it, with that lowlife it’s likely he literally - not figuratively or playfully - did have his hands around your neck when he saw those flowers from me. He literally left you bloody on a bathroom floor, didn’t he? No metaphors necessary there. If I had only known then… god I feel my blood boiling every time I think about him doing any of this shit to you. What a weak ass pathetic piece of shit. I had no clue at the time you two worked together. You left that little detail out when you told me you were running from your ex. Who would have thought that a scared girl who couldn’t get away from her abusive ex due to work would end up back with him instead of a new guy she only sees when she chooses. He had proximity built into your relationship. Must have been nice for him. Of course you’d have chances to work things out if you can’t escape one another. I can’t believe how many advantages he was GIVEN throughout all the time you two were together. He inflicted himself upon you and scarred himself into your brain via endless and seemingly inescapable trauma.

He took advantage of your age, your size, your situation. Hell you two met when you were like 16-17 by the dates of some of your early poems talking about how he wouldn’t turn the car around, and he was in his 20s. You were still in high school. He basically preyed on you. What a fucking creep. Would you want your kids associating with a guy like that? Would you condone that with your kids? Would you encourage them to go after such a young person, a kid, if they were in their 20s? Of course not. And that just shines a light on just how fucked and weird it truly was. And don’t give me the “age of consent” bullshit. The only people who have to use that as a defense are the very weirdos who prey on younger people. You’re basically telling on yourself if you have to bring that shit into the mix. Can’t say I’m too shocked you found those kiddie videos on his phone. Fucking freak and weirdo through and through that piece of shit is. And he had constant exposure to you too thanks to work. He probably realized you were a somewhat shy, quiet, insecure, low self-esteem girl and that’s why he went for you. Young, naive, and heart on her sleeve. He probably tried to sell you on the idea he was just a misunderstood guy that only you could understand - when in reality he was just a creepy loser no one wanted anything to do with cause he’s a black hole for peace and sanity. You found that out the hard way. Make no mistake, you 2 were in completely different life stages with completely different life experience - that makes a huge difference. It’s one thing to be 25 and 32, its way different to be 16 and 23. That whole thing was rotten from the start.

Back then, I remember you telling me you had a bad relationship with your family, and weren't really hanging out with your friends. You were isolated and he knew - and intended to keep it that way. He needed to control you because he knew what I know - that he is depthless, offers nothing, is a leech, and couldn't keep you any other way. In a word, he is a coward.

He wouldn't be able to keep you if he had to compete with anyone else on a level playing field. When you first introduced "February boy" you know what you had to say about him?

February boy tells me all his secrets at once. In one breath. I like him because he isn’t dangerous. He is all hands and tongue, and stays. This one’s gentle even when he shouldn’t be. A foreign love. This one knows to not leave me bloody on the bathroom floor. A DIFFERENT LOVE

First off - gentle even when he shouldn't be... glad your broken pussy and my bruised dick could lay that bullshit to rest.

Anyway.

I told you all my secrets at once because I saw pain in your eyes. Really, I did. I remember our first encounter so well. I've thought about it so many times over the years.

You had a look of pain in your eyes as we were talking about our histories and our pasts. I could tell you were running from something but that you were too ashamed or scared to talk about it. It was the first poem I ever read of yours, read it straight off your eyes.

So I told you my story. The raw uncut truth. I'd never EVER told anyone all the details and pain and everything I overcame. I told you because I wanted you to feel less alone. You just seemed so... lonely. It was the way you seemed afraid to share any deeper part of you. Like you had been isolated through someone turning on you, using your own words as a weapon against you. You came off as someone who struggled with trusting others. It was so clear even back then - I just had no idea just how accurate I was at the time.

I wanted you to feel safe with me. I wanted you to know there were still good people in this world. That you could trust me. I just wanted to take that pain away from you and that's the fucking truth. I hated seeing you that way. I wanted you to feel less alone... and in truth, I didn't want to feel alone, either. I really did feel connected to you. It meant something to me... it meant everything to me, actually.

And you know my history. I was in isolation for about 3.5 years before I met you. I had only been “free” for a handful of months before we met. But I hit the ground running once I did. I spent that time growing, rebuilding, determined to come out the other side a changed man. I will forever be proud of what I overcame. I am proof people can change if they’re determined enough, have enough grit, have strength of character. Even with your undying support he couldn’t ever be bothered to help himself. He overcame nothing and worse, he dragged others down with him. He chose to blame the world instead of taking responsibility. He’s a dime a dozen loser. I had no support in my corner. I’d have killed to have a girl like you by my side through all I dealt with.

But I came out of that 3.5 years determined to date and fuck. That was my only goal. I absolutely was the dirty-dick Casanova you always painted me out to be - at least I was back then. I only do things with people I care about now- I can’t just do the casual thing anymore. Does nothing for me now. But back then, I knew one thing was true about me: I had the motherfucking gift of charm. I know how to charm a woman’s pants off quite literally and it’s fun as hell, I won’t lie. It’s even easier now with the lean physique, so at least there’s that. I dated a LOT of girls in 2018. I was making up for lost time. But I was never crazy about any of them, just some fun times. Then I met you.

You were the first girl I met, after about 25 others, that I wanted more and more and more of. I couldn’t get enough of you. You had serious depth to you. You loved to read too. You had a love of language, like me. That’s so fucking hard to find and I’ve come to find I really like that in a partner. I’ve always admired your economy of words. I love some of the shit you’d say.

I couldn’t learn enough about you. I was captivated. I was enamored. And it felt mutual. I really really REALLY liked you. A lot. So much. I thought about you endlessly every moment you were away. I yearned for you. Fucking YEARNED. Fucking you felt like heaven with a side of bliss. But that’s never changed. I’ll trash the hell out of you throughout this message, and you deserve every bit of it, but I’ll never pretend I didn’t enjoy every moment with you. I cherished all of it.

I kept dating pretty hard for the next couple years but nothing ever matched what we had. Nothing ever hit the same way. I’d find myself thinking about you off and on with some frequency. I’d sometimes think about you when I was kissing another girl, or reaching down her pants, or fucking her. I’d find myself getting frustrated she wasn’t you, and I’d lay into her for having the audacity to be herself. They fucking loved me most when I didn’t even see them there.

You were always on my mind. I guess all the intermittent hookups kept me hooked. Every time I hoped so fucking bad you’d stick around. I just felt so fucking good with you - but it’d be one thing if it felt one sided. It never did. It felt like you were enjoying me just as much. The way you’d look at me… I told myself there’s no way she looks at anyone else the same way. I’m still deluding myself that’s true. I need to come out of this with at least one beautiful lie still in tact.

But here’s a sad truth: I really haven’t been able to find anyone else that just did it for me the way you did. I hate even admitting it. Because I know this is over now - especially after this message. But I don’t shy from uncomfortable truths and I know eventually this will pass…

And don’t get me wrong. I met plenty of people I connect with. Instant clicks and all that. Just nothing like what we had. One girl was pretty much perfect. We were the same kind of weird and clicked right away. She saw me at a dog park with Midas and had her friend get my number. She was super fit yet extremely feminine, kind and caring, funny, outgoing, intelligent, easy to talk to, great job… she founded and ran a non-profit helping sex-trafficked girls in Africa. She had a big heart. It hurt breaking it. We dated for a few months and I really enjoyed her. But she was a highly religious Christian. That made her a LOT of fun at times - the stuff they say about the repressed good girls has always proven true for me. But she was always bringing God into everything and I wasn’t looking for a three-way. It wasn’t something minor, it was core to her beliefs and values. I didn’t want to do it but I knew I had to cut her loose. When I broke up with her, I did it in person because I respected her. I gave her a heads up, I didn’t spring it on her, or slow fade it. I knew she deserved the respect and decency of being upfront with her. So I did it in person, looked her in the eyes, and told her the truth. She thanked me for it and told me it was okay, and it was God’s will. She cried, we hugged, and I told her if she ever needs me, don’t be a stranger. We’ve stayed in touch here and there. Purely platonically. She’s doing well, and I like knowing. Turns out it is possible to end things respectfully and with the reverence they deserve. With a little fucking empathy.

Anyway, after I shared my one-breath secret, laid it all out bare and showed you who I really am... you told me what you were running from. You told me about him and what he'd put you through. You called him your, "cheating drug addict ex who overdosed. Again." I remember laying there and the look on your eyes when you told me that. We saw each other for who we really were. There was no pretense, no masks. We were both naked now in more than one way. We fucked each other some more after and I still remember how much you were enjoying yourself with every thrust. I remember the black lingerie you changed back into, and how I couldn't resist ripping it off of you again. God how I loved stripping you down. It was like unwrapping a gift every time. I've relived that night in my memory so many times.

After that, I resolved to always be my true 100% self with you. There would be no secrets between us. No truth too painful to share. At least, on my end that’s how I felt. I can tell you earnestly I’ve never betrayed that resolution. Not even now. Trust me, putting this all out there for you to judge, and process, and risk it all being misunderstood, or being fuel to your resentment, or a confirmation of your choice to leave… it isn’t easy to do that when you truly love someone.

In just a week's time I had you questioning the "love" you were getting from him. I showed you something you couldn't unsee. I showed you an unmatched passion. I know it because I can read the look in your eyes accurately - as we both well know now - and you love the way I treated you. Slamming you against a wall, on a bed, I’d push you down and fuck you wherever you landed. The dirty words we'd exchange between airy breaths, gasps, and moans. You loved just how desired I made you feel. You loved that I bring that side out of you so easily.

But if it was ever just about the sex, this never would have gone on the way it did. Sex is only made better by connection. And underlying all that passion was a connection like no other. So easy it was, so effortless. It felt natural. Everyone always talks about how they 'click' but I think most would be hard-pressed to ever find someone that clicked the way we did straight away. I still think about our first encounter all these years later. How I gave you that "tour" of my apartment.

"Here's the living room, here's the kitchen, here's the bathroom... and here's the bedroom!" As I pushed you in and down onto the bed. We really were all hands and tongues and slamming our bodies into one another. Over and over and over again. I've never been able to get enough of you.

I made you feel loved. I made you feel desired.

He made you feel alone.

On a post on Reddit titled: "Feeling alone in your relationship" someone asked:

"What do you do when your starting to feel alone in your long term relationship, but you love your partner more than anything and do not want to leave them? Does anyone else ever feel like that and if so how do you cope with it?"

