#I was miserable and dissociative and just not quite. real or human

[miiiwu]

I am like if rena from higurashi was a tboy

[beeclaws]

It’s been months since he was this close to anyone. It might have even been Jon the last time, too; helping him walk down in the tunnels. How did they get from there to here? How-

“Tim?” Jon asks softly, pulling back to look him in the face, and it’s the loss of that warmth and pressure that makes Tim realise he’s started breathing in great, shuddering gasps. He screws his eyes shut and Jon reverses their positions, pulling Tim into his chest with unpracticed but fervent hands. His T-shirt is soft against Tim’s face; he hadn’t thought Jon would own anything so soft.

Tim’s throat is burning, but as long as he keeps his eyes screwed shut then he isn’t crying. He isn’t crying on Jonathan Sims the night before they both-

“It’s alright, Tim,” Jon says, searching for words of comfort he only half believes himself. “It’s - whatever happens tomorrow, it can’t - we’re safe here.”

Tim laughs bitterly. “Nothing’s fucking safe.”

Jon seems unable to decide between rubbing soothingly at his back and just holding on as tight as he can. Tim shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t be giving into this. But there's a reason he lost so much time when he should have been searching for the thing that killed his brother. The Institute was full of potential answers, but it was also full of bright, lovely distractions. He's buried in the arms of one of them.

Tim didn't used to think of that as weakness - but he didn't used to think there were worms that burrowed through your flesh, or creatures that took every true memory of your friend without you ever noticing, or monsters that played with skin, played with the fabric of who you were, because it was fun.

Tim doesn't know fucking anything, and maybe he never did, and now all that's left is to-

"What can I do, Tim?" Jon asks, and he sounds so honestly lost.

"Turn back time," Tim murmurs into his shirt. "Don't let go," he adds a moment later.

“I won’t, I won’t.” Jon clutches him impossibly closer. Tim’s world narrows down into warmth and pressure. “Tim, we don’t - we don’t have to do this. You don’t have to do this.”

The gentle vibration of his words is almost enough to distract Tim from the words themselves. He turns his head so he can speak un-muffled, and immediately misses the comfort of being closed in. “I do, Jon. I can’t…” Tim fumbles for the right words, wondering faintly if this is how Jon feels all the time, struggling to give voice to the unspeakable. “The worst thing in all of this, the worst thing would be if they hurt someone again while I’m just standing there."

Still not crying, not as long as his eyes are tight shut. He feels Jon hesitate, then push forward anyway. "Even if...Tim, even if you had moved, what could you have done?"

Tim squeezes hard at Jon's side and isn't sure if he means it as a warning or a plea.

"I'd never have met you," Jon says, so soft Tim isn't sure if he was meant to hear it.

"Was just thinking before,” Tim replies, because he’s fucked up enough that he might as well keep going, “I wish I'd met you somewhere normal."

Jon’s hands still, and for a moment the rise and fall of his chest does too. It’s the closest thing to absolution Tim’s ever offered. He’s glad he can’t see Jon’s face, can’t see whatever shock or gratitude is playing out there. At some point, he made himself into someone who no one expects to be kind. He wonders, vaguely, whether it counts as forgiveness, to want someone to spend what might be their last night on earth forgiven.

from: enemy of my enemy, aka jon and tim sit in various rooms and talk: the fic

thank you for asking!!! here we go:

It’s been months since he was this close to anyone. It might have even been Jon the last time, too; helping him walk down in the tunnels. How did they get from there to here? How-

do you ever just think about how fast things went wrong for the s1 crew...they were friends just a few months ago!! a few weeks in between no current supernatural experiences -> trying to survive supernatural experiences together by physically holding each other up -> complete alienation. some experiences just defy comprehension, emotionally speaking, even when you can see every step that led from there to here

i also like to make myself sad by thinking about the practical day to day aspects of everyone in the archives being alienated from everyone else. like...when were either of them last touched (non-violently)

so much has changed but they've circled back around to each other

“Tim?” Jon asks softly, pulling back to look him in the face, and it’s the loss of that warmth and pressure that makes Tim realise he’s started breathing in great, shuddering gasps. He screws his eyes shut and Jon reverses their positions, pulling Tim into his chest with unpracticed but fervent hands. His T-shirt is soft against Tim’s face; he hadn’t thought Jon would own anything so soft.

'person starts crying without noticing until someone points it out' is a trope i generally try to stay away from partly because i just can't imagine that ever happening to me and therefore it doesn't ping my realism senses, but i get one (1) because it is undeniably juicy

this fic is very zeroed in on tim's perspective in terms of small sensory experiences, for a few reasons - drive home emotions, portray dissociation, and because i like writing about how it actually feels to be in a romantic gesture, to make it more real than just like...an image of people holding each other

small detail that jives with bigger points - jon's shirt unexpectedly soft, jon's surprising ability to still provide him with gentleness and comfort

i think jon here has no idea what to do but has been given permission to touch so is living his best tactile life with this inexpert hugging and is hoping that does something

Tim’s throat is burning, but as long as he keeps his eyes screwed shut then he isn’t crying. He isn’t crying on Jonathan Sims the night before they both-

“It’s alright, Tim,” Jon says, searching for words of comfort he only half believes himself. “It’s - whatever happens tomorrow, it can’t - we’re safe here.”

Tim laughs bitterly. “Nothing’s fucking safe.”

tim spends a lot of this fic having his inner-monologue cut off to try and show as well as tell that he's struggling to stay present

that 'both-' hurts me, honestly. hurts more than it actually being spelled out, i think. write to upset yourself, maybe you will upset others in the process

half is a word i absolutely overuse in writing but cannot stop. no one ever does something all the way, they are half- believing, wondering, worrying, etc.

i'm never 100% sure if i'm accurately capturing the way that jon speaks in canon but i did always like and want to emulate the fact that he speaks kind of hesitantly, trips over his own words, etc

Jon seems unable to decide between rubbing soothingly at his back and just holding on as tight as he can. Tim shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t be giving into this. But there's a reason he lost so much time when he should have been searching for the thing that killed his brother. The Institute was full of potential answers, but it was also full of bright, lovely distractions. He's buried in the arms of one of them.

Tim didn't used to think of that as weakness - but he didn't used to think there were worms that burrowed through your flesh, or creatures that took every true memory of your friend without you ever noticing, or monsters that played with skin, played with the fabric of who you were, because it was fun.

again, jon does not know what to do so he is just trying. just trying to do any kind of soothing hand thing

i thought quite a lot about reconciling the seemingly happy-go-lucky tim that gets presented to us early on vs learning why he came to the institute in the first place. tim here is framing that as a failing because he's miserable and traumatised and guilt-ridden, but i think at least part of it was actual healing. he was taking time and enjoying the people around him and trying to make the best of things, until it all went wrong

related, the self-recrimination of tim hating himself for not having seen any of this coming, even though they were not predictable events...very human nature after you have been through something terrible. how dare i have not anticipated every trouble that ever befell me

'played with skin, played with the fabric of who you were' - a lot of this story was me just enjoying the themes of stranger-horror. i love the terror of knowing there are creatures who can change aspects of you that should be unchangeable, physically in skin and otherwise in terms of identity and memory. love applying that to jon and tim, who have been fundamentally changed against their will by trauma and their roles in a story neither of them wanted. skin as metaphor for identity, and learning that people can take away your skin is then utterly terrifying to someone who already feels like his identity is being forcibly eroded. and then that shared terror brings them back together, just a little

Tim doesn't know fucking anything, and maybe he never did, and now all that's left is to-

"What can I do, Tim?" Jon asks, and he sounds so honestly lost.

"Turn back time," Tim murmurs into his shirt. "Don't let go," he adds a moment later.

this fic...is so sad. why did i write this. why am i being attacked by my past self and their awful words on this day

explicit admission that tim wants/needs jon here...even a chapter ago he was like yeah i'm going to america with jon bc i am regrettably relying on him as my reality-anchor, nothing emotional here

“I won’t, I won’t.” Jon clutches him impossibly closer. Tim’s world narrows down into warmth and pressure. “Tim, we don’t - we don’t have to do this. You don’t have to do this.”

The gentle vibration of his words is almost enough to distract Tim from the words themselves. He turns his head so he can speak un-muffled, and immediately misses the comfort of being closed in. “I do, Jon. I can’t…” Tim fumbles for the right words, wondering faintly if this is how Jon feels all the time, struggling to give voice to the unspeakable. “The worst thing in all of this, the worst thing would be if they hurt someone again while I’m just standing there."  

Still not crying, not as long as his eyes are tight shut. He feels Jon hesitate, then push forward anyway. "Even if...Tim, even if you had moved, what could you have done?"

Tim squeezes hard at Jon's side and isn't sure if he means it as a warning or a plea.

warmth, pressure, vibration...continuing to be fascinated by the little tactile details of what it feels like to be close to someone

emotional logic is so powerful. tim moving most likely would have either made no difference to the outcome or worsened it (because both him and danny would have died) but of course for tim standing still while someone he loves was destroyed counts for everything about who he is. sometimes blame feels better than helplessness, which mirrors what happens with his friendship with jon - is it scarier if they are all helpless, or if this one guy is The Enemy

‘give voice to the unspeakable’ sometimes i like poetic descriptions of jon’s role as archivist

"I'd never have met you," Jon says, so soft Tim isn't sure if he was meant to hear it.

"Was just thinking before,” Tim replies, because he’s fucked up enough that he might as well keep going, “I wish I'd met you somewhere normal."

Jon’s hands still, and for a moment the rise and fall of his chest does too. It’s the closest thing to absolution Tim’s ever offered. He’s glad he can’t see Jon’s face, can’t see whatever shock or gratitude is playing out there. At some point, he made himself into someone who no one expects to be kind. He wonders, vaguely, whether it counts as forgiveness, to want someone to spend what might be their last night on earth forgiven.

:(

tim views talking with and connecting to people as fucking up. how much of that is even slightly shrouded in logic and how much is just - tim is depressed and deep in self-loathing, somewhere still at the core of him tim loves people and making connections, so of course doing the thing he wants to do is wrong

‘At some point, he made himself into someone who no one expects to be kind.’ tim has this thought once and then worries at it like a sore tooth because his default state is hopeless fury with himself, with everyone. i also think this demonstrates how new information/realisations often can’t help you out of a bad mental state on its own, because it’s all too easy to slot it into your existing thought patterns. pushing everyone away was making tim worse - he starts to feel like that was a mistake, but it just becomes more self-recrimination

forgiveness is one of those words that seems to encompass so many different concepts that i find it hard to know exactly what it’s meant by saying you forgive someone. specifying what’s meant by this little shard of maybe-forgiveness makes it mean more, at least to me

may i reiterate: :(

[bettsfic]

hi, i was reading your years in review and i noticed that you quit a job of many years to go your own way. i was wondering if you would mind talking about this decision/if you struggled with it? idk i've always told myself that i wouldn't let the idea of a "career" get in the way of what i want (e.g. writing) and that one day (shortly after 30?) i would just quit whatever job i had and go my own way, but as that deadline comes up i find it harder to imagine how i could just uproot myself...

yes, i very much did struggle with the decision to quit (what i thought was) my very stable and lucrative career in finance to get an MFA in creative writing. it’s a bit of a long story so i’m putting it under a cut.

warning for suicidality and sexual assault.

i used to believe i grew up poor, but it was the 90s so poverty looked very different. my dad didn’t work for a long time, and so we only had one income, and we lived in an apartment that was kind of a lowkey hoarder home. as a kid, all i knew was that i didn’t get to have toys, or my own space, and i wasn’t allowed to have friends over. the concept of an allowance was totally alien to me. but it also wasn’t like i ever went hungry. the food we had wasn’t particularly healthy but it was always there.

i didn’t really realize how much that instability affected me until much later, when i noticed other people hadn’t lived their entire lives aware of and obsessed with money. i used to compulsively count the change in my piggy bank and beg my mom to take it so she could pay her taxes (i didn’t know what taxes meant, i just assumed they were the reason we couldn’t afford nice things). 

my safe haven was always my grandparents’ house, which was clean and had semi-healthy food and the door was always open. my grandpa was a high school chemistry teacher. my grandma worked at a bank. growing up, i had no idea what she did at the bank, just that it sponsored all the fun things we did, like going to amusement parks and baseball games. my parents never took my sister and i on vacation, but every year, my grandma would drive us to visit our family in missouri, which, even though it only cost the gas to get there, seemed like a wild indulgence to me.

i started working at 16 so i could have my own money. by 17 i was working illegally full-time and getting paid under the table. then i bought my own car, and shortly after i turned 18 i got my own apartment. even though i could pay my bills, i was still terrified about money. i thought about it all the time. i checked my bank account multiple times a day. i was a cashier at a restaurant and i would often open my drawer and just stare at the money or count it when i was bored.

but i hated working at the restaurant, and one day i thought to myself, how can i keep the money part of this job but lose the food part? then i remembered my grandma’s career at the bank (from which by then she’d retired), and that afternoon i sat down and applied to be a teller at the very same bank. obviously the bank was very large and it wasn’t like my grandma was in management. she worked in ATM operations. nobody on my hiring committee knew who she was, and honestly i have no idea how i got the job.

i stayed a teller through college, working 25ish hours a week. it didn’t pay very well and i was still nervous about money, so i picked up a job altering bridal gowns on evenings and weekends, and also an admin job at my university. so i was working 60ish hours a week, plus going to school full-time and trying to keep up my 4.0. in retrospect, i can’t remember how necessary all this was. i know i was living in an apartment whose rent was higher than i could afford, and i lived with my boyfriend who was struggling to find a job. anyway, it was definitely the lowest time of my life, and i was so exhausted that every day i hoped something horrible would happen to me so i could be hospitalized and rest. 

then something horrible did happen. my dad died. and even though everyone in my life was telling me to please dear god take a break, i did not. 

i got promoted to business finance, which paid what seemed at the time to be an ungodly amount of money. i was still part-time and finishing up my undergrad degree. once i graduated, i got promoted to full-time. for the first couple years, i really did try to be a banker. i was good at my job only insofar as someone who is left-handed can write with their right hand if forced for long enough. it felt very much like i was in the wrong place, but by that point i had so much unchecked trauma that i had convinced myself the highest human ideal was misery and deprivation. i wish i was kidding. i was the definition of ascetic and martyred myself. i didn’t believe happiness existed. work was all that mattered to me.

then i bought a house. so at this point, i had student loans, a car loan, a mortgage, and credit card debt. after my dad’s death, my mom had to file for bankruptcy because of all the medical bills. she abandoned her house. by this point i was 23, single, in six figures of debt with no familial support net, but i was making decent money at the bank, so it wasn’t like i was drowning. in fact i was doing pretty well. the bank was a rock in my very turbulent life. i got a lot of vacation time that allowed me to travel a bit. i had insurance and a matching 401(k). it was really a decent job.

but the bank was also in many ways an abusive relationship. i don’t mean that metaphorically. i had bosses who manipulated me, insulted me, humiliated me in front of other people. i had one boss who went so far as to look at my checking account and ridicule my purchases. i didn’t have any idea what it meant to stand up for myself or say no. in fact i wasn’t allowed to say no. my job at the bank involved solving other people’s problems. i could never say “i can’t solve that problem.” i could only say “i’ll figure it out.”

