#I’ve been working on manifesting and allowing the universe to take care of the things I want recently

[formu-oli]

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[jaguaresss]

Ketu Mahadasha

I don’t see enough people talking about their Mahadasha experiences so here’s mine.

Looking back, 2 years ago Ketu was shedding the things in my life that needed to go, a LONG time ago, but rapidly.

My long term relationship came to an end, but we were legally bound while I became the “other woman”. My boss of the best job I’ve ever worked at began to turn on me, my coworkers were talking about me behind my back and influencing her. I was knee deep in years of fight or flight. All of my ideologies, narratives back then needed to go.

Instead of resisting, I just surrendered into the process and luckily had enough support to stop working for a month. During that month I spent a lot of time working on dissecting who I was and how that needs to change, in order to get to where I want to be.

It seemed as though this was what Ketu wanted me to do, and it worked.

I had a wonderful support system around me, of friends that were ready to help. While I still experienced some betrayals on a micro level, I was able to find another job in my previous field that was holding me down while I spent the next year to heal. I found a soul mate best friend that I believe I manifested. She took me on many adventures into nature which helped me heal from all of the trauma.

The journey of surrendering allowed for me to become closer to myself, and therefore my soul tribe. This was the era of Ketu/Venus.

Ketu Moon is currently on going for me and lots of matters of childhood and family have been resurfacing.

Had to visit my family in an emergency and reconnected with extended family I had not seen or spoken to for YEARS. Had some supernatural things happen, saw a vedic astrologer for the first time and gained lots of clarity.

Currently back in my new home country and experiencing changes in career. My current job is not allowing for me to grow, and some financial challenges.

But my best advice is to always surrender to the challenges Ketu throws your way. If you meet it with resistance, Ketu will do anything in its power to make sure you surrender. Resistance will only make it worse on your situation.

I have had to sell all my gold, accumulated in Mercury MD to be financially stable. Sold most of my items I was holding on to for no reason.

One of my other take aways is, “The more I lose, the more I gain” during this period of Ketu.

Ketu wants to clear out any debris from your consciousness before you move into a place of love and being able to love whole heartedly (Venus MD)

In my experience, despite a Mahadasha, life will keep showing you parallels in your life (aka ending up in the same place or similar situation) until you have mastered that lesson and broken the cycle.

Always look deeper. It’s more than just the same type of person, situation or place. What are your feelings towards it? Are they deep rooted to something else? Perhaps a situation that conditioned you to think a certain way from your childhood?

True power is the ability to turn your thoughts into action, and true power is also the ability to transmute your pain to change… aka ALCHEMY.

Truly analyze your thoughts and actions so far. Where can you become the alchemist, in your own life, and transform your experience for the better?

All of the best artists have transmuted their pains into poems, music, and art.

Become the artist of your life ✨🦋🪬🧿

Additional notes:

Another piece of advice, take care of your body! Ketu is missing it’s head, there fore it wants you to take care of your body. This is the best way to anchor into the brain fog you may be experiencing. Connecting with your body will help you connect with your mind(Rahu).

We tend to store emotions of trauma in our bodies. Lymphatic massages(that you can do yourself) truly help! I adopted a facial lymphatic drainage massage I do on my face and neck that has unlocked a few emotions for me. Holistic University on Instagram shows you massages you can do on the body that help relax and unlock certain emotions. Ketu also does not like too much food, so eat nutritionally dense food, and not in excess.

Fasting on a Tuesday is also helpful for healing your Ketu.

This is the time for you to reconnect with your soul and higher self!!! And the only way to access this is through your body.

Will keep updating as I go :)

Update:

Just began my Mars Antardasha, and I must say, it started out with so many emotions. I don’t even know how to describe how distraught I feel.

An incident with an individual I became very close to during my Ketu/Venus has brought to surface so many emotions I didn’t know were still stored in my body. The combination of Ketu+ Mars feels like it’s burning/ stinging all my old wounds, and I want to ride solo and burn my current life to the ground… to ASHES. There is so much anger and pain coming to surface and it feels cathartic. However, I am also feeling like I don’t trust anyone or anything.

My body and eyes feel like they're on fire...in a good way. Definitely feeling a flare of intensity

Interesting turn of events… what have been your experiences with this Mahadasha/ Antardasha?

[indelen]

The plot kicks off in earnest and the midnight hour is close at hand, it's time for honey cake (medovyk) and tea.

This is my reread of the Lockwood and Co. Books, organized by @blue-boxes-magic-and-tea, I'll make a general summary of several chapters and then post bits and pieces that jumped out at me.

Part III, Chapters 9-12:

Things continue to go pear shaped. I find it interesting how Stroud manages to thread the needle of reader sympathy towards the protagonists. The writing makes it clear that they did mess up and the house fire was avoidable. And this is not all on one person - Lockwood could have pulled rank and insist they leave but didn’t, Lucy had the chance to leave after the first manifestation but didn’t. Lockwood forgot the chains. Lucy lobbed Greek Fire indoors. All of this is bad. And when you meet Barnes you sort of agree with him to a point about them being irresponsible, but he’s so high handed and dismissive of the trio you can’t help but be on their side. The government keeps telling these kids they should listen to the government, because the government is full of adults that know so much better than they do. But if this was really the case the government would not allow children to do this dangerous work at all. You can't have it both ways! Either these kids know nothing and adults really are smarter, in which case let them go study trigonometry and pass notes in class already and, as smart adults, find some different way to battle The Problem that doesn’t involve high mortality child labor. OR. Let the kids do their job and admit you’re not operating within some perfect and fair system where the presence of an adult magically fixes everything or makes anyone safer. We meet so many adults in this universe and the majority of them are awful and take horrific advantage of children to enrich themselves on The Problem. None of them are sufficiently controlled in this universe because it is not in the government’s interest to do so. The kids sense this and revolt, if they are to die they want to die on their own terms! This is what happens when governments fail the people they are supposed to protect and when the desire to make money trumps acting in the interests of the public good.

Odds and Ends, Side A:

10/10 chapter opening. On par with “the building was on fire and it wasn’t my fault”. Reader attention fully captured.

Lucy “no I totally don’t care how I look, I swear” Carlyle maintaining if she ever came back as a ghost she’d be a hot cool ghost thankyou very much is so funny to me, just peak teenager insecurity and vanity but in a very endearing way.

There’s the thing about George – he can learn. Not just from books but in real life he can take criticism to heart if it’s laid out plainly. Even if it’s mean. This is probably his most amazing attribute. He dislikes hypocrisy and doesn’t have time for any kind of jabs or hints that are difficult to interpret. But someone lobs a criticism straight at him, he won’t dismiss it outright. In so many ways he is the most emotionally mature of the trio.

I’ve been thinking a lot in this reread about why George was so hostile to Lucy from the start and I think it comes down to the fact that he saw Lucy as someone who would make Lockwood more reckless. She is a gifted Listener, George knew Lockwood enough to realize this will make him more likely to rush off into the fray without research and Lucy being not especially academically minded would not stop him. I think he was worried that they would feed negatively off each other and outvote him. Which … they did at first, it’s true, George was completely right. Lucy goes along with whatever Lockwood says because she trusts him, because she admires him, because she doesn’t want him to think less of her. This behavior continues later too - she snarks at him plenty, calls him names, makes fun of him, sure. But ultimately she has a hard time saying “no” to him. And finding that balance of how much to go along with Lockwood’s plans and when to contradict him is I think a huge part of her arc in this series.

This pantomime of Victorian gentility is hilarious. The year is (arguably) 2013 and yet this sounds like a scene from Agatha Christie. Barnes knows Lockwood is home, Lockwood knows Barns knows he’s home but this presenting of a visiting card and “show him in” ritual has to be observed because this whole society hasn’t moved on from 1953 in six decades.

I am not the right person to give a post-colonial literary analysis of the Lockwood books but I would be the first to want to read it. There’s a lot there in terms of portrayal of indigenous beliefs, what colonial powers learn and refuse to learn from them and how they appropriate them. Barnes sees a collection of artefacts from all over the world meant to deal with ghosts and immediately dismisses them, seeing only the methods he’s familiar with as correct. He does not stop to appreciate the fact that the idea of contacting the dead and laying them to rest is an issue that in some way or another humanity has been dealing with for millennia and all around him is evidence of the fact that not one of these cultures resorted to shoving their young to act as meat shields to do it. The variety of the artifacts speaks to the idea that there may be different approaches possible, different avenues to explore. On what basis but good old-fashioned racism is this dismissal of a ghost catcher in a universe where ghosts are real and do real harm to real people? Does a country dealing with such a crisis not owe it to its citizens to investigate every possibility instead of just consigning a large proportion of their children to a very high possibility of death and telling them that they can’t even do it on their terms, no, the government and large corporations must manage how they die!

And the idea of “it belongs in a museum” is especially laughable in this context. Presumably he means a British museum despite the fact that all these artifacts are foreign. There’s something so on the nose about a very British man dismissing knowledge from other cultures as useless and indicating he views those cultures themselves as extinct when he himself lives on the bones of a long dead empire enforces the practicing the most barbaric shit imaginable.

There is also something so very sad about Lockwood’s encyclopedic knowledge of every gord and mask in the house. Like he never to a chance to know his parents to he memorized everything about their research to get as close to them as possible.

George is the most verbally brutal of the trio and I love that for him

Here again is that Lockwood duality. We later learn sleeps in his parent’s old room - the ultimate symbol of his attempts to play the adult. Like the suits, like running his own agency, like his many successful and unsuccessful attempts to mimic adult behavior. How successful he is really is … not certain. Lucy is not a reliable narrator and even she is clearly unconvinced sometimes, but he clearly can pull it off to some extent. But every now and then we get a glimpse into the fact that he also, in a very sad and stubborn way, clings to a childhood that was horrifically and unfairly ripped from him. The baby mobile in his seemingly adult bedroom is a neat encapsulation of Lockwood himself.

This man is incapable of staying angry at his beloved for more than like … 15 mins tops.

Please turn the cassette over to side B (see reblog for more)

[deerbornintuitive]

Autumn Messages Pick a Pile

Hello, and welcome to your autumn spirit message. These are mini-readings about what you need to be made aware of for this season. I’m Deerborn, energy medium & tarot reader. I use my intuition to help when you need guidance, feel stuck, or want to understand yourself at a deeper level. All messages are always meant for your highest good. Please note that my readings do not serve as medical or legal advice; I am not liable for how you use the provided messages. If you enjoy your reading and would like to leave a tip, tap here. Book personal readings here.

Are you ready?

Take a moment to look at each of the 3 images. Take a few deep breaths. Ask your Spirit Guides for help if needed. Allow your intuition to guide you.

Which will you choose?

When you’re ready, scroll down to your pile. Thanks for reading!

Pile A

Ace of Pentacles & 10 of Wands

This season, you're being presented with a new beginning. There are going to be multiple opportunities for you to grow and expand in exactly the ways you’ve been dreaming of. If you've been working on manifesting something, this season is when it will come to be; and it may not take the form you’re expecting. If you feel blocked with this, make your manifestation intentions less specific. Sometimes we can make too many guidelines for the Universe, which makes it more difficult for things to align. Because Pentacles often represents finances, there’s likely to be some unexpected money coming in. This could take the form of a gift, finding money tucked away. or a raise, or booking higher paying commissions/gigs. Spirit wants you to know that what's coming for you will require some hard work, but nothing you can’t handle. It will be a matter of listening to your body and honoring when you’re getting tired so you do not burn out. Persevere, and you will see amazing things come out of it! You're strong and capable. Reach out for help as needed, please know you don't have to do it all on your own. There are people that will be glad to support you and see you grow! Happy fall, friend!

Pile B

7 of Wands & The Hermit

This season, you're going to be met with some challenges. These don’t always come from your environment; they can come from within. I’ve often seen 7 of Wands in regards to self limiting beliefs, comparison syndrome, imposter syndrome, perfectionism, even anxiety, ocd, etc. Your Spirit Guides want you to know that they’re always supporting you to overcome these obstacles, whatever they may be. They provide their protection and healing when you need it. Remember, they cannot interfere with free will, so if you need assistance, you must ask them. If you have trouble receiving their messages or energy, try using an intuitive tool, like a pendulum, oracle or tarot cards, runes, etc. Spirit also wants to remind you that your inner guidance will best lead you. When you feel like you're fighting against the current, take a time out to tune into your inner wisdom. Find sanctuary so that you can gain perspective before jumping back in. If you’re moving through a difficult or dark time, be careful not to isolate too much. This will exacerbate feelings of loneliness, sadness, anxiety, negative self talk, or any negative energy. Allow yourself time alone, but do not forget we all need some support. Happy fall, friend!

Pile C

4 of Pentacles & The Lovers

This season, you're doing your best to hold onto something, likely resources and money, but this could also simply be referring to your energy. You’re budgeting something, being mindful and aware of the needs of your future self. By saving or holding onto things, or energy, it gives you a better sense of control, and maybe control is what’s really needed right now. Spirit wants you to know that while it's wise to save for the future, you still need to live. Be careful that you aren't completely shutting yourself out from the world in order to watch your budget (financial, energetic). Instead of completely restricting yourself, make smart choices on where your energy or money is going. Time with friends will be a great way to have fun without spending too much money. Or, treat yourself, no matter how small, to some self care. Use what you have on hand. There is a way for you to come into balance without feeling restricted. A path toward harmony is available to you right now. Trust that the Universe has your back. If things feel stagnant, look around you to see what can be let go of. Maybe it’s time to go through your home and donate some items. Happy fall, friend!

[ejaydoeshisbest]

How re-reading Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe brought this miserable, lonely 29-year-old back to life.

THIS IS NOT A REVIEW OR REACTION OF ARISTOTLE AND DANTE DISCOVER THE SECRETS OF THE UNIVERSE. It’s more like how the story and characters brought me back to life and how it reignited some of my dreams. This is also like stream-of-consciousness writing, meaning some points will be redundant.

The summary of this long post:

Literature and art make life beautiful. I have lost myself for so long. Now I have found myself again, and healing, through the power of stories. My core identity is resurfacing, settling itself nicely in my chest. It’s like I am beating with a new heart, though my body still remains sickly.

But I will fight for this reignited free-spirited dreamer who lives each day with gratitude, purpose, and love. Dante Quintana taught me that. My north star is twinkling again, shining with the radiance of my purest and noblest dream, which is to live life absorbing and expressing myself through stories.

I realized that cutting that dreaming, idealistic part of me only brought misery. By conforming to the constraints of my reality (poverty, meeting social expectations, and following societal norms) and shifting my mindset to reflect those around me, I became a common lemming with no color in his life.

I don’t want to go down the traditional, practical route anymore. Just like Benjamin Alire Saenz, I just want to write, even when that means compromising with reality, like taking a minimum wage job near where I live just so I can have the time to express myself even when no one hears whatever I have to say. Better that than work a soul-sucking corporate job.

Magic happened back then when I allowed it to manifest in serendipitous ways in my life. When I listened to my instincts and my gut, coupled with discipline and hard work. I was open, and so the world opened up to me. And the world was beautiful. I was true to myself like Dante was, and like how Aristotle learned to become. I had forgotten that.

Now, though, I have to be open to the world and be cautious at the same time. I just have to be careful. Dante got beat up because he didn’t run. I’ve got to make sure that I can be like Aristotle and learn how to defend myself even with my small body.

I’m not sure if I can get back to that raw state of vulnerability where every hour of every day that I am awake was nurturing this wistful perception about the world. I’ve seen enough of it to know that there are vile monsters dwelling in dark places. But I will be honest in the way I live my life. I owe that to myself.

Besides, maybe I can find some good people in my journey of truth. Reading Aristotle and Dante again filled me with hope that I would still meet some bright, wonderful people—people who were touched by the story of these two boys, who are sensitive and are not afraid to live their own truth.

Part I – The Re-Read

Who knew that opening and reading one of my favorite novels again—the one I’ve been wanting to read since early this year—the one that’s been on my study desk for months now, drinking the golden rays of the midday sun, could help me find myself again.

It helped heal me, more than anything I’ve been doing so far. Just like Pixar’s Luca did, created by Enrico Casarosa. Just like Heartstopper did, created by Alice Oseman.

It awakened my dormant spirit. For so long, I let fear and general lethargy, depression and anxiety swallow me whole. I viewed the world as this miserable place to live in. I forgot to dream of possibilities. I forgot to retreat into this childlike perspective that worked for me. I forgot to delight in the simplest things: the icing on a cupcake, the smell of coffee in a cozy coffee shop, the sunset hitting the skyscrapers, the laughter shared between close friends. I forgot myself.

The first time I read the book, I thought it was simply a feel-good, well-written,  lyrical young gay romance. It has helped me come to terms with my sexuality and it told me that it was all right to love someone, even if we’re both boys. The writing is warm and lyrical and gentle even through some difficult, emotional scenes.

It filled me with the hope that someday when I was older and more sure of myself, I would experience that kind of love.

And even if I didn’t find this wonderful love shared between two people, then I would still have the wonderful message of this story. Of loving yourself, of discovering yourself and staying true to yourself. Treating yourself gently and treating those around you with grace and compassion, and defending what good you believe in. Of never running away from what you believe is right.

After reading Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe for the second time, I fell back into the age and state and place I was in the first time I read it; a young man who had freshly come to terms with his sexuality, full of hopes about his future. He was excited for the life he was dreaming and planning for.

But reading it again after 8 years felt like I was mourning a part of myself, too. This book hangover is deep and life-altering. The impact was greater, heavier.

When the afterglow from reading the book receded, I was a sickly adult once more; one who had made some major wrong choices in life. And if not the wrong choices, then someone who wasted his good years by being a lazy, anxious, depressed slob, afraid to make any choices at all, whether good or bad. I was a waste of space, back in his old childhood room, wasting his time, wasting whatever remaining youth he still had in him.

It hurt because I was not a young man, and it hurt that I’ve done nothing good and useful in my life. I have not accomplished not one of my major dreams.

Maybe that was why even though I placed it on top of my desk, I was hesitant to open its pages again. Because I subconsciously knew that it would hurt. Though the story still lingered in the deepest chambers of heart, in the recesses of my tarnished spirit, all through these years, it was still faint to not make any considerable impact. It was then just a delightful story. And now that I am reminded of its power, it broke me, and then it repaired my broken heart.

I had forgotten the message and story, and how could I? After it has served me so well and impacted my young adult life. It made me romanticize my life, fall in love with the world, and be conscious of my youth.

Perhaps I thought it silly that I was too invested in a fictional world when the stressors of reality were so hard and demanded my full attention. Maybe that’s why I let the message go, because I thought it didn’t apply in the real world. In my reality.

Perhaps I listened to the people from a corporate setting; those wearing business suits and ties Monday to Saturday, that I kicked all my childlike wonder to the curb.

Or perhaps daring to dream, persistently, was slowly killing me on the inside as I became an overworked and underpaid corporate slave surviving in a developing country like the Philippines, with its corrupt government and ungodly four-hour traffic congestions that eats up most of your life. The added pressure of going through weeks, then months, then years, of putting my dreams and personal goals on hold was so painful that I abandoned them completely. The dreamer in me disappeared, and that was when I became jaded, cynical, anxious, miserable, and depressed.