Your response:

“I do feel like this. It’s honestly unacceptable. You need to talk to your partner about how you feel alone and why... and hopefully, if they’re a caring and good partner, they will work to change it. And if they don’t, then you either deal with feeling alone or leave. But I don’t think anyone should feel alone in a relationship. If you feel alone cause you’re bored and your partner works from 9-5 and you’re at home all day... that’s a different story and you should pick up some hobbies or meet some friends... but if that’s not the case, then it’s really not cool :(“

Crazy how your advice is to talk to your partner about how you feel and why. Why did I never get that treatment? Why didn’t I ever get a chance to hear how you felt and why? I gave you several opportunities. I’d shown my willingness to change many times. I guess that would mean I’m a good and caring partner by your standards.

He never changed. Never worked to change it. He showed you what kind of partner he is. He left you feeling lonely. You were right. It is unacceptable. So why did you accept it for so long?

Thing is, being alone would be better than being in that abusive relationship. You did all the work and always got punished for it as a reward. Seems you were always rescuing him, keeping him safe from himself, and enduring his anger and antics. He was still a dick to you sober - you say so yourself. And you mention he habitually lies to you like it’s normal - it’s not. Being alone was an upgrade from that bullshit.

You gave the wrong guy all the chances and he let you down 100 times if not more.

And you WERE alone in that "relationship." It was the most one-sided thing ever. You even knew it! And I want to be very clear: The emphasis for all of this is because this absolutely shaped you and played a HUGE role in why the mutual love, growth, and respect between us "didn't feel right" to you. Because you're USED to mistreatment, disrespect, one-sided love, and emotional unavailability.

You're not used to a man who knows what he wants, is capable of going for it, has the capacity to both give and receive love, and who actually values you. You're used to having to "earn" that love through endless giving and giving and giving. Constantly having to prove your worth through their endless mistreatment. That is NOT love.

“I feel like with addicts, there’s always an imbalance... you’re giving and giving, and they’re just taking and swallowing it up.”

Him being an addict had nothing to do with it. That's just who he is. He was a known thief - all he knew was taking. Anything and everything, whether it was his or not. All he knew how to do was rob you of your efforts, your care, your energy, your love. And what did you honestly get in return?

There’s a reason your poetry about February boy were full of longing and passion, while the ones about Drowning boy were full of regret.

"I missed the boy with the lavender on the night stand and promises on his lips and I missed the girl he loved in his bed who carried lonely in her hands and didn’t know the taste of blood yet." February boy

(This one hits hard. Honestly, all your poetry did. It was so fucking good from start to finish. Seriously.)

I miss them both too.

That boy followed through on his every promise. That boy knew you’d tasted poison and blood and loved you anyway. He wasn’t oblivious to your past - in fact, he was cognizant of it with every interaction, trying to love you into growing past it. He was a living testament to the fact that we didn't have to let our pasts define us. Because he had overcome his past, his traumas, at least best he could - and she knew his story. He knew it was a choice to either overcome history or let it shape him to it's liking. He'd tasted blood, too. Many times. But he refused to be a victim of the world, to blame the world. To just watch it... happen. He hoped she could learn from him.

That boy didn’t care about anything except for how he and she connected. He loved you in his bed, sure, but he loved you everywhere, any time - it’s why he loved you through so much silence. He loved her no matter what. He loved her whether they were doing anything or nothing. It’s why the passion was always there no matter when you came back - he just loved you. He isn’t that way with everyone. He isn’t that way with anyone. It was an “only with her” kind of thing but she never believed him. No one had ever lived up to their words before, after all. The mask always slips eventually, after all.

But his love wasn't bed-bound - it was so much more than just sex. He listened to you, remembered the little things, said the right words, and left you feeling like you'd met your match. One thing was clear: You now knew what it was like to be seen. To be heard. To be validated and understood. To be loved the way you always deserved. To be appreciated and cared for.

Our connection was instantaneous, deep, and natural and every time you've been brave enough to reach out and reconnect, that connection has withstood everything between it. Because it's based on real connection, real depth, and real love.

Or rather... it was.

You even knew it when you mused on the thoughts of the dreams we long talked about. The garden you never grew: House, kids, marriage, travel. Referencing once again A DIFFERENT LOVE, and the gentle love.

Forever ago, on a Tuesday. I’m drunk on the floor thinking of all the things I could have already grown in a garden had I started months ago, had it been A DIFFERENT KIND OF LOVE, a softer stable lover with lips that never made me spit out poems about poison

Yet another poem about how shithead couldn't give you what you needed. Another poem where you’re dreaming of life with someone better, someone healthier. Add it to the pile.

You couldn’t grow a garden with him. Wasn’t he a fucking landscaper?

Fact is he couldn't compete unless he controlled you and he read you like a book. He knew you'd put up with his bullshit. The moment you forgave him for cheating - after only being with you for 2 months by the way, why did you ever stay!? - you told him everything he needed to know: You'd stay with him no matter how poorly he treated you. It set the stage for the years to come. And it was so obvious he had you. In your reddit posts, you refused to acknowledge the roaring majority of people who were urging you with serious concern to leave that relationship. Complete strangers recognized from the myriad of abuses you suffered just how fucked things were. Other people were reading your post history and connecting the dots for you. But most didn't even need to read more than just one of those stories to know that you are in a serious GTFO situation. Your stories were truly horrific for anyone, let alone a young, ambitious, lonely and naive girl such as yourself.

Even in our last encounter, you acknowledged this.

I asked you what went wrong between you two and you said "A lot of small things piled up." First off - holy shit is that laughable now that I know the details. You lived out about 20 different relationship-ending scenarios for anyone else and still stuck by his side for no discernable reason.

You really think such traumatic experiences wouldn’t have far-reaching, long-lasting, insidious effects on your ability to love and attach? It’s like I told you, I never felt like we were facing our own problems, we’ve been up against your past.

Every story you've ever told me about him - and I'm talking the pre-poetry stories that you told me yourself - were all about him being a piece of shit. You told me about how he stole a whole bottle of meds from some homeless guy. You told me about the eviction. You told me about how he cheated on you and overdosed. Again. How he was addicted to every color of the drug rainbow - I couldn't believe this guy treated himself like a lab rat going so far as to order "research chemicals" to pump himself full of shit. So many other stories... It seemed like endless and exhausting drama with him. Like not even fun or interesting shit, just straight up dumbass shit that was just purely exhausting for anyone within the splash zone. A walking disaster. I NEVER understood why you ever went back to him, especially after meeting me. EVER. I still don't. Because I know I showed up for you EVERY TIME. In your stories, you even admit at one point that there were way more times of him being fucked up, creating drama, sucking all the air out of the room, and creating chaos than there ever were good moments. You two created a trauma bond from all the bullshit he put you through and you endured.

“My boyfriend (28m) and I (22f) have been together for about 3 years now. For the MAJORITY of those years he’s been stuck in a cycle of drug use.”

The fucking majority of the time he was high and when he wasn’t high, he was looking for his fix. He wasn’t ever focused on you in any serious way. You were a safety net. You were a convenience. You were just an enabler for his fixes and a comfort for his withdrawals. He showed you how much you meant with every hit, every lie, every cheat, every skipped birthday and holiday, every “fuck you,” every “bitch,” every skipped rent, every failure to launch, every new place he’d get kicked out of, every mess he told you to clean up, every failed rehab visit, every paranoid moment you couldn’t trust him or ever rebuild. His love for you was as real as the ring he proposed to you with. Like everything else with you, he wanted all of the benefits without any of the work or responsibilities. He showed you how much you meant by what he provided… and it seems like he didn’t provide much of anything other than endless work, stress, drama, and emotional exhaustion. How could you ever have any emotional runway for anyone or anything else when you had to pour all yourself into taking care of that wretch?

I know I was consistent across all the years, despite the many unjustified abandonments. I was devoted. I was stable, secure, safe. I gave you something no one else seemed able to provide. Certainty. Comfort. Chemistry. Compatibility. Connection. We clicked - effortlessly.

Good luck finding that out there again anytime soon. I know you’ve found quite a few who were incredibly unfaithful - to their wives - already. Plenty who couldn’t match your libido. Plenty who you struggled to connect with on any meaningful level. Plenty that were just physical but with nothing behind their eyes - and could see nothing in yours.

They’re the rule anymore, not the exception. No wonder you always wanted to know you were my only girl. You’re used to disloyal, empty-headed shitheads, but I’m realizing that’s the kind of guy you choose. If you were drawn to someone who actually chooses you, you would have chosen me.

You can’t convince me we weren’t great together. You can’t convince me you didn’t think so either.

We get along, connect deeply, make each other laugh, both have aspirations we go for, both are independent, both introverted, both up for new things, both successful, we both turn each other on, and had great sex.

You would always cream all over my cock, leave literal puddles on my sheets, and before we met up you told me I’m not allowed to make you cum so soon. And I know what you like, you like being told. You like CNC. You like being dominated, manhandled, and used. You like being told no. You like aggression. Restraint. I miss hearing you tell me you love me while I fuck you with my hand around your throat. I miss pumping you full of me. I miss the way you suck cock and swallow my cum - you’re the absolute fucking best at that. I miss worshipping your body. I miss being all over you. I miss our dirty talk. I miss calling you a filthy cock-loving slut. But most of all… I just miss talking to you.

I miss telling you I love you. I miss the way you’d need to hold my hand. I miss the way you’d wrap your arms around me. I miss reading the looks in your eyes. I miss your breath on my neck. I miss the taste of your lips. I miss grabbing your perfect ass, your perfect tits. I miss telling you you’re gorgeous and beautiful and sexy and hot. I miss that butterfly necklace, your tan lines, your sparkly “poop brown” eyes, with glasses and without, your black hair both long and short, your scarred chin, your soft skin, your thin frame, your beauty marks. I miss your sharp wit, your sassy attitude, your mocking voice you’d break out when you were making fun of someone (or me) or just annoyed. I miss your reactions. I miss your retorts. I miss your goofy humor. I miss the way you’d say my name - especially when you’d get excited or laugh as you’d say it. Hell, you even made it sound good when you’d be upset or serious with me. I miss hearing you say your own name, with my last name attached. You convinced me you really liked how it sounded. I miss the many looks on your face, the reactions… the judging, the pleasure. I miss your voice - god how I miss your voice. I just miss how natural everything felt between us. Since the start. Til the end.

I just miss the ever-loving fuck out of you and I’m tired of missing you. I’m tired of being the only one who valued it all. I’m tired of being the only one who cared enough to make this more than just our pretty words. I’m tired of being the only one who prioritized this because I saw the potential. You would always say how you couldn’t find anything like this, you’d say how lucky you felt we met way back when, you’d say you are grateful for me. Why couldn’t you mean any of it? I deserved to be missed just as much as I miss you. But you don’t. If you did you’d be here. If you did, you wouldn’t have kept trying to find better. Or go back to others. Or just up and leave without a fight. You would have stayed. And this time, I know there’s no coming back.