i had convinced myself working at the bank was a stable career because it was boring and i hated it. but actually it wasn’t stable at all. after 2008, there were mass layoffs and restructures every year while the bank tried to recover from the recession. i worked for a sales team, and so my job was dependent entirely on whether or not the salespeople did their jobs well. if they didn’t make goal, they’d get fired. if they got fired, i’d get fired. 

i started trying to date again and was sexually assaulted. after that i really struggled at work because i was dissociating a lot and couldn’t focus. my team, despite my having worked there for years, instead of being concerned for me decided to start complaining about me to my boss. finally i had to tell a coworker what happened and that i wasn’t doing very well. my team started being a little nicer to me but ultimately they didn’t care about me, they cared about how effective i was at my job. my boss didn’t want to fire me, so instead i was pushed onto another team.

that move came with a raise. then that team was dismantled and i was pushed onto another team. that was a demotion, but i got to keep my raise from the previous move. by then, i was working from home, and even though i was more comfortable i was also very isolated and miserable. my “fulfillment through deprivation” attitude was destroying me. i wasn’t eating well or taking care of myself. i was isolated and lonely. i still didn’t believe happiness was real and i constantly thought about killing myself. 

but i had started writing fanfiction, and even though i didn’t think i was any good at it, i was beginning to see a way out. i was beginning to learn how to dream, and want things, and give myself the things i wanted. i just couldn’t imagine leaving the bank, or selling my house, or moving out of my hometown. all of that seemed impossible to me.

then i had to go to a business conference where my team had a retirement party for one of my coworkers. she’d done what i was doing for 45 years. by that point i was at the 9 year mark. i’d spent my entire adult life at the bank. and i realized: the bank benefited from my fear and passivity, and nothing in my life was going to change unless i was willing to make sacrifices. 

but i still wasn’t entirely convinced. and then came the day i had to physically hold onto my desk to keep me from killing myself. i didn’t end up trying it, because i had another realization: this was a life or death situation now. if i kept working at the bank, i knew i would die. i knew eventually i would get low enough to do it. i didn’t actually want to die; i wanted an escape and didn’t know what else to do. suddenly i was off the hook. my options were not “financial stability or imminent poverty” but “live or die.” 

those were the big epiphanies i had, but the process of actually leaving the bank was a slow one. i wrote a bit about it here. i got into an MFA program basically by telling myself repeatedly i would figure out the money stuff later. when it came time to quit the bank, my boss convinced me to stay on working part-time, with the assumption i would move back to full-time once i’d graduated. i agreed to it, because just trying to quit was enough to convince me i could, and that better things were ahead of me. for a year and a half, i stayed on working two days a week while doing my MFA, which involved both coursework and teaching, and it felt a bit like it did during undergrad, having too many jobs and no time to breathe or think or feel anything.

between my first and second year, i had a looooong overdue mental breakdown. there were a lot of causes, but one of them was spreading myself too thin. shortly after, i quit for good. by then it didn’t feel like a big deal at all, i was so far removed from the work and my team and so focused on my degree. one day i turned on my work laptop and the next day i didn’t. i shipped it back to HQ and it was over.

then i graduated from the MFA and suddenly had to face the consequences of this life i’d chosen. my school kept me on as an adjunct, but it felt like being a ghost. i no longer had the community of my cohort. i had no health insurance. i was given my teaching schedule and a contract to sign, that’s it. there was no guarantee i would be getting classes the following semester, and after a year, that was what happened. i remember sitting in my favorite coffee shop trying not to cry when i got the email that said the department had nothing for me to teach the following semester.

i really wasn’t the same after the breakdown. i went from “i can do anything i put my mind to no matter how hard it is or how much it hurts” to “i have to step carefully, and treat myself gently.” i hadn’t fully realized that yet, though, so i tried to get a Real Job. i got the first and only job i applied to, because i am bad at nearly everything but somehow i’m exceptional in interviews. it wasn’t a bank but it offered the same sort of benefits package. it was a full-time salaried position at a non-profit. if i had found it earlier, i think it would have been my dream job. it was the kind of work you throw yourself into because you care so much about doing good. 

i lasted a month. during the first week something happened that triggered me in a way i’m very rarely triggered. i realized i needed disability accommodations, but i needed to go to a doctor to get an assessment and i had to be on the team 60 days in order to get insurance. i thought i could white-knuckle it, and i could, sort of, but every minute i was at work, it felt like i was forced away from the thing i should have been doing. i was constantly trying to write a few paragraphs here and there on my phone when no one was looking. i had to find excuses to take breaks and go to my car and breathe. at one point i told a volunteer i was an english instructor, and she looked at me very confused, and i realized i’d said it in present tense, like it was part of who i was and not a job i did for a while. then finally, my breaking point was an after-hours function. when i left i saw a field full of fireflies and thought about how, if i’d just stayed home, i could have sat outside and enjoyed them all evening, not just a glance at them on the way to my car. i liked the job but it was making me miss all the things i’d learned to love about being alive.

i quit the next day. i’d sold my house by then (which was its own feat) and moved in with my grandma, which hadn’t been a possibility until my grandpa passed away the previous spring. i paid off my car. i figured out finally that i would probably never be able to work full-time again unless it was teaching, and that the downside to this life would be accepting fear and instability, only being able to look ahead one semester at a time. staying open to the opportunities that arise. being a little selfish. 

i wrote a bit more about the financial realities of the writing life here. i can’t tell you what you should do, because the path i took definitely isn’t the path for everyone, but i do believe we all owe it to ourselves to pursue our best and happiest lives, because we only get one, and there’s no reason not to live it the way you want to. 

[monochrome-in-madness]

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My Top 10 Favourite Horrors

Within this top 10 list, some will include the prequels, sequels and any other follow ups as 1 ranking number. Some may be considered thriller, sci-fi, suspence etc, however, I do regard these as horrors myself.

I have take many aspects into account, such as videography, actor quality, SFX makeup quality, soundtrack, directors, CGI etc.

Note : this is my personal opinion. You do not have to agree with it, though if you haven't seen these, I highly reccomend them.

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1. The Conjuring

(1 & 2)

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The Conjuring 1 :

The Perron family moves into a farmhouse where they experience paranormal phenomena. They consult demonologists, Ed and Lorraine Warren, to help them get rid of the evil entity haunting them.

The Conjuring Trailer :

The Conjuring 2 :

Peggy, a single mother of four children, seeks the help of occult investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren when she and her children witness strange, paranormal events in their house

The Conjuring 2 Trailer :

My Opinion :

The Conjuring was the start of an incredible series of horrors that beat any other horror to the ground. It is absolutely fantastic and I basically worship these films. James Wan is my favourite director and he never ceases to amaze me.

Paranormal horror is my favourite and as someone who actually believes in the paranormal and who has had paranormal experiences, I can confirm that The Conjuring is much more realistic than any other paranormal films, which just makes it extra spooky.

The actors, camera angles, music, sfx makeup and storyline is just - chefs kiss -. I've been waiting for the 3rd one for so long, but they keep extending the release date. (R. I. P)

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2. Annabelle

(all of them)

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Annabelle :

John and Mia Form are attacked by a Satan worshipping couple, who uses their doll as a conduit to make their life miserable. This unleashes a string of paranormal events in the Forms' residence.

Annabelle Trailer :

Annabelle Creation :

Samuel and Elle embed their daughter's spirit into a doll, only to realise it is a demon. Years later, they open their home to a nun and six orphan girls, one of whom finds the doll.

Annabelle Creation Trailer :

Annabelle Comes Home :

Judy and her babysitter are left alone in her house after her parents leave to investigate a case. However, an unexpected guest sets Annabelle free, unleashing demonic activity in the house.

Annabelle Comes Home Trailer :

My Opinion :

Another great film series that was birthed form The Conjuring. Definitely less realistic, with many more jumpscares and spooky characters, which is appreciated in the horror world. Many people find dolls far more creepy than ghosts, myself included, so that's another perfect aspect that adds to the suspense.

I prefer Annabelle 3 over the others, mainly because I found that one to be more scary overall, even though Daniela is an idiot and she makes me so frustrated 😂

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3. Saw

(all of them)

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For the totally unindoctrinated, the Saw movie franchise revolves around the Jigsaw Killer (a.k.a. John Kramer), who tortures victims he believes are complacent or guilty, in order to make them appreciate their time on Earth.

All Saw Trailers :

Obviously I'm not going to list every Saw movie, because there are 7 (Jigsaw aka number 8, does NOT count. It is a disgrace).

My Opinion :

A classic for horror and gore lovers of all kinds. Of course I need to list this as number 3. I simply adore these movies. I even have the DVD set, so I am definitely a long term fan haha.

The obstacles and creativity regarding Saw as a whole needed a lot of thought put into it, plus it has a happy little side note of "make sure you don't cause harm to others in life and don't take anything for granted" which some may have not even noticed while being overwhelmed by the amount of fake blood.

Yes, a lot of characters are annoying, but that just makes us enjoy seeing them tortured even more (shh it's not real). Some of the blood doesn't look very realistic, the sfx can lack attention, BUT... It's still great and I can overlook these few flaws to appreciate the movies to the max.

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4. Blair Witch

(2016)

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A young man and his friends venture into the Black Hills Forest in Maryland to uncover the mystery surrounding his missing sister. Many believe her disappearance 17 years earlier is connected to the legend of the Blair Witch.

At first the group is hopeful, especially when two locals act as guides through the dark and winding woods. As the night wears on, a visit from a menacing presence soon makes them realize that the legend is all too real, and more sinister than they could have ever imagined.

Blair Witch Trailer :

My Opinion :

I love the camerawork. Not because it's perfect, because it's the opposite. It's a documentary style and this makes it feel more realistic, as if you are within the film yourself. I enjoy how they skip to the action at just the right time after a mild buildup.

The visuals are great as well and there were definitely some parts where I was disgusted and claustrophobic, which is good to experience while enjoying these types of films.

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5. Under The Skin

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Disguising itself as a human female, an extraterrestrial drives around Scotland attempting to lure unsuspecting men into her van. Once there, she seduces and sends them into another dimension where they are nothing more than meat.

Under The Skin Trailer :

My Opinion :

I would classify this as horror, but many won't. Either way, this is an amazingly artistic film with beautiful imagery and silent awe. It definitely makes you feel the suspense in a calming manner and it has some really dark moments. Without reading the description, one might be confused as to what is going on, but how art is supposed to be interpretated is by the imagination of individuals.

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6. Veronica

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During a solar eclipse, young Verónica and her friends want to summon the spirit of Verónica's father using an Ouija board. However, during the session she loses consciousness and soon it becomes clear that evil demons have arrived.

Veronica Trailer :

My Opinion :

A Spanish masterpiece, to put it simply. It's hard to find proper horrors like this in English. I really enjoyed this one and I watched it subbed not dubbed, because I feel like voiceovers tend to ruin the art of the original film. The buildup is perfect and unlike many horrors, it barely shows you the face of the "monster". That leaves it to the imagination, which in general makes it far more scary.

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7. Underwater

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Disaster strikes more than six miles below the ocean surface when water crashes through the walls of a drilling station. Led by their captain, the survivors realize that their only hope is to walk across the sea floor to reach the main part of the facility. But they soon find themselves in a fight for their lives when they come under attack from mysterious and deadly creatures that no one has ever seen.

Underwater Trailer :

My Opinion :

This movie was released quite recently and I didn't know what to expect. I was definitely blown away by how good it was. Being trapped underwater gives most people a sense of anxiety. Add being trapped underwater and being hunted by creepy sea monsters and you've got yourself a good horror. Kristen Stewarts general anxious personality definitely suits this film well.

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8. Split

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Kevin, who is suffering from dissociative identity disorder and has 23 alter egos, kidnaps three teenagers. They must figure out his friendly personas before he unleashes his 24th personality.

Split Trailer :

https://youtu.be/84TouqfIsiI

My Opinion :

An incredible film with phenomenal acting on the part of James McAvoy. You can get lost within his character and almost feel as if you are the character itself. Suspense is built up slowly and the climax of the film is released rapidly. People I know who do not enjoy horror, love this film themselves, which is saying something. It's definitely one of the best modern films that draws you in from the start. 

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9. A Quiet Place

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A family struggles for survival in a world where most humans have been killed by blind but noise-sensitive creatures. They are forced to communicate in sign language to keep the creatures at bay.

A Quiet Place Trailer :

https://youtu.be/WR7cc5t7tv8

My Opinion :

As you can tell by now, I love anything alien related. This film has some of the most amazing looking aliens I've seen, I was honestly in awe by how great they looked. Another silent film, but in a different sense to the previous one. Instead of being the hunter, this family is being hunted and this adds more to the fear factor.

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10. Unfriended - Dark Web

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When a teen finds a laptop with a cache of hidden files, he and his friend discover that the previous owner has access to the dark web and is watching over them.

Unfriended - Dark Web Trailer :

https://youtu.be/XenTM_C9fxM

My Opinion :

A modern take on horror. Involving the actual dangers of the dark web and the use of technology and turning it into a horror was a magnificent idea. It definitely had me at the edge of my seat.

Due to another film type that is not often explored (thus being that most of the movie is equal to what it would be like to look at your computer and video chat), it makes it different and therefore more compelling than the usual videography styles.

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Thank you for reading, if you've made it this far! Feel free to share your top 10 in the comment section, I am definitely interested in your opinions and finding new movies to watch myself. Any questions are also welcome.

Until next time, take care and stay spooky!

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[whimperwoods]

29-Day Whump /Challenge - Day 20

Day 20: Phobia Exploited || Public Whump

Time to be mean to poor baby Az again! But wait? Is that light on the horizon? Maybe. Or maybe not. Previous installments from days 2, 7, and 18. Prompt list by @yuckwhump​ and found here.

Tag list: @inky-whump​

tw: dehumanization, tw: fantasy racism, tw: side shows, tw: dissociation, tw: nonsexual nudity, tw: caged, tw: chained, tw: insults

*****

The cart started moving well before the sun, hours after Az had cried himself to sleep but well before he wanted to be awake.

The wizard was grumbling, too, sitting at the front of the cart with her hood over her head while the fighter drove the horses. The archer was in good spirits. The other man was silent, but hadn’t let him up to relieve himself before the cart moved, not that he’d had anything to eat.

Az stayed in the tightest ball he could manage, cold and miserable, dreading whatever the day had in store. He still felt numb, like his body was either too big or too small for him and he was floating half outside it. He was aware that his body was shivering, but it felt distant, like a concern for someone else.

They stopped as the horizon was beginning to lighten, the sunrise not far away, and the fighter immediately started hauling cages and crates out of the cart, piling the captives in their boxes on the ground beside the cart, while the wizard waved her hands and started setting a tent up by magic, the canvas floating into place as the frame assembled itself.

The archer kicked at his side before she picked up his cage, her foot connecting, only half stopped by the bars, and jolting him partially out of his numbness. He wriggled toward the center of the cage as she and the half-elf picked it up and started carrying him into the tent, the new ache in his side bringing him back to himself.

He wasn’t even sure it would bruise. It was almost unfair, becoming so aware of the filth coating his skin, the chafing around his ankles, the helplessness of his naked body, and not even having a bruise to show for that awareness.

The wizard stepped inside, her hood still up, but her face a little less grumpy than she’d looked when she peered into the cart to tell him she’d silence him if he cried and then he wouldn’t get any breakfast. She looked around the space and then ordered the other two to set his cage along one side of the tent, rattling off a list of the other cages and crates and pointing to where she wanted them.