Now, I am reminded to stay true to myself. To be good, even though the world is cruel. To be strong so I can defend myself, my dreams, and those who I love. To not be ashamed, so long as I do not hurt anyone. To dream big and to live a life full of love.

Part II – Inspired by Young Fictional Characters

I want to go on an adventure like Dante. Or I want to be like him.

I want to pretend that I am young and live in America and have the option and freedom to move to any state I want. I want to feel myself again. I want to restart my life. I want to do things that bring me joy and give joy to people.

Now that I am a lost, directionless fool, I am actively yearning and envious of Dante’s free-spirited nature. I used to be like him way back when I was his age and up to college. Heck, maybe even a few years into my early adulthood.

I am envious of Dante now because he gets to go to the places I want to go, and I am resentful of his artistic spirit and how easily he expresses himself, and mourning how my spirit used to float like his.

I see all these images of me in this alternate life, now that I get to dream. I am visiting New York or Los Angeles or Chicago.

I am in the middle of the art scene, bathed in neon red, orange, and blue lights. I am in my element and I have the energy to explore. Or I am in a literary scene. Or I am in a cozy bookstore/library. I work as a Starbucks barista somewhere nearby. Or maybe I am a creative entrepreneur, making decent income selling prints or self-publishing my work online. I have friends that I’ll keep forever no matter the distance, instead of losing the few remaining friends that I have, because we try our best to understand each other care for each other. This is all what I wanted in life.

Dante makes me feel young and hopeful. He reminds me to let things go and be earnest and joyful and accept all that life has to offer and show up as my real self, even if it hurts.

Maybe this is a passing feeling. Maybe I’m just inspired by all the Western young adult novels that I’ve read. Maybe I’m just riding on the book hangover I’m feeling right now.

I’m not sure if this is a problem. I don’t know if this is silly. That this powerful drive in me was inspired by fictional characters in fictional stories, but I suppose we all take inspiration from somewhere.

I’d rather take inspiration that stirs me to act than be an emotionless lump of despair going through the motions and reliving his miserable existence.

I want the comfort and beauty of fiction to bleed into my everyday boring life because repressing the lessons and impact of fiction is like repressing my creativity and inner playful dreaming child. And that is a promise to myself to never do again.

When I thought about it more, the qualities found in my favorite novels apply in the real world, too. I also know that there are other dreamers just like me out there who are making their own little spaces bright and beautiful. Maybe if I stayed true to myself and follow this new, instinctual path, it would lead me to meeting these wonderful, creative people.

The biggest challenge now is re-learning how to love this slow, sick body and to work with its strengths and limitations to live the kind of life that I want. I’m way past being a young teenager or young adult. I still have to be practical about most things, but not enough to ruin the dreamer in me.

I may be older than I’d like to be when reclaiming my life, but I am still 29. I’m going to give it my all these 8 months until my birthday to pursue all my passion projects even though I’m still unwell.

Part III – Healing the Inner Child

Aitch Alberto, the brilliant director who pushed FOR YEARS to make a movie adaptation of Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, mentioned in an interview that reading the story unlocked something magical and indescribable in her that inspired her to live her true self.

That was what I felt after reading the book, too. It is a testament to its timelessness. The power of stories, in general, is amazing. It had unlocked my core identity; the one I kept chained in the deepest chambers of my heart. And with it came back my highest dreams and ambitions. My purpose in life—the same one I had when I was 18—resurfaced. To tell stories. That was what gave my life meaning. To read and to be touched by stories and to share my own stories to those who want to listen.

And to explore myself by opening myself up to the world and its endless opportunities. To grow by learning with other people and being amazed at what they can do. To collaborate with past and future friends.

I want to carve another path for myself and devote myself to that path for a couple of months and see what happens. If I failed, it wouldn’t matter, because at least I tried, and I was true to myself while doing it, instead of allowing reality to dampen my spirits. At least I tried to really push myself towards a noble pursuit that I believed in when I was still a young boy.

I could do so much more if I wasn’t so hard on myself and thought negatively about myself. I wasted years of my life being miserable, instead of allowing the beauty of fiction to replenish my tired spirit.

This book has inspired to me re-do my life. To get back on track. To fight and not ask for permission and to build the life I want for myself. Focus and determination and grit, like what Aitch said in her many interviews.

I have overcomplicated life for long enough. I want to pursue my many passions again, little by little, because THEY’RE FUN AND JOYFUL AND WORTHWHILE.

Part IV – Staying True and Exploring Myself

We live in an era where we can keep exploring our identities. Our paths can diverge depending on our many interests. We won’t feel stuck being just artists or corporate professionals or any other profession.

We can build ourselves so long as we keep moving forward in meaningful directions. I’ve got to remember to not let go of the things that give my life meaning and joy. If I get lost, I hope that it won’t be too cringe if I imitate the characters in the books I’ve read. It’s not like I have many great real-life inspirations where I’m from.

I might try to explore and express myself in different mediums that inspire me.  Aside from great novels, there are other moving artforms, like drawing, painting, vlogging.

Maybe I can explore my abilities and contribute something good to the world while staying true to myself and having fun by experimenting with them all, one by one.

Maybe I could start by writing stories, then after 2 – 3 months of consistently doing that, I can progress to simple sketches and finally learn how to draw!

What’s important is that I’m doing something meaningful in life. I’d like to believe that that’s all there is to it: doing the things you believe you were set in this world to do. I hope that with each artistic or creative venture, I have something good to add to the world. The output isn’t as important as the journey, just like how Dante lives his life.

I just hope that I don’t get into the trap of feeling self-conscious that I am too old to be free-spirited and curious. This cautious voice inside me tells me to not actually regress back into a 16-year-old, of course. I must live in the present and navigate the waters of the new reality I am creating carefully.

But in whatever I set out to do, I must make sure that it is an authentic adventure; that whatever great works of art or literature I encounter, it has to be aligned with the kind of life I’m cultivating. If I am to participate and add my own voice in the mix, I must make sure I have something good to say.

Part V – Sticking to a Plan

In this part, I am heavily inspired by Aristotle. The simple thing he did of working at a diner. I don’t know, something about that is appealing to me, especially as an old, unemployed, lost person.

I liked his independence. Independence and maturity were my best qualities before, back at my prime.

Now that I plan on getting my life back together, getting a job at a nearby donut shop or mall feels like the right step for me. It also offers the freedom for me to have time to work on my hobbies.

Maybe I can start there, since I feel like I was at the age I started reading the novel, anyway. Teens and young adults got their start working a minimum-wage part-time or full-time job, right? It feels like getting a job out of high school, the do-over I need right now. Then after work, I can fully focus on writing. Just writing for now. And stay true to the stories that I want to tell.

Baby steps. That’s the key. Take small, enjoyable steps that make life more meaningful.

The little boy inside me is still there. I don’t want to chase money anymore. I just want to be secure enough so I can try new things.

I’ve been browsing Instagram and Pinterest recently. I think I like the 80s to 90s aesthetic. Maybe I can try posting photos of anything related to that. Maybe I can tell a story through photography. Maybe I can tell a story through painting or drawing. Maybe I can start a book vlog or a journal vlog. I just want to create stories so long as there’s something worthwhile to say.

Again, Dante inspired me to be free and express myself and he reminded me to keep dreaming and act on those dreams. Like he did when he went to Chicago with his parents. Like how I did when I was in college. I romanticized my life and built many useful skills and befriended a lot of people with their own stories to share. I was so confident in my own skin. I kissed girls, I kissed boys. I wrote, I drew, I captured bright moments. Dante made me believe that I can do anything.

Perhaps I also killed my childlike wonder when I mistakenly thought that growing up and being mature means detaching myself all things playful and creative. My priorities of keeping a 9-6, 6 days a week job, made me forget what matters to me the most.

Conclusion

Reading young adult novels like Aristotle and Dante made me remember the good days that I wanted to have. There were other stories that made a deep impact at certain points in my life. There’s “Freak the Mighty”, “Meet the Robinsons”, “Love of Siam”, “The Song of Achilles”, and many others. Last year I had this sort of mourning period after watching “Heartstopper” Season 1 on Netflix. It was a joyful, uplifting show, but I was sad for all the people who did not experience that kind of love.

It's funny how I can remember myself or identify myself with characters from fiction novels than the people I'm with. Sometimes, I think it's because I'm in the Philippines and that people are more individualistic in other places. Like Western countries. They're not afraid to explore themselves and the world around them. Then again, their world has so much to offer.

The trick now is how to keep that free-spirited nature even as an older, impoverished man who wasted most of his opportunities in life and inaction.

I have to find the balance between channeling this constant vulnerable and emotional state I’m in to make good and meaningful work while also facing reality. I have to find the magic in the everyday even if not much of that is happening lately in my small corner of the universe. I have to remember that there is a twinkling north star that is guiding me if I know where to look.

I believe that’s what makes everyone special: that deep feeling that is everyone’s north star. To live life like you were meant to do. To act on meaningful things that give you purpose. To love life through trials.

I want to fill my life with different eras full of passion projects so that I don’t waste any more days. I just need to be brave again. And to just live my life regardless of the limits of my reality. We only have one life to live. I don’t want to waste my life scared and worrying about the same old things. I’d rather experience tolerable pain doing the things that matter most to me and proactively doing it than living in fear.

I have to believe that even though I may not have that vibrant youth anymore, I can do more than just dream now: I can act.

Thank you, Benjamin Alire Saenz, for writing Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe. And for Aitch Alberto, for adapting it into a heartwarming film.

[angelsaxis]

In Disaffected, scholar Xine Yao looks at the racial history of unfeeling. Trained as a nineteenth century Americanist, Yao, much like Lauren Berlant, shows how sentimentality was used for nation-building. Sentiment promised to unite disparate people into a single, stable country if they all “felt right.” Of course, who is allowed to feel “right,” and who is punished for not doing so, is socially determined. While this suffocating framework of universal feeling is writ large in global modernity, Yao theorizes unfeeling as modes of disaffection and dissent that emerge from different entanglements of biopolitical difference. If feeling is implicitly for white people and only taken as valid in accordance with power, can a case for racialized unfeeling be made?

In addition to these relevant theoretical interventions, I argue that Yao’s analysis of Affect Studies and its persistent “race problem” also provides a much-needed corrective to Trans Studies and its white-washed dissociation rhetoric. While this discourse helpfully seeks to unstick trans people from obligations and stereotypes of maximal, spectacular feeling—inspiration, humiliation, violence—it often ignores how emotion is racialized. If dissociation is a way to survive the routine shame of getting clocked, not everyone can just check out. As Yao reminds us, overt disaffection in response to white feelings has historically been met with punishment.

This conversation with Yao touches on boundaries and detachment; we also discussed our deeply grateful, deeply ambivalent relationships to Berlant’s scholarship. Talking with Yao made me question whether we still live in a cruelly optimistic era, or one defined by un-optimistic cruelty.

—Charlie Markbreiter

▼

CHARLIE MARKBREITER. Could you talk about the history of sentimentality, its role in the American nation-building project, and how both you and Berlant address this topic?

XINE YAO. Part of the founding of the US as a nation had to do with ideas of sympathy: how do you draw together disparate peoples for a national project? The right feeling is supposed to lead to the right type of politics. But trying to just cut feelings out (as if we could) is also not an answer. Think about the alt right phrase “facts don’t care about your feelings” (as if white supremacy was based on fact). One thing Berlant’s work does so well is take seriously what sort of politics are enabled by feeling: what sort of effects does it produce, what also does it limit.

But I also have a hard time with how feelings are talked about––not just by Berlant, but by Affect Studies in general––which is like: isn’t it cool how sticky and porous emotions are? And my reaction is just, what about boundaries? What about the possibility of detachments? As black feminists like Audre Lorde have pointed out, boundaries are a way to refuse the constant demands for gendered and racialized emotional labor.

That’s so interesting. We know that boundaries are important, but when you talk about them as a topic of academic inquiry, people don’t take you seriously. I wonder why. Maybe because, with increasing neoliberalism and austerity, universities increasingly discourage academic workers from having any boundaries at all, as near-constant, precarious labor becomes the norm.

I’ve been thinking about the pedagogical aspects of unfeeling, and what it means in terms of our engagements with our students. Because we’re in a time when there’s so little in terms of emotional resources—or any resources for that matter. And what we’re seeing is that students need us to be resources of care, but also that we barely have enough care for ourselves. And as a result of this scarcity, you see many different types of cruelties manifest. Like there’s this impossible, cruel demand, and people are either suffering from trying to meet it, or inflicting cruelty by doubling down on their methods of discipline and control.

So what I’ve been trying to enact in my own teaching instead is: how can we teach not just give care and be a resource for care, but how do we teach care as a methodology of engagement? How do we teach students to think about building care laterally, and to think of care as necessarily reciprocal?

One way of doing this was not just by asking for feedback, but by showing students what that feedback would be used to do, and how the results would impact their learning experiences. This not only made students more engaged–-it also made them give better feedback, which of course helped us in turn. Another thing I did was separate students into pods of six and set aside time for them to share work online or just hang out. In both cases, the aim is to build laterally in a way that isn’t naive to existing power dynamics.

In Tamara K Nopper’s recent TNI piece, she describes how, for bell hooks, the personal is not an end in and of itself. I mean, it is helpful—it shows people that that they are the experts of their own experiences. But, most of the time, we see the reverse: instead of this movement out, structural forces are reduced to the personal.

In an abolitionist context, something like de-escalation is, in a way, also about feeling less. Because in a moment of heightened conflict, what both sides need is to just like take a second and be like, “Wow. I need to chill. And touch grass.” And one way to de-escalate is actually to reframe the conflict so that it’s less about individual blame, or saying that the pain anyone feels is unreal, and more about how the situation is socially reproduced by structural forces which oppress everyone involved.

I remember this tweet that Mariame Kaba had like maybe a year ago about how social media functions and exploits our experience in the activism of escalation. Which is often less helpful in an actual organizing context, which is when you have to compromise with each other to get things done.

This reminds me of my “getting in fights with people on Twitter” era lol. I’d tell my enemies, “I’m right,” and they’d just be like, “Why are you so obsessed with me?” Which was embarrassing because it was true. I’m obsessed with you in that I’m giving you so much of my energy. And, in an attention economy, what could be more of a self-own?

It reminds me of the bullying we experience as children. And how it heightens your self-surveillance and our attempts to become as non-responsive as possible so that the bullies don’t get any pleasure out of picking on you. When people portray the trauma response of dissociative shut-down, they usually vilify it. But just because you need to switch off doesn’t mean you’re dissembling. You’re making a decision about the allocation of care. Maybe you failed to “rise to the occasion,” but would it actually have mattered if you did? Maybe you’re just saving your energy for those who actually need it.

Lauren Berlant famously also examined “not feeling it” as both a trauma response and a survival strategy.

Lauren Berlant came to Cornell while I was doing my PhD there. They also did their PhD at Cornell, and at one point jokingly referred to the “Cornell school of sentimentality.” Berlant’s writing has been so informative for me. But it’s also not the sole determinant of how I approach the world. For example, their diagnosis of citizenship and the good life as exclusionary mechanisms is both extremely helpful and an over-reification of the US and citizenship as the ultimate model. And while they know that citizenship is built upon exclusions, what they don’t really explore is: what if you don’t want citizenship? What does it mean to read their work in the US, as someone who’s not a US citizen and it’s not really interested in being a US citizen and then to feel and stay with that dissonance? In the nineteenth century, Chinese sojourners didn’t always want to stay. Many of them wanted to go home. Which, again, isn’t even about Berlant, but the problem of sympathy, and how the solution is always just, “Okay. We’ll do better next time.”

I hate the obsession with finding, denouncing and then reclaiming each of racial capitalism’s niche effects. It’s supposed to reveal the contradictions of life, but more often performs a siloing function in addition to justifying harms caused via a mode of cost-benefit analysis thinking—which is more neoliberal than anything else. As if to say, “It’s all worth it, so long as...” some queer theorist can reclaim your pain. Which is actually quite different than saying, “Decades of dissociating causes lasting trauma, both individually and collectively. How do we heal from that?”

And this actually also resonates with the question of identity politics that I tried to analyze towards the end of my book. The point of identity politics was never about this hyper focus on individual; instead, it is the starting point for methodology. Now there are so many jokes about people naming their privileges and then they go off and do whatever they are going to do anyway. But actually you’re supposed to look at the nexus of differences and privileges and then realize therefore, “This is what I’m responsible for.” Which doesn’t just mean that feelings are valid, but about looking at the attachments to those feelings, and what they may but also may not actually index. Which is part of why the work coming from Trans Studies by scholars such as Maxi Wallenhorst is so exciting, and why I’m also grateful for Queer of Color critique, which looks at how white gay/trans feelings are overly universalized.

Along those lines, I’m curious if you could talk more about how dissociation is racialized, both discursively and in life. Trans Studies has done a great job of showing how dissociation is gendered and sexualized by analyzing it via dysphoria; “Fucking Like a Housewife” by Jamie Hood is a great example of this kind of analysis. But one reason I really appreciated your book is the way it shows who is allowed to access unfeeling, who is forced into it to survive. Which helpfully undercuts the liberal sentimental practice of associating maximum feeling with maximum truth, as if those who felt most and best were automatically the most valuable. Trans Studies dissociation discourse has a race problem, is maybe what I’m trying to say.

When you’re talking about affect, there’s always the temptation to make a universalizing move. Because you want something that speaks to the individual, but is also more generally useful. But this is when it becomes useful to bear in mind Sylvia Wynter, or Denise Ferreira da Silva, whose work analyzes the way universal affect leads to the Enlightenment’s universal “Man.” We don’t want to do that. What we’re trying to do instead is make frameworks that speak deeply as a theory in the flesh, both to us and to those we care about in our communities. So how can we push back against universalism’s portability, which is of course based on racial violence.

That makes a lot of sense. Because most of the time, when white trans people universalize, they’re not like, “I looooove whiteness,” more like, “This thing helped me, so it will help you, also.” Without understanding that it might actually not. It’s perhaps another example of what historian Jules Gill-Peterson called “white gender.” That term is from her piece on Christine Jorgensen, who was the first mainstream American trans celeb, and also about her own experiences with white trans women.

Feelings are valid, but sometimes there has to be a type of distancing to really understand the attachments that are involved.

As dissociation has become a more prominent topic in both Trans Studies and mainstream culture, how do you feel the concept of dissociation has been racialized?

Following Wynter, we might say that “universal feeling” over-represents whiteness and the Human, and that, in this case specifically, it leads to an over-representation of the white trans person. So, dissociation is gendered, especially via its contact with dysphoria, but that experience coheres differently for different kinds of subjects in a way that can’t be extricated from the sort of wider colonial biopolitics of difference.

It’s less about proving that dissociation isn’t actually a theoretical panacea, because of course it isn’t, but asking: how was dissociation produced as the catch-all answer in the first place? And if dissociation is the catch-all answer, then what was the question?

[bluediamonder]

it was a lot more than a hug: an (unintentional) short essay on mental health & steven worm

I LOVED THE HUG OKAY.