But that loyalty shit probably makes you gag - and not in a good way. Shame, cause I know we had a real connection - the type that you find only a handful of in a lifetime if you’re lucky. What's worse is - you've told me yourself MULTIPLE times throughout the years that you feel the same. I still don’t know what was so wrong that you just decided to end things without even trying. I still don’t know what was missing other than maybe a little tension and chaos. It genuinely feels like you always ran because we were getting too close and that threatened to close off all your past, all your other options, and you just weren’t ready to have something real. It’s the unknown for you. No matter how good things were between us, it was never good enough. Because you tricked yourself into believing that you know there is better love. That you’ve had that before.

I’m going to be very clear here: what you felt with him was intense, no doubt, but it was the product of all the chaos and disarray. It wasn’t love. Love is mutual. Did you get back all you put in? Could he ever give you equal what you gave? Be honest with yourself: was he even capable? You said it yourself on Reddit: he took and took and took but he never gave. You weren’t in love, you were in a sunk-cost fallacy. You should have left with his first major disrespect, cheating, and never looked back. Instead, you doubled down. You got overly-invested in a loser that never paid off and never would. Where was the romance? Seriously. Nothing you ever told me, nothing you ever wrote, nothing I ever inferred ever had any overtones or undertones of a loving, romantic relationship. It felt more like you had a sense of duty to protect him from himself than anything. He never seemed like a partner - just some dude you took care of and kept off the streets. He was literally sleeping in a fucking closet on an air mattress at his aunt's at one point because his own mother didn't even wanna deal with his bullshit anymore. While he was spending all his money pumping poison into his veins, you were literally selling your plasma to make rent. He was literally draining you. Do you realize how much you sacrificed and how little he cared? Reading your reddit posts and your (lack of) reaction, really makes me wonder if you've just got a serious block around the reality of that situation.

So now, it only makes sense you’re more comfortable when you know things don’t work because there’s comfort in the familiar and in knowing the outcome beforehand. And not only that, but the last time you allowed yourself to invest fully in someone it was a multi-year nightmare with no payoff. You clearly gave that relationship your all - your efforts were Herculean. It left you with nothing else left to give. So all these closed off, unavailable, and preoccupied people? There’s no pressure that they’ll ever become more. The outcome is assured before things ever get going. You don't have to give them anything. Well, nothing meaningful at least. Just some meaningless experiences that'll just leave you feeling a little more empty once the regret sets in. You talk about leaving pieces of yourself in others - you had no pieces left to leave them, you're still picking them up from when you got shattered. After all, "I fuck someone and call it healing instead." Because that meaningless lay is no pressure. But you're a nurse now though, you should know one of the first protocols for healing many wounds is to apply pressure. Sometimes pressure is exactly what we need to heal. I'm glad I "pressured" you. I did the right thing for both of us - I wish you could have too.

The only explanations I can understand as to why we didn’t work out - given how we mesh, given how we talk about the future, given all you’ve written into the void all these years - have taken me through a shit ton of research about trauma bonds, attachment theory, and the psychology of abuse and the victims thereof. And just to answer WHY, because I actually fucking loved you, okay? Because I cared about you, and us, and wanted this so fucking bad because it felt like we actually had something worth a damn in this fucked up world. It felt like we were equals, both wanting the same things, both capable of giving the other what they needed, both able to light the other up whether it was mentally, emotionally, spiritually, or physically. This is my life too that you came and blew up. I want to make sense of it. You wouldn’t talk to me or explain what happened. You didn’t try to avert things or work things out. You just let this die. Well it’s my life and it matters to me, I don’t just have something like this happen and write it off “it is what it is 🤷‍♂️ “ I need a fucking answer as to why someone would come back to me, knowing how much I loved them, telling me they want marriage and kids, knowing I was dead serious about them and had been for years, got along great with me always, looked happy every time I saw them, naturally connected with me, seemed passionate together, always enjoying one another’s company, and then suddenly vanish the moment I try to get more of that more regularly. I NEED to understand why I don’t get that happy ending.

I wondered for years if my love and adoration for you was one-sided. I’m glad I googled that poem offhandedly that night. I truly am sorry for how the discovery must have effected you. I know how difficult it was for you to share just one, let alone an entire anthology. I know how your parents' nosing in your journal affected you. But I chanced across pandora's box, from a gifted writer, who on this Earth, in my extremely unique circumstances, could ever not be curious enough to look? Can you honestly tell me if you were in my shoes that you wouldn't have done the same? Like I told you when we first reconnected... neither of us are angels - that's no fun.

That poetry was VINDICATING for me. I've never felt so much from poetry before. Holy shit. I mean, you're really fucking good, let's be real here. I'm not gonna lie, I first discovered this all way back in October almost right after the break up. I spent most of October and a chunk of November just writing daily. Then off and on since. A document of about 100 pages - yeah, way longer than even this - you know I'm wordy. But believe it or not... most everything I've written here has been from memory from those readings way back when. I haven't spent much time revisiting your poetry or your reddit. But I have an excellent memory for the written word. I remember most our text exchanges near-perfectly. And the things I read were so emotionally charged, uniquely personal to my own situation, and incredibly well-written. How could I not remember? If anything, I fear I'll never be able to forget.

Anywho...

You know that one you wrote about how we both loved the wrong people and are running nowhere near each other? It made me tear up. I've NEVER in all my life teared up from just reading something. Hell, I’ve never shed a tear over you leaving me. It's literally been YEARS since I can remember feeling such a deep... sadness on the level that poem made me feel. I've felt things, sure, but I've never been moved to tears from just reading something. That poem broke me.

I wish you'd have shared that with me back then.

I remember that moment - and the way you wrote your side of things - the way you worded things... It resonated with me so fucking hard. It took me back to that moment in time together. I know EXACTLY what inspired that. I remember that day - the bench outside the grocery store on the main street in the little downtown area with the lake near me. It was a beautiful day. You looked so fucking good. You always have.

I remember telling you how you rocked my world and felt the Earth shaking. I remember truly wishing it had been you. I wished so bad that you could just have the loyalty of the "closer girl" because she absolutely adored me and I had to be the one who'd shatter her. But I also felt like you had already shown me twice by then that you wouldn't choose me. I wanted you, real bad - more than anything, really - that was the hardest fucking thing to do for me... to turn you down. But I chose myself because you had hurt me enough and shown me enough that you would never be able to stay with me. We were both wiser back then, I swear. At least I gave you the dignity and respect of looking you in the eyes when I did it. At least I could give you concrete reasons for my decision. And I would have GLADLY worked WITH you to make things work if you'd shown me that you'd stick with me and through things. Because I WANTED us to work. I wanted you in my life. But you always bounced at the first bump, even when I gave you every reason to stay.

Do you think things would have been different if I had chose you that day instead? I've thought about that a lot over the years. I always wanted to tell you, but it never seemed like the right time. That poem struck my heart so fucking hard. A lot of them did, truthfully. You're good, and I really hope this whole fucked up situation doesn't stop you from writing more.

But it was sad reading all that. I mean, it's really sad that you dealt with so much. You are such a lover, such a romantic... but you lived out about the least romantic tragedy I've ever read. And it all felt like it could have been avoided quite easily. It felt like it didn't have to be that way.

It let me know that in those silences, you were thinking of me too. I know you must be now too. It gives me peace. It let me know you did love me - something I questioned for years. It showed me that you always felt the same and that our connection wasn't something I imagined. But it was real. But that’s what makes this worse. You clearly loved what we had. So why did you always run when we were about to make it more than just a tryst? Why did you always talk so much about moving in and then leave when we would go to make it real? You always bounced when we’d go to make this more. You can blame speed and pressure all you want, but we’d been talking about this for 6 years, E, and you were my fiancé. No one forced you to say yes. So don’t revisionist the history. Everything that happened, happened because it was what you wanted… until suddenly you didn’t.

And I spent soooo much time making sure you were on board with everything and serious. I literally tried to scare you off at first by letting you know how serious I was because I didn’t want to do this if you weren’t serious. I didn’t want to do this again if it was going to end in heartbreak. I wanted you to run BEFORE I let myself fall in love with you again, not after. Thanks a fucking lot. You have no idea how difficult this is to reconcile on my end - and let's face it, you don’t give a fuck either.

You just showed up, did what you felt like in the moment, and when your feelings changed, oh well! Just casually end an engagement. Just casually say I love you after 6 years of harboring feelings, then toss the whole thing out. Just casually tell me you have intrusive thoughts about getting off birth control without telling me because you want my babies. Then just leave. Over text. Not gonna question that, not gonna try and make things work, not gonna do anything heathy or productive to try and salvage things with the healthiest partner you’ve likely ever had. Not even gonna give him an answer as to why I did this to him! Just bye-bye!

How do you not see how fucked up that is to do to someone? How do you just do that to someone. I have never broken up with someone I was serious with in such a callous, cold, and uncaring manner. It’s heartless. What did I ever do to deserve that? Tell me. Justify it. What did I ever do that was even CLOSE to what others subjected you to?

I’m not perfect, but I never mistreated you or abused you or any horrible shit like that. I know overall I was VERY good to you, I would have done anything to make right if I knew something was wrong, and what’s worse is I had every reason to treat you shitty after all your unexplained and unjustified abandonments, but I never did because I enjoyed you so much that it seemed pointless to focus on that - I just wanted to focus on what we had then and there in those moments and make the most of the time we did have. Those abandonments were the only thing that affected me within the relationship. I was absolutely insecure about that and I had every right to be.

Because I had no way to judge how things were going. Because you don’t speak up if anything is wrong and you carry on like everything is beyond fine - you tell me you love me, you tell me you want to get married and have my babies, you make a list of baby names, you tell me you love me after 6 years of choking it down, you talk about getting married... and I propose. You say yes! But our history showed me that no matter how well things SEEM to be going, you could still bail at any moment for any reason or no reason at all. I had every right to be nervous because I had to just work off of complete faith since you couldn’t give any honest input on how things felt from your side.

I didn’t want or need ‘perfect’. I wanted the mess. I was willing to do the work. If something wasn’t working, we’d make it work, damn it. I wanted all of you, not just the good bits. I wanted the anger, the sadness, the things you didn’t like and weren’t working. I didn’t want just the lover, I wanted the bitch too. I wanted the side of you that has strong opinions and differences. I wanted the fights and the arguments - they are opportunities for growth. I didn’t want a silky smooth, friction-free relationship. I wanted something real and always have. I wanted the raw you - the version of you I’ve been addicted to since the start. I know you can be abrasive and I liked that side of you.

