#I’m currently barely bleeding but dying of the pain and other symptoms - isn’t all that helpful!! ^^ anyways we love being denied/dismissed

[the-red-hoodlum]

me when I can blush but not kick my feet bc cat on my lap 💔 I SWEAR I WOULD OTHERWISE CHAT TRUST I LOVE XER SOMMUCH!!

[insipid-drivel]

I need to vent: I’ve wanted and needed a hysterectomy since I was 11 years old, but all I ever hear is “But you might want children someday!”

I'm 27 years old, a lesbian, asexual, and perpetually celibate for religious reasons (It's complicated, but nothing to do with viewing sex as sinful or evil. I don't believe in slut shaming. It's simply a choice I made because it felt right for me). I also have Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder, severe psychiatric disorders including suicidality, PTSD, severe panic disorder, anxiety disorder, anorexia, severe executive dysfunction, and an entire laundry list of other crippling disorders that have rendered me bedridden for almost 24 hours a day. The only time I leave my house is to see doctors, and the only way I can stand to do that is by heavily medicating myself with a battery of different (legal) drugs.

One of the problems that I've had ever since I started menstruating at age 11 is near-constant spotting and bleeding regardless of the current state of my menstrual cycle. I have been on almost every form of hormonal birth control available, including having received an excruciatingly-painful IUD that I still experience extremely upsetting flashbacks from to this day. There has never, ever been any form of hormone therapy that has stopped my spotting and bleeding, and I've already gone through laparoscopic surgery to rule out endometriosis and PCOS as potential causes. 

When I'm not on some kind of hormonal birth control, my periods are so heavy and painful only opioids can control the agony, and since the United States has begun treating the opioid crisis by denying them to virtually anyone that isn't dying or suffering from a "real disease", I no longer have access to adequate pain treatment. I currently take birth control pills year-round without stopping to menstruate because it's so painful I will self-harm or even attempt suicide to escape the pain. I wind up menstruating anyway, but at least with the BC in my system, the cramping is more tolerable.

The only viable remaining option I have left is a hysterectomy or full-on oophorectomy (where they remove everything, from ovaries to cervix). I have been asking and asking doctor after doctor to please, please, please approve the surgery as a necessary procedure for the sake of my quality of life so my insurance will cover the costs, but I am constantly disregarded, blown off, or fed watery excuses about how it's "too drastic" a step to take. The #1 excuse I always receive is "But you may want to have children someday!"

I am stridently childfree and have been my entire life. If you want to be a parent, that's cool; it's your body and your choice, so more power to you, but I absolutely hate children and refuse to be anywhere near my child relatives, and I am so riddled with disabilities and dysfunction that I could never, ever be a mother. Even still, I am constantly told that I'm too young for a hysterectomy and may someday change my mind about parenthood. Doctors simply will not take me seriously when I tell them that a major detrimental factor to my extremely poor mental and physical health is centered around my reproductive organs. When I start to PMS, I become dangerously suicidal and even less functional than I already am. "But you still might change your mind!" 

I've already been hospitalized on suicide watch once before, but hey, I still might change my mind, right? Because children always thrive when they witness their mother attempt suicide.

I am already regularly seeing a psychiatrist about my mental health, and I genuinely like my PCP. I already hang out around various support groups. I am being actively treated for every one of the dangerous symptoms that I have listed, but I continue to spiral because no one will agree with me that a hysterectomy would be a huge benefit to my quality of life. My PCP has been the only one to ever give me a different excuse besides the possibility of me changing my mind, and her reason for refusing to sanction the procedure thus far is because of a case that happened in my state where a woman agreed to getting a hysterectomy, and then sued her doctors when she later discovered that the surgery made her incapable of having children. There are times where I feel so frustrated and angry that I wish I knew who she was so I could throttle her with my bare hands for kneecapping my chances at ever getting approved for the surgery as a necessary treatment. 

The only chance I have at ever getting these awful, disgusting organs out of me is to try to find a surgeon that will perform an elective hysterectomy, which would cost me $30,000+ out of pocket. 