I’ve seen a lot of people saying things like “uGh thE eNdiNG sUcKEd geTtiNg a hUG doEsN’T sOLvE aLL yOuR pRoBLeMs”. but in my opinion, that’s exactly the point. 

All throughout the second half of SUF, they’re trying to show us that there is no one way to feel immediately better and have all of your problems solved. He goes to pretty much every source he can. The gems aren’t necessarily seeing what he’s going through, Connie isn’t going to solve this for him, his Dad is helping in an unhelpful way, so he goes to Jasper and that went haywire, so he goes to the diamonds and they just make it worse. And then what is he supposed to do?

Every single time Steven goes to a person to “help” him, he’s going to them seeking help in order to fix it. and there’s a big difference between the two. 

I have anxiety, depression, and OCD, and often when I’m panicking or having moments of high anxiety, I do what Steven did: I seek out people not to help me, but to fix it for me. I then react the same way Steven did - with anger - when people try to help instead of just fixing it.

Anxiety, depression, panic, none of those things can be completely and magically cured and rid of in the snap of a finger. But in the moment, for people like me, for a person like Steven, the thought of that feeling not being entirely solveable is petrifying.

 It’s like if someone is drowning and splashing around: you can’t get the life ring around them because of how much movement and commotion they’re creating. But they’re drowning, so you can’t just tell them “Hey, stop moving so I can help you!” From your perspective, you’re trying to help them by encouraging them to do something that will in turn allow you to help them. But to that person, if they stop flailing, they’re going to sink even further, and that is terrifying, so much so that they can’t even consider that you might be wanting to help them. All they can process is that you told them to stop doing the one thing that they don’t want to do: sink. Even if they’re sinking just for a moment, before you save them, that doesn’t matter. That feeling of sinking is terrifying, so they end up splashing around more. 

When Steven seems to be babbling on, almost comedically, in “Everything is Fine”, trying to convince himself he’s fine, he’s gotten to a stage that I was in for a while, a sort of mania, where he is not only attempting to convince everyone around him that he’s fine, he has convinced himself that he is fine. This is a huge red flag for people with bipolar disorder or manic depression (NOT diagnosing Steven, I am not a professional, I’ve just experienced many of these things and been surrounded by people experiencing these things and professionals explaining them to me. Like I said, I was in the hospital for this, so). Everyone around him starts to see that he is, in fact, not fine, as they’ve already surmised. But the physical consequences of them not doing anything, not doing enough, are starting to manifest.

When he morphs into the Steven Worm, he has lost his sense of self. He doesn’t know what to do with himself, he can’t exist within himself with the world he’s created. He didn’t tell the Gems about the hospital, he didn’t tell his dad he was angry, he didn’t actually tell Connie he needed her he just proposed. He doesn’t know what to DO with all of this. So it explodes around him.

He can’t control his feelings, himself anymore. He feels he’s lost control. For me, a human, this morphs into a panic attack. But for him, he’s a gem, he turns into Steven Worm.

Not even the diamonds, the most powerful beings in the entire Gem universe, are incapable of changing him. His emotions bring White Diamond to her knees. But what they’re doing wrong here is they’re trying to fix him!

When Connie bolts in on Lion and is making her (iconic) rallying cry, she never says they need to fix Steven or heal him; she says they need to help him. Because that’s the only way he can get better.

When you go to the psychiatric hospital, you don’t go to get fixed. You’re in an environment where you’re made so you’re not a physical danger to yourself, and then you do a shit ton of work. You have therapy multiple times a day, every day, all week. You do work, they don’t just fix it for you. And this is the solution that we need to see portrayed. This is the solution they did portray in SUF.

Mental health disorders can’t be fixed. And Steven’s problems weren’t solved with a hug. 

But we needed to see the hug. Because Steven needed to see the hug.

The hug wasn’t just about hugging him. It was about literally forcing him to come face-to-face with the love and support he had been inadvertenly, and then intentionally, pushing away. It forced him to say, “Okay, this is who I am right now. And these people love me.”

I had to have the people in my life tell me over and over that they loved me when I went to the hospital. I had to have my doctors tell me that they cared for me, my therapist tell me that I wasn’t talking too much, because I didn’t believe them. I had convinced myself I wasn’t worthy, I was a fraud, just like Steven. Sometimes you need that love in your face, surrounding you so that it is the only thing you can see, for you to be able to let it in. 

The hug didn’t fix everything! That’s the big thing. The hug was a pure, beautiful moment, but I don’t believe it was meant to be a plot device to try to fix everything. Everyone was still emotional, he still destroyed things, he scared people, he scared himself. That wasn’t all magically fixed because of the hug. But his resolve to do the work, get help, and accept what happened to him - that is what made him go from Worm Steven to Boy Steven.

And afterward, we seen Steven has grown. He hasn’t morphed, his hair hasn’t changed, he’s not pink. But he’s grown mentally. He’s communicating more making plans, his disposition has changed.

Previously on this post, I said" I don’t like that they called what he had a meltdown (again, I vouch that it was a gem version of a panic attack)" However, I learned that this is actually a really good term to describe what Steven experienced, and as a person in my ask box (@a2Ieep) noted, could be relevant to the headcanon/idea that Steven is autistic, or at least autistic-coded, as well as his PTSD or cPTSD. None of us can diagnose Steven but that also means I shouldn't just pass off terminology like that! I realized it gave people who self-identify as autistic, the same feelings it gave me as I struggle with panic and anxiety. While we surmise different meanings from the meltdown, it was a meltdown. We all feel so touched by it, and Steven's meltdown felf like a panic attack to me, that doesn't mean it isn't a meltdown, and that it can't be meaningful to someone else with autism or PTSD. Steven's meltdown is just as meaningful to someone who has autism or PTSD, as it is to me with panic attacks. Erasure of someone else's feelings on my part was not okay, regardless of my intent or my own strength of different feelings. Plus, it was his choice to use that term. I just want to make it clear that at first I didn't like the term, but it is actually a really important term to use. I didn't expect the post to blow up like this, so I wanted to make this edit known and seen as it's a really important of this post. Thank you to everyone for understanding! And thank you to @tentacrocacles @transtistic @satoshigekk0uga @mercurialmeditator @possumpiebruh and @a2leep for sharing their feelings ans thoughts with me, which helped me to realize this and investigate and alter my own sentiments!

but YALL STEVEN HAS A THERAPIST NOW! He’s is not only getting the help that he needs, he is showing that he is going to continue needing this help, and that’s okay! He’s making plans to visit people, to go see the world, on his own terms! 

 He’s scared and sad of leaving the gems, and it’s also time to leave the gems. It’s time to move on, and be a new Steven.

We’ve seen a lot of Stevens the past few weeks. But Steven driving off past the Big Donut into the night was my favorite Steven. That was vulnerable Steven. That was Steven doing the work to be himself, to exist with his feelings and the ways he had acted, and the things he had gone through. That was my boy. Steven Universe.

When I saw my mom for the first time while I was in the hospital, the first thing she did was give me a big hug (I was a blubbering mess, of course). But it wasn’t just that my mom was giving me a hug. She was telling me she was there for me, she loved me, she was telling me she would stay up on the phone with me as long as the doctors would let me, she would drive 3 1/2 hours from our home in Michigan to the hospital in Ohio at a moments notice (I went to school in Ohio and went to the hospital there too before coming home). That hug was her forcing me to see that she was there for me, even if I didn’t believe it, or didn’t want to believe it.

So yeah, Steven got a hug. But it was a lot more than a hug, okay? Take my word for it

[aphrostarot]

Future Relationship Pick a Pile

What is the present and future state of things with the person you are thinking about?

*you do not have to be in a relationship with them currently*

Please remember that this is a general reading and some things may not apply to you. Don't force it to fit. I offer paid readings on my page if you would like a personal reading. Prices are listed there. Please message me or email me if you are interested!

Pile One (Rose Quartz):

Where are you presently?

Seven of Wands:

Right now, someone in your life is causing you drama. Recently, you have been arguing and fighting more than usual with this person. This might be a romantic partner or an old friend. This person doesn't respect you or your ideas, and it has been showing more and more lately, which makes you retaliate and step up to defend yourself.

Where is your person presently?

Seven of Cups:

Right now, this person feels pretty lost in their life. After spending so long on one path, they are stuck, unsure of how to proceed, faced with multiple options on how to move forward in life. Right now, they must decide whether to continue on the path they have been on or take a different route.

The Hanged Man:

They will have to make sacrifices on this journey, and it appears that they are currently stuck due to a lack of desire to make those sacrifices. To move forward, they must give up something in their life, but this is a very difficult decision. Currently, they are at a standstill.

What obstacles stand in your way currently?

King of Pentacles:

One or both of you are a very materialistic person, viewing people as what they can bring to you rather than through an emotional lens. Based on the energy I feel that this may be the person you are thinking of rather than you. This person needs to let go of this mindset so they can choose the right path, the one that leads to you.

What do/will you provide for your partner?

Page of Cups:

When it comes to this person, you are very empathic. Your more sensitive side shows when you are with them, and you really want to help them through their troubles. You tend to be quite needy when it comes to them, feeling as though if they do not constantly show their love to you or express their love for you that they are losing these feelings. When it comes to them, you need constant reassurance. Despite that, you still show this person a more loving and gentle type of love, something they might not be accustomed to.

What do/will they provide to you?

Queen of Wands:

When it comes to you, this person is quite bossy. They are quite dictatorial. Most of what they care about is themselves and their pursuit of what they want, rather than your emotional needs and wants. However, they have no ill intentions or feelings for you. Love from this person makes you feel more insecure. This person brings out your abandonment wounds. As of now, your relationship is like this.

What are your future intentions with them?

The Emperor:

Since this person currently has a lot of control over you, it seems to me you want to be in charge in the future. You want to reclaim your throne and be the bossy dictator instead. For a change, you'd like to be the boss.

What are their future intentions with you?

Nine of Cups:

They want to fulfill all of your future wishes as well as their own. They want your relationship to be everything that both of you have ever dreamed of having.

Queen of Swords:

This may not reflect their future intentions, but rather only a possible outcome. There will be a woman who causes trouble in your relationship. Usually, it is a female relative, a mom, or a sister. In the case that you are currently having problems with this woman, this person's intention may be to handle your current problem.

What are some obstacles you will face in the future if the present obstacle isn’t dealt with?

Eight of Cups:

In the future, if you do not resolve the present obstacles, one of you may walk away and start a new life. According to the energy I am receiving from this pile, you might be the one to walk away from this person if they do not change their materialistic mindset.

Where do they stand with you in the future?

Knight of Cups:

It seems as if they will finally start to see you from an emotional point of view in the future. Eventually, they will start to be more romantic towards you and act like a prince charming. They want to be everything that you have always wanted them to be.

Where do you stand with them in the future?

The Devil:

I think that this person finally acknowledging their feelings for you and becoming less bossy and more romantic towards you is too little, too late. Ultimately, it will be you who walks away. Having had enough of the psychological trauma that this person brings up in you and causes in you, you leave them.

Channeled Messages:

“Dominate me”

“I wish you were lying next to me my love…”

“You are home”

“You are the one I want to be with”

“How can you miss someone you’ve never met?”

“I can’t stop thinking about you, you are always in my dreams.”

“I think you are amazing”

Frustration

Have faith

Please stay

Channeled Letters:

Q

N

U

Y

S

X

O

O

L

I

Channeled Songs:

Pile Two (Amazonite):

Where are you presently?

The Magician:

My sense is that you may be single and manifesting this person into your life. If that is not the case, then it is possible that your significant other isn't who you thought they were, so you are trying to manifest a better version of them through them or through someone else.

Where is your person presently?

King of Wands:

Currently, this person feels extremely passionate about the things they are pursuing in life. They work extremely hard to achieve their dreams and they are pretty successful. At this point in their lives, they are feeling pretty confident and feel as if they can accomplish anything they set their minds to.

What obstacles stand in your way currently?

The Hanged Man:

If you want to move closer to each other, you may need to make some sacrifices in one or both of your lives. For some, I’m hearing that the Universe is bringing you your manifestations but it may not look exactly like what you want. If that is the case then you will need to let go of some of your ideas of what you want in a person.

What do/will you provide for your partner?

The Fool:

There may be an age difference between you and this person, that or a different level of maturity between the both of you. The person you are thinking of seems to be the more mature and serious one out of the both of you. This person will see life in a more fun-loving, carefree way when you are around. You show them a more youthful approach to love and life.

What do/will they provide to you?

Death:

The Fool is all beginnings and Death is all about endings, so, this is another symbol of the two of you and your levels of maturity. You benefit from this person's maturity. Their guidance will help you to become a more beautiful version of yourself. They will help you let go of your past and grow into a better version of yourself.

What are your future intentions with them?

Five of Cups:

Despite the hurt you've suffered in the past and the sadness that has filled your life, you're still a positive person. Life still seems hopeful to you and you do not let hurt consume you. That hurt still resides deep inside of you, and sometimes it overcomes you if you are not careful.

I am receiving strong Aries energy from this pile, both Sun and Moon.

The Tower:

During the Tower moment in Tarot, everything you have accumulated over the course of your life comes crashing down around you. The Fool's journey describes them sleeping under the Tower when it comes crumbling down around them. It was a traumatic experience but they emerged from it more optimistic thanks to the fact that they lost most of what held them back and they are ready for a fresh start. I find this interesting because you bring the Fool's energy to this person, which shows me that you do embody the Fool. You know that this person will allow you to let go of your past and move forward. Therefore, your future intention with this person is to help you overcome your sadness and become a better version of yourself.

What are their future intentions with you?

Ace of Pentacles:

This person wants to build a foundation with you in the future. In order to make sure that you're happy and comfortable in life, they are willing to do whatever it takes. They want to make sure you can count on them for support whenever you need it. Their intentions are to build a happy and healthy home life with you. Possibly even building a house for you. They could also want to buy you an engagement ring.

What are some obstacles you will face in the future if the present obstacle isn’t dealt with?

Five of Wands:

In the absence of solutions to the present obstacles, some competition may be on the horizon. There may be people who try to steal this person's attention from you.

Page of Cups:

Your emotional immaturity may be another obstacle in this current situation. You need to start to mature a bit more and recognize that some of your desires are not what is best for you. You are being blinded by your optimism in this current moment and this may come back to haunt you in the future.

Where do they stand with you in the future?

Nine of Cups:

With you, their future is filled with wish fulfillment. You will fulfill all of their wishes in the future. Their dreams of building a foundation with you, of making you comfortable and happy with them are coming true in the future. As long as the obstacles are overcome.

Where do you stand with them in the future?

Judgment:

As for you, the future looks bright as well. You will see results in your current problems. By overcoming your current obstacles, you will then be able to be in a healthy relationship with this person.

Channeled Messages:

“Emotionally distant”

“Too self-conscious"

“Dominate me”

“I’ve heard that you’ve been a bad…”

“Can I know every part of you?”

“Playing hard to get”

“I think you are amazing”

Divine Masculine

Eternal Love

Forever

Channeled Letters:

P

N

R

O

I

K

E

A

Channeled Songs:

Pile Three (Amethyst):

Where are you presently?

Nine of Pentacles:

In recent months, you have been enjoying the fruits of your labor more than you did before. It is possible that you have been treating yourself more rather than saving money. It seems that you have struggled with money in the past, which is why you usually save money, but lately, you have been spending more than you used to.

Where is your person presently?

The Hermit:

For the past few months, the person you are thinking of has been living in hermit mode. Instead of spending time with friends, they have been spending time with themselves. This has left them feeling pretty lonely.

Three of Wands:

Recently, this person started a new job or has changed the way they work. They have had to work in a team more, and being in a hermit mode makes this difficult. They would much rather be alone right now, but their job requires them to work with others.

What obstacles stand in your way currently?

Three of Pentacles:

This is the card of putting your skills to good use. The process of becoming a master. Currently, your person is not doing this. Recently, they have experienced something that has caused them to withdraw into themselves, despite the Universe telling them they need to work with others to improve their abilities. This is preventing both of you from progressing towards each other if they continue to do so.

What do/will you provide for your partner?

Two of Cups:

It is possible that this person has never experienced true love. They do not know what it's like to be truly loved for who you are and everything you do. No one has ever brought them sweet, innocent, fairytale-like love. As a result, they may feel that they are unworthy. You will bring this to them. This person will experience what it is like to be truly loved by you.

What do/will they provide to you?

Eight of Cups:

Your tendency is to hold onto the past, fearing that the negative things that happened to you in the past will happen again. You will be able to let go and move on from the past when you are with this person. A brighter future awaits you with their guidance.

The Sun:

With them, you will experience true happiness. Your life will be better than it has ever been before because of them.

What are your future intentions with them?

Two of Pentacles:

You want to bring balance not only in your own life but also in their life. Your goal is to be the person that makes them feel complete and whole, the one that makes them feel at home.

Queen of Cups:

Also, you want to show this person what true loyalty is. You want this person to trust you and feel at ease with your relationship. Your way of doing this is by being an extremely kind, caring, and loyal partner. The last thing you want is to become the kind of person who has hurt them before.

What are their future intentions with you?

Strength:

They want you to see how strong they are. They want to be the person who you go to for protection, the one who is going to hold down the fort when you need it. They want you to truly be yourself and let your guard down around them and the only way they feel they can do this is by being strong for you.

What are some obstacles you will face in the future if the present obstacle isn’t dealt with?

Page of Wands:

If the present obstacles are not addressed, it appears that this relationship won't last. Maintaining a long-term relationship will be challenging for you both.

Where do they stand with you in the future?

Four of Pentacles:

It seems that this person will be very possessive of you. This can be a negative thing for some but, based on the energy I am getting from you, I think that you may enjoy this at least in the beginning you do.

Where do you stand with them in the future?

Death:

As a result of this relationship, you will undergo a transformation. At the beginning of the relationship, you may enjoy their more possessive and jealous side, but as the relationship progresses, you no longer enjoy this side. In the end, you will want to end this relationship.

King of Wands (reversed):

As the relationship progresses, this person turns out to be quite arrogant and domineering. When you realize they were hiding their true colors from you at first, you begin to lose feelings for them. You no longer enjoy their bossy attitude and actually despise it.

Channeled Messages:

“Just tell me how you feel”

“I tried to replace you but then I realized you’re irreplaceable. Now you’re gone.”

“Can I know every part of you?”

“I can’t stop thinking about you. You are always in my dreams.”

“I want to see you naked”

“Let me show you how much I love you”

“I see you in my dreams”

“I wished for someone like you”

“You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen”

Forever

Channeled Letters:

O

T

T

N

B

S

I

Blank - whatever you feel fits

Channeled Songs:

Pile Four (Fuchsite):

Where are you presently?

Queen of Pentacles:

Recently, you have been treating yourself to some luxury. As of late, you have become more self-loving, and this includes treating yourself to things you normally wouldn't.

Three of Swords:

After being heartbroken, you may have realized that you cannot rely on others to love you and that you must love yourself. Because of this, you have been treating yourself much better than you have in the past.

Where is your person presently?