Remember at the gardens when I took an unflattering picture of you and you hit me out of annoyance/frustration? I looked around quick, but there were people all around. I laughed things off with you. But really, I wanted to grab you then and there, push you down, and put you in your fucking place. I wanted you real fucking bad after that. It made me want to take a hold of you and fuck the living shit out of you. I always knew you had a real bitchy side to you and I always craved more of it. I wish we had more tension like that throughout. I wish you’d let that side of you out more. I love having a reason to treat you that way and I know you’d love being put in your place for it. I wish we’d fought more. I wish we’d had more tension. Perfect is too predictable. I like some friction now and again - it keeps things fun.

And at least then it was also very clear how you were feeling. No guessing games required. Because most of the time I had to constantly be both present with you in the moment while also being vigilant about working out what was and wasn’t going well, or what may trigger you into leaving. Because you couldn’t just do me the dignity of speaking honestly with me and risking some tension when in all reality it would have been so good for us.

Besides, you’re never gonna find someone that just gets you 100% without ever having to communicate. It’s toxic and self-sabotaging to believe that exists. And I'm sorry, but we had like 95% and I think that's a lot better than most. But I can’t be expected to know your every thought and feeling at all times so I work off of what you tell me because we’re both adults and I thought we both actually wanted this to work. Hell, one time you even told me "If there's ever anything wrong, I hope you'll tell me instead of just holding it in." I told you I hoped the same.

I trusted you would speak up about things that worried you. Whenever you did, like moving in, we discussed it and the conclusion of those conversations left me thinking we’d worked things out. I have texts from you that 100% confirm this and couldn’t be interpreted any other way. Literally you pitching and initiating ideas about moving in. Us talking about leases. This shit was explicit.

So when you said you felt “pushed” it just felt like a slap in the face. I was catering to your needs every step of the way and you knew what I wanted before this even started up again. I was listening to you and adapting. And you dare blame me? You know, you’ve NEVER taken any real accountability with how things turned out, when in actuality, you’re the reason things always ended. You chose to not share your doubts before they festered. I called you out on it "last October" and you told me that I was "right, and I wish I had said something, but I didn't and I'm sorry." Then you turned around and did it to me again this time. I even brought that up BEFORE we ever even met up. It's in a text I posted further down.

I took the blame for years, worked on myself tirelessly, and the truth is, you just didn’t want us to work. No amount of effort on my part was ever going to change things. And if anything it sets you up for the lazy bullshit answer of "You should be able to be yourself." I was and am. I am a realist - I don't expect to just fall into a perfect relationship. I expect to have to make changes and compromises. I don't mind doing those things for the right person and if I agree with the changes they need. None of the things I did took much effort (well, other than the body transformation), they were just things I needed to be made aware of. Simple as that.

There was literally no reason we shouldn’t have worked. There was nothing you’ve ever told me that couldn’t have been overcome and the proof is that every time you ever gave me an excuse for why you left, I worked on it, came back, and corrected for it. That’s why you always had a new line. Not to mention none of the break ups have ever felt justified - they all felt like really lame and poor excuses to break up something that seemed so serious one day, and something you can't get away from quick enough the next. That is such a wild swing. Usually there are signs someone is losing interest - you've never given any of those off. So every break up line sounded like excuses. That’s why I go on and on about how you’re just scared of commitment and vulnerability because what else could it be at this point? Not to mention, you even agreed with both those points a few times. None of this is out of pocket.

It felt like together we could BOTH have what we'd been searching for all our lives together. Someone who could match us and meet us where we are. Someone who’s the full package. You really think I proposed to you on a whim? I had been waiting years to do so. I knew way back when what I’d stumbled upon with you. I was waiting for you to be ready - to say I love you - you thought I already knew, I mean… I always FELT like you did, but you could never bring yourself to say it and make it real. But you knew you did way back when too. You held it in. For years. Why? What took you so long to finally admit it? In the kitchen poem, it literally reads like someone afraid of ruining what we have by chancing it on having what we really hope it could be. It reads like someone afraid to have something real, not someone questioning authenticity.

But yeah I asked you why things didn't work with him. You said a bunch of small things piled up. I asked you what you liked about that relationship. You told me you liked hanging out...? Well... it seemed like you liked hanging out with me too - except I never beat you, belittled you, cheated on you, kept a secret drug addiction from you, refused to do anything for you on holidays, constantly disrespect you, cheer on your downfall when you realized you didn't want to be a teacher, wedged myself between you and your family, take advantage of you, need you to take care of me because I lack any capacity to be a functional adult who can take care of himself, discourage you from being a doctor, stonewall you, control you, treat you like you're stupid, gaslight you, secretly keep pics of my exes from you - the one that they cheated on you with no less, make you distrust me so much that you need to have access to my phone, literally never lied to you, or any other bullshit.

I’m not bragging or anything. I mean NOT doing any of those things is actually quite easy and what most would consider the bare minimum. Most would not put up with any of that bullshit let alone ALL of it. Remind me again what I did so wrong compared to all that?

Anyway, after all you could tell me was that a bunch of “little things” piled up and you just liked hanging out - even though that’s what we’d do, and you’d use it against me sometimes (even though you sold yourself as an introverted homebody who likes reading, tv shows and movies, and when asked what you like to do would never have much to say beyond that - you literally told me once “Oh B, I’m boring. I like 90 Day and taking Macy to the park” thanks, that’s a lot to work off of to plan things. I was down for anything or nothing on my end - it wasn’t about what activity we took part in, I can do that with anyone, but I can’t love just anyone. It’s about who you’re with, not what you’re doing.) I finally told you what I thought. "Seems like the only thing he did was get to you first." I could see the lightbulb go off in your head. Your eyes gave that look when people have an epiphany or take on a new perspective. You finally saw it for yourself.

"I was so young." Was your response. Do you remember? I hope to hell you do. You need to truly see it for yourself and internalize it. You were preyed upon and shaped - some part of you clearly knows it. You need to fully confront that truth. It’s genuinely fucked up and I genuinely feel sorry for you. I’m sorry that happened. You didn’t deserve any of that. You are seriously such an incredible woman and I hope one day you see it for yourself and get what you truly deserve - and that ain’t it.

And that’s what sucks most of all, E. You are such an incredible person at your core. I know you don’t think so, but you are. You deserved someone who would help build up your sense of worth and love you the way you deserved. Not someone who was “drowning” in a pool of their own poison and their own piss because they’re a coward who’s too scared of the world and escape reality through coping with drugs. You deserved someone who could help you out of a bad situation, not push you further into one. It didn’t have to be this way.

How different things might have been had I met you first instead.

But you were right. You were so young. And he knew it. You were in over your head with a shithead who used you and was experienced in using people. You were his caretaker - it's quite clear from the poetry and especially the reddit posts. That wasn't a loving relationship - at all. There was no love to be found in any part of your stories. None. At all. Seriously, where was the romance? I’m not being arrogant, I swear. I’m asking as objectively as possible. Where was the romance? Where was the love?

It romanticized abuse and neglect, sure, but there was absolutely no love or romance to be found in your words.

Caring for the perennially wounded doesn’t mean we love them. Don’t mistake pity for love.

On that call from way back when, I could hear your voice trembling. I still remember it clearly even though it was a half-decade ago now. I could tell you were trying to hold back. I wish you hadn't. I wish you'd realized on your own that you were always safe with me. I wish that had ever meant anything to you. I wish you’d realize asking for help isn’t weak or soft and that none of that “weak/soft” shit even matters. It takes more strength to be vulnerable. Infinitely more strength to expose your true self and be able to trust others enough to lean on them. To trust yourself enough to just be true, authentic, and real, especially in the most vulnerable of moments. Telling you all this in the raw manner I am is true strength - you think it’s easy putting this all out there? It’s only pride that holds us back. And pride on that level is weakness.

And on the topic of weakness: Only the weakest and most pathetic men treat a woman the way he treated you. You don’t treat a woman you love the way he treated you. He barely treated you human. There was no love, no respect, no decency, no trust, no romance, no appreciation. It was rife with drugs, drama, struggle, put downs, fights, and disrespect. Is that all you think you’re worth? Is that what “feels right”?

On that call, I worried about you. But you downplayed every concern. I tried to suss things out, but you always held back with me. How I still knew...

I know you better than you give me credit for. I didn’t need to read all I did to know you. I figured most of it out when we first met. I knew you were troubled. I just didn’t know the details. I wish I had. But I’d read most the poetry from your eyes. They told me everything and now it’s wild how in retrospect, I was right about so much.

But still, I knew back then that something was wrong. But I didn't know the details. I wish you had told me. I would have done something then and there. I would have had a sense of urgency. I would have protected you. I would have made sure he never laid hands on you ever again.

And I think that's WHY you didn't tell me. Because you knew I would. I also think you felt ashamed.

I knew he was a piece of shit from the start. You literally told me he cheated on you, and had just overdosed after promising you he wouldn't. Again. and even though he’d broken your trust endlessly, even though he’d lie to you about everything from the gifts he never bought you, to the woman he’d cheat on you with, you believed his “promise” to choose you over drugs. You couldn’t even trust him to take a shit - it’s how you caught him with the Xanax the night he laid hands on you. Is that what feels right? Having to be paranoid about your partner’s phone use, where they are at any given time, what they’re doing in the fucking bathroom? Whether you can trust them after they endlessly betray you? Do you just need someone who is going to make you endlessly question your own worth? Sorry I let you know you’re perfect for me just how you are - flaws and all. Sorry I accepted you.

After we first met in February of 2018, I seriously thought, especially after how we connected, that he'd be history and you and I'd go on to be happy because it was a case of "when you know, you know" for me. I'd felt a click that couldn't be mistaken for anything else, and it did not feel one-sided in the least. And you acknowledged it all on your own in the "last October" era when you asked, "Is it crazy to think we probably would have been married and with kids by now if we never broke up all those years ago?"

After our time together, and how you described him as a cheater and drug addict, I couldn't believe you went back to... that. Still can't. It's just wild you chose that over us. I still cannot see what you got out of that relationship other than sadness, trauma, and degradation. He literally abused you, E. For years. Mentally, emotionally, and physically. The tragic irony is, he was the one who stabbed you in the back. Repeatedly. Hurt people truly hurt people - and you passed that cycle on to me instead of having the strength to end it. Don’t worry, I’m making damn sure I don’t pass it any further - though the trust issues you’ve left me with haven’t been easy to overcome. Fuck.

I just gotta remember that what you described has all the hallmarks of a legitimate trauma bond. You’re a literal victim and you deserve compassion. But you also deserve a reality check. Consider this message to be that. Maybe the armchair psychoanalysis is pure cope, but it's literally the only thing that comes close to making sense about all this. If you told ANYONE the unfiltered truth about your past relationship - or any of the others, and told them about me and all I’ve done for you, with you, and to you, I feel confident I would reign supreme. I feel confident that if you were objective and unbiased about things, people would tell you you’re crazy for walking away from this.