I say again, I am disabled. I don't have an income. I'm so disabled that I can't even make it into the welfare office to apply for disability benefits. Elective surgery is not an option for me.

I am so sick and tired of living with this, but I can't find help in any quarter. All I ever receive are more and more prescriptions for psychiatric medications, and they never work. I have been around the block with medication so many times that my psychiatrist is just astonished and increasingly at a loss for how to provide me with effective care other than, you know, confirming that this surgery really is the only thing that can provide me with a modicum of relief.

I'm just so tired. I'm tired of the stains. I'm tired of the smell. I'm tired of the pain. I'm tired of the bloating. I'm just so tired, I sometimes wish I would hurry up and hemorrhage out so I don't have to be stuck in this broken body anymore. I don't have any kind of gender dysphoria (I 100% support trans rights and absolutely respect them, no questions asked other than "What are your preferred pronouns?") - I fully identify as female, but being born female has felt like nothing but a punishment and a slow, slow death sentence. 

[tenscupcake]

electrostatic potential (34/?)

ten/rose. teen this ch. this chapter was definitely an exercise in pushing my creative boundaries. a style i’ve never tried to tackle before, and it’s a short chapter on top of that (concision is something EVERYONE already knows i suck at). i like the way it turned out though, as did my beta :D so i hope you guys do too. summary: as the doctor and rose traverse time and space looking for adventure, they slowly fall victim to a mysterious energy that can manipulate their emotions. though confused and unnerved by the cerebral affliction, neither of them understands its cause, or realizes that it could jeopardize their friendship. what will it take for them to discover the truth? this chapter on ao3 | back to chapter 1 on ao3

There’s a phenomenon that exists in many species across the universe – ones with cardiovascular systems, at any rate. A temporary enlargement and reduction of function of the heart muscle in response to a severe stress, especially a death or breakup. Untreated, it can result in fatal arrhythmia or heart failure. Its symptoms are similar to those of a myocardial infarction: acute chest pain and shortness of breath.

Some medical professionals designate it takotsubo cardiomyopathy. But, species and language barriers notwithstanding, it’s known colloquially across much of the universe as broken heart syndrome.

“We haven't got time to argue. The plan works. We're going. You too. All of us.”

“No, I’m not leavin’ him!”

There’s no evidence the condition occurs in Gallifreyans.

But as the Doctor turns his back on the stark white wall and faces an empty room, he wonders if all his time spent around humans hasn’t begun to affect his biology. His chest is swollen yet empty and aching, and the only time he can breathe is when the erratic, pounding palpitations of his hearts knock the wind out of him and he gasps for air.

“He does it alone, Mum. But not anymore. ‘Cause now he's got me.”

Why did he do it? Why did he sling the device around Rose’s neck?

He would never. He should never.

His legs, barely functional pegs, slowly carry him out of the room where the rift was created. Broken. Numb. He nearly makes it to the stairwell but falls to his knees before he can reach the door. He buckles over at the waist, barely catching himself with his hands before his head hits the ground. The cold, hard floor is a welcome, if miniscule, reprieve from the agony in his chest.

“I made my choice a long time ago, and I'm never gonna leave you.”

He squeezes his eyes closed, wishing tears would fall. Wishing he could scream. Wishing something would happen to disrupt the deafening silence. The intense emptiness of this room. This entire building. Its previous employees either evacuated or dead.

He knew. He knew she’d never leave. He promised he’d never leave her either.

Why did he do it?

But she came back. The storm had nearly passed.

Nearly.

“Hold on!!!”

Haunted by the memory of his own guttural scream, he finds his voice.

“NO!” he shouts at no one except the walls and the corpses scattered through the building. Smashes clenched fists on the linoleum.

They had come so close.

And they had hardly two weeks connected. Hardly one actually believing they might be able to live out their days together.

More and more seconds pass without Rose’s mental presence close enough to feel, and his mind begins to throb with the realization she’s gone. It worsens until it overrides the pain in his chest, the edges of his mind a raw wound that no salve will treat. And yet, futilely, the abandoned tendrils of his mind search for her. They’ll never stop searching for her.