Inside the tent, he couldn’t see the sunrise, though every time the tent flap opened it was brighter outside. Inside, magical lights floated where they were needed as the wizard made the space what she wanted it to be.

It wasn’t a large tent, and it filled quickly, Az feeling more and more trapped as other cages full of the creatures he’d shared the cart with filled the tent, with a narrow walkway between them.

“We’ll feed ‘em all once we’ve got a decent crowd,” she said, “Make a show of it. That way we can charge extra. Dinner time, too. Then the ones with less feel like they’re getting a deal paying a silver less for a view between meals. No reason not to come in, if they’re getting a deal.”

The archer snorted. “If you think they’re that dumb out here, sure.”

“They’re that dumb everywhere. Go help Goswin round up some customers. You know Paeris is useless for that sort of thing. Dunno why you stick with him, cousin or no.”

“Yeah, fine.”

The archer left the tent.

Az didn’t like the archer being in the tent. He didn’t like being alone with the wizard. He didn’t like any of this.

*****

The first of the townsfolk came into the tent in a huge group, laughing and chattering, shrieking as they saw the first of the caged monsters, pointing and holding each other’s hands and listening to the fighter explain in that warm, booming voice what they were passing and how it had been caught.

As the crowd approached his cage, Az tried to shrink back away from them, but all of a sudden, the archer was crouched behind his cage, clicking her tongue at him.

“Tsk tsk. We knew you’d try that. Get up where they can see you!”

She jabbed an arrow through the bars, and he wasn’t fast enough to avoid it entirely. He wriggled to the front of the cage, the arrowhead digging into his back and leaving a shallow cut.

“Now this one,” the fighter boomed, “This one might not look like much, but he’s so dangerous we have to keep him muzzled. One bite from a goblin and you’re as good as dead. But, of course, we’d never let any of you get the plague.”

The crowd responded immediately, shrinking away from him with gasps that he would have thought were melodramatic if they didn’t seem to mean them.

“Some folks says goblins are almost human, building cities down in those caves and such, but anyone’s ever fought ‘em can tell you different. They run in packs, like dogs, and just when you think you’ve got one handled, another one’s behind you with something sharp, ready to rip your guts out. One goblin alone, though...” he laughed again, “Well, let’s just say even if he did get out, he’s nothing to worry about with us here.”

Az hated the eyes on him. He hated the glares and the gawking, the ones who leaned forward for a better look and the ones who shrunk away and glanced back in terrified little glimpses.

He tried to shrink backward again, only to find the archer’s arrow still behind him.

“Now, now, don’t make me pin you to the ground in there.”

He shivered, no doubt left in him that any of these people would be true to their word when they said such things.

After the first rush of people, a guided group huddled together, the rest of the day was a steady trickle, and people stayed longer at each cage, peering in.

A little boy shouted insults at him, telling him the plague was his fault, and he wondered how quickly word got around in a town like this. He wondered how many people knew he was here. He wondered how many people wanted a look.

His stomach grumbled, but he knew if there hadn’t been breakfast for him already, there wouldn’t be. Just like there hadn’t been dinner last night. His stomach ached and gurgled, and every instinct in his body said to stay curled around it any time the archer stopped prodding him to be more visible.

By midafternoon, the trickle was slow and the group had gotten lazy with the Wizard off at the tavern eating lunch. He heard the fighter send in a group of little boys at a discount ‘for kids’ and squirmed back into the back of his cage, hoping the archer would stay at the front where she’d been chatting with him.

The boys were loud, shouting and clanging into things and shoving each other. Maybe they’d be too distracted to notice him here. Maybe they’d miss him and move on.

They didn’t, immediately gathering at the front of his cage and peering intently into it.

“Whoa, it’s naked!”

“Of course it is, stupid, it’s a monster.”

“Don’t look like a monster.”

“Of course it does! Look at its ears! It’s like an ugly old bat.”

Az tried to hide his face in his arms.

“I wanna see better,” one of the kids declared. “Hey, goblin, I wanna see you!”

He didn’t move, hoping they’d believe he couldn’t understand.

He could hear one of them coming closer, squeezing around the side of his cage toward where he huddled at the back.

“Hey, Sig, don’t! Berto’s mom says goblins are real dangerous! She says the guy in here said they have plague.”

“That’s a buncha hooey. They wouldn’t bring it here if it had plague. I just wanna see.”

Suddenly, he was being prodded with the arrow all over again, and he glanced up, surprised, only to find himself making eye contact with a small boy with russet hair and green eyes. The eyes lit up in a way that reminded him of the archer, and he wriggled back toward the center of the cage, away from the boy.

“Hey!” the boy shouted to his friends, “They got his mouth all covered. I bet he’s got wicked teeth behind there.”

Something thudded into the back of his head, and another kid shouted, “Hey, look over here! I wanna see!”

One of the boys in the group hissed, “Don’t!” but the others picked up dirt clods and threw them at him again, even though he was facing them.

“Think he’s got balls?” one of them asked, suddenly daring. “I bet I could hit him in the balls.”

The one behind Az laughed, jabbing at him again with the arrow. “Hey, yeah. Show us your balls.”

Az’s face burned, but the cage was just big enough that the kids’ short arms probably couldn’t reach him if he stayed right in the middle. He just had to stay right in the middle.

He curled up tight again, tucking himself into a ball. The kid with the arrow kept prodding at him, never quite managing a good stab, but a couple of times getting enough purchase to scratch him through his coating of filth. The boys in the aisle continued pelting him with mud. He closed his eyes.

Even when they got bored and stomped off to rattle other cages, he stayed tucked that way.

As they left, he heard them complain that the goblin was no fun and wouldn’t even let them hit it in the balls with a rock. The archer laughed, and his blood ran cold.

He only knew it was getting toward dusk when he heard the fighter’s loud, booming voice outside, telling the townsfolk that the show was only going to be open a few more minutes before they had to get ready for ‘the big show,’ whatever that meant.

The last trickle of customers was hurried, and they seemed to look at everything but him, rushing past his cage. He wanted to feel relieved, but after everything else, it just seemed like another ill omen.

The wizard shouted about the big show as the fighter and archer started moving the other cages and crates out of the tent, carrying them out the back and presumably back to the cart. Az couldn’t hear her words over the grunts and chatter of the two moving the cages, or the noises of the creatures inside, hungry for their dinner even having eaten twice since he was last fed.

It wasn’t until his cage was the absolute last that he was certain of it - he was the show.

As people filed in to stand on the opposite side of the tent, he felt his whole body growing cold with fear. What was this? What could they possibly be planning to do to him that they hadn’t already?

The fighter’s voice rang out, filling the tent. “Now, some of you questioned whether we really caught these beasts. Some of you doubted we could contain them. Some of you even told your friends to carry knives on them in case we had a breakout.”

There was a soft muttering from the crowd, and the fighter laughed. “Now, don’t worry, we’re not angry. We understand! It sounds wild! But that’s why we’ve prepared one last little show for you. We liked this little town of yours, and you seem like good folks, so we thought we’d put those rumors to rest in case we ever come through here again.”

A bright light suddenly appeared directly on top of Az’s head, and he buried his face in his arms to get away from it.

“Behold!” the wizard shouted from behind him, “A real, living goblin!”

The crowd responded immediately, making shocked noises like they hadn’t already seen him earlier in the day.

“Now my friend Dania here is going to open his cage, and you’re going to see exactly why you’re so safe with us in town. The first time we caught him, he had his hands and legs free, and his mouth uncovered and ready to bite.”

That wasn’t true, and the wizard knew it. Az wasn’t sure he had the courage to risk being frozen like that again, trapped in his own body and not only in his chains. He whined in the back of his throat.

The wizard was still talking. “But of course, we’d never put our beloved patrons in danger like that! For tonight’s - entertainment, we’ll be showing you what would happen if his cage door came open - and we think you’ll find you’re quite safe on your side of the tent.”

The archer stepped forward, waving out at the crowd, and the wizard’s voice spoke directly into his head, making him squeak in surprise. “Make this look good or you’ll be riding into the next town with only half your skin. Make it look really good and I’ll let Dania take off the muzzle so you can eat again.”

He couldn’t. He couldn’t. Could he? But then the cage door was open and there was a crackle of sparks behind him, where the audience couldn’t see, and he crawled forward away from the noise as fast as he could, stumbling to his feet outside the cage and shuffling as fast as his shackles would let him toward the open tent flap beside the audience.

Women shrieked and men yelped, but he’d only made it a few steps before an arrow thudded into the ground just a hair’s breadth in front of his toes and he had to backpedal, ducking to the side and trying to weave to be harder to hit, even as his shackles kept him at constant risk of tripping. A few more arrows missed him narrowly, some coming closer than others.

The fighter moved toward him, taking one big, slow, menacing step toward him at a time so that Az’s heart started leaping uncomfortably in his chest and he had to duck backward defensively again, rerouting for a second time and trying to circle toward the faint sunset light of the exit instead of weaving straight there.

Then the magic touched him. Rosie’s magic. He’d know that particular arcane touch anywhere, now, and probably to the end of his days. He cried out, expecting to be frozen, but instead he found himself - floating?

He yelled out again in panic, trying to get back to the ground and finding that his desperate scrabbling did nothing but send him spinning, flailing as he moved through the air outside of all control.

“Dania!” Rosie shouted.

“Got it!”

Something hit him hard in the side, driving him through the air and toward the audience, and he’d barely had time to register that it had been blunt before a net sprung out of the arrow and wrapped around him.

A moment later, he was slammed suddenly to the ground, Rosie’s magic on him the whole time, thrusting him into the dirt harder than a mere fall would have and driving the breath out of him.

By the time he’d regained enough air to cry out, Goswin was looming over him, a long staff in his huge hand, and it was all Az could do to curl in on himself and pull his chained arms over his head before the staff was thudding heavily into him, hard crushing blows that he could only pray would stop before his ribs cracked.

He couldn’t beg them to stop with the muzzle over his mouth, but he whimpered through it anyway, trying to get enough sound through to the man that he’d know that Az had given up.

Of course he’d given up.

They’d known he would.

They’d known he didn’t have a chance.

His eyes filled with hot, stinging tears, and Goswin kicked him so hard he rolled halfway over and had to curl himself around the other way, his face turned from the crowd and the sunset, back to his cage and Dania’s perch on top of it, that cruel grin back again. Rosie was on a box, looking at the crowd like he wasn’t even here, but Dania’s eyes were fixed on him and he shivered at the sight of them.

He whined through the muzzle again, curling more tightly around himself inside the net, but the only response he got was another hammering blow to his ribs.

He continued to whine and whimper, making every noise he could get through the muzzle in the hopes that something, anything would make them stop, would take away the thousand eyes staring at him, peeling through the grime to burn into his skin.

He could still feel the magic on him, not dropped, just waiting, and Rosie stepped ever so slightly forward on her box, clearing her throat. Fear rippled through him again, cold and violent.

Before she could speak, a loud voice sounded from the entrance to the tent, behind him. It was twice as loud as Goswin was at his loudest, shocking the whole tent into silence.

“Enough.”

He didn’t even realize it was Paeris, the half-elf, until the voice continued, slightly more quietly, “I think you’ve proven your point. Put him back in the cage. There’s rumors at the temple that there’s paying work in the next town for folks like us.”

Az shivered again. He’d never heard Paeris like this. He’d never even imagined it was possible. And from the truly murderous looks on both Dania and Rosie’s faces, he didn’t think they had, either. He shrunk down into the ground, wishing it would rise up and swallow him before their ruined show came out of his own hide.

The magic on him abruptly cut off, and then the edges of the net were lifting. He turned his face, panicked, to see Goswin lifting him into the air, his face as impassive as the first time he’d bound Az and carried him dangling alongside his leg.

Az shivered, waiting for the man’s hand to drop him abruptly back to the ground and drag him, but instead everything seemed to snap back to business, Rosie hopping down off her box to wrap up the show as Goswin tossed him, net and all, back into his cage and Dania swung the door shut with a clang.

“You’d better cooperate later when I get my net back,” she growled at him as she locked it, “Or in the next town those arrows won’t miss. You getting shot is still a pretty good show, as far as I’m concerned.”

Az wriggled into the middle of his cage, pulled in on himself, and waited for the fallout, only half listening to the sounds of the audience, only certain that it mattered whether they were still talking, not what they were saying.

[echoise]

first of all: i promise you this hurt me at least as much as it will hurt you. (but i promise it ends soft!!)

Bad Things Happen Bingo #8: Taunting

"help me,” you whisper, and he does. (steelstep, m!sidestep (it’s Keith but the only namedrop is... you’ll see) trigger warnings galore past abuse, hardcore panic attack, flashbacks, intense dissociation, short identity confusion, grounding techniques and emotional fallout to go with it all. also spoilers.) 3,415 words

You dream.

Oh, you dumb little doll.

You dream of needles in your skin, of the beeping of machines, of rough hands pinching and prodding. Of intrusions of any and every kind while you laid strapped down, restraints at your arms and your ankles and your midriff. This one is quite resilient, isn’t it? Too hazy to struggle, to protest, to scream for help, but not lucid enough to block it out, to retreat to what ruins remain of the safe space at the very back at your mind. The jagged shards of your psyche, torn apart by a little girl’s hands and relentless blue eyes.

Did you really think you could be like them?

You dream of whispers, of barked orders, of venom and hatred you never could understand before. Of dozens of eyes staring at you, multiplying into millions, boring into your skin, little pinpricks of light stabbing you along the orange etched into your skin. Man, I hate how human they make them look. Naked, bared, exposed, stripped of name and identity, of mind and heart. A blank slate, an empty vessel, screaming under your skin but keeping your form carefully blank because that was the only choice you had.

Look at them. Would they be in this situation without you? Miserable and dead?

You dream of news reports, of videos playing on loop till the words and pictures melted together into lights and white noise. Of headlines, blurbs, entire articles scrolling before your eyes so slowly you had no choice but to read them. They should terminate it, put it out of its misery. Pictures, recordings, every little piece of evidence of the fallout scrounged up and presented to you as a grand feast, force-fed to you until you no longer cried choking on the rot and filth.

You couldn’t even defeat one little girl. What use do we have for a broken tool?

You wake up screaming.

Chen is awake and upright before you can wrestle out of your blankets, heart hammering, breath catching, sweaty skin sticking to sheets. Black hair over your eyes, tangling with your eyelashes, blinding what little vision you have in the darkness of the bedroom. Chen reaches for your arm but you bat him away, not stopping until your feet are safely on the ground and you can bury your face in your hands, digging the heels of your palms into your eyes so hard it hurts, so hard the muted fireworks begin firing in the blackness.

You feel the mattress shift as Chen scoots closer to you, a delicate civilian hand brushing your shoulder. You flinch and he withdraws, but you can feel him hover, feel the anxious buzzing of his mind against yours: worry and fear and adrenaline at the violent awakening, and for you, what’s wrong, are you alright, do you need anything, what do you need-- 

You can’t take it.

He speaks your name, a low rumble from his chest that at any other time might calm you, but now it’s the same as the static of the TVs you were forced to watch, the same as the slow scrolling of text, burning black on white searing headlines into your retinas. Whispered taunts, chisels wedging neatly in the cracks of you, exposing every little weakness and mistake, look what you did, it’s all your fault, did you really think you were helping anyone?