So in the spirit of the reality check, it was laughable that in the last texts we exchanged you told me that you were just young and dumb and that you learned from it when I "rehashed" things. Which btw, you can’t “rehash” something between people if they’ve never talked about it before. You just want to dodge and avoid everything. No growth. No accountability. No effort. That’s so you.

Get real for once.

First off, you're smart as fuck. One of the smartest I've met. Truly brilliant. You are too smart to use "young and dumb" as an excuse. Especially since it is OBVIOUS to ANYONE, smart OR dumb, that if someone cheats on you at any point - let alone 2 months into being with them - they're an untrustworthy, disrespectful, piece of shit. You shouldn't have to "learn" that lesson by living it out.

Secondly, your poetry is an admission that everything was all fucked up. You knew it wasn’t right or you wouldn’t have poured so much energy and emotion writing about how you wished this and wished that. How you chose wrong, or regretted him for this and that. You were trying to reach yourself. You were trying to find the courage within to leave. You knew you deserved better. The abusive conditioning kept you stuck and it was reinforced for years. Read into the effects of abuse and trauma. It literally changes the pathways in your brain. You’re up against more than just your thoughts. You’re up against neurochemistry and we’re all slaves to our reward systems.

I mean this objectively: The only poems you wrote that had anything resembling love, romance, and connection were the ones about February boy. I'm not being arrogant - it's simply the truth. All the other poems were about how you wish things were different, how disappointed and hurt you were, how you couldn't save him, how he is some sad misunderstood guy - which by the way, he's not, he's actually about as 2-dimensional as they come from the sounds of everything, wild how depthless the drowning boy was. Drowned in the kiddie pool and probably pissed in it too. In your words he was a lying, cheating, abusive, drug-addicted loser with nothing to offer. Your poetry was a monument to his failures as a lover, devoid of romance, and full of hate and abuse, and the reddit posts were the works cited. They read like they came from an abuse victim trying to rationalize her situation. It was genuinely heartbreaking to read - I literally wept for you reading that shit - especially having the unique perspective of knowing most of the backstory and context. Especially having the knowledge that those stories overlapped with our experiences and that I was treating you better in the short bursts we’d have together than he would treat you in literal years - and honestly, of what I know now, I truly believe no man you’ve been with has treated you as well as me, and honestly, knowing myself, none ever will either. You deserved better. So much better. But what’s worse is, better was always just a text or call away. You didn’t want better.

I’d shown how you should have been treated all along, and all it took was a week together. You acknowledged it secretly in your poetry back then, and you acknowledged it by coming back all those times since. I was your safe harbor. I made you feel safe. I will forever be proud that I made you feel safe with me - it's clearly not something you feel with many and probably unnerving when you’ve always had to be protective of yourself. Hell you’ve been traumatized so severely that healthy love “doesnt feel right” to you, allegedly, even though I’ve got a mountain of evidence to the contrary. You’re not used to feeling safe like that. You’re left waiting for the other shoe to drop. At a certain point you just wish it would drop. Because you’re afraid the moment you do let your guard down, that’s when shit will hit the fan. That is when my “mask” Will drop and you’ll already be too far in to get out. Because he used everything against you, didn’t he? He would turn all your vulnerabilities against you. He would use anything he could to hurt you. Hurting you was the point. Hurting you kept you complacent, loyal, and stuck. Hurting you kept you trying to be worthy of not being hurt. Hurting you kept you trying to make the hurt stop. See it for yourself if you haven’t already.

Finally, back in the "last October" era, you told me that you had been with him again in March of that year. So clearly, despite his abuses, he still had a hold on you - and likely still does. I mean, I read the poems. So it’s incredibly disingenuous how you said he was a lesson and you were just young and dumb. You clearly didnt learn much of anything, and besides, no one should need to have lived out any of that bullshit you put up with and went through - FOR YEARS - to know it’s not right and they deserve better. If he was (and is) still in your life, then you still haven’t learned yet. That asshole should have absolutely no access to you. You chose the wrong boy, again. You closed off the wrong boy. I am literally trying to wake you the fuck up to the reality of things. But I saw how you responded in the Reddit posts. You will literally ignore reality and search for confirmation biases that support your hopes - that he’s just a good guy in bad circumstances. He’s not. He’s an irredeemable toxic asshole who robbed you of your youth, left scars on your heart, broke you down mentally and emotionally, made you question your worth, and left you with more baggage than an airport check-in. If you hate me for all I have to say about him then so be it. But you’ll always know deep down I’m right across the board. But hey, you also know it for yourself:

The drowning boy stopped drowning and you swam back home together but never forgot the taste of salt down your throat and in your eyes and he never stopped using it against you. August boy

August 7th, 2022, 10:50 PM

This is proof it was never the drugs he was drowning in. It’s just who he is at his core. You wrote that as you came running to me - we started reconnecting around this time and eventually meeting up. You never came to me ready for anything real. It was always as a rebound. Always just getting out of something else. We never had a real chance. You were always just using me to either get over them, or buy time til you were ready to go fuck yourself up some more. That’s what happened this last time too. You told me that your friends thought you were getting with me way too soon after your last thing. I’d hoped you’d tell me more. I didn’t want to have to ask. I wanted to know more, but honestly, I wanted to focus more on us and the fact we were together after all we’d been through to get back. I didn’t want to spoil things between us by worrying about your past. I didn’t care about your past - I just cared about our present. But I should have inquired.

Then one day after being out, we were laying in my bed. You wanted to show me something on your phone. You had a lot of text messages. I wasn’t gonna ask cause I trusted you. But you got defensive without me ever saying a word. I remember the message count. 77 messages. You started saying “Ohh that’s just… solicitors and debt collectors.” Hmmm strange. 77 messages from solicitors and debt collectors? And weird how defensive you got over it. The red flags were flying up quick. I didn’t say anything to you. You also were putting your phone face down suddenly when before you were leaving it face up.

Idk if you remember, but one day after we ate at the sandwich shop you introduced me to, I asked you about your credit score, your debts, your student loans. I asked you how much you owed. You told me 40-45k. I asked you about credit cards and other stuff. I asked you all this because I was trying to connect the dots on the “solicitors and debt collectors” bullshit line you tried to feed me. Then that earthquake hit your family’s country. You shared a screenshot of a conversation between you and your mom. But up in the top-left I saw your message count. Wild how quickly that 77 quickly dropped. You said you were ignoring them. But now your messages were read.

So clearly you were talking to someone else. Lying to me the whole fucking time. Using me. Incapable of being alone. That’s why you leave so suddenly and coldly. Because you ditched me for someone else. It’s also why you’re so short and annoyed when I come to you. Because you got what you wanted and I was just a safe harbor one more time for you. I don’t know how you could do that to someone. I literally don’t understand why you talked about marriage so much with me and kept talking about it and PUSHING things forward with me in that direction if you knew you weren’t serious. You knew I was. I left no room for misinterpretation. Why did you fucking do that to me?

I swear to fucking god if it’s with that useless pile of shit, pathetic fucking pin cushion, lab rat, closeted air mattress loser of a landscaper that managed to “drown” on dry land and can’t grow a garden, I will buy you both the nicest fucking knife set I can find, and you can use each other as the block.

I remember back then, in 2022, you told me how when you were talking about how you would graduate from nursing school, his first thought wasn’t excitement or to be proud of you, or anything like that. It was how it could benefit him. “You could get us a place again once you’re a nurse, a nice place this time” that’s what you told me of him, in your little mocking voice you’d always use with him that made him sound like he had a room temperature IQ, and was likely an accurate impersonation. I remember telling you that he sounds like a child who needs his mom to take care of him. You turned your gaze down. I was way more accurate than I ever could have realized at the time. And even some people in the Reddit comments picked up on that from your own stories, calling your relationship out with “mother/son vibes.” It was gross, and worse is the fact of the ages. He was like a kid, but he was the adult by age. You had to step up at every turn to take care of the baby that was shitting and throwing up on himself. You took care of a manchild. You outgrew him a long time ago. He’s never been able to keep up, so he’s had to drag you down. Like crabs in a pot.

You also mentioned where you are now, back then. Like a year before you ended up there, you were already considering living there. Then you said you were moving in there after we’d talked about getting a place of our own. AFTER. Then you tried to gaslight me into believing you’d brought it up before. You didn’t. In fact I have MANY texts from you talking about how excited you were to get a place with me - together, us, we.

I think I knew deep down that this was over then and there but I ignored it because I’m an idiot blinded by love too. I always thought that location was such an odd place to pick. It’s so random without some reason to be there. You even told me there’s not a whole lot there other than a bike trail. You were adamant about being there though instead of the place 10 minutes away from your work and with your fiancé though… instead of a place that you said there’s a lot to do around there, and a lot of good food, etc. hmmm…

You had posts in 2023 that clearly were referring to him. Unbelievable you would ever still associate with that piece of shit after he laid hands on you. Hurting you was the point - don’t you get that? He literally wanted to ruin your reputation and end your prospects for a career at one point by faking a fucking DV. All because you dumped his precious drugs he uses to cope with his reality. Now he wants to USE you and your newfound career for his own gain. He belittled you when you were a teacher, he wanted to ruin your life over drugs, he was unsupportive of your dreams of being a doctor because it might interfere with his neediness, and now that you’re a nurse he wants you to work for him so you can give him a nice place.

He would have traded your whole life for his hour of coping. Reminder: He grabbed you so hard you thought your arm was broken. Why would you ever let someone like that remain in your life? But I'm the bad guy? I'm the one shut out? Why? Because I dare question any of this? Because I actually want to talk shit out? Make things work? Hold you accountable? Oh better run! Run from accountability and growth. Run from the guy capable of being supportive. “Doesn’t feel right” The tragic irony is, you wouldn't know a good man if he slapped you across the face. But had he, you’d probably want him more.

Way back when, I wrote you a poem. Sent you flowers. Tried to make you feel special. Glad to know I succeeded. He couldn't even mix you up some instant mix pancakes for your birthday. Because he didn't want to. He didn't care to. He didn't care about you or your needs. He didn't give a fucking shit about you. He didn’t care about your feelings. He took and took and took from you and all he gave you was trauma, the gift that keeps on giving. That’s just who he is and even once he “stopped drowning” he was still that same asshole. The evidence was all around you. Hell the evidence was in every birthday - why you ever let him "celebrate" more than one with you is beyond me - you were the third wheel on a drug-deal date that YOU drove him to on your own birthday. He couldn't get you anything, but he could always treat himself to another hit. He had YEARS with you to do... anything. He did nothing. I made every time together with you count. It's honestly sad I showed more affection for you in a week than he could in literally years.

