#I was away from home since Wednesday and the signal was so CHOPPY

[acekindaneat]

Good thing there's espers on board, no car crashes today everyone 👍

[wheneverfeasible]

~Wiggly 🧠 🪱 Wednesday~

Eeee thank you for the tag @hotluncheddie, this is my first brain worm tag and that’s super exciting, buuuttttttt…

So I actually just realized that I’ve recently hit the anniversary time of when I went No Contact with my family, and I know that that I’ve began kinning Steve more since then due to his own terrible family.

So then I was thinking about Steve, who it’s been years since he walked away from his family, since he found his true family, and he’s doing okay for himself. Maybe not an amazing career or anything, but he’s found something that he’s relatively happy with and he’s got people who love him in his corner and yeah, sometimes it still hurts, but he’s moved past it all.

Until one day, completely unexpectedly, his mom comes into his place of business.

Maybe they threw him out, maybe he left of his own choice because he realized that they would never be what he wanted or needed them to be. They never truly knew him and never cared about him, at least not enough to ever choose him over anything else, so it hurt but ultimately it wasn’t hard to leave them, only hard to leave the life he used to know.

He and Robin were roommates now, because obviously, and it was a shitty little place, but it was theirs, and they’re happy, and their friends are over all the time to the point that Eddie practically lives there too, which is…nice.

Really nice.

Steve has come to accept the fact that he isn’t entirely straight, and part of that is the reason he no longer speaks to his family, and he’s even come to terms with the fact that he might have a teensy tiny itty bitty little crush on his best friend, Eddie Munson. Which is fine. He’s used to having crushes on friends and having them be unreciprocated.

Except Eddie has been sending him some signals that maybe it’s not entirely unreciprocated. And he’s starting to feel confident, starting to feel like maybe he could actually be genuinely happy with someone…

And that’s when he sees his mom. It’s been years since he last saw her, but suddenly all that pain and hurt he thought he had grown past is tearing through his chest and up his throat and he feels his heart rate accelerating and his breathing is growing choppy and he can’t breathe can’t breathe can’t breathe—

He’s thought about, before, what he would tell his parents if he ever saw them again. About how he would call them out for being terrible people who never cared about him, only saw what he could offer them, about the image they wanted to show the world. Wanted to tell them of all the times he’s almost died and they never knew because they never cared enough to ask why he’d come home bruised and bloodied, or why he avoided the pool, or why he woke up screaming from nightmares. He thought about how good it would feel to say how he never needed them.

But he can’t say any of that now. All he can do is try not to pass out from hyperventilating because they were his family, his parents, and they should have loved him unconditionally but they never did. They never chose him over their friends, their jobs, their image. They never loved him and never would. They would never truly know him or accept him and all he wanted was for them to say that they were sorry and they never would.

Steve would like to think he could face his mother, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t he just couldn’t. So he hides, he runs, he disappears into the back and he can’t stop the tears because why was he never good enough for her or his dad? What was so wrong with him that they couldn’t love their own son?

And there’s no sort of resolution for him, no closure.

He finishes his shift, he goes home, and Robin and Eddie are there just like they were when he left that morning, and their immediate smiles at him being home slowly drops because even though he tries to hide it, they know.

He doesn’t want to talk about it, can’t talk about it, not yet. He does tell them that he saw his mom that day and he loves them because they get it, they understand, and they don’t make him talk about it. Robin makes him his favorite snack and drink, Eddie finds that movie he knows is Steve’s comfort movie and puts it on, and they don’t talk about it but they’re there.

And, curled against Eddie’s side with silent tears dripping off his nose and onto Eddie’s shirt, Eddie’s arm around him while Robin keeps him grounded with a hand caressing his leg on his other side, they let him mourn not what he lost, because he never had it to begin with, but what could have been.

And maybe, maybe one day Steve will be brave and tell Eddie what he means to him, but he’s too fragile at the moment. It will remain unspoken for now because he’s not ready. But maybe one day. And maybe that day is sooner, maybe that day is later, but there in his friends’ unconditional love, he knows that they’ll both wait for him to be ready.

Because his parents should have been his family but they’re not. They never were. And maybe he wasn’t ready yet, but one day he would be able to let them go because he knew that what he had with him right now was his real family, and that love was forever.

Yeah anyways the song Matilda by Harry Styles hits a little too close to home for me, and I think it’s fitting for Steve too.

no obligation tags since Wednesday is over but there’s always next week lololol: @derythcorvinus @stervrucht @katyawriteswhump

[fourcountriesfourmonths]

Some good, old-fashioned rest and relaxation

Hello again and welcome to part two of this week’s blog installation, this time about our vacation week here in South Africa!