He was right not to trust. To flee from a possibility of a connection like theirs. He saw this coming. He knew how much it would crush him, but he did it anyway. He’s a fool.

And for his stupidity, Rose will live out her millennia of life in a different dimension, with no one to spend it with. Her very immortality a constant reminder of what she’s lost. He’s thrust the very curse upon her that he can hardly bear the burden of himself.

He can’t let her suffer like this.

He can’t.

He has to find a way to her. He’d rip apart two universes to find a way.

A burst of adrenaline wrenches his eyes open. A second gets him to his feet, supporting himself against a wall.

As he takes in his immediate surroundings, trying to re-orient himself so he can find the TARDIS, the stark surfaces of the white box he’s trapped in begin to warp. The walls bend and buckle. A haze drifts over everything, until it’s suddenly too treacherous to take a single step.

He squeezes his eyes shut and rubs his fingers over them, giving himself a moment to try to breathe. Kick in his respiratory bypass to assist. This must be merely a symptom of his situation, his brain’s sensory processing ability taking a temporary hit from hypoxia or shock. Maybe both.

But when he opens them again, the entire interior of the cursed building flickers in and out of existence around him. Milliseconds of utter blackness interrupt his shaky perception of the world – like a live video feed cutting out.

Somewhere, Rose is screaming his name.

He screams back, only it’s not her name but a garbled cry of pain, because his head is suddenly pounding like it’s about to explode. Clutching the sides of his head, he crumples to the floor again, and this time he’s unable to break the fall with his hands.

---

He’s tried everything he can think of.

Went back in time to Canary Wharf, risked it all to try to slip through the crack between the universes while it was still open. But the TARDIS wouldn’t allow the risk of crossing his own timeline. He shouted himself hoarse and tried to override her safety precautions but she wouldn’t budge. She wouldn’t let him kill himself trying to get her back.

Normally he’s grateful for her protection, but right now the alternative still seems preferable. He did have that deal with himself, didn’t he?

He tore apart the console trying to recreate the accident that brought them to Pete’s World in the first place. It was an even worse failure that led the TARDIS to confiscate his flying privileges entirely. He was marooned inside the ship, no outlet for his grief for what felt like years.

He’s searching for other gaps between universes now, any crack that might be large enough to squeeze through. It doesn’t even matter if it’s a one-way trip or not. Setting the randomizer over and over, he searches every new destination for signs of the Void seeping through. But with and all of time and space at the TARDIS’s disposal, her search radius a mere pinpoint in comparison, it could take ten billion stops before he found one.

It’s hopeless.

His mind cries out for her, its edges aching, still raw. Frayed. Like the stub of a severed limb.

The monitor still doesn’t have any positive readings.

He crushes the pen in his hand, not caring when the ink bleeds onto the keyboard beneath it. He’s about to punch the glass screen, desperate to feel something besides the hollow ache in his chest.

But he suddenly feels… strange. Without warning, a different emotion rapidly displaces his grief and hopelessness: a potent sense of amnesia.

How many times has he done this? How many loci of this universe has he already checked? Two? Two thousand? He can’t remember any of them. But their current voyage doesn’t feel like their first one, either. Mingled with the amnesia is déjà vu, a nagging sense he’s done this before. He’s exhausted like he’s been at it for months without sleep, maybe even years.

He rubs a hand down his cheek, finding it rough with stubble. Looking down at his suit, he finds it stained with grease, dirt, and blood. His own? How long has it been since he washed it?

As he looks around, suddenly nothing he sees feels real. The console, the floor beneath his heavy feet, none of it.

Why are there such large gaps in his memory? Was he dosed with something? He doesn’t feel right.

He must need sleep. He’s been fighting so hard to get back to Rose, he’s been neglecting himself. Severely.

That’s all it is. A kip is all he needs.

Suddenly too exhausted to make the trek to his own bed, he drops to the console floor and is unconscious before he can second guess himself.

---

The Doctor carefully pilots the TARDIS around the dying, blazing star, getting the ship into just the right orbit to absorb its power without her shields being depleted by the intense radiation.

The gap he eventually found isn’t large enough to fit through.