Four of Pentacles:

Currently, this person feels very possessive over the things in their life. Perhaps they fear letting go of things or are sentimentally attached to pretty much everything they own. This leads to hoarding behavior, which they have always had but recently has gotten worse. This person gives me strong Cancer energy.

Eight of Swords:

In addition, they seem to be trapped in their own minds. Insecurities that they have lived with all their lives have resurfaced and are causing them a lot of trouble. This may explain why they are hoarding things. I also feel that they may be moving right now and this is what is causing the insecurities and hoarding behavior because they may fear change.

What obstacles stand in your way currently?

The Devil:

You have been unable to come together because of this person's hoarding addiction. The reasons why they hoard stem from their anxieties and insecurities, which are a result of their fear of change and abandonment. In order for the two of you to come together, this person needs to get these behaviors under control.

What do/will you provide for your partner?

Queen of Cups:

You will be an extremely kind, caring, and loyal partner. Providing them with an outlet for expressing their emotions. This person will be more willing to open up with you in their life. As a result, they will be more willing to get out of their own heads.

What do/will they provide to you?

Ten of Pentacles:

This person will bring you abundance. Everything you have ever wanted in life will be provided by them. You will both have a very comfortable life together.

What are your future intentions with them?

The Emperor

You want to be the dominant one in the relationship, wanting to control how the relationship goes. When it comes to them, you want to make the decisions and be the one they can count on to let go of their control issues and let you handle things.

What are their future intentions with you?

Nine of Cups:

It is this person's dream to fulfill every one of your dreams. Their goal is to make your life full of joy and abundance. My impression is that they are willing to give you control so long as they can be the person that you have always dreamed of being, and as long as they can fulfill all your wishes.

What are some obstacles you will face in the future if the present obstacle isn’t dealt with?

Two of Cups:

If the present issues are not addressed, it seems that the two of you will struggle to maintain a balanced relationship filled with love. Together, you will butt heads and have a hard time finding happiness.

Where do they stand with you in the future?

The Lovers:

The future looks bright on their end. They seem to have gotten control over their unhealthy behaviors and want to give you love. If you are currently in a relationship with this person, they will likely realize in the future that if they do not control their negative behaviors, you will not be able to remain together. This is what drives them to change.

Ace of Cups:

If you are not currently with this person then this is a sign that they too will realize that the only way for them to be with you is by them getting their negative behaviors under control. They will soon do this and come towards you with an offer of love.

Where do you stand with them in the future?

King of Wands:

In the future, you will be ready to commit to this person. You will be the provider for them, taking care of them and their needs, giving them a chance to settle down and let their guard down. The future looks bright for both of you and this relationship.

Channeled Messages:

“Don’t let me go”

“Not open right now”

“I want to taste you”

“My twin flame, my love”

“Want to make you scream”

“I’m testing your limits”

“I’m working on myself right now.”

“I am trying to protect you”

Fight for it

Time Apart

Channeled Letters:

E

D

R

R

M

G

Channeled Songs:

Though tips are not required, they are very much appreciated. Thank you!

Venmo: @ aphrostarot

Paypal: paypal/aphrostarot

[lets-talk-spirituality]

Let’s talk about: So you’re new to spirituality

I’ve watched for awhile as people have gotten scammed by gurus, looked to some reader for godlike information, and seen readers who over-identify with their gifts and let it go to their head, especially with what they say they can do. Readers are people too and they have ego issues like we all do. So today I want to welcome you to read more about how to engage with spirituality if you’re newer to it or just maybe you feel like you’ve been falling into these traps.

Okay so like are spiritual readings like palm readings and stuff real?

Yes. To an extent. Readers only pick up on the current path you’re on and the potential future that aligns with that path, if they are a gifted reader that is. They may even be able to help you see upcoming forks in your path and other potentialities based on decisions. Some are gifted to help you learn more about your soul path. What they say is not be all end all. It is meant to guide and help you. It is not necessarily predicative. I have found few people who can actually predict things and those I’ve found who can, it’s usually very sporadic what they can predict. Spirit shares messages that need to be shared through people who know how to channel (I’ll do a post on channeling) but if you have learned anything here, I hope it’s that spirit is vague and uses metaphors because the point of life is not to follow some pre-determined plan you know and get right, it’s to discover the plan as it unfolds and hold faith in the unknown, letting control go so life can flow.

Red flags to watch out for

- anyone who claims they can tell who your exact soulmate or person is, they may pick up traits but they can’t say for a fact who your person is. They may confirm to you and a partner that you are twin flames or soul mates or whatever but only through the presence of both your combined energies in the same space. Like you and your partner go to a reader together. Anyone who claims otherwise, I’d say be very careful with them. Those type of claims are designed to lure desperate people for a reason.

- someone who teaches about changing your physical appearance through manifestation. Babies, I know this isn’t fun to hear, but spirit doesn’t give a fuck about beauty standards and norms and you were born how you are, even looks wise, for the purpose of growth. If you are born in a time period where you aren’t conventionally attractive, you may be meant to work through a lesson around self worth. You can use spirituality to help you make choices to take better care of yourself, for example, which may lead to changes in your physical appearance or changes to your energy may allow others or yourself to perceive you differently, but that’s the extent of it. You can’t magically manifest a different nose shape.

- people who overly identify with their power and talk about being more powerful than others, or who seem to react strongly to people disagreeing with them. To me that indicates their ego is in the way. Be careful around readers who act like what they say is fact or go out of their way to continually prove their correctness. Truth-intentioned readers don’t prove their correctness, spirit does. Usually people who genuinely channel, pick up what they pick up, and spirit will confirm through those insights being proven right.

- anyone who reaches out to you directly or asks for money. Most readers don’t find you, you find them, or are led to them.

Tips:

- please develop discernment, listen to your own insight and voice first. We are all allowed to have different perspectives and truths because the universe is expansive. If something in a reading or if information feels off to you, you don’t have to believe it. I’d encourage you not to and to use that as an opportunity to look deeper into the subject yourself.

- spirituality is a tool for the self, if you continually go outside of yourself, using divination tools or listening to others insight, you can drown out your own voice. It’s important to distinguish between listening to others for growth and for understanding, vs looking outside yourself for answers. It’s okay every now and again but if you find your emotions are heavily invested or you’re spending countless hours listening to others, I’d encourage you to check in with yourself about why.

[magnetic-rose]

Why Spones is a top-tier ship

AKA “the inherent homoeroticism of annoying the shit out of your co-worker.”

Spock and McCoy have a complicated relationship. A lot of their bickering and ideological differences lead fans to believe that they hate each other, but that’s an over-simplification of the truth. The reality is that Spock and McCoy are extremely close friends who care about each other deeply. Though sometimes their bickering turns serious during stressful situations, for the most time they seem to enjoy the banter. A common mischaracterization of their relationship seems to put McCoy as the bully and Spock as the victim. In truth, there are many times where Spock will say something specifically to get a rise out of McCoy. They fight. That’s how they show affection, not disdain. In fact, one could argue that some of their bantering have a flirtatious tone to it.

Kirk: Mister Spock, regaining eyesight would be an emotional experience for most. You, I assume, felt nothing.

Spock: On the contrary Captain. I had a very strong reaction. My first sight was the face of Doctor McCoy bending over me.

McCoy: ‘Tis a pity brief blindness didn’t increase your appreciation for beauty, Spock. (Operation -- Annihilate!)

Spock is a half-Vulcan, half-Human who has mostly chosen to follow his Vulcan heritage. As such, he is a being of almost pure logic. The truth about Vulcans are that they are secretly beings who feel things very deeply and intensely, and they feel the need to keep a tight lid on their emotions as to not succumb to them. McCoy, on the other hand, is a regular human. He’s a deeply emotional man who cares about others. One could argue that McCoy is almost too empathetic, as he lets his emotions rule him. Spock and McCoy are polar opposites; the brain and the heart, the logic and the emotion, the super-ego and the id.

Despite these differences, the two men are similar in a lot of ways. They’re both men of science, men of peace, and they both care very deeply for their Captain. They’re both self-sacrificing morons, to the chagrin of the other. Spock will prioritize McCoy’s life even when both of them know it’s not the logical choice to do so. Likewise, McCoy will take a hit for Spock even when they both know the Vulcan is stronger and better equipped to deal with pain than the doctor.

Spock: (In the middle of a blizzard) In this severe cold, we cannot survive much longer.

McCoy: Leave me here, Spock.

Spock: We go together or not at all.

McCoy: Don’t be a fool. My hands and face are frostbitten. I can’t feel my feet. Alone, you have a chance. Now do what I say. Go try to find Jim.

Spock: We go together! (All of Yesterdays)

In the episode, “The Empath,” Kirk, Spock and McCoy have to choose someone to be offered as sacrifice to be tortured by a group of aliens. Kirk obviously volunteers, but gets put to sleep by McCoy with a tranquilizer. Spock then states that he’ll offer himself up, as he has the higher chance of surviving the torture. McCoy then proceeds to sedate Spock as well, and sacrifices himself to be tortured by the aliens.

Spock: While the captain is asleep, I am in command. When the Vians return, I shall go with them.

McCoy: You mean, if I hadn't given him that shot

Spock: Precisely. The choice would have been the captain's. Now it is mine.

(McCoy turns away. Spock sits to carry on working. Gem puts her hand on Spock's shoulder, and smiles. McCoy comes up behind him and gives him an injection.)

Spock: Your action is highly unethical. My decision stands. (Spock falls asleep next to Kirk.)

McCoy: Not this time, Spock.

Underneath all the fighting and disagreements, there is a deep caring between Spock and McCoy that manifests itself into protectiveness towards each other. In “All of Yesterdays,” Spock is constantly showing concern for McCoy after he almost died of hypothermia. In aftermath of McCoy’s torture in “The Empath,” Spock is seen hovering over his body and caressing his face, worry written into his features. On the other hand, while McCoy constantly makes fun of Spock for his lack of emotions, he’s also highly aware of the Vulcan’s mental state and protective of it when others threaten to shatter his resilience.

McCoy: He's a Vulcan. You can't force emotion out of him.

Philana: You must be joking, Doctor.

McCoy: You'll destroy him.

Parmen: We can't let him die laughing, can we?

McCoy: (Watching as Spock starts to cry) I beg you! (Plato’s Stepchildren)

The episode “Amok Time” also demonstrates McCoy’s perceptiveness of Spock and Spock’s true feelings of friendship towards McCoy. McCoy is in fact the first person to notice that something is wrong with Spock:

McCoy: Oh, captain. Got a minute? It's Spock. Have you noticed anything strange about him?

Kirk: No, nothing in particular. Why ?

McCoy: Well, it's nothing I can pinpoint without an examination, but he's become increasingly restive. If he were not a Vulcan, I'd almost say nervous. And for another thing, he's avoiding food. I checked and he hasn't eaten at all in three days.

Kirk: That just sounds like Mister Spock in one of his contemplative phases.

Kirk doesn’t notice anything wrong with Spock, and initially dismisses McCoy’s concern, but McCoy immediately picked up on Spock’s mental turmoil. Despite his cantankerousness, McCoy not only cares about Spock but goes out of his way to look out for his mental state. Part of it might be because he’s his doctor, but how many doctors go so far as to monitor someone’s eating habits because they notice that person’s suddenly being fidgety? On Spock’s end, when it comes time for him to beam down to Vulcan to complete his marriage ceremony, he specifically asks for McCoy to be there:

Spock: By tradition, the male is accompanied by his closest friends.

Kirk: Thank you, Mister Spock.

Spock: I also request McCoy accompany me.

McCoy: I shall be honoured, sir.

One episode I find extremely fascinating in terms of McCoy/Spock moments is “Mirror, Mirror.” In this famous episode, half of the Enterprise crew get transported into an alternate universe dubbed The Mirror Verse, in which evil versions of the characters exist and terrorize space as a fearsome military force. McCoy is part of the team that gets transported in the Mirror Verse, while Spock stays in their regular universe. Mirror Spock immediately realizes that half of the crew, including Kirk and McCoy, are acting strangely. When he corners Kirk to question him, he does so by threatening McCoy: “I shall not waste time with you. You’re too inflexible, too disciplined, once you’ve made up your mind. But Doctor McCoy has a plenitude of human weaknesses, sentimental, soft. You may not tell me what I want to know, but he will.” This Spock seems to have a intimate knowledge of McCoy’s mind.  When the party decides to attack Mirror Spock, he fights all of them except for Uhura and McCoy, who he simply pushes out of harm’s way.

When Mirror Spock gets hurt as the crew is trying to escape back to their own universe, McCoy is suddenly unable to leave his side. Kirk allows him to stay to nurse Spock back to health, and McCoy risks almost staying in the Mirror Verse forever for him. When Mirror Spock awakes, he backs McCoy into a wall and initiates a forced mind meld onto the doctor. The next scene has Mirror Spock holding a disoriented McCoy up and bringing him back to his crew; he now understands what is happening and he wants his regular crew back, and thus he allows Kirk and company to make the switch back to their own universe.

Other Star Trek properties have gone more in depth on how a forced mind meld can be extremely traumatizing on the person receiving it. Star Trek: Enterprise has an entire story arc dedicated to the Vulcan T’Pol trying to heal from a forced mind meld. Unfortunately, because the nature of TOS episodes were episodic, we never got the chance to explore the emotional fallout of McCoy’s forced mind meld and how that might have affected his relationship with Spock. The franchise also never went in depth on Mirror McCoy outside of what Mirror Spock speaks of him, since Mirror McCoy died of xenopolycythemia in 2269.

Closing the list of evidence of Spock and McCoy’s affections towards each other are the Star Trek movies “The Wrath of Khan” and “The Search for Spock.” Towards the end of Wrath of Khan, Spock sacrifices himself to save The Enterprise in one of the franchises most heart-wrenching scenes. Moments before his sacrifice, he knocks McCoy unconscious, touches his face and whispers “remember.” What happened in this scene was that Spock, knowing he was about to die, transferred his Katra to McCoy. The katra being the Vulcan equivalent of a soul. This speaks to the amount of trust that Spock has in McCoy. For someone who keeps most of his emotions under a tight lid, it’s a huge gesture to entrust another with the essence of their entire being. The next movie, The Search for Spock, is a journey as the Enterprise crew fight to return to Vulcan so they can reunite Spock with his body. When they finally arrive, the Vulcans warn McCoy that the process is extremely dangerous and could even result in his death. McCoy calmly replies that he “chooses the danger.” He cannot fathom living his life without Spock.

McCoy: (Speaking to Spock) I'm going to tell you something that I... I never thought I'd hear myself say...But it seems I've missed you. I don't know if I could stand to lose you again.

So in conclusion, Spock and McCoy have a rich and complex relationship that is much more than simply just “they dislike each other because they bicker a lot.” Their bickering is more akin to that of an old married couple. There are plenty of examples not even included in this post of how deeply they care for each other. Despite their ideological differences, they balance each other out quite nicely. McCoy is finely attuned to Spock’s emotions, arguably better than anyone else on the ship. Spock in turn is protective and gentle with McCoy. Once you stop looking at their interactions solely on the surface level, you’ll be able to see the tenderness and years of love and friendship between them. This is why I think Spock/McCoy is one of the most underrated and misunderstood relationships of TOS. Don’t let the constant arguing fool you into believing these two dummies don’t adore each other.

Shout-out to Tempest for their extremely lengthy ship manifesto on Spones called “Spiced Peaches,” which goes even more in depth on why Spones is a great couple. Using their manifesto as a reference was key to remembering Spock/McCoy moments. Also shout-out to the site chakoteya for having full transcripts of TOS episodes, so I could easily find quotes for this. If you’ve come this far, thanks for reading!

[love-takes-work]

When someone toxic needs a friend

I just wanna add a little personal reflection to the discussion of Spinel’s treatment in Steven Universe: The Movie.

A few signposts so you know where I’m starting with this:

A criticism I’ve seen: 

Steven was not particularly warm to Spinel. He did not hug her. He did not offer to be her friend. He spoke carelessly and triggered her toward becoming murderous again. He only cared about what she could do for him.

A perspective I’ve seen: 

LOTS of people with borderline personality disorder or strong feelings about abandonment personally relate to Spinel and are critical of Steven from this perspective.

Rebecca Sugar’s commentary on Spinel:

The thing about Spinel is that she’s a really toxic person. 

She’s so toxic that she’s literally trying to poison people. 

In my interactions with friends who have had a history difficult enough to make it hard for them to trust other people and sometimes even actively want to hurt others, it’s just a very difficult situation to navigate. In the case of Spinel and all of these characters, that’s extremely exaggerated because cartoons have the ability to be extreme exaggerations. I wanted to explore what it’s like when you’re trying to help someone who really doesn’t want to help themselves, who wants to embody the negative feelings that they have about themselves. I think that’s something really real. I hadn’t seen that in a cartoon before. 

Spinel, unlike many other characters, actually has the goal of hurting people, which is new territory for the show. She really wants to hurt Steven, and there’s a reason that she does—because she’s in so much pain. I just wanted to explore all the dimensions of that.

I also think Steven has his way of trying to handle and dissolve conflict. It’s not necessarily a good way for him to handle this situation. It really leaves him in a difficult state, and I think what I wanted to show in the way that they interact is that at a certain point, when you can’t help someone, you have to be able to protect yourself. 

Ultimately, he can’t really convince her to change. It’s something she’ll have to want for herself. But what he can do is protect himself from her, making it impossible for her to hurt him. 

It’s sort of up to you if you would like to love her. If you watch this movie and she, you know, frustrates you, that is totally fair. I want that to be a big part of who she is.

[From the AV Club interview]

So here are a few things I want to shed light on.

It’s very interesting that Rebecca intended Spinel to be read as “a toxic person” because so many fans fell in love with her, said they’d be her friend, hated intensely on Pink Diamond because of what she did to abandon the poor Gem, and sympathized with her directly. But Rebecca was looking at Spinel from Steven’s perspective. And that’s also what I did.

I’ve been Steven. I have VERY much been Steven.

When you meet someone who was done dirty, when you recognize the horror they’ve been through, when you see how much pain they are in and agree they have the right to be angry, it’s natural for empathetic people to offer themselves as comfort.

But when you’re Steven, you also know it isn’t YOUR fault either. Before you have the ability and experience to set boundaries, you can get sucked into other people’s stormy waters and think you’re helping if you drown in solidarity with them. What’s really important to preserving yourself is learning that you can stand on the boat and toss a life preserver. That it doesn’t ACTUALLY HELP to jump in the water and sink with them.

Some folks are angry that Steven didn’t jump right into sacrifice himself on the altar of friendship in the service of an intense, literally murderous stranger who tried to poison him and his planet and lash out at his friends, robbing them of their rich pasts and their relationships because all of it hurt HER so much. It is SO easy to understand WHY SPINEL WAS ANGRY. But nothing she was doing to Steven, his friends, or the Earth was going to fix her problems, and furthermore, she FULLY UNDERSTOOD that it was NOT THE FAULT of any of the people she took her anger out on. It was irrational, yes, and that is part of her dysfunction. But also, in these situations, what helps explain it still does not excuse it.