You stand up so fast you nearly topple over, headlines in your eyes changing into the slow blinking of stars before your blood catches up and clears your vision. The mattress creaks and Chen’s mind surges and you just can’t take it.

You never helped anyone. You only made it worse.

You snatch your clothes and are out the bedroom door before he has a chance to fully realize what you’re doing. Maybe it’s unfair: he can’t follow you, not as fast as he’d like to, with his legs resting on the chair beside the bed. Where you placed them the night before. Could he reach them? Have they toppled over, like last time? You didn’t look. You don’t care. You need to get out. It’s better if he doesn’t stop you.

He is faster than you expect, though. Maybe you’ve just never seen him put the legs on in a hurry. Maybe your own movements are still sluggish from the dream and the memory of drugs and restraints, muscles straining to discern the past from the present. Maybe it’s the damned trembling of your hands, so intense you drop the shoe you’re trying to put on. Maybe it’s all three at the same time. Nevertheless you find yourself being pulled into a hug when you stand back up, the weight of his arms around you and the warmth of his chest at your back. You flinch, but don’t recoil, don’t fight back, and let the hand reaching for the doorknob fall.

“Talk to me,“ he pleads. 

There’s a whine from around your knees and another warmth presses against your legs, Spoon’s familiar mind somewhere at the edges of your own frayed consciousness. Dog’s mind. A soft mind. Worried. Anxious. Simple. Animal.

Mangy curs. Did you see its eyes? Creeps me out, man.

You choke back a sob and bury your face in your hands again, feeling your mind clamp down on itself, unable to stop it. Unable to do anything, a stranger in your own body, hammering at the door to be let back in but getting no response. Staring at yourself in a broken mirror, a distorted whistling radiating in anger, more jagged edges and impossible angles: you’re a shadow of yourself, crudely painted over, and the paint is flaking off. And there you are underneath: you, not you, a forgotten you, and it’s all the same and yet completely different.

You don’t know how you end up on the couch. You don’t know how long you sit there, wrapped in a blanket and Spoon pressed up against you. You don't know if the hand holding yours has been there the whole time. You're not here; you're burrowed deep inside your mind and you're outside your body, you're numb and you're aching all over. Your hands are static and your heart drums a steady rhythm that means nothing. You’re-- you’re not you.

You're a unit number, without a name, without an identity. Mind and heart stilled to keep yourself safe, to be what you need to be: a blank canvas for them to paint on.

There’s a hand in yours and a voice at your ear, but you have no context for either. You have no context for anything. You are-- Who are you?

State your identification code.

You breathe out numbers. A familiar string, chiseled into your very spine, hiding deep in the marrow to emerge in moments like this. The one thing you can always be sure of, your nature and purpose condensed into ten characters dictating your life.

534-845-966E.

There’s a brief silence, and then the man sitting beside you gently turns your face towards him. He calls out a name that sounds wrong. He tells it’s yours. That you have a name. You’re not a string of numbers. You have a name.

“I know,“ you hear yourself say, voice hoarse, heavy with tears you don’t remember crying and panic you don’t remember feeling. You have a name. You chose a name. Your first act of freedom, first act of rebellion, first choice. First thing not given to you, decided for you, first step on a long road that led you right here. You are--

Well done, pup.

You grasp at the hand on your cheek, trying to dig your nails into the skin, finding it impossible. Hard. Cool. Artificial. You remember. Broken, like yours. You’re not the only one here with fucked up hands. Your fucked up hands. Not a tool’s, broken tools are discarded, and you’re still here.

Or are you?

“I don’t feel real,” you choke out. There are tears on your cheeks again and you squeeze your eyes shut, willing the pain behind them to go away. It doesn’t, there’s still chattering in your mind, your shields are cracked and they’re bleeding in and you’re bleeding out, people all around you, up, down, left, right, everywhere and they’re all screaming in your head. “I don’t--“ You breathe sharply, and when Chen calls your name again, you recognise it. You open your eyes and meet his.

“Help me,“ you whisper.

He does.

He dries your tears and holds your hands as he tells you how to breathe. In deep. Hold. One, two, three, four. Long breath out. Again. Count to four. Then count to ten. Count your breaths, count your fingers. Count his fingers. Four, ten, twenty, back down to zero again. He squeezes your hands when your sobbing quiets to shaky gasps, then soft breaths, an achor that you cling to like your life depends on it. Your sanity just might.

He traces your scars, and his. Remembers them with you, to prove that you’re real. That you exist. Runs his fingers along your collarbone, points out the bump where it fractured when you miscalculated a jump and disappeared before anyone could drag you to a hospital. He lifts his own shirt and reveals the scar on his side, the emergency cauterization you did for him in-- where was it? Somewhere outside the city. Too far to wait. You roll up your sleeve to look past the orange lines, instead focusing on the parallel whites, left by the Catastrofiend. Lines, bumps, ridges and dips on both your skins. Memories. You feel like you can breathe again.

He takes your hands and puts them on Spoon, has you feel his fur, keeps a reassuring hand on your arm when the dog spasms and looks at you with wide eyes, startled out of whatever dream it was having. Smiles when you laugh at Spoit on getting tangled in its own spindly legs jumping up and into your lap, stumbling against your chest in its hurry to lick your face. Slobbery tongue all over you, warm and affectionate, and your heart that had sunk to your toes gradually makes its way back up to its rightful place in your chest. 

The string of numbers retreats back into your spinal cord and settles there.

You don’t even notice Chen has gotten up before he returns, shooing the dog off you long enough to hand you a glass of water. Half full, and even your trembling hand can’t possibly spill it.

“Thank you,“ you croak, free hand holding onto Spoon and his warmth, the simplicity of his mind giving you respite from the void that is your own. Simplicity is what you need now. The echoes in your ears have quieted.

“I put the coffee on,“ he says, reaching down to scratch behind the dog’s ears. You catch a glimpse of the world outside between the blinds: the pale blue of approaching sunrise. You don’t know what time your episode began, but you know it was dark then. A wave of guilt, followed by shame, washes over you. You should be better. You shouldn’t be weak like this. You--

Chen speaks again and you wrestle your tangled mind out of itself, force it to stack back into the fragile tower-like structure you’ve managed to rebuild. “Can you stand?“

You gulp down the water and pull yourself up. You tremble, but don’t fall, and you decline the hand Chen tries to steady you with. He gives you a long look, assessing you, and a part of you wants to challenge him on that, but the tired part of you is much stronger. Finally, he takes the glass from you and nods towards the bathroom. “Wash your face, you’ll feel better.“

Your legs wobble less than you feared as you head that way. You hear Chen flick his tongue and Spoon trots after you, the patter of his paws a welcome sound, the soft brush against your knee keeping you grounded. The bathroom tiles are cold under your bare feet and the sink under your hands as you lean on it, calming the endless static in your fingers. 

You don’t look at the mirror, face carefully angled down the entire time, afraid of what you might see. A shadow, a Re-Gene, or just yourself, as miserable and pathetic as you see yourself. You don’t need a reminder of that.

By the time you get to the kitchen, Chen has set two mugs on the table, each steaming. You sink into a chair and Spoon curls up by your ankles, trapping your feet under him. A faint smile pulls at the corners of your mouth and you wiggle your toes, making him bark up at you, tail madly wagging. You chuckle and when you look up, you find Chen eyeing you fondly over his mug. You’re quick to avert your eyes and pull your own closer, inhaling deep, welcoming the familiar scent to your system. It courses through you, nostrils to lungs and from your lungs to your limbs, arms, legs, fingers, toes. Exhaling remnants of your panic and you feel just a little bit better, letting your eyes close, shoulders relax, head drop.

Shit, you’re tired.

“I’m sorry,“ you mumble after a while, laying your elbows on the table to brace them as you lift the mug to your lips. There’s no spillage and you pretend it’s not only because Chen has developed the ability to somehow tell exactly how full a cup you can handle at any given time.

“It’s fine,“ He says, quickly, like he was expecting that. He probably was.

“It’s really not,“ and reluctantly meet his eyes. “Did I hurt you?“ You’re not sure. You can’t tell. You probably did, but he hides it well. Either way, the ouroboros of guilt in your stomach slithers, curls up tighter, digs its venomous fangs deeper into its own tail.

“No more than you have before.“ It’s a jest, a callback: said with not quite a smile, but his features are soft. You respond in kind with what’s not quite a chuckle, just a soft exhale through your nose. “Again, it’s fine.“

You set the mug down and brush your thumb over the top of the handle, trying to hide the slowly heating shame and guilt working their way up through your throat. “I think... I woke half the building.“ You don’t just think, you know: you felt them. Your mind, unguarded, crashed into theirs and you weren’t the only one who woke up screaming and crying. Invaded them and tapped into the darkest part of them, like a little girl with blue eyes did once before.

“You didn’t hurt anyone,“ Chen says, quickly again, too quickly. Eager to reassure you but it’s all empty words, he knows even less than you do - he knows nothing, and you know for a fact. You could know even more, if you reached out, if you had the presence of mind to. But that might just do more damage right now, so you keep a tight rein on your thoughts. As tight as you can, unraveling as they are.

But you have to make a point, because that’s what you would do, you remember, so to make that point, you raise an eyebrow, aiming for some semblance of sharpness in your words. “Really? Did you go knocking at every door while I was in the bathroom?“

“Don’t do this.“ He’s set his own mug down now, expression solemn. You allow him to take one of your hands as he reaches over the table, eyes on his. Gunmetal grey against deep blue. “Focus on yourself for now.“

He’s right, and you hate it. You lower your eyes and untangle your hand to sip at the coffee again, not trusting yourself to hold the mug with only one. You can feel Chen keep looking at you and his mind is calm, a summer pond, a midday shade, morning frost. Musing. A veil between your minds held up mostly by him, because your shields are still fractured, brittle, a fourth floor window breaking against your arms. Welcome home.

His voice drags you back from the edge and you blink. “What?”

“Do you want to talk about it?“

Your hands grip the mug tighter, you see your knuckles go white and the tremors intensify, but feel nothing. You’re drifting outside your body again. Remember: we own you. “I--“

“You don’t have to,” Chen says, reaching out with both hands this time, prying yours off the mug and holding them with gentleness you’re not sure you’ll ever get used to. Cool hands. Hard hands. Artificial. Four fucked up hands between you and you count the fingers, twenty of them, then back down to one. Breathe in. Hold. One, two, three, four.

The air you exhale flutters and you pull one hand back to rub at your eyes, but allow him to keep a hold of the other. “I don’t know if I can,“ you admit, and your voice breaks. You can’t remember, another pair of gunmetal grey eyes, easy smiles, half-finished crosswords and cups of coffee. You can’t. You won’t. Breathe in. Hold. One, two, three, four.

“That’s fine,“ he says, his voice coming from somewhere far away, and through the static you feel a squeeze. His thumb brushes over your knuckles and when you regain enough of yourself to look at him, you find him looking back. He smiles softly, but you're too tired to return it. “More coffee?“

“I think,” you turn his hand over in yours and slip your fingers between his. Easy as lying. As lying used to be. Before you stopped. Before he stopped you. “I want to sleep.“ You don’t know if you can, after all that, after the caffeine, in the daylight, but your limbs are weighing you down.

“Alright.“ He squeezes your hand once more and stands up, grabbing your mug along with his to put away. Your feet have gone numb and you nudge them slowly, awkwardly, until Spoon gets up and lets you go. He circles your chair and barks up at you, and you reach out to scratch the top of his head before leaning on the table and standing up. You keep leaning and shake your legs, willing them to wake up faster. Spoon cocks his head at you, wondering what you’re up to, but his attention is quickly stolen by the rattling of food in his bowl. He he makes a beeline for it, and you smile at the joy he can get from such a small thing. Simple mind. But maybe simplicity isn’t bad.

You don’t realize you’ve zoned out watching his wagging tail before Chen’s hand at your elbow literally makes you jump. “Shit!“ You recoil, then rub at your eyes again. Your mind is starting to fall apart again, but in a different way than before. The blocks on the tower coming apart and floating in every which direction, rather than collapsing under unforgiving gravity. “Sorry.“

“Come on.” You let him take your arm and lead you back to the bedroom, now painted in soft blues where the morning sun shines behind the curtains. He helps you change, out of the clothes you haphazardly threw on so many hours ago, and you help him take off the legs again. You wonder if he doesn’t have anywhere to be later, but you don’t want to ask. You don’t want him to leave. 

You can’t be alone right now.

He pulls you close to him and you curl up, burying your face in his chest. His breath is steady and you focus on that, match yours to his, pull him closer by his shirt and inhale deep. Safe. Safety. A real bed, in an actual apartment, loved by another human. Not a slave in a dampened facility somewhere in the vastness of the silver state.

Did you really think you could be like them?

“They called us dogs,” you whisper, eyes closed. Mutts. Mongrels. So many other things. Chen tenses momentarily and then brushes at your unkempt hair, leans down to kiss the top of your head.

“Try to sleep,“ he murmurs, and you do. 

And you sleep soundly, because you’re not a dog, not a doll, not an identification number: you’re a person, a someone, maybe not exactly human but enough for this little family.

You’re enough.