He had every possible advantage to keep himself in your life. He had proximity and constant exposure to one another - which in all truth seem to be the only thing he had (and needed) - he had age, he had you catering to him and taking care of him, allowing him to be stress and worry free. It’s gotta be easy to have fun when you have no responsibilities. He was on easy-mode and still fucking up. It’s like it was all he was capable of.

I knew you for a week yet it felt like we knew each other forever. Our connection was instantaneous, deep, and real. You're literally the only person I've met in these last handful of years that I've experienced that with - and from what I could tell by the poetry, and even you directly addressing it when we first started reconnecting last time (and many other times over the years) - it's the same for you. I revered what we had for the longest time. But now I'm on the level with you about all this.

When you were scared you ran to me. When you needed help you ran to me. When you were lonely you ran to me. When you were abandoned you ran to me. Learn the value of someone who is consistent. Learn the value of someone who actually gives a fuck about you and is reliable. Supportive. Resilient. I am proud of how I showed up for you across all the years, despite how you always ended up treating me in the end - I didn't deserve any of it. I know I was good to you. Always.

Never forget who took initiative to fix your car visor just cause they wanted to make your life a little better - I hope you think of me every time you use it. Why did no other guy you were with in that time do that for you? When you were sick, I made you soup and wanted you with me - I didn’t care if I got sick. I’d rather take care of you anyway. When you were sick with him he’d tell you to keep your distance and not look at him when you speak. He’d turn away when you went to kiss him. What a bitch. And in the Reddit posts you mentioned wanting to go ice skating way back then. Never forget who finally took you. I know it wasn’t how you imagined, but I still enjoyed our time - you looked good in those wolf socks if nothing else.

And never forget who you’d call when his abuses had you rattled from mistreatment. Never forget who’d be your safe harbor when others showed you their true colors. Never forget who showed you their true colors from the start and never strayed from who they were the first day to the last. You knew you couldn’t call anyone when your couch was stuck - you were so proud of how you moved out on your own, but suddenly you needed help. Who did you turn to? Who was there for you? Damn right. It was me. And not being able to turn to anyone, and being soooooo “independent” isn’t the flex you think it is - but hey, I had to learn that one the hard way too. There’s something beautiful about knowing there’s someone in this lonely world that cares enough about you to make you a priority, and make you feel a little less alone. But you never saw it that way.

Never forget who always had your back no matter how many times you stabbed him in his. Never forget who always put his pride aside and would forgive you in hopes you’d finally appreciate what the two of you had.

I am proud that I was able to be your north star when you felt lost. I am proud that I showed you a different kind of love from what you knew. I am proud that I once was able to forgive you, no matter how hurt I felt. I am proud that I could still love after being betrayed - that I didn't let it stop me, like you did. I’m proud I went for what I wanted. I’m proud I knelt before you and let you know I loved you and wanted to give you everything I could. I’m proud I let you know I always loved you and cared about you, proud of the depth I was willing to give it. I’m proud I never hesitated with you or held back. I’m proud of who I showed up as, consistently, every time. You may see it as being soft, but you oughta know better by now how incredibly hard it is to speak your heart and mind to someone so nakedly. Why do you think you preferred screaming your heart into the void instead of letting it be known? Why do you think you truly deleted your anthology once it’d been seen? You can hate me all you want and blame me too, but it isn’t the truth. If you were being honest with yourself, you’d admit the real reason you deleted it is because someone meaningful to you found out a side of you that you never thought they would. You felt exposed. Newsflash, you were exactly who I always thought you were. Who you come across as in the poetry is who I fell in love with. I’ve loved you BECAUSE you’re a deeply introspective, tragically all-too-human, beautiful, well-spoken, flawed, complex, layered, brilliant woman. You never realized it but that’s who I fell in love with all those years ago. And you talked so much about your fear that people change, but since I’ve met you, you’ve always been that lovely in my eyes, and you earned the way I saw you. I just wish you’d ever been able to see me for who I am. I’ve always felt like you saw me as Mr. Make Believe. I always felt I had to be perfect to keep you around. Because it always felt like one false move and you’d use it as an excuse to flee. I was never given the chance to be fully human. To be flawed and accepted. It’s exceedingly disheartening to see how much you’d put up with from someone who clearly didn’t care about your heart, and how little you’d try with someone who absolutely cherished and adored you.

But hey, it "didn’t feel right" to you, which I could contest vehemently with your own words, but I know in my heart that I treated you right and loved you without fear. You said this “isn’t what you want” and that this “doesn’t work for you”. Funny, you literally said this will work if we let it and that this is what you want, multiple times. Never led me to believe anything otherwise. I literally asked you “have you thought about what you want this time?” Before we ever even met up. You told me “I have thought about WHAT I WANT…” then proceeded to tell me EXACTLY what I ended up giving you. Seems like the only mistake I really made was actually giving you what you said you wanted. I should have worked you like a fucking dog to get it. That’d probably feel right, be what you wanted, and work for you without feeling “pushed”. So fuck you saying you don’t want this and doesn’t work for you. You were getting everything you asked for and then some. It was easy between us - your words, not mine. Choke on them. I know how much you like having something shoved down your throat.

I never shied away from difficult conversations, or from letting myself get close to you even when I knew it’d probably push you away. I could have played you, easily, and just pretended to care a whole lot less than I really do. I could have said “no” more often. I knew what buttons to press - I’d done it before with you and you never even noticed you were being played, but you sure did love it - but I respected you and myself enough to not play those grade school games. And honestly, I thought you’d outgrow that high school bullshit. I may not know much, but I do know what good love is. I gave you that and I know it in my heart, in my gut. I know it with every fiber of my fucking being. I don’t give a single fuck if you can see it or not, but it’s a serious god damn shame if you can’t. Oh well, guess it doesn’t matter. Even if you could see it, it wouldnt mean much. You think you gotta work for love. You treat love like it’s a carrot on a stick and that having someone dangle the prize before you is romance. That’s seriously your idea of love. God you need serious help. You don’t even love yourself.

You were never pushed - you wanted this until it got too real. We’re past the age of letting our feelings decide for us - you’re closer to 30 than 20 now, manage and regulate your feelings some. It’s not like you got blindsided by them - that’d be a little more understandable. And make no mistake, it was a choice to love you on my end too. You think it was ever easy taking you back? Did you think I just came back effortlessly? Did you ever think of how much I had to forgive to allow you back into my life? The work it takes to do that after someone up and abandons you time and again? What happened in those many silences you forced upon us? If you only knew…

I take solace though. After reading your poetry, and the reddit posts, and everything I know about you, it’s left me with no doubt and I'm proud to know I'm the only man that ever genuinely loved you and chose you every time. Who had your back without question. You walked away from that. Now what are you left with? Lying, cheating, abusive, drug addicts, unfaithful pigs, people you described as misogynists, the illusion of endless “options,” (which just leaves you with indecision), and a fear of love - hell I’m pretty sure you don’t even know what love even is. You might know your lines, but you can’t hit your mark.

I showed you compassion, understanding, patience, support, white hot passion, and love. It wasn’t good enough for you. It “didn’t feel right” and you felt “pushed” after 6 years of talking about having the very thing you felt “pushed” into with me. Even though you proceeded with things even after I showed you these were more than just words to me. Haven’t I proven enough by now I only say what I mean? I know you’re not used to it, but I figured you’d at least know it was true with me by now.

And don’t tell me this message and intensity and all that is crazy. I look sane compared to what you endured with him. My choices look well reasoned compared to the choices you’ve made. We at least loved each other back. Is any of this honestly crazier than harboring deep feelings for someone for SIX FUCKING YEARS before you could say THREE LITTLE WORDS. No, holding something like that in your heart is betrayal of the highest form. It’s worse than getting cheated on. It’s betraying yourself. Stopping yourself from having what the poetry made quite clear you deserved, and it keeps you stuck in something that you didn’t deserve, which the many many many poems musing on your regrets demonstrably proved - IN YOUR OWN WORDS. You let our love rot because you decided to keep investing in a sinkhole. You let what could have been, become what never will be. Fuck you for that. Fuck you for an eternity for that.

If you dare think any of this is mean, or this makes me an asshole, think again. First off, I think anyone who knew both sides of this story would tell me this is long overdue. You told me you want me to respect you… what an insult. I have always respected you all this time while you’ve endlessly disrespected me time and time again with your sudden and unexplained departures to go lay with a junkie. You disrespected me every time you ever led me on to believe you not only wanted that future with me that we always talked about, but that you were willing to fight for it. Because you knew I loved you and I actually would fight for that future - I was fully invested in US. I wanted us to succeed - you ensured our failure. Every time. You disrespected me and us and my time by never trying to work on things with me and instead just ditching me without any effort. You blindsided me every time. You never let on anything was wrong. You never gave us a real chance. So you need to realize that how you’re being spoke to is the level of respect you’ve earned.

Secondly, this ain’t nothing, believe me - I’ve heard and said worse to and from better.

Thirdly, almost every argument made against you is based in part or in whole on YOUR OWN WORDS. So don’t get mad at me, you set this whole fiasco up! Don’t hate me for having a memory for what you told me - go check the girl in the mirror. And lastly, there is quite literally NOTHING I could possibly say to you that was ever worse than how he treated you, what he said to you, his endless inactions, his endless abuses. He was the fucking worst. Bar none. The only thing he did was set the bar so low that literally no one would ever be able to stoop as low as him. They’d have to be as spineless as him to get under it. A real fucking worm like his spirit animal.

And if you dare try to say that this is hate, like you said about the Reddit posts, then go back and read it again. Work on your emotional intelligence if that’s the only conclusion you come to.

That was so sad to read your response. "I'm sorry. I'm not use[d] to it"

You're not used to someone that would actually listen to you in those moments. You're not used to someone who actually would give a fuck about what you have to say. You're not used to having your words matter. Silence is a learned behavior because your words never mattered anyway. It’s probably why you wrote into the void and felt a shame about your poetry and who you really are. When we’re not heard, we feel like our very being is being rejected. I always felt that way with your silences. It’s funny too, this time there’s no going back, but I don’t care about your silence - I saw what I needed to. I know you still think of me in your silence. A lot. All the other times I held onto hope, but felt like you never thought of me. Funny how that shit works. He knew all this. He would literally use silence as a weapon against you. Keep you in the dark. Put you in time out and close you off. Use it to control you and retain power in the relationship. That's not normal, and it's not love.

You words mattered. Well, they did to me. Your words meant everything. I just wish they had counted for more.

If that text exchange isn't proof enough as to why the good thing between us "didn't feel right" to you then I don't know what is. You literally demonstrate, by your own admission, that you're NOT USED TO mattering. Your version of normal is the opposite of that. What you're saying is that you're used to nothing mattering, so why even bother? And it happened again when you suddenly ended things with me last September.