Some have railed at Steven saying he somehow forgave genocidal tyrants like the Diamonds but couldn’t be friends with a damaged Gem like Spinel who just wanted friendship. The big difference there is that Steven got involved with the Diamonds when both parties believed he was a different person. The Diamonds believed he was the lost Pink Diamond, and Steven has also spent much of his superhero life believing he WAS his mother and was therefore obligated to accept punishment for her crimes or to clean up the messes she made. Now that he knows he is not her and that she did some pretty horrible stuff, he also wants the right to stop feeling responsible for every person Pink hurt in the entire region of space.

Steven gave Spinel basically compassionate treatment. He did not abuse her. He did not insult her. He occasionally coddled her when it seemed important (and though some said he was too businesslike while he pursued his mission, he was literally looking at the world ending within two days if he didn’t solve the problem). And most importantly . . . .

He let her leave the garden.

Spinel stayed in the garden all those millennia because Pink Diamond told her they were playing a game. All that time, she had visions of Pink returning so she could see her smile, hear her laughter. We see a sequence where she tried to follow Pink out of the garden and Pink manipulated her into staying willingly. We watch those feet leaving and one pair of feet staying behind. We see Pink disappear.

When Steven goes to leave the garden, Spinel follows in the same manner. Some have criticized him for letting go of her hands.

But he invited her out of the garden. He didn’t say stay. He said come with me.

As he sang about her deserving someone better, he was sincere. But he did not say the person to make her feel found should be him. He did not want to take on another person with thousands of years of baggage who would require a specific brand of attention and so much tenderness to avoid snapping. He did not allow her to be held by the hand and led out. He recognized that she needed encouragement to leave this place because of what was done to her, but he wanted her to take the steps.

Compassionate people are crushed all the time under the weight of needy people who make it hurt to love. People like Steven can acknowledge that Spinel deserves love and deserves to be happy without accepting that it’s heartless to stop short of personally doing it. Especially when you literally have to take physical, mental, and emotional damage as a general consequence of offering support and counseling. It is sometimes just beyond what you can do.

I made the mistake several times of getting very close to someone who treated me poorly while taking comfort in my presence. I cared that they were hurt and I didn’t know how to say “You deserve love” without stepping in and loving them. In EVERY case I was involved with, the person went from initially grateful to “why don’t you help me more?” shockingly quickly, and two of them deliberately tried to create situations where I would be trapped with them and isolated from others. 

I could get very personal here but I don’t think I need to. Those of us who relate all too well to Steven wanting to help others will have been in this situation. Your heart hurts for people who live with pain that has never touched you, but when they’ve made it clear with one of their first actions that they feel satisfied at the idea of ruining your life, trusting them could mean the end of you. Especially if they demand that you risk life and limb to fix and save them before you’d dare to call it love, and especially if they want to be fixed without feeling responsible for initiating any of it. Some people mistake suffering for working hard toward a goal. Both can hurt but only one is constructive. If I’m expected to spend extensive resources on someone, I need some partnership in the goal, and I can’t accomplish that with someone whose wish for companionship manifests as “I want you to feel as bad as I do, and will take steps to hurt you so I have someone to cry with.”

Steven risked his actual life while he didn’t have powers so he could go talk to Spinel, and he wouldn’t fight her when she wanted to fight. He protected himself while she spent her anger. He STILL put himself in the line of fire far more than a less compassionate person would. He took time and tenderness to listen to her story and sympathize with her, tell her she deserved better, bear witness to what she’d become after being treated like a discarded plaything, and bring her hope with promises of a new future and a way to feel found.

Sadly, Spinel flipped back to being murderous at the first sign that Steven might be about to prioritize someone other than her, reframing his reasonable needs as if he was planning to abandon her, isolate her, discard her. This was a trauma reaction, yes, and she isn’t entirely to blame for being upset because she was worried she was just being used and none of her actions were logically thought through. 

But does someone ever “deserve” the friendship of a specific person who can’t feel warm toward them because of their OWN bad experiences? 

No! 

Steven has a big heart but he has his very own huge storehouse of trauma, and being physically attacked with his family and planet put in danger over the actions of his mother is at the top of the list. Instead of assuming that the person who has trauma the loudest is the most hurt, can’t we just acknowledge that Spinel’s and Steven’s respective traumas make them NOT the best match for friendship?

The ending of the movie, with Spinel going off with the Diamonds, might seem a little disturbing with all the codepencency floating around there, but if you want to talk about compassion, I think this is a good place for Spinel to start. 

She just wanted to make Pink Diamond laugh and enjoy her life. She longed to do that for so long and then it all ended when she found out she would NEVER GET TO DO IT. I think bonding with the other Diamonds and having a familiar, safe place to experience the kind of love she’s used to will be a good FOUNDATION for building herself into a person beyond that. For now, she needs comfort. I hope they treat her well.

[tundrainafrica]

Title: How many colors can you see in the dark?

Summary:

"Darkness wasn’t pitch black. Darkness wasn’t nothing. It was a slew of shadows, lines and glimmers. It was a dark blue, a light blue in places and if she searched for it, a subtle shade of green.

Eyes were just constantly looking for something to see."

After the war, Hange and Levi start living together and Hangs notices something might be a little off about Levi.

Link: AO3

Note:

I know this is two weeks late but...happy birthday Shaila! Based on the prompt you sent ;)

Levi had always approached housemaking like it was a delicate art, a dance to master

Or maybe it was something he had mastered already.

Despite his small stature and his generally aloof demeanor, he navigated the kitchen with silent confidence, running his hands over each task quickly, efficiently and more notably, elegantly.

Elegant enough to catch Hange’s busy eyes for at least a few minutes a day.

Turning something as mundane as managing a house into an art was an admirable skill that Hange learned over the years, could never be replicated without the natural proclivity. And as long as it was Levi was involved, Hange seemed to be completely capable of giving her full attention.

And before she even realized it herself, she had mastered the subtle art of just observing.

She mastered it so well that when inconsistencies started to appear, Hange spotted them almost immediately.

There was a plate that Levi had settled on the counter with a louder than usual clatter and that was enough to ring alarm bells inside her. Then when the angry clatters, the awkward rhythm as Levi reorganized utensils became commonplace, Hange found herself watching every move more closely then listening even when she had know idea what she was searching for in the first place.

She surreptitiously kept her guard up, she followed his movements. She snuck glances when she was sure Levi wasn’t looking. Over time, acts as mundane as turning on the stove had Hange looking up, ears perked up, interest piqued.

Maybe she was just a little nervous that Levi might burn himself.

Levi knew the stove from the back of his hand, he knew everything inside and out from the vacuum cleaners, to the dishwashers, to the mops. She had never needed to be nervous before.

But the clicking of the stove as he turned the knob was just a tad slow. The plates continued to clatter instead of settling softly on the counter.

And when Hange observed the way he set the table, she couldn’t help but notice, the spoon was just a little closer to the plate than the spoon.

Something, a fastidious Levi would have never allowed.

It could have been the long observations, or just the broken dish that had started it all. It could have been Levi’s careful movements or Hange’s penchant for overthinking. For a while, she had even blamed herself for being overly zealous about how the house should be run.

Then understanding came out of nowhere one morning, as an abrupt yet taut curse from just a few feet away.

Fuck.

Hange’s reaction was almost immediate. “Levi? You okay?”

He wasn’t okay. Hange had stood up instinctively at the sound, her eyes following Levi’s hands. The latter had dropped the peeler onto the kitchen counter with a louder clack than usual.

“Let me take a look,” Hange said. Her pace quickened as she made more sense of the situation.

Out of instinct, Levi held his hand close to him, another clumsy mistake, considering the red streaks that pooled out of that tiny knick that started to leak into the white shirt underneath. “Fucking hell,” Levi let out another curse, that time as a hushed whisper. He pulled away even before Hange could get close.

“Let me take a look,” Hange repeated, that time more firmly. Instinctively her eyes narrowed, her brow furrowed.

Somehow, that combination of everything had been enough to have Levi just a little more obedient.

He didn’t pull away further. But he didn’t make it any easier either.

It was Hange who carefully unwrapped his fingers, exposing the raw skin underneath. She ran her hand over it as gently as she could, but still not gentle enough to prevent a soft, hesitant and begrudging whimper.

“I’ll get the bandages,” Hange turned towards the cupboard, pulling out the materials one by one.

The process of bandaging was slow and the air between the two remained unbearably silent. Hange had more than enough thinking space to notice it then, when it was right at her fingertips.

Levi’s hands have always been rough, they have always been crusty to the touch. But something seemed a little different about the scrapes, the raw red that seemed to climb up his wrists, settling in his palms.

Levi had always been careful, he’d never been clumsy, let alone accident prone.

But his hands seemed to tell a different story. Hange ran her hands over his palms as she worked, ignoring the winces, the way he tensed up at each slight touch.

Then she started to ignore the passage of time, only painfully aware of the questions, then the ardent curiosity that seemed to manifest as some heavy weight in the silent kitchen.

She had to let it out somehow, or risk having that weight crush her.

Are you okay? Even if she did ask that, would Levi ever respond with a straight answer? Her own experience with him said no.

She took a deep breath. “Levi…” Hange started, hands running through the bruising once again. “Did you fall somewhere?”

***

Levi never answered that question. And any attempt at pushing and prodding after that, came up empty.

He was quiet, and it turned out, keeping mum could have been as much of his talent as being careful. He could ignore Hange if he tried and he would mumble something to himself, and walk away.

He always found a way to feign or at the most even force himself into a state of deep concentration, enough to even convince Hange to leave her questions for another day.

Hange was never one to stay quiet forever. And the universe was only tempting Hange to push the issue.

Suddenly everything was a catalyst.

The broken plate was the first catalyst. Then accidents seemed to pop up more frequently, an awkward clatter worse than an awkward clatter or a broken rhythmThere were rhythm. There were broken platess, a bleeding cutss and crushed fruits. Strange accidents had become a common sight.

I’m fine. Levi had said the first time she asked.

Hange gave it a week. One week became two weeks when Levi insisted that he was fine.

Two weeks became three when Levi insisted he was just tired.

One month in, Hange’s own habits of observation have graduated to levels of almost accurate predictions.

Hange didn’t notice it for herself immediately. In fact, she noticed it in slow motion, in the way she tensed up as she started to make sense of her observations.

They were in the moment Levi’s eyes twitched, the split second long blink, and the way his hand hovered over the plate, the way his hands gripped for something so tightly Hange could have sworn he had to have been gripping something.

Something a little more tangible than air.

Hange didn’t have to squint or furrow her brows to see that nothing had been between his two finger tips. Yet, for a second, Levi still held the air in between them like it was a lifeline.

When Hange looked up, narrowing her eyes at Levi’s, she noted the flash of confusion. As quickly as he pulled back, it melted away to something more subtle.

That dumbfounded expression didn’t fall away for any longer. It stayed long enough for Hange to see everything about the way Levi had blinked rapidly for a few seconds longer, the awkward way he stepped back then the way he gripped the counter as he bent down to grab the plate.

He didn’t go quickly for the broken plate, he started to feel the ground and Hange was sure she could have been much quicker. She rushed next to him.

Levi had a headstart but despite that, Hange was moving alarmingly faster. “Levi… I’ll handle this,” Hange said, noting the awkward and aimless movements of his hands.

Levi didn’t even protest but something inside Hange had wished he did. He pulled back, reached above him for some support from the counter.

When Hange focused on the obvious signs, she was quick to conclud, Levi had never been that slow.

He had never approached cleaning with such painful hesitation.

The first time, Hange did stomach it but she never really was the type to sit back and observe. She always observed but after observing, Hange would act in the most logical, calculated manner.

“We’re going to the doctor.” Hange brought it up out over an uncharacteristic silence.

“No.”

That brusque response had Hange jumping in her seat. When Hange thought about it for a second longer, after ‘I’m fines,” and “I’m just tired,” a firm ‘no’ seemed almost ominous.

Levi wasn’t making things any better with the rash way at which he stood up, then teetered, his eyes hovering wildly over the table. He blinked hard, then he widened his eyes in some look of confusion or surprise.

When Hange bent over to look into it, he looked away. “I’m fine.”

“You know I can help with the laundry right? Or cooking.”

“Why do you wanna help so suddenly? Don’t you have work to do?”

“I do,” Hange admitted. “But even if you’ve always wanted to do it yourself... I thought I wanna help with house chores more.”

“That’s new,” Levi glanced at her accusingly.

Glanced. That’s what it should have been

Hange squinted, then her eyes scanned over his expression while aiming to recall every other moment he had made eye contact before.

Levi wasn’t glancing. His eyes could have been staring at nothing. Either that, or he could have been staring at something which Hange couldn’t see.

There was a blunt grey in his sharp blue eyes and before Hange even felt the damp tension in the room, the way it weighed on her lips, forced her jaw back, she took one deep breath. “Are you sure you’ll be okay? Doing everything on your own?”

“I’ve always done everything on my own,” Levi said. He pulled his chair back then walked slowly away.

He didn't finish his breakfast that day.

***

It was like a switch just turned on inside Hange.

The stronger the indignance, the more motivated Hange became. Soon, even the small things back home were pulling out the researcher from inside her.

Despite her chaotic personality, Hange always seemed to put some systematic process into something as complex as solving a problem and subsequently, getting into the bottom of someone as stoic as Levi Ackerman.

Define the problem.

Levi was just a little too clumsy.

Form a hypothesis.

That part was a little more complex. With a little more observation, a little more analysis, she noticed the small details.

The small details weren’t in Levi, in fact they were in the little changes in his surroundings. The spices and the groceries have always been arranged neatly but when Hange observed Levi’s movements, she noticed, he liked to hover his hand over everything before allowing it to land, on top of one cap, then he would grip the one right next to it.

The salt shaker was just a little smaller than the pepper shaker just an inch away. When Levi was done with the salt he put it in its usual spot.

In the exact same place.

Levi was meticulous. He always did it that way. But there was something unsettling about the way he gripped it hard before letting go, before hovering his hand over the jar right next to it.

“Here,” Levi said, dropping the plate gently on the counter.

Scrambled eggs with salt.

“Thank you,” Hange said as she pulled it towards herself. Most days, she had a book next to her, or a few documents to review before she left for the office. That day in particular, the documents were just for show. She watched carefully as he cleaned up, as he positioned the bowl right next to the plates, and when he set it, he let his hand hover, he let it gently fly over the other utensils.

As if he was memorizing where everything was.

But Hange couldn’t be too sure. She needed to experiment.

There was only one window to move and that was when Levi was in the shower.

So Hange called the office, mentioning something to Armin about being late, and about an urgent health concern.

She never called days off so Armin didn’t pry.

She opened the salt shaker and poured the contents into a bowl. She opened the pepper shaker and poured the contents inside. A few hand motions later, the salt was where it wasn’t supposed to be and the pepper wasn’t where it was supposed to be.

Then Hange lined them up. She could never be too sure if that was the exact sample place but it was worth a try.

The next morning, the experiment turned out to be very much worth it when Hange was served an omelette sprinkled with a little too much of something else on top.

“Levi, I asked for salt in the omelette right?”

“You always ask for salt,” Levi answered matter-of-factly as he picked at his own breakfast. “Is anything wrong?”

“Nothing… I just thought you put in a little too much.” Hange made a loud show of pushing the plate in front of him and it looked like Levi had been ready to make a show of something too.

He narrowed his eyes on the plate then nodded. “Sorry, I’ll put less salt next time,” he muttered, only proving himself what Hange already suspected.

“It’s fine, put as much salt as you want,” Hange didn’t even notice herself, not until she pulled the plate back towards her that her voice had deadened to smatterings of sound. She sliced the omellete into smaller places, mixing the black pepper with the gooey yellow just underneath then wondering for a second how Levi managed to so cleanly crack the eggs even when he could barely tell the difference between white and black.

The only way to ever find out is to ask. But there were more pressing things to ask at that moment.

Levi, are you blind? If Hange just went with her first instinct, maybe that’s what she would have asked.

This is pepper. That had been her second choice but with such a fragile moment right between them, that was no time for proving her own conjecture correct.

She went for an in between, a curious in between and she decided, it was up to Levi to take it for what he sees the question to be. “Levi? How much can you see right now?”

“I can see just fine,” Levi answered, once again straightforward and firm.

At that moment, he met her gaze with blank eyes, or at least, he attempted to meet her gaze. The moment Hange avoided his eyes, he didn’t follow.

She started to make sense of everything at once.

The strong denial, the lack of confusion, her omelette with a little too much pepper instead of salt and one strong inference later, Hange started on a new endeavor--- convincing Levi to see a doctor.

***

The disease wasn’t anything new and Hange was confident, she could have pronounced it and memorized it if she had put her heart into studying it.

As Levi put it, there were more pressing things to study than the sudden onset of failing eyesight. The doctors at least had been nice enough to put a prognosis on it.

The rules were simple, old people usually got it, Levi had just been terribly unlucky he experienced it decades earlier. It wasn’t common but it wasn’t unheard of either, even in the small island of Eldia. If Hange requested the documentation from Marley, if she made a quick visit to Marley, maybe she would have figured it out for herself.

Levi had shot down that idea though before Hange could have entertained it any further.

Even in the silence, in the bedroom, at two in the morning, even when Hange had so carefully padded towards the desk, Levi had seemed to have sensed it.

His voice rough, his eyes half open, he spoke up seemingly from out of nowhere. “No need.”

Whatever had hinted him to it seemed to have work, maybe even if it was just Hange’s own tense demeanor which she couldn’t so easily brush away.

In fact, Hange had been thinking about it. She had a half written letter for a leave to go to Marley. She had papers on whatever the doctors had even documented about the failing eyesight of elders, all scattered across the table.

But fading eyesight of elders was something not many people endeavored to cure. Levi's case was just too rare, and there were no other studies which made it worth white.

It was as if Levi had known that too.. “Hange, go back to sleep.”

He had chosen a convenient moment to say it. That exact moment where Hange had ran her eyes over the last few paragraphs of one of the files from the library.

No known cure.

“I’m reading something.” Hange disturbed the papers enough to release some loud rustle in the room.

“You wanna read it to me?” Levi asked. That was the first time he had ever asked her to read anything to him.

To Hange’s surprised, it sent some painful pang through her chest that seemed to settle in her stomach.

Suddenly, she was in no mood to read again.

“Actually, you’re right. I think this can wait until morning.”

***

Hange’s work in the office started to die down just a bit, and suddenly her mind was everywhere.

She allowed herself to ponder what the hell Levi was busying himself with while she was away. Did he get bored? More importantly, was he safe?

And a few times she did call home, only to get some form of ‘go back to work’ in a more and more annoyed tone with every call. The few times she stopped herself from calling, she busied herself with something else.

Piles and piles of paperwork, some of them were actual work and some of them were something that Hange would have classified as personal, hidden amongst a small pile of papers slightly obscured by the one Jean had left a while back.

Luckily, no one really asked Hange to clean up. No one among her subordinates seemed to have even made sense of the pile of paperwork and that was one thing Hange took advantage of.

After one call with Levi, where the latter had put down the phone a little too roughly, Hange quickly went through one of the letters she had written only that morning, to another doctor she had heard about through her network.