[eventhorion]

this is from a comment section on yt. Am i the asshole

Event Hʘriךּon: when will we realize that otherkin and transgeners are basically the same... xXComplexXx : transgenders* and, that is not even remotely true Event Hʘriךּon: @xXComplexXx where are the differences. Both think they are something they are not, think they are born in the wrong body, and think that feelings make reality. xXComplexXx: @Event Hʘriךּon so what you're saying is, you don't understand the difference between species and gender? Event Hʘriךּon: xXComplexXx oh i do. but i also understand that the concept of gender has been made up. Like, the difference between gender and sex. there is no difference. But the real problem is not me using a similitude, but the lack of ability in certain people to differentiate between fact and fantasy. Now, im quite happy for any sex to wear and act however they want, heck, i even fall in that category. My issue is with people that believe they are one gender they are not. Its alright if you are into playing a child when you are with your partner in a roleplay scenario, another thing is being convinced you are actually 9 year old. Im not conflating all of these things btw, species, race, age, sex. Im just trying to show how you wouldnt accept it if someone took one fact about their person and warped it. Im white, you wouldnt like it if went around saying im black when im not. Now, what if i adore the jewelery they make? the dresses they wear? the songs they sing? (im thinking of a certain part of africa in this case, just for this example) Im free to buy a beautiful dress, go to sing with my choir, buy the jewelry and boost that part of the economy. That is just human culture being shared and spread. But the second i go around and say i identify as black, and even go and actively change my skin color (like a reverse michael jackson, and it already happened in some cases too), not only everyone would see that as disrespectful, but i would be actively be ignoring the fact that im as white as a sheet. And try to put any other part of me in the place of the word "black". and youll see why im concerned. We are in the era of ignoring the facts, and this is one of them. I will end by saying, im actually a transhumanist, if you can believe it. I believe in the power of humans to become whatever they like. But just like natural evolution, you cant outgrow your anchestry. We can evolve ourselves (genetically or by body modification) in something new, but we cant stop being the sons and daughters of our anchestors. We are still monkeys, we are still mammals, we are still amniotes, we are still eukariotes. We can evolve in more branches, not jump between them. A woman can evolve a new way to be woman, that looks like a man, but she cant become a man. That wont stop her being a person either, it just a delusion, and we shouldnt be shaming delusions either. Just not encouraging them, because its a slippery slope, and we already know there is a pit at the end of it. xXComplexXx: @Event Hʘriךּon While it is true that sex is unchangeable, the modern concept of gender as a whole exists as a means to be comfortable in your own skin. there have been many scientific studies showing that being transgender is, in fact, a real thing. And the ones that "prove" it isn't have been debunked. If someone was born as a women but wishes to be acknowledged as as a man or vice versa, would being a decent human and treat them as they ask be harming anyone? No, it wouldn't. So why should you go out of your way to make others feel worthless? Event Hʘriךּon: @xXComplexXxThe sense of "worthless" is not coming from me but from themselves. They would be worth exactly 1 like everyone else to me. If being treated like everyone else is an offense to them, that is a problem, their problem to be exact. If the fact that they are delusional changes how they are treated by society that is because we need to have an honest discussion about mental health in this society, not that we should accept their belief as true.. This gender thing is nonsense. Yes, it exists just like people actually think they are a wolf trapped in a human body. They are 100% convinced of this, so the fact that they believe it is real. Doesnt mean they are tho. And its not harmless. When you depart from reality its never harmless. It seeps in what you do and what you believe, and the second you allow one thing to be departed from reality, there is no stopping it, without special pleading. Event Hʘriךּon: @xXComplexXx Also i have nothing against a man wearing a 'woman's' dress, in fact i find it hella rad. My problem lies with what people believe. I wear mans clothes on the daily, i speak more closely to a masculine type, and i otherwise act more like a man than a woman, apart from the little things that make me me. No quantity of act will change what i am, only i can come to terms with how i was born. I will change what that looks like, but i cant parade around thinking im something else. I can make a new image of me, like a dinosaur can evolve into a bird. But a dinosaur cant become a mammal. It can converge in something similar, but it would be its own thing. That is what i wish people understood and did. xXComplexXx: @Event Hʘriךּon I never said being treated like everyone else was offensive. If that is how it came off, I apologize. I'm saying we should be treated like everyone else and not get shit on. And just because you dress like a man doesn't make you a man. If you dress like a man and don't identify as a man, then you are not. How is this concept so hard to grasp? Gender isn't physical. Yes there are two sexes, but there more genders. Gender is your state of mind. A part of your identity. Event Hʘriךּon: xXComplexXx so its completely made up and useless. i mean it can be a fun concept to throw around,like me feeling a bit alien compared to everyone else. It doesnt mean that if i identify as alien, i am (apart from the literary, metaphorical sense). the problem lays with districating the Man and Woman word from egos. You are a man, a blank sheet that you can costumize. Dont stop being a sheet tho. My problem is that when they "Identify" they think anything is ok. If i identify as a crow, i am mistaken in my identification. its alright if i feel more confortable in a bird suit a beak and with people throwing bread at me. Some people have kinks, or have a lifestyle different than most, its fine. But its not alright when we stop considering reality, and whe Demand that it bends at our own will. State of mind is too merky to have any value. What if people start identifying as two year olds when they are 50? is that state of mind justifyed? is there a limit to what we can ignore just because someone thinks that the act of Identifying is reality altering? Can someone be wrong about identifying? what if i sincerely identify as the qeen of england. 'I identify as X' is a statement that can be proven false or true, like everything else in reality. It is true that they identify as X, it is not true that that identification correlates to reality: they are wrong in their identification. To be fair humans are not perfect at identification, we thought that wind had a mind of its own because we identified movement with agency. xXComplexXx: @Event Hʘriךּon Even if all you said was true, why do you care so much? Why would you go out of your way to tell people who've made a choice ,that affects their life and not yours, that they are wrong?  Why force people to be confined to the "limits" of our reality? You really think that they're going to listen to you and force themselves to be miserable living a life they can't stand? Are they hurting anyone? No. Are they hurting themselves? Most cases, no. Event Hʘriךּon: xXComplexXx why do i care about reality? because when people think something, they act upon it. Its not true that it doesnt affect anybody else. we share a reality, what other people do affect everyone. Otherwise we wouldnt take care of schizofrenic people, or narcisistic ones, or we would leave cults alone. You dont get to live in a pocket dimension. If someone in their mind think they are better than everyone else, that will impact how they act, who they vote, influence everything around them. If someone think they are trash, they wont fight for themselves when the time comes, they might think that life doesnt matter and not intervene to save others or themselves when they could. It matters. It matters if someone thinks that god will care for them in the next life, and their loved ones will burn in hell if they dont convince them that their god is real. It affect everybody. They might think that their god has a plan for their children, so they wont cure them if they get a disease. It matters. It matters when we let go of reality because the inside of our mind feels better. Expecially because in your mind you are alone. And we need to be less alone, not more. And inside your mind no one can criticise you, or teach you new things, or make new experiences. You can tell yourself stories and no one can say otherwise. we need to live in the real world. If they feel miserable in the real world, that is a symptom of depression, and psychologists exist for that exact purpose. And detachment and dissociation is unhealty.

[aliceslantern]

Beyond this Existence, Counterpoint, chapter 11

Summary:  After being recompleted, Ienzo vows to do everything in his power to atone for the atrocities he committed in the past. But this life hasn't been easy, and he's plagued with memories and nightmares. When Demyx suddenly reappears, the two discover that they have more in common than they thought, though the secrets in their past might tear them apart. Zemyx (Demyx/Ienzo), post kh3

Read it on FF.net/on AO3

---

It seemed to grow piercingly cold all at once. The next day they ended up having to go to the market for warmer clothing. Four days had passed, between sleep and trauma. Ienzo found himself dreading to return to the research, which was unusual. He wanted to help Sora, desperately, but at the same time, he’d been experiencing so much--good and bad--lately that he wasn’t sure he could have a clear head.

He would just have to try his best, and, if need be, ask for help. He’d finally started to make some progress, after all.

The day passed quickly and relatively peacefully. Ienzo did feel a lot better, no longer plagued by the headaches and dizziness that had no doubt been a result of sleep deprivation. His anxiety, too, was much more manageable, though he guessed this might be because he was spending so much time with Demyx.

Ienzo was in love.

As a teenage Nobody, he’d read some romance novels, mostly to try and gain some insight as to what this all meant in the world, especially for the Somebodies he’d been put in charge of observing or manipulating. He’d always found such descriptions of love melodramatic and overblown, lacking grounding in reality. Of course, the fact that most of these novels were written for heterosexual couples might change things too.

He felt the precise opposite of that dissociative, codependent infatuation. He’d hardly ever felt more awake, and more himself. Maybe that was why he was so afraid to leave the safety of this week. This stability and peace was so very tenuous.

Demyx helped him make dinner. He tried to take the instructions Ienzo gave him, he really did, but his knife cuts were not very clean or uniform. Ienzo couldn’t help but wonder how Demyx had been raised. With some things he was so practical and capable, but yet he couldn’t dice onions.

“Why’d you learn to cook?” Demyx asked him.

Ienzo checked the recipe. They were making a sort of bouillabaisse. He measured out a few different spices. “Perhaps you’ve noticed, but we apprentices tend to view our bodies more as vessels for the mind more than anything else. The meals I were raised on were nutritious, but bland. It frustrated me when I was younger, so I did research.” He shrugged. “It’s something I enjoy doing. Objective. Harmless.” It was the closest to artistry he could get.

Demyx pointed to the still-fading scar on his hand.

“ Largely harmless,” he corrected. “More so than my other research. Are those carrots ready?” That brought him, inevitably, to spiraling about Sora. He had to be careful. But wasn’t time of the essence? The more time Ienzo spent away from his work, the farther Sora was drifting from all of them. Ienzo reached over and corrected Demyx’s cuts before mixing them into the pot.

“Are you beating yourself up again?” Demyx asked. “We’ve talked about this.”

“You always ask questions about me. That doesn’t seem fair. Tell me more about you.”

He started slicing down the potatoes in front of him. “There’s not a whole lot to know,” he said. “You know about as much about me as I do.”

“...So you haven’t remembered anything else?” Demyx’s heart should be complete by now. This amnesia was concerning. Was it all trauma and repression? Or had Xehanort’s heart done more damage to him than they’d originally thought? But then Even’s memories should be scattered too, and by all accounts they weren’t. Worry tightened in his throat.

He sighed. “There is one thing,” he said. “Um, it’s kind of a doozy though.”

Ienzo looked up. Really it had only been a month or so since Demyx’s return. Did he just need time? “Pray tell.”

Demyx set down the knife.  “Well. Don’t freak out. But--”

Ansem’s voice broke the moment. “Oh, boys, that smells absolutely incredible.”

“Ienzo did all the work,” Demyx said without making eye contact. “I’m just moral support.”

“That’s not true. He’s trying,” Ienzo said. “It’ll be ready in about an hour. I hope you’ll be joining us?”

“I shall.” He paused slightly. “You look much improved. Perhaps I shall take a page out of Demyx’s book.”

“I am… feeling rather better.” This was the first time Ienzo had spoken to Ansem since he’d found out about the relationship. He couldn’t pretend it wasn’t awkward. It had been all too easy to avoid him, lest he feel the need to give his two cents, or worse, try to feign parenting. When it came to something this personal, he did not need unsolicited advice.

“And you were both able to find good things for winter?”

“Yeah. Thanks again,” Demyx said.

Ansem smiled. “Like I said, I wish for you to be comfortable here. Winters in Radiant Garden can be… bracing, if one is not used to it. I can feel it even now. Perhaps, Demyx, if you wouldn’t mind, you can help Aeleus light the boilers sometime in the next coming days?”

Demyx blinked. “I don’t know why I’d be the right one for the job.”

“He needs assistance. I’m afraid with all of us tied up in our work, and Dilan still acting as guard, we’re one pair of hands short.”

“I’m happy to help,” Demyx mumbled. He turned back to his potatoes.

Awkwardness aside, Ienzo wanted to ask about the state of the research. No doubt Ansem had been investigating as well. It took a great deal of restraint not to ask. The model's face, so alive, so like the real thing, flashed behind his eyes. He felt recovered, but that didn’t mean he was. Still, his hands trembled.

“I shall see you in an hour,” Ansem said.

“I’ll hold you to it,” Ienzo said. He added some thyme to the soup. “Well. What is it you wanted to tell me?”

“...Nothing. It can wait.” He smiled.

“So you’re happy to help,” Ienzo said. Flirting was new to him, but he liked it. A new and unexplored use of wit. “I can’t tell if you’re trying to talk up Master Ansem, or if I’ve been a good influence on you.”

He seemed to hesitate, but really only for a fraction of a second. “Neither. It really is cold as fuck in here!”

“I’m afraid even with the heating it doesn’t get much better. This place is very old, poorly insulated. You’d better brace yourself. Though admittedly… it occurs to to me there is one way to keep warm.” Before he could lose his nerve, Ienzo kissed him. Part of him wondered, briefly, if he was only doing this to distract himself; warmth and want chased off the anxiety. Humanity was so manipulable. He'd always wondered why.

“Ienzo!” Demyx gasped in surprise.

He felt his face warm. “When this week ends, we won’t have that much time together,” Ienzo said.

He brushed a finger against Ienzo's lip.  “I’m not going to let you overwork yourself like that again. You can’t get rid of me.”

“Is that a promise?”

Demyx kissed him back equally as deeply, pulling his fingers through his hair and trailing down to his throat. The only thing that interrupted them was the loud sloshing as the pot boiled over. Ienzo swore and dropped the burner’s heat to “low.” “Later?” Demyx asked.

Another surge of anticipation, stronger this time. “Later.”

After all that, dinner was a bit of a fiasco. The food came out alright, despite the cream overheating. The apprentices’ old hierarchy was still very much in place; thinking nothing of it, Demyx had sat next to Ienzo, not realizing it was Even’s place. Nobody really outwardly commented, though Dilan did smirk. He’d always been a glutton for drama. Seeing them all here, gathered together, Ienzo felt something akin to embarrassment. The truth of their relationship had already been revealed, but to have it acknowledged added a strange layer of tension to the air. This sort of thing had never happened before.

“I see you’re feeling well, Ienzo,” Even said sweetly. “What is it you’ve both done to keep yourselves busy?”

The impudence of this made the blood rise in his face, but Ienzo replied pleasantly, paring the truth down to something palatable and non-incriminating.

“I am sure we’re all glad to see you back in good health,” Even said to him. “I just hope that this new development does not cloud your judgement going forward. To be young and… caught up in such matters, can no doubt impede your critical thinking. However natural it is.”

Demyx’s eyes flashed, but he said nothing.

Ienzo set down the cup of tea he was drinking. “Clearly you have thought on the subject, and I appreciate your concern. But I feel as though I am just as able to take on my research as I ever were. Not that I have asked for your advice. Should you have more to say on the matter, please let us discuss it in private.”

Even turned faintly pink.

“You needn’t worry about me anymore,” Ienzo said, a bit more gently. “I… I’m not the little boy I was.”

Even shook his head. “I will always worry about you,” he said. “After all, I’ve so much time to make up for.”

After a rather pregnant silence, Demyx cleared his throat. “Anyone want seconds?”

They both did the dishes. Ienzo was extra cautious to make sure that no knives were lying around. They returned to his room, though the mood from before had been spoiled. Demyx sat on the bed.  Ienzo turned towards the window, looking out at the town wreathed in fading light. “I must apologize for Even. It was incredibly rude for him to be so suggestive.”

Demyx joined him. “Why? Everyone knows.”

“They used to be… quite protective of me,” he said, with a shake of his head.

“I think it’s nice they care so much about you.”

“They don’t… dislike you,” he said. He flinched at the double negative.

“They think I'm not good enough for you. And they're right."

Ienzo took his hand and sat down next to him. “I don’t think you understand the impact you’ve had on me,” he said quietly. “If it were not for you, I’d still be there, miserable and working myself to death, unable to find any value in myself aside from needing to atone. I… I know the mistakes I made cannot be undone, but I… I’m better. Destroying myself isn’t going to fix what I did. You’ve… brought me back to reality. And if they don’t realize that, then they’re worse off. I wish they could see what I see in you. Your kindness, your patience, your emotional intelligence.”

Demyx shook his head.

“Healing is a slow, tedious, constant process. You can’t allow yourself to get caught up in moments like these. They don’t matter.” He touched Demyx’s face. “You do. We do.”

Demyx blushed. “I didn’t realize you were such a romantic,” he said.

“I… still have a few things to learn.” He kissed him gently.

Intimacy was still new and shocking to him, though at least he had somewhat of an idea of what to expect. Ienzo didn’t want to be so passive this time. He pulled his legs around Demyx’s waist and kissed him along the throat, along the soft spot that always made he himself feel weak. Demyx responded by pulling him down on top of him.

"I admit," Ienzo whispered. "All of this is... very new to me still. But I think I'm starting to understand."

Ienzo wondered if he should tell him, if he should say it out loud. But he had to know already. Everything he’d just said meant ten times more. He felt Demyx reach for the buttons of his pants and figured maybe now was not the time for talking. Clothing having been dealt with, Ienzo touched him, rivers of veins and muscle and bone, and scars. He kissed them and found that he’d been right about it also being pleasurable for Demyx, if the reaction he felt meant anything. He could feel it too, heavy and delicious and impermanent. To a degree, what Even said about this muddying thought was completely accurate. But was it such a sin to try and stop thinking for a few moments? The hand he'd been propping himself up with tightened against the sheets. "I want to..." Ienzo's voice sounded strange, a little like someone else's. "I want to do this for you. I--" His experience with such frustration was minimal, but he couldn't imagine it was easy.