You're not used to someone actually caring about your side of the story, or what you're thinking, or what you're feeling. And I stand by every single word in this exchange. In fact, I stand by ALL my words. And believe me, I could make another super-long post about our exchanges too, and have half a mind to peck away at one.

I hate that the lessons they taught you get used on me. Those lessons DON'T APPLY TO ME. Those lessons were solely to teach you to get away from THEM. They showed you time and again they can't and won't change. I've proven time and again I'm more than capable of change that I both believe in and agree with. Because speaking of Reddit, you saw my post. You know what's really sad? You can read my posts from 2023 and they could easily be copy + pasted and apply to the last time around. No wonder you don't think it's worth even bothering and that people never change. You haven't.

And how you ended things with me this time, how you just shut down and pushed me away, how you went cold and offered no explanation, how you made no efforts to work things out. THAT was EXACTLY what I was talking about in that exchange. In fact, most of the exchanges back then are still relevant now. You have a clear pattern and I was sussing it out. Remember when we talked about “vetting” each other? I was drawing from our past the whole time and history repeated itself on your end. At least I’ve made changes. What have you done? You still shut down, didn’t try, didn’t explain, just ran and iced me out. You ENSURED our downfall. You FORCED it. Then you try to say it didn’t feel right? Seemed to feel pretty fucking good for you when I made you cum just a week before. Seemed to feel pretty fucking good when you were telling me how you want to get off birth control secretly and have my babies. Seemed to feel pretty fucking good when you said “Yes” we got the picture proof.

Your reasons for ending are always indefensible - it’s why you don’t even bother. You know it. I know it. But what you don’t seem to know is why you really leave. Even if it’s for someone else, why would you honestly choose them over us? I know I was good to you and I know we were good together. Your confessions more than prove it. And I know we click harder than most people ever get a chance to experience. We’ve never struggled to connect and talk. The attraction was clearly there. And I was down for ANYTHING so we had plenty in common and to do. I took you places you’d never been here in all your time here, and had plenty more ready to go see and do with you. You cancelled bowling, beach, and karaoke on us. I would have done all three this time around. I’m pissed we didn’t get to the beach together. I wanted to just stare at you while you catch rays and read. That’s my idea of a perfect fucking day.

So I feel confident that it’s hard to replace or recreate that kind of connection. So it just leaves me wondering - why do you really leave? It truly did feel like we had it all and it didn’t feel one sided. Whatever was wrong, I would have addressed with you. I know for a fact we didn’t have anything that was irreconcilable or irreparable. And again, there’s a clear pattern: you always leave when we’re about to get closer. As close as close can get. You said you felt pushed but you were also talking about moving in. I was cognizant of our pacing and your participation the whole time and was constantly checking in on you. Again, it’s in writing. You said you felt like you should be living with your fiancé and said you wanted to move in together. Last time around you told me “I kind of like the accelerator side of you” and that was after you left me because we were going too fast in your opinion. You always give these major major mixed signals and then get mad at me for not knowing if you want to go left or right and then just leave in what seems like the fear of all those things we talked about, about to happen. And honestly, I know I’ve been consistent over the years too. What would taking things any slower really reveal to you? You seriously were just waiting for the other shoe to drop - cause there’s always a shoe that drops, right? Sorry, but I’m way more stable than that. I’ve got my feet planted firmly on the ground. My shoes weren’t going anywhere my feet didn’t take them.

Who I presented to you as is more or less who I am. I didn’t have any dark secret waiting to spring on you. I always just tried to treat you well because I liked you and I hoped that’d be enough. I wasn’t giving you my “best” self, I was giving you my real self. So it’s wild you still felt this was going too fast and you were being pushed because I know in my heart I gave you enough to work with over all those years to know who I am. I do regret it in many ways though. I have had the same time to know you as well. I knew you were skittish and I really WAS always cognizant of your past. I rushed things because there was something missing for me: a sense of security between us. I wanted us together first and foremost because I love how everything feels with you. I wanted that every day. But it would have served another purpose: knowing you really meant everything you said. Because you’d be there every day proving those words true. Being there and in it with me. You always left me no matter how good things seemed - so how can I even tell how things are going when the stability of our relationship is so unpredictable? It creates a fear of abandonment in me that I’ve never had with anyone else.

And I feel like you only thought of the nightmare scenarios - and those arose from your past, not from me. So I felt helpless to do anything about it because I wasn’t up against anything I had anything to do with. I didn’t want to rob you of your freedom or smother you. I have long known you’re an introvert. I mean come on, you love books and shows and movies. All of those are things that shift the focus away from interacting with one another unless it’s to cuddle or whatever. And that’s fine - I didn’t wanna change you or any of that. I wanted to read some books and watch some stuff together - I was actually really excited about both. I just wanted you around. To know you were there. To have that every day. I just wanted to start and end each day together. Go on a few dates, fuck, make some meals together, watch some shows, hang out, plan trips. Pretty normal but fulfilling stuff. Honestly, did you ever have a bad time with me? Seriously ask yourself.

And I don’t mean like now in the aftermath of things - I still contend I have every right to be bitter and angry given how coldly you ended such a serious commitment with me - but I mean when we were together. Did you ever really not enjoy my company? I enjoyed every moment with you. I cannot think of a single time I didn’t enjoy with you by my side. It’s why I wanted a lifetime with you. I never had a bad time with you - at least when we were actually together. I hope you didn’t with me either.

When I wrote those texts to you, I was reliving your last breakup with me and how out of the blue it felt. How... unfair it all felt. It felt unjustified. And so did this one. And in all honesty... they all did. It felt like you always just gave up. No effort to make things work. No effort to let us grow. And the people you’d go back to… I swear to god I’m not judging you. I don’t care if they were junkies or cops or accountants or janitors or someone you met on Tik Tok or any of that bullshit. I genuinely don’t care - I got my own past, who am I to judge? And beyond that - if you’re with me, why would I care about them? I never have and still don’t care who you were with or what you did, or how much you did or didn’t enjoy them. Seriously I didnt care then and I don’t care now. But it does hurt knowing how well we clicked, the fact you agree, the fact you wrote about us in private which says you really enjoyed us, and then have you tell me that you went back to a guy who cheated on you, or got with some guy who cheated on his wife to be with you, or all these people who were clearly awful and VERY CLEARLY it could never work out with. I mean, really, you gave your all to your ex for YEARS as he just took you for granted every step of the way, abused you every chance he got, and what did it amount to? And if your relationship with someone starts with an affair, how do you think it’s gonna end? Imagine if you put even a quarter of the effort you put in with your ex into us. Can you seriously tell me you gave all you could in our relationships? I saw how much effort you put in with him - it was all of the effort. It hurts because I know those people were unfulfilling - and you could have had something far more fulfilling with me. A fulfilling relationship shouldn’t leave you feeling lonely. A fulfilling relationship shouldn’t include infidelity. A full filling relationship should have reciprocation - he couldn’t even make you pancakes for your birthday - idc how annoying that is to keep bringing up, it’s just the perfect encapsulation of how fucking pathetic he truly was. And I don’t know why you kept choosing to go have those cheap thrills over building something real with someone you clearly connect with. I feel like we barely scratched the surface on what this could be.

Now I realize it was likely because you didn't want us to work out because either you were still holding onto hope that the most hopeless guy ever would suddenly be that good man he always promised to be, but has no clue how to, or because you’ve never known a healthy and successful relationship and you’re scared to death that things might actually work - but that you will inevitably fuck it up somehow, or I will leave you because I make some discovery about you, or you aren’t good enough. You definitely give off low self-esteem vibes here and there. Just know if it’s the former, the man you always wished he could be, I always was. And if it’s the latter, just know, I’ve always loved who you are - flaws and all. I never fell in love with you because I only saw the good bits. I fell in love with you because I saw the whole. I saw you. And I love you.

So don't get it twisted, none of this is hate, this is righteous indignation - there is a complete absence of hate for you here. I definitely hate your shitty ex though. I hate how he treated you and I hate he inflicted himself upon you. I hate that he left you with so many insecurities and fears.

I have every right to be angry with how you led me on and then suddenly vanished without any effort or explanation. You pulled the rug out from under me. You led us down a path of matrimony and then tripped me on the way to the altar and ran. But never fool yourself into thinking you got pushed. You wanted that ring. You. When you first returned I asked you if you had thought about what you wanted this time around. You told me “I have thought about it… I want the same thing in theory. A husband, kids, a home… I know you’d make a great husband… That isn’t something I’m worried about.” That was ALL YOU. I asked you what you wanted, I never thrust it upon you. We had a LOT of talk before I ever popped the question because I wanted to be 100% sure. Even right before I bent the knee I asked you, “You sure you wanna spend the rest of your life with me?” You gave me a very convincing and enthusiastic “Yes! Of course I do, I love you.” And then I said “Alright, let’s find out.” Got down on one knee, pulled out that telltale sea foam green box, and asked for your hand. You gave me an even more convincing and enthusiastic “Yes!” I still think of it as a happy memory. I regret nothing.

But I made it a point to not lead this time. I decided - long before we ever reconnected - that I was going to let YOU lead us this time around specifically because I didn’t want you feeling pushed or pressured. I only worked off of what you told me.

Six years. Three words. After waiting that long to say “I love you” to one another, the words are going to carry some serious weight. I mean, have you told anyone the truth of that moment? How long it took for you to say? The poetry? How you wanted to love me out loud for once? How you harbored your true feelings for me for years? I’m glad you finally braved up and said it to my face. We earned that moment and those words meant everything to me then. They still matter to me now even if you never say them again. We deserved to love each other openly for once. It was always there even if it was never spoken but god does it ever feel so good to look someone you love in the eyes and just tell them. I’ve only told 2 other girls I love them. I don’t say it unless I mean it. After six years of waiting, I don’t think you do, either.

I swear I’m still processing them… maybe that’s why it’s so hard to let go. It took six years for you to work up the courage to say something you felt for much longer. But that’s why I proposed so quickly. Things were going so incredibly well between us, we’d finally expressed our love for one another after 6 years of it being ragingly palpable, we were being open and honest (or so I thought), and having a great time together, we’d been talking about marriage and moving in and making up for lost time, and when we finally broke that wall down I wanted it to be once and for all. I felt like I’d let you slip through my fingers so many times before. I wasn’t going to lose you again. I knew what I had to do - so I did it. The very next day I went and bought that ring that you’d known about from the email. While you were at work, I was at Tiffany’s. I was nervous as all hell about the next day at the garden. You have no idea just how nervous I really was. I stay calm and cool under pressure. Even really close calls like crashes, or fights. Guess proposals make the list now too. But inside I was anxious. I had no clue how this would go. But I needed to find out. I knew I’d loved you for quite some time. I felt like I was always just waiting for you to be ready. All I knew was that I loved how we meshed and I wanted that for life. So I went for it.