The few doctors in Eldia had deemed it incurable but Hange still managed to grip on to whatever hope came with a second opinion. The few researchers that had come back bore bad news but Hange was unfazed, there were still many other doctors, some in Marley, some in the Middle East, some in Hizuru.

Others had come back with nothing but affirmation that whatever research that had reached Eldia were the latest.

But Hange wasn’t giving up just yet. There were a few more she hadn’t sent yet.

She bent over, chin leaning on one hand. She knew the best way to write a letter and if she just let loose, she was confident she could make it sound as professional as the many other letters she had written before.

Somehow, the nth letter was harder. Somehow, writing that same letter when she had received too many rejections already was harder.

Was it worth it to still try? Hange took a deep breath, pressed the pen to paper and wrote out the first few words. It was like a script, when Hange gave into self discipline and to the mechanisms that kept working the past few years, she found it was easy enough to stay productive and efficient.

Doctor Wilken,

I hope you’re doing well.

My name is Hange Zoe from Paradis. I’m writing to you to inquire about a case…

Hange had gone halfway through, before the door to her office creaked open. The sound echoed, breaking whatever trance she didn’t even know she had been in and Hange jumped her seat.

“Did I scare you?” Armin asked, another wad of documents held close to his chest.

Hange eyed the documents and instinctively patted the empty space to the side of her desk. “Leave it on my desk.”

“This can wait until tomorrow.” Armin dropped the documents on the side and looked up at her expectantly.

“If it’s urgent, I could get started tonight,” Hange offered.

“The grocery closes at seven,” Armin volunteered.

At that point, she had been painfully aware that a lot may have changed about her work habits. How long had she been writing letters back and forth. More importantly, how long had she been frequenting the grocery on the way home?

Since the doctors had given her Levi’s diagnosis? Hell, maybe even before that.

“You notice I’ve been going to the market more often?” Hange said.

“Connie noticed it first. Then Mikasa,” Armin explained. He put his hands up in defense. “We weren’t stalking you or anything, but we used to see Levi in the market more… and when we started seeing you there, we got curious.”

Hange forced a smile. “I just thought I should pull my weight at home. I think I’ve been spending too much time working. Not too much time helping out.”

“Levi isn’t the type to get lonely though and I’m sure he does enjoy cleaning,” Armin said.

“He sure does,” Hange said. She kept whatever tone to herself, instead feigning some preoccupation as she shuffled mindlessly through the papers. “Still, we’re living together and taking care of the house is a team job.”

Armin nodded. “You know, you don’t have to work overtime anymore. Jean, Mikasa and I… The queen… Connie… we can handle most of the work. You should spend more time at home--- I don’t even think you ever got rest as commander.”

Hange sighed. “I’m gonna have to think about that. There is a lot I feel like I haven’t done yet. Gimme some time to think about that.”

“If you need anything else, just let me know,” Armin said. He bowed lightly and walked quietly out the room, leaving Hange to ponder that offer.

There were things she hadn’t done. There was a lot of work she still had to deal with but she didn't need the time to consider them.

It was an easy decision to make.

Soon enough Hange had stopped working overtime and she had started to spend a little more time cracking open books and reports from each doctor and writing letters in between.

Surprisingly, she didn’t feel at all guilty about shortening work hours.

***

The door of their home opened up to the living room and just behind it was the kitchen.

By evening Hange would find Levi either working at the kitchen, sitting at the dining table or lounging by the sofa.

On the rare days that he wasn’t, he could be in the laundry room.

That was her first thought.

There was something about the eerie silence though that had Hange walking ahead more quickly.

“Levi?” she called out.

There was no reply. The beating of her heart only turned wilder. Hange dropped her bag by the sofa and raced towards the laundry room, just beyond that, was the bedroom.

She didn’t have to go any further though. Levi was slumped on the wall of the living room. A pile of clothes lay toppled over and scattered on the floor right next to him.

“Hange…” It wasn’t a question. Maybe more of a statement. But to Hange it had just been a lifeless name and the blank expression on Levi’s face wasn’t helping it either.

“Hey, I’m here.” Hange bent over and started to pick up the clothes, resting them on one hand.

“Did they get dirty?” Levi pulled at one of the sweaters then held it close to himself.

“No, it’s fine. I’ll put them back in the closet.”

“No, but I need to know, do I need to wash them again.”

“You don’t have to. I’m not as much of a clean freak as you are,” Hange folded the clothes once again and piled them all in. Levi had done his part but Hange couldn’t help but note, in the span of her folding ten, Levi had only folded two.

His was still neater and most likely, if Hange hadn’t caught him, if that accident--- whatever that had been--- that left him slumped on the wall, didn’t happen. He still would have managed to fold everything.

She carried the laundry basket with one arm and lumbered over to their bedroom. Listening closely, she made out the hesitant and clumsy steps of her partner right behind.

“Levi, what happened?” she asked.

“I fell over, the basket fell over, I hit my head on the wall.” He kept his voice soft, his answers straightforward.

“I’ll get some ice. Just lay in bed,” Hange ordered.

That accident must have hurt. For once, Levi was completely obedient, not even attempting to reorganize the clothes on the basket and putting it inside the closet. He didn’t even answer, or crane his neck when Hange entered the room.

She dropped the ice pack on his outstretched palm, guiding his fingers to the top, where it was easiest to hold. “In the morning, if it still hurts, you have to tell me. We’re going to have to take you to the doctor.”

Levi had experienced worse. Explosions, man eating monsters and war. Regardless, just a strong smack to the right part of the head was enough to kill. Hange had worked long enough with army medics to know.

He gripped the ice pack only lightly and once again, Hange was tempted to run her fingers over his and grip his hands guiding them over it. It wasn’t a physical issue. Levi was still strong, she was sure of that.

Still, Levi was stronger than that, he always had been. Hell, he was dubbed humanity’s strongest for a reason.

“Hey, are you okay?” she asked.

“No. I’m not,” Levi admitted.

“We should see a doctor tomorrow then?”

Levi turned to his side, his front to the window. “It’s not that. It doesn’t hurt that bad.”

“But something else hurts right? Something you can’t explain?” Hange suggested.

Levi didn’t respond after that and Hange didn’t prod further. She started to reorganize the clothes one on top of the other, noting then how Levi had managed to fold them neatly into piles.

Hers and his, divided like they’ve always been. Staring for longer than usual, not having to consider the day in front or any other things, she started to note that there was a slight difference.

There were small stains on the white, some white on the red and just colors where she didn’t remember having them been before. “Levi, maybe we should get two hampers, a light and a dark one? So you don’t mix them up?” Hange suggested.

Silence.

Hange turned back to the hamper, the clothes still untouched, clumsily folded on top of one another. She brought it back to the bed and held Levi’s left hand towards her.

“You want me to teach you how to tell the lights from the darks?” Hange asked.

Levi had been holding the ice pack to his head for the past few seconds and he turned to Hange, eyes half open.

“Sit up.” She pulled lightly at Levi and it turned out, she didn’t have to pull for long. That order was enough to get him to a sitting position.

“I’ll teach you the lights from the darks,” Hange said. She pulled out one of Levi’s sweaters, a pure white with a few colored spots from washings. “This one is your white sweater…” She started. She guided Levi’s fingers through it, pressing his fingers closer on the areas where the threads bunched together, making up some intricate design.

As she guided his fingers through, as she felt his fingers pinch at it, she started to notice it herself. The seams, the hems, the collar, they all gave the sweater a unique character, and the color was starting to seem almost negligible.

“I can still tell the whites from the darks,” Levi said.

“How much can you see?”

Levi nodded and gave her a wry smile, the first in a long time. “Just enough to pick up some colors.”

“I think you may have mixed some of the lights and darks together. ,” Hange said.

Levi seemed deep in thought for a second. “It’s dim in the laundry room. When it’s darker, I can’t see as much, maybe that’s it,” he explained. He pinched at the hems as he spoke, running his hand quickly over it, as if trying to distract himself. “I just have to do better at figuring it out.”

“But now...” Hange said. “If you can’t tell the whites from the darks…”

“I can. It’s just harder to tell at times.” Levi hummed. “Let me try to explain it… When in a room, I don’t see anything. But in a well lit room, like now…” He paused for a second longer.

Hange was starting to get impatient. “Like now?”

Levi fell back on the bed and stared up ahead at the ceiling. “Hange, tell me, how many colors can you see in the dark?”

***

She did the laundry again that night, particularly for the more dirtied bundle.

In the dim laundry room, she closed her eyes for a moment, just for long enough to understand it herself. Her eyes would naturally search for light and in the darkness, they still seem to find it.Yet, Hange was sure that that was the closest thing she could get to total darkness.

Once she finished, she retired to the bedroom, turned on the lights of the room once again. Unlike before, it did nothing to wake Levi or even have him stirring, half asleep. His own condition had actually made him a better sleeper over time.

Hange put whatever dried up clothes back in the closet and just to answer the burning question for herself, she didn’t turn off the lights. She fell back on the bed, just like Levi had done hours ago. She closed her eyes tightly and the lights above stayed within range for just a second longer and the longer Hange made sense of herself, the clearer it started to become.

Darkness wasn’t pitch black. Darkness wasn’t nothing. It was a slew of shadows, lines and glimmers. It was a dark blue, a light blue in places and if she searched for it, a subtle shade of green.

Eyes were just constantly looking for something to see.

How many colors can you see in the dark? The darkness was endless and Hange was sure, if she looked hard enough, she may even see every shade in the spectrum.

That should be the same for Levi right? Hange thought to herself. She turned to a sleeping Levi, tracing the lines under his eyes, the tense jaw and when she stared for a little too long, she was cruelly reminded, the difference was right there.

She could open her eyes when she grew tired from searching for colors. Levi couldn’t.

An attempt at an awkward apology, Hange turned towards Levi, pulled herself closer, pressed her forehead on his, found rhythm in his breathing, picked out the moment the rhythm broke. Then there was a light brush on her cheeks, light yet ticklish enough for Hange to just ponder for a second how long Levi’s eyelashes really were.

She let out that laugh that tickled at her throat and she pressed her lips against his.

“You can stop now. I’m awake,” Levi’s lips pulled up into a smile. “Why are you laughing?”

“Nothing,” Hange answered almost instinctively.

“You never laugh at nothing.”

Hange sighed then she turned on her back. “I was just thinking about something.”

“About…”

“You know, there are things the eyes can’t see right? But are still very much there?” As soon as it came out of her mouth, all to a dead response, Hange realized, it wasn’t funny at all.

It had never been funny. It was just a glimmer of hope and she just hadn’t felt a glimmer of hope in a while.

***

There were colors in total darkness. There were colors the eyes couldn’t see but they were colors that the ears, the nose, the tongue, the skin had no problems making.

Getting Levi acquainted with them was a daunting task.

It took weeks to get Levi familar with the hems of each sweater, the collars of his shirts and the areas were seams split wide enough to make a noticeable dent just between his fingers.

Soon enough, Hange realized, Levi didn’t need the dent, or he didn’t need the areas were the strings awkwardly bunched up together. Sometimes the areas were the threads lined up perfectly were enough of a hint.

How Levi could have figured it out, Hange could never tell but progress was still progress.

The work at the kitchen continued, the cleaning continued and most days, Hange could pretend it was just like before. If she avoided looking closely at how Levi’s hands hovered lightly over surfaces, how he pressed his hand against the wall before he made a turn, she could pretend he was just slightly clumsier than usual.

And most days it did work. Levi was always improving, getting used to whatever view he had every morning. Sometimes, she could even pretend he wasn’t struggling at all.

A ripple in whatever progress they set for themselves came as a knock on the door and a surprise visit.

It was a lazy Saturday morning, Hange was lounging on the couch, Levi was preparing lunch when they first knocked on the door.

“Is this a bad time?” Armin asked.

It wasn’t and Hange didn’t think it ever would be. The cadets always had a special place in her heart. She didn’t need too much to reassure Armin. She let the wide smile play at her lips, she then let her head cock to the side.

“You wanna stay for lunch?” Hange asked. She turned to Levi who was looking up at them too, his eyes wide with surprise.

“We can make a little more,” Levi volunteered.

Armin shook his head. “No thank you. Mikasa and I will be visiting Eren’s grava after this. We just wanted to drop some things over.” He dropped the plastic bag on the coffee table and turned to Levi. “It’s been a while. We don’t see you go out as much anymore.”

“Hange offered to help with groceries so there’s no need to,” Levi explained, his expression completely deadpan, enough of a reminder for Hange that they never did tell anyone about.

“I noticed you’ve been sending a lot of mail… to doctors I think? And I saw you’ve been reading a lot of medical books so when these were sent over to the office, I thought you’d want them as soon as possible. They arrived at the office this morning.”

“From where?”

“It was sent with a letter apparently, from the medical society of Marley,” Armin explained.

“Yeah, I requested that.” Hange settled on the sofa and ran her hands through the package. The medical society of Marley was one of the most technologically advanced yet somehow, had been the most difficult to contact.

She unwrapped the packaging to find books. A quick look at the cover and Hange found they were case studies. She ran her eyes over the cover, then quickly through the pages. She took a deep breath.

Nothing at all about a cure, yet many pages about management, symptoms and cases. Then she ran her hand over the letter. She ripped the envelope open and unfolded the letter with one flick.

Hange had always been a quick reader but she only needed one second to realize, she didn’t need to read the rest of the letter.

Her eyes had only been searching for one word, cure.

No cure. That was the only answer she found..

“You okay?” MIkasa asked. Suddenly, she was right next to Hange.

Hange only needed to feel the hand on her shoulder and to see the surprised look on MIkasa’s face to accept it as truth. She was trembling, she was shaken. And for just a moment, Hange was feeling hopeless.

“I’m fine. Just a bit disappointed with the research I was doing.” “If I may ask… what research?” Armin asked hesitantly.

Hange managed a shrug and an almost uninvested expression. “Something about being able to see colors in the dark.”

And it looked like that had been enough. Mikasa and Armin didn’t prod more deeply than that.

Apparently, the disease would progress. Maybe over months, maybe over years but eventually, the subject would become completely blind.

The literature called him a subject but the word subject had always felt cold and calculating. Hange didn’t like the word patient either. He was Levi and he would always be Levi.

Tired of the negativity, the coldness, Hange put away the books, somewhere where even Levi wouldn’t find it to somewhere even she would need a chair to reach.

To hell with it, she wouldn’t be missing it for a long time. She was in a new stage of the process, the grieving process, the denial process, the acceptance process, one of those.

Either way, one thing was sure, it still fucking hurt like a bitch. And in her own way, she knew she had to find a way to shake it off. She opened the door then before leaving she let out a final greeting. “Just going out for a bit!” She said loud enough that Levi should hear.

And she slammed the door behind her. To clear her head, Hange went out to the streets and made the calming journey around the block.

They lived in a quiet residential area within what used to be walled Sinna, conducive for walks any time of the day. And Hange had learned over the years, keeping to some steady rhythm when she walked, keeping her breaths relaxed, she could easily take back whatever control she had lost.

Hange then tried another trick.

The end of the block led down to a downward slope and right in front of her was blue sky, framed by buildings on both sides. Out of instinct, or maybe just out of a burning curiosity Hange hadn’t tapped into yet, she closed her eyes.

Blue. Her view behind closed eyes was a light blond for just a split second.

Light blue but it never turned a dark blue. Then she started to search for contours between the light and the dark, then shapes, some of the perfectly geometric, other almost incomprehensible blobs.

Then Hange took a deep breath. The early autumn air around her seemed to tickle at her nostrils, the rustle of the leaves seemed to brush at her ears. Her lips were dry and they tasted a little bit like metal.

“Excuse me.” Of all things, it had been a passerby just behind her who had pulled her out of her trance.

“Sorry about that,” Hange responded almost instinctively. She moved to the side of the sidewalk, stood by and watched.

And having just fallen out of the last trance, suddenly Hange was finding anything to focus on. “What’s that big bag?” Hange asked, biting her lip soon after. Who the hell asks that out of nowhere?

“It’s a guitar,” the stranger asked matter-of-factly. If she had been at least a little offended by Hange, she didn’t show it.

In fact, the conversation seemed to flow a little more easily after that. It turned out there was a shop only a few minutes away, long enough for that instrument to draw Hange in.

She was out for an hour longer than she had expected. That one hour though was long enough to pick out a guitar, pick out some easy sheet music and guidebooks.

Hange came home late that evening but with two hands full with impulse purchases, brimming with newfound excitement.

***

Even in the deepest blackness, there were colors that shone clearly.

You just have to look for it. Hange whispered to herself, an attempt at self motivation.

One bout of serendipity and Hange found a new way to pass the time, that same time she had used up messaging every researcher and eye doctor in the international network.

In the evenings, she was reading tabs and sometimes, she was trying out the different chords, allowing her fingers to slowly get used to the soft nylon of the guitar, and the riffs which were unnatural to the touch.

One week into it, she was making music but admittedly, she was a little sloppy. A day or so after that, Hange decided to pick the sound for herself when she closed her eyes.

When she graduated from awkwardly pressing riffs and hearing unnecessary splats as she strummed, she opened up the lyrics.

And she only had to sing it once to feel the almost consoling burn in her throat, the rush in her cheeks and just her chest full, brimming with some cross between excitement and relief.

Eyes closed, hands moving, she seemed to see more colors, some colors she swore she had never seen before.

“Hey, can you sing that song?”

“Which song?”

“The one you sing on the balcony.”

Hange let out that wry smile. She looked away in instinct as she felt the blood rush up her cheeks, only reminded a second later, Levi wouldn’t have seen it. “You can hear it? I could have sworn I closed the door.”

“I still heard you, perfectly clear,” Levi retorted.

Hange cocked her head to the side, suddenly feeling like a five year old stealing from a cookie jar. Then she wondered, why the hell she had been hiding it in the first place. In her decades of managing squads and armies, somehow, she wondered how she made a mistake out of a stupid yet simple decision.

“I wanted it to be perfect before I let you listen,” Hange admitted. “But now that I think about it, maybe you would have enjoyed the process… of me learning?”

“I wouldn’t know if you don’t let me listen.”

Levi rarely made eye contact with Hange those days. There was no reason too when there was nothing to connect with. At that moment, he seemed to have deliberately met her gaze with his own unseeing one, an expectant look on his face.

Even before Levi had voiced the request, Hange was sure, she could never say no. She padded to one end of the room, taking the guitar hanging that sat on one of the shelves, and pulled it close to her.

“It’s an easy song,” Hange warned.

“Music is still music,” Levi said. “Besides, I don’t think I’ve ever heard you sing.”

Hange played the opening chords, slowing down just a bit as she felt the bed shake, then a warm body pressed on her back. Levi had lain on the bed, pressed his forehead to her back, or that was the quickest guess she could make as she concentrated on coordinating her still very amateur fingers.

The opening chorus passed peacefully. To Hange, that was enough of an achievement.

“What’s the song?” Levi asked.

“Ir’s called ‘You are my sunshine.’ There was someone who met me at the music store and she recommended that since it’s easy to learn. Is it too mushy for you?” Hange asked, stifling a nervous laugh.