He bit his lip a little and brushed Ienzo's hair out of his eyes. "If you're not ready--"

His face burned feverishly. He could only imagine how ridiculous he must look. "I am ready. And I want to. I just... I'm not, technically speaking, sure how?" He should probably try it on himself one of these days, if only to know the difference in sensation, but the thought was so jarring he pushed it away.

Demyx laughed a little. "Do you remember what I did to you?"

He nodded. The memory of it almost made him gasp out loud.

"Something like that."

He smiled shakily. "This isn't really something you read about in books."

"I guess it wouldn't be."

This shouldn't be difficult. He wanted to do it, to make him feel good as well. Yet finding the nerve took some time. Ienzo kissed him. He tried to will the trembling in his hands to stop. His hand brushed against Demyx's waist and hip and thigh. The scarred skin was warm. Demyx kissed him harder, his hand tangling in Ienzo's hair. This distraction was enough for him to touch his (what was it called in such moments? Wasn't "penis" too medical?) dick. The skin there was softer than he though, more natural. At least it was somewhat familiar in terms of structure. He stroked it gently and heard a small sound catch in Demyx's throat.

Ienzo pulled away from the kiss. "Was that alright?"

He nodded, unable to catch his breath. "Just a little bit more towards the--"

He tried to oblige. There was a sort of pleasure in doing this. He felt Demyx start to touch him too and tried to copy that. The awkward self-consciousness began to fade, replaced with the same lovely thoughtlessness as before. It was amazing that the body was capable of such pure joy. Little waves of it broke over him, heightening the tension within. He wove the trust and love into his touch and felt the same in return. The vulnerability did not feel so much like a weakness as a strength. It was okay. The rising, tightening feeling in him was recognizable now. He tried briefly to hold it back, but the need for release was just too tempting. He heard Demyx gasp as he came against him.

“I see,” Ienzo said softly, pressing a kiss into his sweaty brow. “It really is simpler than I thought.” The stress had been for naught.

Demyx lay back. “I swear this is not indicative of how long I usually last.”

Ienzo laughed. He shifted off of him, onto his side. “So do you feel better?”

“ So much better.”

He did too. The utter lack of anxiety was intoxicating. “I’ll keep that in mind.” He leaned against him. “You’ve been so patient with me.”

“It wasn’t all for you. Everything feels so different than it normally does. Plus I… I’m not used to the emotional part of it.”

“The sense of connection is… certainly unique. If I’ve learned anything, emotions are always capable of becoming more overwhelming. No matter their strength.”

Demyx hummed in response. For few minutes, or however long they remained knotted up together, he felt perfectly at peace. If there was anything to worry about, there was a later in which to do it.

“What the hell is that?” Demyx asked.

“My gummiphone. Though I have no idea who would be calling.” He got up and pulled on a robe, then reached into his lab coat pocket for the phone. “I’m sorry. I have to see who it is. Hello?”

“Ienzo? Are you busy?” Roxas’s voice, garbled.

“No, I’m not. What is it?”

It was hard to tell exactly what he was saying. Something about “worldlines.” Anxiety, or panic, made Roxas speak quickly.

“Slow down. The signal is not very good.”

“Are there universes other than this one? Like parallel universes? Xehanort mentioned something about worldlines but when I tried to ask Ansem about it he didn’t answer.”

That was so like Ansem. He probably hadn’t even heard the phone ring. “Well I do suppose it’s possible but I’ve had no insight this past week as to what he’s been up to, I fell ill and was resting--” He only knew about the Worldlines Theory vaporously--because it was just that, theory.

“Are you sick?”

“No, I’m alright now. And yourself? You sound distressed.”

“I mean I think I am? And then Riku went over to Yen Sid to ask more about it, and well, he said it’s possible, especially with the power of waking. They said Sora broke the rules of the power and walked between worlds. So they think that, if he’s done that, he’s in another worldline. Ienzo, do you know anything?”

Yes. Yes, it was all making sense. How had he not even taking the power of waking into account? He’d assumed it had all to do with hearts. He’d been wrong. “I understand,” he said woodenly. “I’m afraid if that’s the situation then… I’ll try my best, but you must realize the prognosis is not good.”

“Can you check in your research? See if anyone knows anything?”

“Yes, I’ll let you know. Try and take care.” He hung up. His mind was spinning but no good thoughts came from it. He sat down on the bed.

“What happened?” Demyx asked. “Who was that?”

“It was Roxas. They think Riku’s got a lock on Sora’s location.”

“But isn’t that… good? Then why are you both upset?”

Ienzo was wringing his hands. “Because he’s not in this reality. We’ve no way to get him back. Wherever he is… he’s there, alone. And there’s nothing we can do about it.”

[thegoblinbee]

guides and guardians and a gauzy sense of purpose

So, one of my cats has started closing herself in my room to sit on my bed by herself. Once or twice a day now, you hear the door close firmly like she’s just had enough and when you open it, there she is like she owns the place.

But she’s not even that kind of cat... she’s a sociable, beatific little angel who lets you do anything to her and who sits on my lap and purrs for hours while I write. It is baffling, and hilarious.

I’m on my second generation of life-saving cats, this current batch having helped me heal from losing my soulcat who tied herself to me on a spiritual level for nineteen years. Before she was even big enough to overflow my palm, she’d already commenced with saving my miserable life. And she did so tirelessly, as if it were her sole purpose on earth to act as my guardian and my guide, gazing at me as if I were a god when I wanted more than anything to lay down and lay my veins open.

Even now, should I breakdown in a way these cats don’t understand –  having been the first to experience me so sober and so sane – she comes rising up ghostly through one of them, her spirit as near as my skin. I don’t understand it, but I choose to believe in it regardless. I’ve had too many experiences of that sort to keep insisting they can’t be real just because they make no sense.

It’s eerie, the guides I’ve been given to pull me through the chaos, the bottomless darkness. I’ve had two. The other -- a human this time -- has also ceaselessly saved my life, in ways both metaphorical and incredibly literal: he found me after I’d slit my wrists, came home and mopped up my blood while I sat in the psych ward. He visited every day, brought me notebooks and sweaters, books he thought I might like to read.

Between surviving so many suicides I’ve long since lost count and being protected in this way by these two souls, I can’t quite shake the feeling that I’m here for a reason.

But. I’m not entirely sure what that reason is. The only thing I know for certain is that I am supposed to write it all down.

I lose that feeling constantly, though, that feeling like clearly someone, or something, somehow, somewhere, knows I belong here, that feeling like I have a purpose to serve. But even in the moments where I accept it, I only ever manage to beat myself up for not doing whatever it is I feel I should be doing, for choosing instead to sit in my safe little cave and hide.

I’m still just learning how to treat my life like it’s something worth hanging onto. It’s a brand new experience for me; all I ever learned how to do was to hide beneath the hatred I’ve always felt toward myself, to go to war with myself in a very literal way; poisoning myself, slicing myself open. Throwing my soft, vulnerable body, my fragile, naked soul out into the night to lie in a drugged and drunken haze, dissociated beneath the bodies of strangers. I’m a toddler when it comes to treating myself with any degree of care or kindness. I’m a toddler when it comes to believing I belong here, that I have a purpose to serve.

I wish I had a neat little conclusion, a bow to tie prettily around these thoughts. I keep trying to write this better and to ferret out some meaningful conclusive statement, but I can’t do it, I haven’t got one.

[deliadexaerisofficialuniver-blog]

I had to get out a lot of feelings today. I feel like one of the biggest blessings I've had in my life lately (for the past five months now) has been stability, and that was such an important determining factor in a decision I made now about two months ago. Basically after a fight that started when I was venting my depressed feelings, I was pressured to decide whether I was still wanting to try a relationship again with someone, the idea came up of someone moving here where I am now, and after that fight, and really just the whole slew of triggering and degrading conversations, abusive texts, emails, etc. I'd endured in the previous months trying to reconnect to make up for my wrongs in the situation, I decided I wasn't really comfortable with thinking about that, and suddenly I was back on the defensive, which, just no. That made the decision that much easier. It's never okay for someone to use a "no" as a reason to go back on the attack.

It became very obvious that all they ever wanted was control. Since then I've gotten harassing, abusive emails threatening to do whatever it took to ruin my public life, and I have no idea what's gone on since and I still really don't care to know or involve myself in engaging with any of it, and just can't see it ever being the case that I would, or that it could be worth my time in any way. I feel like if I've learned anything from this particular experience of my life, it's that it's not as hard to tell when someone just wants control over you for their own reasons, whatever those reasons may be, as I tried to act like it was, I was just living a life in denial, making excuses for why it was okay for someone else to intentionally sabotage my mental health to the point of sabotaging my stability so many times, and for me to just forgive and forgive and keep taking it without a single sorry, a single acknowledgement.

Basically, I'm not into allowing myself to be provoked anymore. The truth is that if someone really loves you, ever really loved you, when things end, there eventually does come a point when, even if there ever was ugliness, call-outs, whatever it is, it stops. They stop trying to be right and start trying to figure out where they became wrong and fix it, or at the very least, the leave you alone. They stop breaking into what few safe spaces you have for yourself. They don't make it their mission to ruin your life, take everything you have when there's hardly anything left but the will to wake up and say "maybe life will be worth it if I just keep going."

They always had a safe space to go back to, I never had a safe space with them, or to retreat to. Only the barest of what was left of my mental health after the experiences of early 2016 to break over and over again, a process which started pretty immediately, and has basically only ended in the sense that I'm 'choosing not to engage with it, knowing that the only desire there is the desire to break me in every way they can, because they think that just because I let them so many times before means I'll just keep letting them.

Anyway, in new relationships, and living where I've been for 5 months, all I can say about where I am now is that I actually feel like I have a family for the first time in a long time, and unlike last time, in North Carolina, where I got drugged, beaten, raped, told it was punishment for my faults in my marriage, and left to die, it doesn't feel like an illusion. It doesn't feel like it's too good to be true.

There's no fighting, no intentional triggering, no one yelling in my face, laughing in faux disbelief while I cry and beg for space so I can break out of a dissociative self-harm fit and stop cutting until someone else has to literally physically pull them out of my space. There's no fear of the next time I'll get dragged into series of fights that keep me up for days at a time, until I can't even remember what bullshit trap started it. For five months, as long as I've followed my roommates' and therapist's advice of avoiding willfully subjecting myself to a blatantly toxic situation in denial of the obvious truth that no change would ever occur, I've known what it's like to be surrounded by NORMALCY.

I go to work, I come home, my primary treats me like a human being. Our roommates treat me like part of the family. We spend quality time together. We all have our limitations, we all work together to accomplish a functional life. I have an appointment scheduled for my vaginoplasty. I'm getting mental health care in the form of therapy and medication management. I'm finally managing to work through my trauma from 2016 and even before instead of letting it dominate my life. I'm getting to the point where actually putting up content might be possible again. Feeling like I have a voice to talk about important shit feels like it might be possible again. I don't feel the need to fear my partner, or that they've been grab some strand in the web of he said's and she said's. Some of the wires were harder to see at first, maybe some are still invisible even to people who've chosen to catch themselves up in it, but I know where it goes, where it came from, who's willing to say what to maintain the illusion, and who's not worth putting my own life on the line to pull out of it.

Basically all that matters now is that I'm done not listening to my intuitions, I'm done accepting anything less than a world where I'm treated like a human being and don't have to keep myself on guard against crazy-making, abuse, etc.

I'm done letting obsessive people weave their webs around me.

If you ever really loved someone, and you can't get over it, that's a reason to get mental help. If you let it drag you into a war with them, it was never really love. Finally accepting that perspective has empowered me to let go of the pain of wondering who's love was real or not, and even feeling so taken advantage of the times I fell into illusions. I can just accept that if they loved me, things would be different, accept that yes, I was hurt, yes, I was taken advantage of, in my gullibility, but that is in the past. I can make a choice to only accept love that is real. I can make a choice to never rely on anyone but myself to look out for me so that I can never fool myself into believing that fake love is real again just for a semblance of false safety.

A struggle on your own is better than the illusion of safety with someone else who might just be a bomb waiting to go off. I'd rather be free to do what I need to take care of myself, and my new partners, roommates, and friends than trap myself in a world of accepting empty actions that come with endless expectations and price-tags. Love is free, it doesn't come on terms of what's expected in return, especially ownership, and I have to accept how many times I've felt like I basically amounted to a thing that could be owned, bought, through kindness in the past. This is part of what I refuse to ever go back to, that, and the manufactured instability.

That being said, this is *NOT* a post for call-outs, this is *NOT* a post for name-calling, and I'm also absolutely not gonna tolerate people engaging with anyone trying to perpetuate some kind of war in any direction. Do I have things to say? Absolutely. Did I have my faults as well? Yes. I feel as though I've been quite clear to that end. I'm a human being.

So is anyone and everyone I've ever had to deal with violence, social or otherwise, or abuse from in any form. Where I mark the difference is that rarely, some of those people actually make right for it. That's basically happened once, and I dropped everything with it. Once, I've had a former abuser come back to me in order to apologize and make right for it. Every other time, they've chosen to start an obsessive war over my life, and I've basically had the choice to engage it, or ignore it, which I feel like they've taken as their ability to silence me, but I feel like it's possible to speak up about our lives and experiences without engaging in the toxicity, and that's important.

When I get back to content making, that is definitely something I plan to do, because if anything, the entire point of everything any of my abusers have said/done in the time since I escaped has been to try to silence me.

I've been thinking about call-out culture, and my own role in it, and realizing that the biggest disservice we do to ourselves in engaging in it is to give our abusers exactly the attention they want in order to twist whatever they want to the people who may be too close to, or too far from a situation. We allow our abusers to make our lives, our stories about them. We give them the attention they crave and feed off of.

I'm done with it. If I vague-post, it's because I refuse to hand my narrative over to people who only want to hurt me, drag me down, rob me of the life I already robbed myself of for 27 years. If I never speak an ex's name again, it's because I'm done making my life about them when they never deserved it,, and as someone with a long history of Stockholm's and silence in the face of abuse until it's "too late," there's really just not time to get caught up in the details of every minutia of every way anyone has ever chosen to hurt me anyway. That would be getting caught up in resentment, living in the past. I choose to live in the present for the sake of my own future. If other people want to live in the past, that's their choice, but I refuse to let them drag me there.

My life is important to talk about, and so I will, but I can do it without letting people who feel miserable just seeing me not suffering drag me to keep re-living parts of it that are already behind me.

I choose to be who I am today, and never let anyone take that from me again. I refuse to ever let anyone take the changes and growth I've been through from me again for their own twisted desire to make me who I *WAS*. I've been imperfect. I will never not be imperfect, but if I've left something behind me, I refuse to let anyone else shove it back onto me when it will only drag me back down. I choose to be more every day the person I was meant to be, and live the life I was meant to live, and abandon the shell I've outgrown, and used to call "me." I refuse to give my time to anything or anyone who would rather keep me there, whatever their reasons.

I've been a different woman every day since I've come out. Some changes were for the better, sometimes changes have dragged me down, been for the worse, but as change remains the only constant, I will endeavor to keep making it in positive directions. People who want to be a part of that can. People who want to relish in dwelling in the past for the sake of drama or whatever other reason aren't people I'm gonna shed a tear for missing.