And I’ll never regret letting you know I loved you enough to try and keep you in my life for life.

But it was a very serious commitment and I know you must have entertained it a few times over the years and while we were together last. If you wanted to leave, well, that sucks. But that’s never been the issue. It’s how you choose to end things. Suddenly, with no chance to make anything right. No effort on your part to make things work or to make it more what you need it to be. You just unceremoniously end things without giving me a voice, a chance, or even an explanation. You worry it will force things, you think things should just “work” well we did work seamlessly in all the major ways. It was just some specifics that could have easily been tuned to your liking without it being forced - it would have just been making me AWARE. I have every right to be angry that you ended things how you did. It was undignified. I didn’t deserve that, E. And we didn’t deserve that either - we deserved a real chance to make this work. You walked instead of even trying.

We could have made things work.

And honestly, it’d be one thing if you left me for someone better - good luck with that - but you went back to gutter trash that treated you like shit, disrespected you, betrayed you, kept you in the dark about their marital status, were misogynists in your words. You went back to cheaters, and liars, and assholes. You went back to people you were fundamentally incompatible with at every turn. Guess that’s what “feels right” though. Guess that “worked” for you.

But seriously, if you think any of this is “hate” believe me it’s not. You haven’t ever seen hate out of me. Hate would go beyond words. Underpinning every bit of this monologue is a love and care. You wanna know what hate looks like? He showed you. On the daily and for years. Because if that’s love, then what is hate?

You wanna know what disrespect is? It’s all the cheaters and unfaithful affairs. Everyone else taught you something shitty. I saw in your own words I taught you a new kind of love. Who’s the bad guy?

Yeah, I might sound unhinged or whatever but this is tame compared to what that asshole put you through. You’ll never see it that way though. You’ve forgiven him 100 times for things 1000 times worse, but you’ll never be able to forgive me for calling you on all of it. Because somehow that’s worse than hitting you, grabbing you, cheating on you over and over, leeching off you, wasting your time, belittling you, lying to you, ignoring you, trying to ruin your entire livelihood, and abusing you.

I really do wish you the best. I really do want you to be happy. But I know I did a fine job of making you happy and whether you can ever admit it again or not, just like how you left me to just have to “know” you loved me all this time, I just know I made you feel happy and loved whenever you were with me. It’d be a damn shame if you ever had to have that everyday in your life. Someone who actually gives a fuck about you? Makes every effort to show you they care? That they love you? Can you imagine? That’d be horrible.

I have never in my life felt bad for the person leaving me. In the past I always blamed myself quite harshly and worked incredibly hard to learn from it and do something about it. But this time, I feel bad for you. For giving up on us. For giving up on the only consistent and reliable person you’ve been with. For giving up on someone who clearly would have had your back through thick and thin. And for what? You could have grown that garden by now, but you’re deep in the weeds. Worst of all is that you know it too. But where I took every loss as a lesson, you’ll never learn anything. I called it last time around in 2022 when you left me.

And it has happened again and again. Even by your own admission. Even by your own words.

You fucked up and only pushed yourself further from happiness. You told me you’re happy - I am genuinely happy to hear it. Your happiness is all I ever cared about. But one day you’re going to realize that you weren’t truly happy at all - just content - until you finally had something real with someone that had a real hope for a future. We could have had that, but you just couldn’t see it for yourself.

And because of that, I genuinely feel worse for you than I do myself. It’s so clear that you genuinely don’t even know what you’re denying yourself of. I have never felt worse for the person leaving me during a breakup. Ever. Not even any of the previous ones between us. For once in my life I truly do believe it’s your loss and you’re so bad at valuing people that you don’t even know what you’re losing. Like some idiot on antiques roadshow who wiped his feet on a copy of the constitution or something. But hey, you clearly disagree. Apparently all that love I felt between us wasn’t enough - because you didn’t feel right. Could have fooled me. Could have fooled anyone. But you haven’t convinced me in the least that you left for any reason of substance. It seems like you only left because you’re so fucked up from your past - or that your past came back to haunt you.

You get in your own way for no good reason other than you’re scared of making the wrong choice, even when the best choice is abundantly clear. You’re indecisive and we’ve talked about it before many times. The one coming to mind right now… Before you clicked up with me “last October” we had a call. On it, I told you I understood you leaving and how difficult it is to make such a big decision of who to spend your life with. “Who you marry is the biggest decision of our lives. It definitely deserves consideration!” You told me you loved what I told you on that call. I didnt fault you for wanting to see what’s out there. And truth be told, I was always confident you’d never find anyone as good as me. That you could click with someone the way you can with me. It didn’t make it any less confusing as to WHY you wanted to keep looking, but I did get it and I didn’t hold it against you.

But I do now.

We had something great. The choice should have been easy. And whatever was missing, we could have worked on and grown together - that’s what successful relationships do. It’s basic communication. Having to voice your needs is healthy. Expecting your partner to read your mind is toxic. I’m not Mr. Make Believe. My love for you was real and always has been. Abuse isn’t romantic and it isn’t love. Scott didn’t love you - it was the opposite. His actions made that abundantly clear, and often. He doesn’t have the capacity to love. He didn’t want you - he needed you, and you know the difference. It’s better to want someone than need them. What’s worse is he needed you for all the wrong reasons: because you could take care of him, be responsible for him, and let him have all the benefits of a good woman by his side without ever having to show up as a good man in return. Calling him a boy wasn’t poetic, it was accurate. He needed you like a parasite needs a host. He never needed you because being without you was an ache in his heart - he stonewalled you countless times, he didn’t care if you were around or not - he needed you because you were a means to an end. The only thing he has routinely proven is how careless he is with your heart, how apathetic he is to your feelings, how little you mean to him if you don’t serve his needs, how little he actually knows or cares about you, and how easy it is for him to choose literally anything else over you. He has a long history of mistreating and abusing you. He couldn’t even make you pancakes - that is seriously the most pathetic thing ever - my little nephew could make them - he couldn’t take the 10 minutes to just show you the scantest of appreciation on your birthday. I made you soup from scratch when you were sick. He literally cared so little about what you want, even if he could easily provide it, that he refused to do something simple and special for you even on your own birthday. That’s your idea of the perfect man? He fucking sucks. Raise your standards. I can’t believe you fooled yourself into thinking you loved him. You were a plaything to him. He played you, used you, and abused you into staying. He’s a piece of shit and everyone seems to know it but you. Wisen up.

We had the burning passion. We had the chemistry, compatibility, the deep and easy connection. We were closer to equals across the board than any other partner you’ve had. We want the same things, we’re both deep and loving people, we turn each other on in every meaningful way: mentally, emotionally, and physically. We had what it takes to have it all. We were lucky to ever even find each other and mesh so easily. We had more that was there than not and we both know it. How much better are you expecting to find? After all, you “haven’t been able to find anything like what we have. Not even close.” Your words, not mine. And that’s over more than half a decade of searching and coming up empty handed. Think of all the things you could have grown in a garden in that time… And I know I’ve only gotten better over time. I’ve stood the test of time. Still standing too.

And I can make pancakes.

So go ahead and block me on platforms and phones - do what you do best like in that opening poem of yours and run. Hide. Cower away from the good things and keep running yourself into a wall of pain with those who can't, don't, and won't ever love you the way you give it. Block out the truth all you want. But I’ve already seen how that’s worked out for you. In the silence, you’re screaming and it reverberates onto the page. You can’t block the memories and if I know one thing about you, it’s that you have an incredible memory. You once wrote you wanted to be remembered, well, I know I’ll never be forgotten.

So if I’m going to be reduced down to a lesson, then I’m making sure class is in session. On the pages of your poetry you showed me I taught you one thing for sure, and I’ll always be proud: How you deserve to be loved. You can’t unlearn that lesson - and you'll never forget who taught you it.

That's my fucking confession.

[nientedal]

You're trying to teach something that, while interesting and mostly well-reasoned, is not as applicable to this subject matter in this context as you assume. Please bear with me for a moment.

You have a hammer you've built and refined over a lot of years, and it sounds like it's probably even a really good one, but the quality of your hammer does not actually make this problem a nail. Being able to apply data analysis to these concepts does not make them a problem of data analysis. Using handy shorthand values to describe certain things in casual conversation is useful and necessary, but if an extreme oversimplification like this one becomes The Way We Talk About Things, it can validate and perpetuate wrongheaded, harmful assumptions in the broader social consciousness.

It's not rocket science to say the way we talk about things matters. Way too many people do not realize bodies of all kinds make both estrogen and testosterone in differing amounts. That's a problem because the belief that female bodies produce this but not that and male bodies produce that but not this reinforces the concept of "men are from mars and women are from venus" -- the idea that there are two binary sexes and they are super-duper different and chemically distinct from one another, when (1) that is only somewhat true, (2) only true up to a point, and (3) that point is NOT where most people think it is. It supports the underlying assumptions one of my coworkers is working from when she says "men and women just have different brain structures; my husband can't understand me." It supports the ideas radical feminists are working from when they say "if you have a penis then you are dangerous to women; this is inescapable."

When someone says "pi is 3," that is worth correcting, even in casual conversation. Yes, WE know pi is approximately 3, but A LOT OF PEOPLE think pi IS ACTUALLY 3 in this analogy and they are using that belief to support violence, do you understand?

You may not agree this contributes to violence to an extent worth worrying about. That's fine! You don't have to agree! But telling other people it's true enough for data analysis so it's true enough for everyone and they're wrong to worry because it's true enough for you, in your field of study and you've won awards for teaching at big prestigious schools is...an asshole thing to do. Your heart seems to be in the right place overall, but holy smokes, my guy. If you can't make a point without bragging on your credentials and patting your own ass, it may not be the fantastic point you think it is. Maybe this is an opportunity to consider the worth of a new point of view instead of immediately bouncing up and down trying to explain why your existing biases are universal constants.

tl;dr: Yes, I know being overly precise isn't helpful and is sometimes even harmful in both data analysis and basic conversation. Yes, I know the act of discussing reality necessarily requires simplification; that is basic postmodernism. The level of simplification and approximation necessary for good data analysis in this case IS HARMFUL in practical day-to-day conversation, and going "wellll, they're male and female hormones in MY field of study ;)" is not actually talking about practical conversation AND it is not helpful to people engaging in practical conversation. Again, pi is not actually 3. This isn't a tweet arguing approximations are never appropriate; it's talking about people who believe pi is actually 3.