“It sounds just fine to me,” Levi said.

Hange saw that as a cue to continue. She strummed again, opening with a few chords then the first verse.

Even laying on the bed, seemingly unmoving, Hange seemed to sense investment, attentiveness from Levi. Maybe Levi was just waiting for his own chance to speak.

“Please don’t take my sunshine away,” Levi let it out as a whisper but Hange couldn’t help but pick out the remnants of a melody that seemed to die at his throat.

“Maybe if we sing that line enough times, it might just work.” A shoddy attempt to lighten the mood. It was only after the second verse did Hange realize how depressing the song actually had been. She turned to Levi, an apologetic smile on her face.

“I still see the sun you know,” Levi said. When you open the windows in the morning, or the curtains, I still see the white, sometimes I see yellow. When the sun rises, I still know that it’s morning.” Levi was surprisingly talkative or Hange suspected, there was something about how she was carrying herself that Levi could have sensed from his place in bed.

Hange pushed the guitar right under the bed, and lay in bed next to him. “You told me before, you still see other colors. But it still hurts right?”

“It does,” Levi admitted.

“Then you don’t have to pretend it doesn’t. What I wanna do is I wanna try to enjoy whatever is still there,” Hange reached her hand just a little to her left, close enough to just grip at his fingertips. “But i won’t be able to help, if you don’t tell me what you want to work on.”

Levi hummed for a second. “Work on your guitar skills.”

“I don’t need that reminder. What else?”

“Just help around the house more I guess…” Levi’s voice lacked fervor and Hange wasn’t at all convinced.

“You can think harder than that,” Hange responded firmly.

Levi didn’t respond immediately. And maybe the silence between them had worked to rack Levi’s brain. His answer was unexpected, simple but it seemed to make sense. “I want you to describe things to me.”

“Things?”

“How our house looks like, how the outside looks like every season, how you look like.” Levi answered. “One day,I’m going to forget how everything looks like, the colors, the trees, our house.... What if I told you, I’m scared of forgetting how you look like?”

It was easy enough to give. “I’m still here. I’ll look in the mirror and I’ll tell you how I look like,” Hange said. She stood up, walked towards the mirror next to her desk, making out whatever she could under the dim moonlight. “Big nose, always chapped lips, messy brown hair, small eyes.”

“Did you know, your eyes are bigger without your glasses.”

Instinctively, Hange pulled out her glasses, only to be greeted by whatever blur she had become in the mirror. “I can’t see it now.” But she was a quick thinker. Hange pressed her fingers to her good eye, tracing her eyelids then her bags underneath.

It took a little more than a few seconds to thread through them carefully and she could never tell if they really were big without comparing them to anyone else.

It wasn’t about what she saw though, it was about what Levi wanted to see.

She walked back to the bed, holding Levi’s hand between her finger and she pressed his good hand to her eyelids. “Will this let you remember?” She only had to guide his hands through her eyelids before he took the reigns. His hands travelled lightly over her lashes, then to the bags underneath, resting heavily and long enough for Hange to feel the pressure to her bones.

The hands fell to her large nose, then as if falling over a cliff, they fell almost quickly over her lips. Suddenly, Hange was self conscious of how dry they were.

“You should lick your lips more,” Levi whispered.

Hange couldn’t even find the right moment to let her tongue out and lick them. Levi’s fingers stayed for a second longer on her lips, heavily enough that it was difficult to even mouth words in between.

Still, she attempted. “Have your lips always been dry?” She pressed her own fingers to his lips,

“You’ve kissed them before right?”

She saw that as some cue to draw nearer and maybe it was. Levi didn’t turn away or pull away. Instead, he did his part and their lips locked.

Levi’s lips weren’t dry. And Hange wondered how many times they had kissed, how many times they had even touched lips yet it had never been so much as even a passing thought.

Eyes closed, she felt it, she tasted it then she relished the in betweens. In complete darkness, there were still colors to expereince, colors to see. It was just a matter of finding it.

Levi’s hands fell forward, landing on her neck, then down to the collar of her shirt.

She didn’t want it to end there. Hange held his hand just an inch away from her, before guiding it down towards the buttons of her polo and Levi got the message.

He held both hands a hairs breadth away from the buttons of her shirt, then pressed at them slowly one by one. Despite not having any visual aids, he still had close to perfect coordination.

He then pulled at her undergarments, delicately and slowly and Hange did her part. She pulled at his own sweater, flinging it to the side of the room before falling next to him on the bed.

“Do you want me to describe anything for you?” Hange offered.

It was late at night, the room was dim save for the moonlight, there wouldn’t be much to talk about beyond their bodies half naked right next to each other. Still, if Levi asked, it would have been worth a try.

“No. I’ll figure it out for myself,” Levi said. Once again, his hands were pressed on her face, this time tracing her cheeks. They sat for a second on the cheeks just below her eyes, before falling onto her chin.

Somehow, by just the movements of his fingers, Hange could pick out a little of what he could have been seeing. Levi didn’t have to see it for her to feel it.

He had pressed his fingers over the apple on her cheeks then right down to the dimples underneath and even in the darkness, the circular movements seemed to goad whatever smile out of Hange.

“Are you done?” Hange asked, keeping her voice light, keeping the laugh in them very much apparent.

“How long will you give me?”

“Take as long as you need,” Hange said, The last thing she would have wanted would be for Levi to forget.

“How much will you let me do?”

“We’ll do what you want.”

Levi smirked. “You’re pretty generous tonight.”

“I have one condition.”

Levi raised his eyebrows. “What?”

“After this… after everything we do tonight, I want you to tell me about it. Tell me about everything you see in the dark.”

[amourdivine]

i loved reading your opinion. i agree with everything you said. you know, i do believe in the law of assumption but one thing that has always made me uneasy was the lack of compassion and gentleness in the way its messages and teachings are delivered sometimes. they way people who finally get to understand how it works, forget that the people whom they’re delivering these messages to are human beings that have gone through stuff and so yes, when you’ve been through decades long trauma and you see that you can finally turn your life around, the first reaction is to spiral (at least that’s how i felt ) then you start to feel like you need to watch your every thought. it’s exhausting. tbh, there’s so many things that could be said on the topic but i feel like if people decide to share their own spiritual journeys and knowledge (and they’re totally allowed to do that ofc) they should also become fully aware of the role they decided to assume and the responsibilities that come with it. i have always had a problem with the “everyone is you pushed out” concept in loa, because i feel like it’s something that not only creates this desperate need to be in control of people, their perceptions of us (sometimes even the role they play in our lives) etc, but also causes people to feel so fucking entitled to others and their energy. everyone’s “you pushed out” but you have no fucking compassion for yourself and you don’t allow yourself to be humanly imperfect so you’re definitely gonna reserve the same treatment for others around you… one day, i remember seeing a post that said that karma was a man made belief so a liminiting belief. i don’t think that’s what you want to tell very vulnerable people lmao. so now everyone’s gonna feel like if they act like an a ss there won’t any consequences. life doesn’t work that way. i liked how you mentioned the fact that we don’t need to be in control everything, because as someone who struggles with that, when i first got to know about loa, i felt like “ yeah now i can do this or this and that” but i soon realized that while i can manifest hundreds of things in my life it is also great to allow the universe to do its own magic, cause after all that’s what this is all about : the magic of life, its serendipitous events and those “aha!” moments that happen as we go through it and as we heal and grow. i apologize if this was too long, but i’ve been wanting to get some things off my chest lmao and i’m happy to see people i can do this with! have a nice day and take care !

thank you so much for the reply! don't worry about the length, seriously. i'm glad to know i'm not alone in this experience and other people want to get these thoughts off their chest. it made me apprehensive at first to share my opinion because i didn't want anyone to feel like it was a personal attack on them, but i've read a lot of harmful things in the tags that are concerning to say the least.

the concept of karma is also very tricky as well, because if you firmly believe "everyone gets what they deserve," you are also (subconsciously or not) affirming that people under difficult circumstances have brought it upon themselves. and that's genuinely not at all compassionate or comforting to know. i totally agree on how the messages about loa and manifestation in general lack tact and gentleness. a lot of them feel like toxic positivity to me and that's why i blacklisted most of the tags regarding it. in the end, we have less control than we think and that's not a bad thing, in my opinion.

to know that i don't need a thousand affirmations, vision boards or visualization methods to feel good, to be happy and to know my own worth has been really healing. instead of repeating sentences over and over again or obsessing about how i want my life to feel and look like, it's been much more helpful to surrender to the chaos of this world and look for magic wherever i can find it. a lot of the topics on manifestation have also become very shallow, in the sense that people want to manifest "ethereal, perfect and otherworldly beauty" or a "flawless relationship" without questioning themselves if that's truly necessary for their happiness. you can't base your looks off of bella hadid's instagram when she's had multiple procedures done or some random account of a perfect-looking couple when they only showcase their best moments.

[luna--reading]

[PICK A CARD] WHAT IS THE PERSON ON YOUR MIND’S THOUGHTS, FEELINGS AND INTENTIONS TOWARDS YOU?

Hello lovelies~ ♡

This is a pick a card reading for “what is their thoughts, feelings and intentions towards you”. Think of a person and note that this is a timeless reading and you’re meant to see this right now! Please do find peace if it doesn’t resonate with you~ ♡

So take a few minutes to mediate on these 4 piles:

Left to right: 1 - 4

Once you’re ready, just scroll below to find the reading that you have chosen!

You can always leave a comment or simply like the post if it resonates with you, thank you so much~ ♡♡♡

Pile 1:

Tarot: The Star, 6 of Pentacles, 10 of Wands

Oracle: PEACEFUL RESOLUTION // TAKE ACTION

Emotions are a natural and necessary part of life, but they can also distort your perception and cloud your vision. In order to see things clearly, you must let go of resentment.

HEALING – Imagine yourself and your beloved surrounded by light. Feel your relationship being healed this very moment.

You may not always understand why certain things happen, however there is always a higher purpose to the events in your life. Through turmoil, a blessing will soon be revealed.

Deep in your heart, you already know the answer. DO what feels right.

Okay, darling, I feel like your person thinks very highly of you. I feel like there is this sense of seeing you as someone who is very popular, very well-known, someone who is like the shining bright star in the night sky. They definitely think very highly of you and in fact, I feel like they see you as a very healing energy. I do feel that this person might have some heavy burdens on them, be it if it’s within this connection or outside of this connection, and that your connection with him has definitely helped them to heal past traumas and hurt. It’s like upon interaction with you, they are kind of forced to see their shadow side which they have been avoiding for so long. Or that previously they would have avoided, but now, it’s like your energy has allowed them to face this shadow side and to start healing from their past. I do feel that they definitely see you as someone who is very generous. And that they are feeling apologetic for how they have treated you in the past. They want to make it up to you. They understand that it was their problem in the past and that they want to make up all of the hurts that they have caused upon you. It’s like maybe this person has ran away or pulled out of this connection, ghosted or blocked you and it kind of make you question yourself what is it that you’ve done wrong. But darling, it wasn’t you, it was them. And they now know that they were the issue. I feel like maybe deep down you’ve understood this point as well, but you’ve been so understanding of their circumstances and continuously being that supportive and healing energy around them. I’m sorry is what I’m hearing and I feel like they do have some inner work that they have to do first. But I definitely do see them coming in again, darling, and I feel like they would apologise for whatever wrongs that they have done to you in the past. It’s honestly up to you if you want to take them back into your life, but darling, there will be a peaceful resolution for this connection eventually. And if this is someone that you are currently with, they want you to give them a bit more time, they will soon open up why they’ve been acting this way. They have some inner work and inner healing to do first, but they truly hope that you will continue to be the supportive and caring energy around them for now, till they are ready to come in. And like I’ve mentioned, it’s truly up to you darling, but this peaceful resolution will help you to restore certain balance in your life. Whatever wrong will be corrected, and this person will come forward and offer this apology to you.

Pile 2:

Tarot: Queen of Swords, Page of Swords, Justice

Oracle: LET GO // IN THE NEAR FUTURE // TRUST

Look deep within your heart and you will feel my love. My love for you is as deep as the ocean.

Let there be closeness between you but always give each other space. Love never claims, it simply allows and gives.

SURRENDER – At times we must surrender the old before something new can enter our lives. Let go and all will work out.

Give thanks for the blessings of love soon to come your way. Know that you deserve to be and have all that your heart truly desires.

Now, darling, there is a lot of air energies here, so either you or your person has strong air in your charts. Else, I’m also getting the message that this person thinks of you a lot. And I do feel that they will never admit it but they definitely think of you a lot. I feel like they definitely see you as someone who knows what you want. You are intelligent, smart, and you set those healthy boundaries. You don’t let others take advantage of you, as naïve or as pure you might seem to be on the outside. They definitely do feel that below that pure and innocent image, you are someone who is very strong and tough and you know what exactly you want so you don’t let others get the best of you. This person, if it’s a romantic interest, does have interest in you but they don’t seem to express it. Or they might be afraid to express it because they are afraid that you don’t feel the same way for them or that they feel like they might get hurt while expressing themselves on a very emotional level. If this is the case, note that this is someone who might have been hurt previously or they might feel inferior towards you and that they feel like they can’t express themselves on a very emotional level towards you. And if this is a platonic connection, I do feel that they find you to be very intriguing. It’s like how can someone who just seems so nice, but deep down, you just don’t tolerate bullshit. And you know what is it that you want. They want to learn from you, especially in regards to your attitude and they are very amazed at your own standards and how you set those standards not just for the people around you, but for yourself as well. I feel like in regards to their intentions, this honestly can be a 50 – 50. I do feel for those who are asking about a romantic interest, this person is more so trying to leave it to the divine. I feel like as much as they do have feelings for you (and honestly, I’m seeing deep feelings here, but maybe they themselves don’t really understand them right now), they are just going to surrender and leave it to the divine. I do feel that they might feel that they are not worthy of you, or that they might not be your cup of tea as well. I also do feel that another group of them, is more so waiting for a sign from the Universe, or maybe it’s from you as well. I feel like they want to know how you feel and that they are trusting in the Universe that if this is really meant to be, there will be a sign from the Universe. So, I do feel that they are going to let go of control issues and trust the signs that are coming in for them. Regardless, this person’s intentions are very much focus on the divine. It’s like if it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be. And I feel like if this is a friend that you are asking for, they definitely do feel that this connection is going to be long-term. And I feel like they definitely see you in their life in the long run. If there has been a falling out with this friend, they are currently trying to release certain past karmas, and in the near future, things are going to come together. I do feel that the Universe is also asking you to have faith and trust in this connection that it is going to withstand the obstacle of time, darling!

Pile 3:

Tarot: 8 of Pentacles, 7 of Pentacles, 6 of Wands

Oracle: WITHIN THE NEXT FEW WEEKS // COMPROMISE

MANIFESTING MIRACLES – Your dream is soon to become reality. Trust your heart and continue to follow its guidance.

WAIT! – Don’t rush into it. Allow nature to take its course.

FORGIVENESS – Stop focusing your energy on past events, for life is too precious to waste. You create your reality by what you think, dream and imagine.

TRUST – Transformation occurs through acceptance. Once you accept the current situation, it will automatically transform.

Okay, darling, there is a lot of pentacles energy here, so maybe work is significant for you and this person, or that maybe both of you met at work. But the overall idea I’m getting is that this connection has been very slow-moving but very stable as well. I feel like it just feels like nothing much has changed within this connection on the surface, but actually a lot of things have changed deep down, in a good way. Because only by doing so, can you then build things on a more solid and stable ground. I do feel that this person definitely sees you as someone who is very hardworking. So, especially if both of you work in the same place, they definitely admire and appreciate the hard work that you put into your work and your job. I do feel that if this is a romantic interest, this person’s feelings are growing in a very slow but steady manner for you. And it’s so slow to the point that I honestly don’t feel like they actually understand how much you mean to them. I feel like they might have been pretty used to having you around. I do feel that these feelings are constantly growing and that maybe you’ve been manifesting this person as well. And if you’ve been trying to manifest this person, the angels want you to know that your dream is soon to become a reality but you have to trust this process and that everything is going to unfold itself. And I’m seeing it happening within the next 6 – 8 weeks, honestly. I feel like things are going to progress quicker as time goes by as well. And if this is a friend you’re asking about, I feel like they definitely feel that this connection is worth the investment and that they are seeing this connection going to continue in the long run as well. I do feel that they see you as a miracle in their life and they are very grateful and thankful to have you in their lives. I do feel that for most of you, things are really going to start to progress and improve within the next few weeks, 4 weeks, I am hearing. Else, it could be within the next 6 – 8 weeks. Summer seems to be a very significant season here as well. I just feel that for those who are asking for a romantic interest, this person is going to come forward. And I feel like they want to bring forth certain success and victory into this connection. I feel like if this person hasn’t been very balance in their energies with you in this connection, they would want to make that compromise with you. I do feel that they are pretty sorry for not treating you right in the past, and that they want to make it up to you. If this is the case, forgive them if you want to and honestly, it’s up to you if you want them back into your life. But remember, forgiveness is always for yourself and not for the other party. I do feel that a compromise has to be made here because balance and harmony is definitely needed within this connection, be it if it’s a romantic interest or a platonic connection. I do feel that things weren’t very balanced in the past, and what is to come within the next 4 – 8 weeks is the achievement of balance and harmony. I feel like things are going to transform slowly but steadily and you are asked to trust in this process, darling. Things are really going to be aligned in your favour, and this is something that you’ve been manifesting for a long time, so please don’t give up now, darling, trust!

Pile 4:

Tarot: The High Priestess, 8 of Cups, 9 of Pentacles

Oracle: OPPORTUNITY // LOOK FOR A SIGN

Life is a series of constantly shifting cycles. When we resist change, we resist the natural flow of life and create unnecessary stress. Go with the flow – you will be surprised where it leads.

LOOK INSIDE YOURSELF – Examine what is causing you to feel this way.

A MESSAGE FOR YOU – I’m thinking of you this very moment. Your love fills me with light. I love you.

ONLY TIME WILL TELL.

Now, darling, for most of you, I’m getting a no-contact or separation situation. And if you don’t resonate with this, maybe you can try a different pile because this pile just may not be for you. I feel like this person on your mind sees you as someone who is very highly intuitive and that you are someone who is in your power. But more often than not, this person sees you as someone who is very secretive. And it’s not in a very bad way, in fact it is very alluring and charming to your person but I feel like sometimes you might have kept things to yourself too much that it makes it difficult for this person to truly communicate their needs and wants to you. I feel like this person does love you, be it if it’s a romantic interest or a platonic connection, but I’m hearing disappointment. I feel like this person might have felt that you were never ready to open up to them, or that they can never get you to open up to them and that there are feelings of sadness, of disappointment when they are being reminded of you. I feel like this person feels that this connection is constantly in some sort of cycle and it’s just hard to simply break free from it, because there are no changes on either side. Honestly, I feel like it’s not just you, I feel like they do have their own problems but they are not seeing it clearly either. I do feel that while they do have feelings (and I’m feeling that they currently still have feelings), they aren’t going to act on it for now. I feel like they are more so going to focus more on themselves. In this sense, I feel like they are intending to just put in the work and focus on themselves and leave this situation behind. I do feel that they feel that if this connection is meant to be, both of you would eventually come back together again, but of course, this is only due in time. I do feel that they are currently trying to put in the focus on their career and finances and just trying to leave this situation behind. And darling, I’m hearing that if you’ve been confused about this situation on whether if you should stay and move on, this is a sign that you should move on and work on yourself as well. It’s not entirely your fault that this connection didn’t work out. It honestly takes two hands to clap in any forms of connections, and while it’s not entirely your fault, it’s important for you to examine the part that you’ve played in this connection. Learn and grow from these lessons, darling, and again, if this connection is meant to be, it will eventually happen in the future. You’ve just got to be patient and in the meantime, work and focus on yourself first, darling!