Only just enough to send simple communication.

When it’s finally in the right spot, he steps away from the monitor. It’ll take a few minutes to draw enough power to send the projection, and the Doctor needs to freshen up. He’s still determined to find a way through properly, but he’d be an idiot not to consider the possibility this is the last time she’ll ever see him. He doesn’t want to look pathetic and unkempt as he says what might be his final goodbye.

He mechanically changes his suit and shaves his face, styles his hair though he hasn’t in he can’t remember how long. The way she likes it.

They didn’t get to say goodbye.

It’s the very least she deserves.

It will destroy them both, to be able to see one another but not touch. To be tempted with one another’s image even as the pervasive emptiness in their minds persists.

But it’s better than nothing. He repeats that to himself as he drags his feet back to the console.

But when he re-enters the console, his head is suddenly killing him again. He pushes his fists into his forehead, clenching his eyes shut and gasping through his teeth to try to will the pain away.

It does begin to fade after a few moments of steady breathing, and he takes one last deep breath, steeling himself for what he’s about to do.

But when he opens his eyes, the TARDIS’s interior has been completely transformed. A console still looms in the centre, the time rotor still breathes heavily as it churns up and down. But a purplish glow has replaced the green hue he’s accustomed to. The control panels have sharp edges, the organic corals supplanted by polygonal pillars. Unfamiliar Gallifreyan inscriptions line the walls and moving parts overhead, and the room is far bigger: multiple tiers of pathways extending in three dimensions beyond the grating of the console.

Dimly, as though a projection itself, a young redhead traipses around on a level of grating above him, and he can just faintly hear a Scottish accent...

And with a blink, it’s all gone. The stranger, the headache, the foreign TARDIS. It’s all back to normal.

He shakes his head, blinking hard a few more times. But the console room is now just as he left it: small and green and old-fashioned.

But… how… wait...

How did he get here?

The last thing he remembers is falling asleep on the grating. When he came to, he had already found this supernova. What did he do in between?

He shakes his head, dispelling the nonsensical train of thought.

It’s the anxiety. It has to be. Messing with his brain. Temporarily distorting his memories. But he can’t back out now. This might be his only chance to say goodbye to her.

---

“How long have we got?”

“About two minutes.”

---

“Am I ever gonna see you again?”

“You can’t.”

“What’re you gonna do?”

“Oh, I've got the Tardis. Same old life, last of the Time Lords.”

“On your own?”

He nods.

“I…”

A sob chokes off whatever she’s about to say, and she buckles over at the waist, trying to contain it.

Two minutes.

They’re running out of time.

When Rose rights herself, meeting his gaze again, her cheeks are still wet with tears, but they’re no longer falling. Terror and desperation have replaced the sorrow on her face.

“Doctor!” she shouts, far too loudly for being right in front of him. It’s frantic and impatient, as though it’s not her first time shouting his name, like she’s been shouting it for ages and he hasn’t heard her. The tangible shift in her emotional state makes this feel so much more real. Her presence here with him is an illusion – she’s not really inside the TARDIS – but it suddenly feels like she is. She feels closer to him than she has for months. His mind agrees she may be within reach, reaching out and calling her more strongly than it ever has.

Which is foolish and naïve. It must be merely his instinct to protect her kicking in, a strong emotional response to her evident distress affecting his judgment.

“Rose? What’s wrong?”

“You need to regenerate!” She’s still shouting just as forcefully.

He looks around, searching within the TARDIS for whatever danger she’s detected, but finds none.

“Rose, what are you on about?” Panic bubbles up inside him. This isn’t how he wants their last conversation to be. “I’m fine.”

“Doctor, whatever this is you’re experiencing in here, it’s not real.”

In here?

He’d rather they could touch one another, too, but this projection was the best he could do. He’ll keep trying the rest of his life, but there’s a good chance this is their last chance to speak. As far as Rose knows, it is. He doesn’t want to waste their final seconds together arguing about what’s real.

“Rose, I know I’m not here properly. Not physically, but… I had to say goodbye.” He pleads with her to understand with his mind, though he knows she can’t feel it. Her mind is still too far away, notwithstanding this visual fabrication that’s projecting her image inside the TARDIS.