This past week a small group of us utilized the hostel that our program provided as optional break housing and we used the time to explore more of Cape Town and relax. On our first full day we did a hike up Devil’s Peak, checking that one off the list of mountains to summit in Cape Town.  That night we went to a taco place that also happened to be doing trivia and get this!  At one point the man asking the questions goes “Residents of a town in New Hampshire, in the U.S., have collectively carved how many pumpkins?” and then proceeded to list three options, which I obviously got right because he was talking about the Keene Pumpkin Fest!  How crazy is that? Halfway across the world and the restaurant I was in was talking about my home town! Wild.

On Wednesday morning we took a choppy boat trip out to Robben Island, the old home of both political prisoners and other criminals.  We had an AMAZING tour guide for the bus portion of the tour who pretty much summed up everything we’ve learned over the past month, about the history and inequality of South African society, in a short monologue.  We then proceeded to take short prison tour from an ex-prisoner himself, which included seeing the cell in which Nelson Mandela was imprisoned.  It was a powerful tour and we were so glad we did it.

Thursday I went back to Salt River to visit and have lunch with my Auntie.  Thinking it’d be a quick visit, my friends and I planned on hiking later in the day, but as it always turns out, we had lunch, caught up, and played with her grandson for over two hours.  It was lovely to visit her again. When I finally got back to the hostel Colette, Jodie, and I re-hiked Lion’s Head (where we did the sunrise hike) for exercise and cranked up to the top in 37 minutes.  When we got back down, we headed to the grocery store and organized a picnic to go along with a sunset viewing at a popular local spot, Signal Hill.  It was a very chilly and windy picnic, but fun all the same.  We also had a movie night in the hostel and watched Call Me by Your Name, which I would recommend if you haven’t seen it yet!

On Friday morning I went on another small wine tour because it was cheaper for those who hadn’t gone yet if I tagged along.  When we got back we headed to Camps Bay, one of the beaches nearby.  I had only walked on the Cape Town beaches thus far and when I went in for a quick dip I was frozen almost immediately.  Muuuch colder than in Arniston, and similar to New Hampshire water, but with a much cooler air temperature.  That day more of the larger group came back to the hostel after their vacation, so it was really nice to see some of them again and relax on the shore.

On Saturday we went to Maiden’s Cove which is a swimming area that has tidal pools which are basically cemented off pool areas that fill with water from the ocean, and we hung out there for the afternoon.  That night Sam’s Salt River host family hosted a birthday party for her 21st birthday, so a bunch of us went over there to celebrate with her which was a lot of fun and so nice of her family to orchestrate.  

Sunday was the last day of our break and we started it off with an ENORMOUS hill run.  The hostel was at the bottom of a huge hill that Colette was adamant about running up.  And so we did...about 17 minutes to get up to the road where you start to climb Table Mountain from, and then back down again.  We did an abs circuit when we got back as well and it felt amazing to exercise that hard again.  My living on top of hill back home and my middle school cross-country hill training days, came back to me as we were making our way up to the top.  Afterwards we rewarded ourselves with a well deserved brunch.  That night the whole group went back to Salt River for a farewell dinner with our host families.  One of the host dads organized an opportunity for us to march in a parade with a marching band that was walking through the area so we had a really festive and fun sendoff! Madeline had the great idea of buying our Auntie flowers from the two of us, so we gave those to her and stopped by her house afterward to get the rest of Madeline’s stuff.  We had a final chat and cup of tea with Auntie and her close friend that she brought as her plus one to the dinner.  They were complimenting us, wishing us the best of luck, and genuinely very sad to see us go, as were we to be leaving.

We spent Monday organizing, wrapping up some program related stuff, and packing, and flew out towards Dubai around 6:15pm.  We’re currently on the longest flight I’ve ever been on, fourteen and a half hours to Rio, a touchdown there for an hour or so, and then a few more hours to Buenos Aires.  Getting a little stir crazy, but I lucked out because there was an empty back row that enabled a few of us stuck with middle seats to spread out to aisles.  We have about 6 hours left until we touch down in Rio and should be in the Buenos Aires airport around 8pm/6pm EST.  I’m looking forward to being able to go to sleep almost right away and not having to suffer through a day like we’ve had to do in the past two countries.  

I’m so glad some of us decided to keep this week so relaxed.  We made our room feel like home, got to be away from the larger group for a bit, with no staff, and really got to experience some much appreciated relaxation and independence again.

We’ll be in the hotel for two nights and meet our host families and find out our new homestay partners on Thursday evening.  Excited to see what the city is like and also to be able to try to speak some Spanish again…that’s gonna be a interesting as I haven’t taken a class since my first semester freshman year, but fingers crossed!

Thanks for bearing with me and my lateness on these last two blogs!  I can’t believe this is the last country and I’ll be home in about a month!  Crazy how fast time is flying while the start of the program simultaneously feels so long ago.

Talk to you all soon.  Lots of love,

Em