Much as I hate to say it, coming out and facing immediate social violence taught me pretty quickly that there's no such thing as any amount of happiness, "good" feelings, etc. in the past of *any* relationship to make it worth carrying around and mourning when people show their true colors, buy into bullshit, etc. Sad as it is, to an extent, this is just a woman's life. Our lives have drama by default. Other women will use that to try to manipulate our lives, the lives around us, any way they can, other women will relish it, and non-women will fall for it every time, and that's just the way it is. So, people in my past can call me whatever they want, it'll never be anything that every other woman hasn't already been called before.

That doesn't mean I have to take it.

I have a stable life now, and I'll find my way to move that life to better places, and share the blessings along the way with the people I love. Sure, I'm sure there will be fights, bad days, nothing will ever be perfect, but it's gotten a lot easier to tell the difference between what's normal, and what's a whole armada of red flags. It's become easier to listen to my intuition and tell the desperate little girl inside full of learned helplessness to shut up, put on her big girl panties and stay away from ever letting that kind of bullshit pull me down into a prison of convenience and lying to myself again.

[cyanpeacock]

god... the fuckening happening continues. i've catalysed Some Shit up in here in my thinkpan. and like this doesn't feel in a sick way? like kinda, because a lot of what is being remembered is sickening. but, uh, woah, well, i remember that again now. not... experiencing it? but yeah that is DEFINITELY a thing the body remembers happening. a Whole Bunch of things.

i'm... considering calling my g adrian tomorrow, which is an irregular move for me, but i have been making many more moves which are irregular for me, and mostly they are turning out okay, now i'm figuring out better which voices to actually listen to and act with. i think i gotta talk a bunch more this week, after my Decision and the PIP thing digging up even more stuff a week after that, and this whole, internal revolution i have finally noticed going on.

freaks me out this is a whole Thing I Could Not Perceive. but yea ig brain do the protecty thing when shit feels like That for such a long time. oof no wonder parts of me are so angry. and why it took such a long time for me to think i was actually, like... free.

like i still wanna ask is it real? am i dreaming? because i was lying in the sun earlier and just for a moment i like, forgot. i mean really Forgot. not dissociated from, it just like, wasn't all Right There any more. and like i felt the sun on my body and grass on my legs and my hair over my eyes and i had my shirt off and i just felt like, okay, this is a thing a human body does. which, is strange. often the body feels unnatural? there are two animals here also, but one doesn't have a name and isn't ready to come out yet. the other is... mostly just a big dumb yelling peacock that likes shiny things. oops making my mind wander. not that it isn't already all over the place but maybe this is just how i'm meant to be now? at least for a while? i have a weird feeling i'll figure something out.

and like, who saw? who saw all, like, That, before i could, before like, i understood what and how i was supposed to Do to do that. was i really that, like, miserable? did i imagine it? but like... how could i make ANY of this up. i know there's somewhere i could look, but like, that's still a danger zone for me. anything could happen.

and, am i supposed to feel like I've suddenly stopped going in circles? is that a point people reach? if i've ever asked i could never believe the answer i heard before, or it wasn't me asking, or somebody got in the way.

ah lord. it is so hard to trust in something built under such harsh conditions. like, the house isn't always dark any more, and increasingly the lights aren't on when nobody's home. but dude... there's no furniture in here. we must have electricity? metaphorically speaking. kinda literal. i don't know who installed that! i'm pretty sure i got in the way actually! but we don't have a fridge and i haven't seen a tap. but like... i've been too scared to look. too scared to like, allow myself to exist there. i'm like, dude, what, is this even my house to live in? i'm just like, squatting here, i might have to dash at any time, or somebody will throw me out. but... i guess i'm living here?

oh man im going through a writing a lot phase. or maybe this is like, just me? is this why i feel so like... disturbed when I find a journal that's clearly like, my handwriting, more or less, but i don't remember writing it? or i do, but whoever is there doesn't, and that spooks me?

somebody's telling me to go to bed soon, it's like, way past bedtime. he's very tired and barely understands a word and i'm tired too tbh. all this is wild. i suddenly understand in more depth why i was so drawn to the borg specifically Lmao... many acting as one. kinda hard to pull off in practice.

man. yeah. continuing the process of Going Through It. have a feeling im gonna dream a whole bunch that i may not quite remember tonight, but if i wanna get met office on my personal forecast there's also like a solid 50% chance of lucidity tonight. it's just a feelin.

ok i'm going to bed. it is a good place to rest this. got there eventually. now zzz.

[sharingshane-blog]

BPD in Doctor Who

Trigger Warnings: Depression, Anxiety, Suicide, Abuse, Self-Harm, Mentions of Physical Assault and Rape

When I was 17, almost a senior in high school, I watched my first episode of Doctor Who.  I started with Christopher Eccleston and worked my way through.  It took me only a couple of episodes before I was hooked. I became obsessed with the series, and many of the characters, particularly the ones from the Russel T. Davies era, because I felt like I could emotionally connect with them.  I understood them.  Rose Tyler really grew on me.  She was supposed to be around my age at the time, and we both lived at our parents’ home feeling overall empty and worthless.  

At that age, my anxiety and depression were particularly bad. Someone who was mentor and major influence in my life had committed suicide.  Not long after, my grandfather whom I would see all the time passed away. I was already wallowing in major levels of grief and loss.  I had also just gotten permission to skip eleventh grade and graduate a year early from high school.  With that, I had to work last minute to get myself together, so I could apply to colleges and universities.  My parents had a history of neglecting my needs frequently and one of the ways they did was helping me prepare for college.  They refused to help me research or check out schools.  They would not take me on visits because it was too much of a “financial burden” on them.  They also refused to teach me how to drive or help me much at all for the next step ahead.  I felt extremely lonely and I felt very abandoned.  My parents have a history of physical and emotional abuse towards me, but I did not come to terms with that until I was in college, eventually developing PTSD.  

Feelings of abandonment and isolation became chronic and debilitating for me.  There were many emotions I would bottle up until I could not take it anymore.  I felt like a geyser.  As the emotions bubbled and heated more, the pressure in the chamber underground increased until there was a burst of boiling hot water—a crisis or outburst of anger.  I had trouble maintaining consistent relationships with people which only added to the loneliness.  People came and went, and I never expected them to stay.  I felt too worthless to think they would care about me.  I had recurrent suicidal ideation.  For a long time, the way I would keep myself alive would to just tell myself every night that I will just kill myself the next day. I refused to go to therapy until well into college.  This had to do in part that I did not know how to express my emotions, and it also had to do in pat because of trauma.  My mom forced me against my will (on my 16th birthday) to see her therapist and basically admit how horrible of a child I have been.  After my grandfather’s death, I did attempt to see a counselor, but it was a religious counselor who told me that I did not need counseling and that I just needed to focus on my faith in God.  It was not until I was 19, well after beginning college, where I decided to actually pursue therapy.  I had many unstable friendships at college.  I was with my abusive ex-boyfriend.  My already unhealthy relationship with my parents became worse.  The tipping point was when I was in the car with my dad one day, and he tried to hit me. I jumped out of the car before he could do anything to me.  He drove off leaving me on the side of the rode in tears.  It was not long after that experience that I filled out the paperwork to start counseling.  I eventually got a therapist outside of the college campus.  After almost attempting suicide, I was hospitalized for a week at a psychiatric facility.  It was there where the psychiatrist inquired me about a condition called borderline personality disorder.

Here are the symptoms or signs of the disorder:

-Efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment, such as rapidly initiating intimate (physical or emotional) relationships or cutting off communication with someone in anticipation of being abandoned

-A pattern of intense and unstable relationships with family, friends, and loved ones, often swinging from extreme closeness and love (idealization) to extreme dislike or anger (devaluation)

-Distorted and unstable self-image or sense of self

-Impulsive and often dangerous behaviors, such as spending sprees, unsafe sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, and binge eating

-Self-harming behavior, such as cutting or burning

-Recurring thoughts of suicidal behaviors or threats

-Intense and highly changeable moods, with each episode lasting from a few hours to a few days

-Chronic feelings of emptiness

-Intense anger or problems controlling anger

-Difficulty trusting and possessing a fear of other people’s intentions

-Feelings of dissociation, such as feeling cut off from oneself or seeing oneself from outside one’s body

Not everyone with the disorder experiences all these symptoms. The symptoms also come in varying degrees.  No two people with the disorder is completely alike, although they tend to understand each other.  After I received the diagnosis, I felt that my life made a little more sense.  I began to understand myself better.  I have been in treatment for a long time and have made many improvements.  During this whole journey though, I learned something else, one of the reasons why I became so obsessed with Doctor Who.  I mean who doesn’t want to fly away from their boring lives to explore all throughout time and space with a mad man (or woman) with a box?  I have not seen the episodes with Jodie Whittaker so no spoilers! You may cause a paradox and destroy all of reality if you tell me anything.  It’s my future.  It was more than a form of escapism or a way of leaving my miserable life.  I realized that the Doctor’s character really resonates with me on a more personal level.  Now I am specifically referring to the New Who episodes.  I haven’t watched enough of Old Who to make adequate judgments of the character during those episodes.  The Doctor in New Who exemplifies many of the characteristics associated with borderline personality disorder.  I am no psychologist or psychiatrist, but for me, I feel like that this was one of the main reasons I fell in love with the Doctor.  He (or she) is the star of the show, the hero, the person everyone loves aside from say the Daleks, the Cybermen, the Slitheen, the Weeping Angels, the Zygons, the Silurians, and well, okay not everyone.  But in other shows, people with the disorder or exhibits multiple aspects of the disorder are usually portrayed as antagonists and creeps.  

The Doctor continuously goes out of his (or her) way to try and avoid losing people.  It causes him a lot of pain when he loses his closest friends.  Sometimes he will push his closest friends away, even for years at a time, because he’s afraid he’d never see them again. Sometimes he’d isolate himself from making new friends for fear of them falling apart.  We see this with the tenth Doctor at the end of his tenure.  He refused to take on new companions.  He was also reluctant to take on Martha as an official companion after losing Rose. But as you know, things did get “escalated.”  The eleventh Doctor set up Amy and Rory with a house on earth so he could come back to them whenever for hundreds of years because he knew that humans could not live near as long as him and he couldn’t bear to see his closest friends die.  He uploaded River Song as a computer program in the biggest library in the universe so he could always come back to her.  After losing Amy and Rory, he isolated himself from most of others except from a select few refusing to make other friends for fear of the inevitable loss.  Like Martha, he was reluctant at first to take on Clara as a companion.   On the whole though, the Doctor is fairly quick in choosing is companions, almost like Jesus choosing his disciples.  The Doctor becomes close pretty quickly and has people by his side while traveling in the TARDIS (time and relative dimension in space).  However, he is also quick to cut communication in order to “save” his friends or most often himself from impending grief.  He tricked Rose and Clara to have the TARDIS take them home while he faced a life or death scenario.  When Clara came back to the Doctor 300 years later in his future, he admitted that the reason he sent her away was because he would have buried her a long time ago.  It seemed to be more for his sake than hers.  She didn’t want to be sent home, and she was willing to face every danger he faced.  For those who struggle with BPD, the fear of loss and abandonment is quite prominent. Similarly, to the Doctor, I would frequently be quick to make very close friends.  I often idealized them and think they are basically perfect. “And she is perfect,” the Doctor says about Clara Oswald.  “You are the most important woman in the whole universe,” he says to Donna.  At the same time, I was also just as quick to push people away.  I’ve sometimes seemed to ghost people, hide things from them, push them away from my problems, refuse help when I desperately needed it.  I was too afraid I’d hurt them or overwhelm them to the point that I’d lose them.  I become a roller coaster ride to be friends with.  I constantly felt the need to protect people from myself and try to save myself from impending grief which hurts so bad that it makes me sick.  

Like the Doctor, I also felt persistent emptiness and loneliness. I felt like no one really understood me.  Even though I usually had close friends nearby, they also seemed temporary. Give another year and it will be a whole new group of friends.  I am very blessed that I’ve been able to maintain a strong relationship with my best friend for almost five years.  I’ve not had a romantic relationship last even a year.  Alongside the loneliness came emptiness.  For the most part, I felt like my life was pretty meaningless and boring.  I felt like I constantly had to be doing something in order to fill the gap.  The Doctor gets like this too.  When he stuck around in Amy and Rory’s home for a couple of days, he got anxious.  He rarely sticks around for tea after saving the day.  He has to constantly be doing something, or he just feels bored or pointless. This causes anxiety or depression. The tenth doctor, after trapping himself in the 18th century with Madame de Pompedour to save her from impending doom, looked sorrowfully into the night sky because of losing access to his TARDIS.  Like him, I usually can’t handle monotony.  I get anxiety and depression really fast.  

Impulsivity is another common trait between me and the Doctor. This can look different for each person who struggles with BPD.  Many do struggle with alcohol or drug addictions but not all.  I do not, but my impulsivity comes out in other ways.  It actually is similar to how the doctor is impulsive.  I am very quick to putting myself in compromising or dangerous situations. Personally, I cannot actually go into much detail on this issue for my safety and the safety of others around me. As a result of impulsive decisions I’ve made, I have gotten assaulted or raped.  Now these crimes are ultimately not my fault, and do not advocate victim blaming.  People should just have the common decency to know that those things are wrong. Unfortunately, that’s not the world we live in.  I was almost physically assaulted after outing myself as transgender.  I learned quickly the dangers of being trans in society. I’ve stretched myself thin for the sake of others without taking the time to analyze how much I can handle.  The Doctor is very similar in this regard.  Over and over, he’ll walk passed “keep out” signs.  For him, they are like “dry clean only.”  He’s one of those people who usually takes action before thinking.  Although sometimes we find out that he has actually put more thought into something than we, the audience, assumed he had.  Still, a lot of times the plan is to run towards the danger, see what happens, then come up with another plan.  When he hears a scream, he runs towards it.  When a sketchy guy is offering jobs at Hooverville in 1930, he was the first to volunteer.  Despite his intelligence and cleverness to get out of dangerous situations, he usually just as quick into them.  The results have even blown up the entire universe.  

Both the Doctor and I also seem to have struggled with a personal sense of identity.  This also can result in intense mood swings.  Sometimes I have feelings of euphoria, a heightened feeling of myself.  I can be the life of the party or on top of the world. I can become hypomanic (BPD and bipolar disorder often mimic each other).  Other times I am the complete opposite.  I think I’m the most awful, pitiful thing that creation gave birth to. I will self-harm or have suicide ideations.  I’m afraid that I am an abuser just like my parents, that I just hurt people, or that I constantly let other people down.  This sometimes spawns feelings of isolation.  Sometimes my emotions swing between extremes within a day.  The Doctor seems similarly to reflect these traits. For most of New Who, he is haunted about destroying Gallifrey in order to end the Time War.  Was he a genocidal maniac or a hero who ended a war that would have destroyed all of reality?  Is he any better than a Dalek who belongs to a race of ethnic cleansers.  Even after the 50th anniversary episode, the twelfth Doctor feels the need to ask Clara whether he is a good man. People with BPD tend to have a difficult time knowing themselves outside of how others perceive them.  They constantly rely on others to tell them how they are more than trying to take the time to analyze personal actions and intentions. We usually think our intentions are just excuses for the horrible things we’ve done.  The Doctor kept telling himself that he was trying to end the most deadly war in all of history when making the decision to eradicate his own species, but he wondered afterwards whether it was just an excuse to be the monster he truly was.  It wasn’t like he had a super friendly relationship with the Time Lords (although he was also half human first suggested in the 1996 movie and confirmed with the twelfth Doctor).  He constantly wrestled with the prospect that maybe he took on companions in order to use them rather than actually befriend them.  Davros visibly gets under the Doctor’s skin when he suggests that the Doctor takes “ordinary people and fashions them into weapons.”  We have the episode with the Dream Lord, a suggested personification of the negative aspects of his character.  There is a very dark portion of the Doctor which makes him such a complex character to fully understand.  Still, generally, we most often see him as a hero.  We are more gracious towards his decision to destroy Gallifrey to end the Time War than he is to himself.  I struggle to understand myself.  I generally have persistent feelings of shame that if the dark side of me comes out, then people will leave me.  It’s something I try to control.