“No, Doctor! Don’t say goodbye!” She lunges forward and grabs onto the lapels of his suit, the strong clutches of her fists successfully capturing the fabric, and his eyes bulge out of his skull. He stares down at her hands, the dark blue fabric of her jumper pressing into his chest, the arms attached to them suddenly quite real.

“Rose,” he gasps out, breathing heavily. “How are you doing this?” He reaches his arm up, touching her shoulder and finding it quite solid. His throat closes up with panic. Has sending this projection torn the fabric of reality? Jeopardized the stability of this universe? Hers? Both? As much as he wants to touch her in return, he knows something has gone horribly wrong.

“Look, you’re hurt.” Rose moves her hands up to his cheeks, tilting up his head, forcing him to look her in the eyes. Frantic as they are determined. “You’re hurt really bad. You hit your head. You need to regenerate.”   

“What’re you…” he tries to speak, but a potent spike of pain in his head prevents him from finishing the sentence. “Agh!” Clutching his head, he sinks to his knees, but rather than the hard grating, there’s nothing but sand beneath his knees. He glances around, only to find the console, the coral struts of the TARDIS, the ramps and the adjacent hallway are fading out of view. In just a few seconds, his ship has disintegrated completely. There’s only Rose, the ocean, the cold wind and sand and scattered rocks surrounding them.

“Rose, what’s happening?” he grits out through his teeth. The world tilts on its axis as the relentless pain brings nausea and disorientation. 

“Doctor, you need to stay with me.” She kneels down with him, fighting desperately for his full attention. But he can’t give it; the pain is already excruciating. “Can you feel the regeneration energy?”

“No!” he spits out, too miserable for politeness.

Amidst the agony is a profound confusion. How did he get here? Why does his head feel like it’s been cracked open?

But he has to say goodbye.

Two minutes.

He’s running out of time.

A powerful wave of dizziness crashes over him as he looks up at her, making the entire world spin around Rose until she goes completely out of focus.

“Rose, we don’ ‘ave much time. Just… needt’ tell you…” The words are slurred. Like he’s drugged, about to lose consciousness.

“Doctor! Listen! We’re not on this beach, okay? We’re at Canary Wharf. You’re about to leave me forever. You’ve got to trust me. I can feel it. The fire in your veins. You need to surrender to it.”

He stops trying to fight against what she’s saying. If this will be the last time he sees her anyway, he might as well indulge what she wants.

But how can he regenerate if he’s not dying?

Maybe he is dying. He’d be better off dead than living without Rose, anyway. Either way, regenerating sooner just means his miserably lonely life will be over sooner once she disappears.

He searches inward for the familiar flames of change, and to his surprise, he can just detect it down in his toes.

Is he dying?

Now that he can feel the fire in his veins, it quickly consumes him. Spreads through his body, burning every cell it touches from the inside as he yells against the wind in protest. The relentless migraine in his head worsens as the fire reaches his head, spreading and swelling with unbearable pressure until his head feels fit to burst. An overinflated balloon about to violently pop, its shrivelled latex remnants raining to the ground.

The agony at least brings a burst of adrenaline that hauls him to his feet, still holding his head. At this point he’s worried if he lets go his skull will fall apart, but he pulls one hand away from his head, needing to see the evidence for himself. He watches as the golden glow emanates from his hand, trickling down to his fingers. Brighter by the second.

He doesn’t want to regenerate. He wants to stay in this body. This is the man Rose fell in love with.

But if she’s gone, what’s the point? If he can’t get her back… oh, he’d do anything to get her back... but it’s too late. The crescendo of energy is moments from reaching its peak. The overwhelming heat is melting his organs, the poorly contained energy tearing his cells apart one by one as it searches desperately for an outlet.

He gasps for air, desperate for the pain to be over. Maybe Rose will still be here when he comes out the other side...

Rose.

“Get back!” He barely gets the words out before he explodes.

Rose.

She’s his only conscious thought as his body combusts to a whirlwind of plasma and ashes around him.