Building off the last point, the Doctor is prone to anger quickly coming to that emotion.  “The fury of the Time Lord” is explored throughout the series.  It’s related to the question as to whether he is a good person or not.  This is one area I have seen significant improvements in.  It is okay to angry, but sometimes my anger was ineffective in achieving my goals.  I am not as quick to anger as I used to be.  I think a part of it is that I don’t live with my parents anymore.  I still have much room for improvements.

The Doctor’s fears of abandonment and loneliness has given away to trust issues.  Too many people have betrayed him.  We never learn his actual name throughout the series.  He doesn’t trust anyone with it.  He keeps a lot of himself a secret.  He will refrain from being vulnerable around others including his companions.  He’ll always say that he’s fine, that he is always fine.  This is the classic thing that someone battling mental illness says to cover up their emotions from others.  It is something that I have said in times of distress many times because I am afraid that people will judge me or betray me or leave me.  River Song tells him to trust her.  She whispers his real name in his ear to prove to him that she is worthy of trust.  Even then, he has his reservations.  When learning River was a prisoner for killing man and she doesn’t reveal who, he questions her and why future self would trust her.  There is always constant questioning of other people’s motives and intentions.  When Rose saves her dad’s life altering a fixed point in time, the Doctor is quick to accuse her of selfishness, that she only wanted onto the TARDIS to save her dad, that she was only using the Doctor.  Though Rose’s decision was impulsive and unwise to say the least, the audience isn’t as quick to accuse her of that.  We get the sense that she had a genuine care for the Doctor and actually wanted to travel in the TARDIS for the purpose of exploration.   As we millennials like to say, I feels.

Thoughts of suicide and self-harm or disassociation are not attributes that we can necessarily observe or be able to observe in the Doctor.  We do know that he does tend to view his life as less important as others.  He’s hinted that death may be a gift for someone who lives so long.  He is quick to sacrifice himself.  He gets angry at River when she tries to save him and tell him that the universe doesn’t want him to die.  He’s willing to neglect his life for the sake of others.  When he tried to destroy Gallifrey, he didn’t expect or want to live.  The ninth Doctor explained it wasn’t his choice.  The Doctor seems to be depressed that he didn’t die after ending the Time War, that his guilt is unbearable at times.  I don’t think I can delve much further on this particular aspect of his character to be honest.  

I have thought about this for a long time as you probably can tell.  I am still in love with the Doctor and it is one the view shows that I garner pleasure from when I am severely depressed.  It can distract me from my sometimes very intense and unbearable emotions. I believe this in large part due to how much I relate to the Doctor, that maybe I may not be an absolute monster.  Maybe, I’m not that bad of a person.  Maybe I’m someone that can be loved just like the Doctor. Maybe I am just as interesting and unique.  Maybe at times I can be the hero and not the villain that I always view myself to be. I continue to love the series and I can not wait to see Jodie Whittaker’s depiction of the character when I am able to get access to the episodes.  I am sad to say goodbye to Capaldi, but the story always continues. 

[vedantaboston]

All the World's a Stage

"All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages."  -- William Shakespeare, As You Like It,  II, vii, 139

A play was in progress in India. Actor and dramatist Girish Chandra Ghosh (1844–1912) was playing the role of a drunkard and profligate. In one scene he was required to abuse a woman. His acting was so vivid and natural that a man in the audience, intensely infuriated and stirred, threw his shoe at the actor. It struck Girish and rebounded on the stage. Girish immediately picked it up, placed it on his head, bowed to the audience, and declared that he had never received a more gratifying tribute.

What happened to that man in the audience has probably happened to us all. The play of creation has been going on from God-knows-when. We were supposed to be watching it and enjoying it. At some point in this cosmic play, we probably got so involved in it, so identified with the characters and events in the story, our response was so strong and so quick, that before we knew it, we had already left our seats and found ourselves on the stage, becoming a part of the story ourselves. 

When exactly this transition from being a “spectator” to being an “actor” occurred we do not know. We stopped watching the play at some point and began acting in it. We became immersed in our roles to such an extent that we even forgot that we were only actors. We became one with the characters we were playing. 

This is, of course, the hallmark of all genuine actors. They forget their real identity and become one with the role they are playing in the story. When the story requires the character to shed tears in a tragic scene, good actors don’t need to smear glycerine under the eyes. Their body and mind, their entire being, becomes so attuned to the role, that tears and smiles come naturally to them. On this stage of the world, we too have become excellent actors. We laugh, we smile, we grieve, we suffer, we hate, we love, we fear. We do all of this, and more, naturally and effortlessly.

When the play is over, all actors regain their identity. When this play of creation is over, we too will regain our lost identity and know who we have always been. Not that every one is eager for the play to end. Many don’t even know that it’s a play. Some have heard that it is, but don’t really realize what it means (Kaṭha Upaniṣad, 1.2.7). Among those who believe it, some are terrified by the idea. But a few have had it. They just want out. For them, the question of questions is: when is this play going to end? If we are thinking “death” may be the answer, we need to think again. 

Death does not end the play. The curtain rings down only for a while, and soon we have to get ready for the next act, perhaps for a different role, in a different costume, in a different makeup. The story continues with little variation—a few tears and a few smiles, with a liberal sprinkling of love, hatred and jealousy—like the soap operas, full of stock situations and the usually predictable storylines.

If this play of creation does not end with death, when does it do so? Alas, it never does. It just goes on and on, without ending. It’s being enacted on a revolving stage, one scene following another without respite. Now that we are already somehow entangled in this play of creation, when can we realistically expect to be free? Is there any hope that the play will end someday?

There is always hope. The play can go on—who cares?—but there is no reason why I should. The problem is that, so long I continue to be a “good” actor, I cannot get out. Will the director ever let go of good actors? They will be held back one way or another. But in the case of bad actors, the director is only too eager to dismiss them. As soon as a suitable substitute is found, the director shows the door to the bad actor. I know now what I need to do to get out. I must stop being a good actor and learn to act badly. 

Is it possible to consciously practice bad acting? I think it is possible. Suppose a rich man is required to play the role of a beggar. Would his acting be natural if he is not able to forget that he is really rich but only playing at being poor? If an actor, miserable in her real life, is asked to play on stage the character of a cheerful woman, would she able to do it well if all the while she remains conscious of her personal woes? The actors who cannot forget their real identities while acting are bad actors. Their acting lacks spontaneity and authenticity. They have no future in the acting world. Sooner or later they are forced to quit.

If I really want to quit from this play of creation, I must become a bad actor. That is the only way out. When I consistently dish out bad performances, the director of this cosmic play—who else but God?—will, I imagine, gently whisper in my ears, “My child, go and sit among the audience. I cannot use you anymore. You have lost your ability to act. The only thing you are fit for now is to watch this play.” While this seems like a dismissal, it is in fact a reward.

Oddly enough, in this play of creation, it requires tremendous effort to become a bad actor, and hardly any effort to be a good actor. (Try writing a sentence with every word spelt wrongly. That needs more effort!) To get out now and dissociate myself from the play appears impossible unless I try real hard to make myself unfit for it. The only way to become a bad actor is to remind myself incessantly of my real identity, and to consciously detach myself from the role I am playing. I must remember always that all this is only a play, not real. I am reading fiction, not living history. I am not the character I have been dressed up in. I am someone different.

I learn from Vedanta that I am not the body, not the mind, not the intellect. I could say that they belong to me, but I am not any of them. I am different from them. The ātman—or pure awareness—is the real me. The body and mind are, at best, only coverings over me. What is my true nature? I am free, ever-pure, without birth, without death. I am being, consciousness, bliss absolute. I have never had any birth, nor will I ever die. I am free and infinite. (Gita, 2. 11–25)

All of this sounds too ridiculous to believe—and too disorienting to be told that I am not who I’ve always thought I am. It’s too scary to feel that I do not know who I am, but that seems to be the message. I have been so much absorbed in acting in this play of creation that I have forgotten my real identity. When and how did I forget this truth about myself? The Gita addresses this subject of loss of memory (smṛti-bhraṁśa) and traces its cause and its effects (2. 62-63), and recommends practices to help recover the lost memory.

When the quality of my acting in this play of creation starts degenerating, that is to say, when I am reminded again and again of who I really am, I become incapable of responding fully to the fictitious character I am supposed to be playing. I can no longer play a human being because I find it difficult to forget that I am divine. That’s the time for me to quit the stage. Sri Ramakrishna said, 

“If a boiled paddy-grain is sown, it doesn’t sprout. Just so, if a man is boiled by the fire of knowledge, he cannot take part any more in the play of creation” (Gospel, p. 668). 

I have to become “boiled” by the fire of knowledge—which will burn to ashes my false self and reveal my true identity. I will then remain absorbed in my real self (ātman). My duties as actor will be over (Gita, 3. 17). Once again I’ll find myself among the audience.         

All who have attained enlightenment in this life are the audience. They are watching and enjoying this play of creation. Those who are absorbed into the play and are playing their roles to perfection are the actors. They can’t choose their roles but they can, if they wish, quit acting. No one is forcing them out. But if they want out, there is a way to get out.

Let the play go on. Once I am in the audience, I am free from the obligations and compulsions of acting. If I want, I can sit and watch the play. If I get tired and find it boring (as I eventually will, everyone does), I am free to walk out of the auditorium for ever. No rush. I can take my time. I am free.

[belaborthepoint]

Please share this on Facebook so people will know I deleted my Facebook

Hello, online community. Though no one has personally reached out to me, I’m sure all of you have noticed my absence. At the very least, you had a feeling that something was missing, even if you couldn’t quite put your finger on it. That the universe was slightly off-kilter in some way, besides being off in the sense of climate change and capitalism and the Trump regime and the fact that everyone has been sexually assaulted and anyone who isn’t a cis white guy is unsafe in this country and we can’t trust anyone and people are dying and the arts are dying and no one knows why the human race was ever brought into existence only to ravage the planet and destroy each other and once in a while do something good like discover cures for diseases but only so that we can draw out our miserable lives even further and spend our last precious moments on this earth in a state of vegetation, alone, unable to look back on the one or two true moments of joy we felt amidst the alternating states of misery and empty, sedated distraction.

Personally, I’ve been coping with things in a very healthy way, as you can tell by the fact that I deleted my Facebook. Just as I expected, as soon as I cut out one of my many vices, the rest of my life immediately fell into place, and when I was able to find inner peace, I was also able to make sense of the horror awaiting outside. I used to be anxious and depressed even though I knew that things were mostly okay in terms of concrete reality and human beings being inherently good-natured and knowing why I’m alive. And then I graduated from college and the election happened and then I was sad and scared just in general and also for a lot of legitimate reasons. And now everything is still really horrible, but I deleted my Facebook, which means I’ve cured myself of my addictive, self-sabotaging impulses and negative thoughts and I’ve found ways to process how bad the world is by self-medicating in the form of deep breathing, hammocks, and raw vegan baking.

Here’s a picture of me relaxing in my hammock in my backyard in Brooklyn:

Sure beats social media, that’s for sure! I sure am sure about that sure! And don’t call me Shirley! Haha!! That’s a movie reference! I can make those now because I spend so much of my free time relaxing and watching movies! I also read books and listen to podcasts. I do all of these things and stay present and enjoy them instead of putting on some kind of audio media for background noise to try to feel less alone as I dissociate or ruminate on humanity’s tragic demise. In this photo, I was listening to a meditation podcast while doing my vegan hammock yoga. I came up with that myself. It involves an almond-avocado-mud bath face paste that you apply to your face, and a yoga pose where you lie with your face in the mud and one foot in the hammock. And every four hours someone comes to pour warm baking soda on the back of your knee.

Things are going really excellently for me. I read the news, don’t have panic attacks, take my medication at the right time every day even though I don’t need medication because my brain is healthy, and I go to work! When I stay home from work, it is because of real reasons that are outside of my control, and not for reasons like I ate a full box of Oreos at 3 in the morning and then tried to write poetry for two hours and then slept for two hours and then woke up feeling horrible physically and emotionally and psychically and spiritually and wanted to die so when my phone rang I just hid under my covers and told myself nothing was real and then sent my boss a belated email saying simply “I have a fever” and hoped that I didn’t get fired but also didn’t really care one way or another because nothing matters.

In addition to attending my job, I also spend time eating full meals consisting of real food I have prepared, which often contains nutrients. When I eat my real food I feel like a live human being and not like a body bag full of toxic waste, which is a good feeling that I like to feel a lot of the time. When I eat my real food, I also drink water so I can stay hydrated and have non-orange-colored pee and feel like my head will not explode and I won’t pass out.

Being healthy is seriously so great and I’m doing awesome. It takes a lot of time and effort, and I’ve had a long journey to get here, but seriously if I can do it then anyone can. It’s hard, but I’ve finally found a way to manage everything and feel good and okay and good. Being an adult today can be really difficult —  poverty, disease, homelessness, hunger, lack of adequate healthcare, cancer, death, debt, feeling unsafe every time you walk down the street — adulting is hard! But since I deleted my Facebook and started to declutter both my mind (and my closet — who knew I had that many shoes??), I’ve just been able to adopt a much healthier mindset and more positive outlook about the fact that my world is crumbling around me. I’ve been off Facebook for almost two full weeks now, and things are better than ever. I’ve really developed my yoga practice, I know how to relax, and I don’t cry every day, apart from every morning when I watch the sun rise over the mountains and peek through the clouds to say hello to the world, and I think how beautiful it is to be alive, and I know the next time a homeless veteran asks me for change, I’ll say what’s the value of money, wouldn’t you rather have a ray of sunshine? Look up and open your eyes, my fellow countryman! And we will clasp hands and stare into each other’s eyes as we weep with joy at what a gift it is to be a human being living in the United States of America. And our tears will turn to laughter as we simply overflow with bubbling, jubilant cheer. And we will walk off into the horizon like in the end of “The Great Dictator,” and we will be happy, and he will be homeless, and I will make a movie about it, and with my art I will make a home for all the poor and dispossessed and we will realize that this was The Hero’s Journey by Joseph Conrad and we had what we needed all along. Our shoes were in our heart the whole time. And all because I woke up and deleted Facebook. And so are you, if you really want to be now and always forever moving and turn turn turn prayers and love and laughter. We are all us. And it’s going to be okay. We are all okay. I AM OKAY. I. AM. O. KAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! OKAY????!!!?!!?!!!!!???????