[gay-otlc]

Little Miss Perfect

Summary: Straight hair, straight A's, straight forward, straight girl

Straight hair is most beautiful. Straight A's are most successful. Straight forward is fastest. Straight girls are the most perfect. And if straight girls are the most perfect, and Biana is the most perfect, ae has to be straight. Ae doesn't get a choice.

Little miss perfect, that's me

Content warnings: Internalized homophobia, homophobia in general, cursing, mentions of abuse, mentions of eating disorders, lmk if I should add more.

Word count: 3143

(Read on AO3)

Straight hair, straight A's, straightforward Straight path, I don't cut corners

Biana Amberly Vacker is beautiful, and smart, but that's hardly a surprise. Even before ae was born, everyone knew ae would be beautiful, and smart. Ae's a Vacker, after all. Ae wakes up early to straighten aer hair and stays up late to study, so ae's tired all the time, but ae's gorgeous and ae's at the top of aer class, so does it really matter?

Ae takes life one day at a time, one step after another, because if ae slows down or turns around, everything ae's running away from might catch up with aer.

So ae doesn't do that. Biana keeps following the straight path and hopes the road ahead of aer doesn't wind too much. Make sure every step leads aer to perfection.

I make a point to be on time Head of the student council

Not only that, but Biana's on time for everything. Aer parents make sure of that, but ae probably would be even without their help- Biana likes to plan ahead. Or really, ae doesn't know for sure whether ae likes it, or if it makes ae feel trapped. But at least it saves aer the confusion and terror of an uncertain life. Whatever the reason, ae makes little notes in aer planner for all aer appointments.

And bigger notes in aer journal for the rest of aer life.

Make it through Foxfire.

Manifest an ability.

Get a respectable job.

Marry a respectable boy.

Have children.

Step four... doesn't seem so great, by which ae means downright nauseating, but that doesn't matter. What ae wants doesn't matter. And anyway, this will probably be what ae wants in the long run. Ae's just not old enough for boys yet. Plenty of time for that in the future.

Ae'll be on time for every step of aer perfect fucking life.

I don't black out at parties I jam to Paul McCartney

Biana doesn't break rules- mostly because ae's afraid of how aer father would punish aer. Either way, ae's never snuck out at night, never spent time with the classmates he said were beneath aer, never wore something he said showed too much skin, never ate more than ae was allowed to. Every single one of his rules, ae followed.

If that meant not going to Marella Redek's party because her mother was too "strange," even though everyone else was talking about how fun it would be, ae wouldn't go. Ae would just miss out. Fun.

Ae heard that at the parties, they played human music. What would that even sound like? Fitz knew- he got to go to the human world all the time, but Biana didn't. Still, after incessant begging, aer dad let aer listen to one song, by a human named Paul McCartney. It wasn't bad. Quite good, in comparison to elvin music. Still... ae wished ae could listen to more.

Of course, ae wouldn't. That would be disobeying aer dad. And ae didn't do that. She always had to be the perfect daughtaer.

If you ask me how I'm doing I'll say... Well, hmm

Lying wasn't good, of course. Ae shouldn't lie to people who asked how ae was doing.

But ae couldn't admit to being anything less than perfect.

So ae'd just mumble.

Perfect until proven otherwise.

I was adopted when I was two My parents spoiled me rotten

Okay, so Biana isn't actually adopted- but for years, ae thought ae had been. Always out of place in the perfect Vacker family, because everything comes so effortlessly to them, they're exactly what elvin society wants without any struggle at all. And ae... wasn't like that. Too loud, too argumentative, not quite ladylike enough. Not smart enough, ae needed to work harder. Not pretty enough.

Not interested in the right people.

But when ae learned to stay quiet, keep aer head down, and follow all the damn rules, aer parents seemed to like aer better. Well, Alden did. Della always appreciated aer, however quietly, slipping aer little pieces of mallowmelt behind Alden's back even when he told aer that ae had to be thinner. Whispering compliments into aer ears after Alden scolded aer so much his voice was hoarse from screaming and aers was hoarse from crying.

And when Alden was proud of aer, she would get everything ae wanted. All the pretty dresses. All the sparkles and sketchbooks and sewing kits. Trips to Atlantis or Eternalia. Anything ae wanted, to reward her for being Little Miss Perfect.

Often I ask myself, "What did I do?" To get as far as I've gotten

Some of the time- who the hell is ae kidding, it's most, if not all, of the time- Biana feels like... ae doesn't deserve aer last name, or aer popularity, or any of aer privileges in life. Mentors at Foxfire practically revere aer and aer peers bend over backwards to be liked by aer.

Ae is so fucking sick of it.

Why aer? Ae wants to scream the question at every single person who treats aer differently. Why is ae the one to get that treatment? Ae had never done anything important in aer whole fucking life, ae didn't do anything, and all this praise should go to someone far more perfect than aer.

A pretty girl walks by my locker My heart gives a flutter

Biana is, unfortunately, very well known at Foxfire, and ae thought ae knew everyone else too. But ae's never seen this girl before, because ae would know if they had. It would be impossible for past Biana to have seen this girl and not remember her.

She has dark skin, even darker than Biana's, and long dreadlocks pulled into a knot and streaked with blue. Biana thought ae was used to the beauty of elvin girls- they were all quite pretty- but this girl, holy shit, ae was not prepared to see this girl. Her flat nose and full pink lips and turquoise eyes are all so beautiful. Biana's heart pounds and flutters around her chest like it wants to fly out and meet this girl, and aer breath catches.

Maruca Chebota, as ae later learns, is perfection.

But I don't dare utter a word 'Cause that would be absurd behaviour For little miss perfect

The pretty girl continues walking, seemingly unaware that she's thrown Biana's world wobbling out of orbit. Biana wants to call out to her, to yell, to make sure she doesn't walk away and make it so that amazing high, those butterflies and awe and something ae can't even describe, seems almost like it never happened.

But there are a lot of people in the hallways, and they're already staring at aer far more intensely than what ae would describe as comfortable, ready to judge each and every thing she does. Running to catch up with a girl because she's pretty? Not normal. Not normal for any elf, but especially not aer.

Biana silently watches her turn around a corner into a different hallway and out of aer line of sight, wishing ae could have been a little less perfect. Just for one second.

Na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na No, I can't risk falling off my throne

Dear Maruca,

I'm sorry. I'm sorry I've been avoiding you lately. I'm sorry I can't talk to you. You haven't done anything wrong, I promise.

It's just... you're dangerous. To my heart, my... my reputation. My throne.

That's not quite true. You're not dangerous to most people. You're just dangerous to me. Maybe you're fine, and I'm just too fragile. Too imperfect.

La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la Love is something I don't even know

Dear Maruca,

What if we did love each other? Bravely. Boldly. Unapologetically.

What if I pretended it wouldn't topple me off my throne; or pretended I didn't care?

No. That's stupid. I shouldn't sacrifice all that for love.

This isn't even love, anyway. I don't know what love is, but you aren't it.

Straight hair, straight A's, straightforward Straight girl

Straight hair is most beautiful.

Straight A's are most successful.

Straight forward is fastest.

Straight girls are the most perfect.

Little miss perfect That's me

And if straight girls are the most perfect, and Biana is the most perfect, ae has to be straight.

Ae doesn't get a choice.

One night my friend stayed over We laughed, and drank and ordered

And straight girls would like Maruca, sure, but not in the way Biana does. Not in that all consuming, heart wrenching, feels like ae's floating and falling and spiraling all at once way. Just in a... a friend way. A normal way. Because the two of them would make perfect friends, and anything other than that would end in fiery disaster.

So Biana makes friends with Maruca. Friends. They talk about their Universe class, and play splotching together in PE (Maruca wins; Biana gets distracted by her braids), and horribly bake mallowmelt together. It burns.

Maruca is... fun. It's fun to be friends with Maruca. Ae invites her over to Everglen for a sleepover- Della is overjoyed that Biana is finally making friends- and they have a fun time. Playing games and talking about useless shit and going to go bother Fitz and his friend Keefe.

It doesn't need to be anything different, Biana tells aerself, again and again. It's perfect like this. It doesn't need to change.

Something about her drew me in What? It's totally platonic

Biana can't stop staring at Maruca.

She feels like gravity, a star, and ae feels like a planet. They work perfectly together, orbiting around and around and around. If Maruca smiles, Biana's mind races to solve the mystery of how exactly that smile would taste on aer lips. It tastes good, ae thinks, though that's a stupid thought.

"What are you thinking about?" Maruca asks. "You have this goofy smile on your face, and you didn't hear the story I just told."

Biana turns bright red. Of course, ae can't say I was thinking about your lips on mine, because that would sound... weird. Ae has to keep it platonic, because they'll never be anything other than platonic, and it's not like ae wants that either. Ae swallows, and finally says "You. I'm really glad we're friends."

Platonic friends. Perfect, platonic friends.

That night was so exciting Her smirks were so enticing

"Yeah, I'm an awesome friend," Maruca says, flicking one of her intricate braids. Biana's eyes linger on it a little too long.

Ae clears aer throat and quickly deflects the conversation, still blushing. "You are. Do you want to go downstairs? It smells like something's baking."

"I would be honored to go eat some of your mom's amazing desserts, m'laedy," says Maruca, extending a hand with mock formality. Her gorgeous lips are pulled into a smirk. Biana's breath catches; ae wants to freeze this mental image for eternity. Cautiously, ae takes Maruca's hand in aers.

Skin touching. Holding hands.

It's stupid, it's a cliche, but it does feel like sparks shoot across aer skin as Maruca wraps her fingers in Biana's and starts walking downstairs. Aer stomach flips around excitedly.

Then ae crashes and burns. They are friends. Both girls. Friends don't get this excited about holding other friends' hands. Biana rips aer hand away and stuffs it in aer pocket. Maruca looks a bit offended, but Biana clenches aer jaw and looks down.

It hurts, but ae has to be perfect. No exceptions.

Hours speed by like seconds Then, what happens is iconic

Once they get over the awkwardness of that moment, they slip right back into the fun they were having before. Della's ripplefluffs disappear quickly, and the two of them go back into Biana's room to keep talking. Biana shows Maruca aer sketches- ae hasn't really shown them to anyone before, Alden thinks a Vacker should have a more noble profession than designing fashion- and Maruca tells Biana that ae should dye aer hair.

Alden is going to kill aer, but for once, ae isn't thinking of that. Della would probably say yes, but the two of them decide it would be more fun to sneak out, so they light leap to Slurps And Burps as quietly as they can, in silent giggles the whole time. Maruca decides to re-dye the blue streaks in her hair, and Biana opts for violet. They go back to Biana's room and laugh more. Biana wildly thinks this is the most fun ae's ever had.

It's perfect, even if ae isn't.

She takes a sip, I bite my lip She tells a joke, I nearly choke

Aer stomach is sore from laughing, and ae still can't stop looking at Maruca. She's so pretty, something ae could stare at forever if ae had the chance. The longer ae looks, the more ae notices little details, like the way her braids fall against her shoulders, and how she has barely visible freckles splattered across her nose, and how her hand brushes against Biana's every so often. It's warm, and smooth, and perfect.

Maruca is a masterpiece of a person.

Currently, Biana's fascination lies in how her lips curl around the straw of her lushberry juice. It’s disgusting and wrong and so thrilling as Biana imagines kissing those lips.

No. Stop thinking about that, Biana commands aerself, biting aer own lip to draw aer attention away.

"Biana? Bi? You listening?"

Ae turns red. "Yeah, sorry!"

"Alright, so I was reading about cowboys, except I read it as cowgoys because it was really late, which implies the existence of Jewish cows. So then the thought 'Bar Moo-tzvah' came into my head and I can't stop thinking about it."

Biana snorts; the joke is funny enough on its own, but the cute little smile on Maruca's face and the way her eyes light up nearly make aer choke.

“Shut the fuck up, brain, let me be the perfect Vacker,” ae muters, too quietly for Maruca to hear.

She braids my hair, I sit there Blacking out for the first time

Maruca says Biana's newly violet hair looks beautiful- ae needs to fake a coughing fit to keep from squealing- and asks to braid it. Biana nods, and lets aerself get lost in the feeling of fingers weaving through aer hair and brushing against aer head.

Aer eyes close- ae doesn't know when, but the room around aer disappears and all ae can feel is fingers and this all encompassing, overwhelming love ae seems to be drowning in, blacking out everything else.

Next thing I know, I lose control I finally kiss her but oh no

Without making any conscious decision, Biana spins around, cups Maruca's face, and gently presses aer lips against hers. Their flat noses touch, eyelashes flutter against each other's cheeks, lips kissing. Kissing. It's fast, and sweet, and wonderful. Biana feels aer world aligning perfectly, like this is the way everything was meant to be, and there are fireworks shooting across aer skies.

Biana smiles against Maruca's lips.

I see a face in my window Then my brain starts to go

Everything happens at once.

Maruca yelps and pushes aer back. The door swings open, revealing a shocked Fitz. Fireworks vanish, as quickly as they came.

Biana's world shatters.

Na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na No, you can't risk falling off your throne

Dear Maruca,

That kiss was amazing.

But it's too risky to do again.

I'm sorry.

La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la Love is something you don't even know

Dear Maruca,

What do I know about kissing? It's not like I have anything to compare it too, besides that one time I kissed Keefe on the cheek because I thought I was supposed to. No, because I wanted to. Because I wanted to kiss him. I wanted to kiss him and I didn't want to kiss you.

I don't know what kissing is supposed to feel like. Or what love is supposed to feel like.

It'll be better with a boy. It has to be better with a boy.

I'll know love eventually, and it won't be with you.

You shouldn't love me either.

Na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na You can't risk falling off your throne

Dear Maruca,

I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you-

No.

I hate myself.

La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la Love You don't even know

Dear Maruca,

Or maybe I love you.

I don't know.

I probably don't.

Because I can't love another girl, right? I have to be misunderstanding what love means if I think I can love a girl.

I don't know love. But it can't be you.

Rewind, induce amnesia Deny the truth, that's easier

Fitz tells her what to do- pretend like it never happened. That's what Alden told him when he kissed Keefe. Biana snorts humorlessly at that; two fucked up Vacker children. But ae follows his advice. Forget about it. Pretend it never happened. Never address it with Maruca; or speak to her again, really. Pretend, pretend, pretend.

Ae's been pretending aer whole life.

Life continues on, and ae pretends to be okay. Maruca makes friends with Stina, and Biana makes friends with the new girl. Sophie Foster. Sophie is nice enough, but she's not Maruca. She can't replace Maruca. No one can fucking replace Maruca, and no one should have to- ae just fucked up aer only chance with someone that wonderful. But ae pretends Sophie is enough, pretends ae's not heartbroken.

Pretends, pretends, pretends.

Pretends to be perfect.

You're just confused, believe her When she says there's nothing there

Biana talks to Maruca once.

They both apologize in the same breath.

"I'm sorry, I don't know what happened-"

"That was weird, I'm sorry-"

"I don't like you, I was just confused."

"So was I, kissing girls was just something I thought I'd try, a bit of a phase."

"No, totally, it's not like I really like girls or anything."

"Nah, that'd be weird."

They never speak again. There's nothing between them. Biana tries to believe what Maruca told aer. Ae doesn't.

“You're just confused,” ae repeats to aerself. “You're still perfect.”

It's never worth it When you're little miss perfect

Dear Maruca,

Maybe someone else can love you. Someone who doesn't have to be little miss perfect.

[positivlyfocused]

Little Things Lead To And Create Big Things Everyone Wants

Some people think when practicing meditation or other manifestation process, that focusing on the big things — manifestations like jobs, money, and relationships — are the goal.

But it’s really the tiny things, those little, moment-by-moment realizations, that make the big things reveal themselves. And without those little things, the big things don’t happen. That’s because the prime objective of a Positively Focused practice is joy.

For example, a client realized this recently as he advanced in his Positively Focused practice. He’s a musician, and as he thought about his upcoming practice one day, he made a remarkable discovery.

“Before my practice session,” he began. “I had the thought ‘well, what am I going to work on today?’ Then I thought ‘oh that sounds so depressing.’”

“So I said to myself ‘I’m just going to enjoy what happens.’ So I just started improvising and really got interested in this one particular thing and off I went.”

He continued. “What happened was I put the emphasis on enjoyment, and ended up enjoying working on something that needed working on, because of the enjoyment, rather than working on something I needed to work on, which would have been boring and unenjoyable.”

It seems this little realization isn’t much. But don’t be fooled. Such little things are precursors or harbingers of big things. And the more someone focuses on these little things, especially one’s feelings, the sooner bigger things happen.

In this client’s experience he learned that a joy-orientation instead of task-orientation creates outcomes just as powerful, but much more enjoyable, than task-orientation. It’s way more fun too!

^^It is law. If you’re chronically Positively Focused, your life must reflect that back to you.

The pay-offs are infinite

This kind of awareness, putting joy first, pays huge dividends. The greater one cultivates such an awareness, the more they realize we all live submerged in a sea of blessings, all happening specifically for our enjoyment.

This is the Charmed Life I write about. The experience of life as a moment-by-moment joyful experience. Were eveything one wants happens…effortlessly.

The Universe wants us all living in joy. That’s why discovering it feels so good. This client shared more of his unfolding experience later in the same session:

“There’s been a lot of moments,” he added. “Just in the last couple of weeks, where I’ve deliberately put my attention on the fact that me and society in general are all being pretty much taken care of all the time,”

“Aside from the amazing cosmic set-up allowing all this to happen,” He explained. “Even at the societal level [we’re taken care of].”

He went on describing things he realized indicate this. For example, even simple things, inventions like the rear view mirror, he said, make life so easy for everyone.

“All the things we take for granted, yet they’re made out of compassion the benefit of others…everything, everything is geared up to help each other. It’s amazing!!!”

We live among treasure troves

Indeed, these little things, like roads, traffic signals, standards and conventions, and inventions like rear-view mirrors, reveal how good life is. But only to those willing to take time to appreciate what’s really happening.

With these inventions, every one of us may move through life in relative comfort, ease and joy. We can pursue all kinds of activities. Activities bringing us satisfaction, pleasure and fulfillment.

Afterwards, my client and I marveled in his realizations. And we marveled for a purpose. Because by focusing on these little things, focusing on them and appreciating them for the blessings they are, our perception broadens until life reveals its secrets.

In every life instance, every waking moment, we stand among treasure troves. Troves everyone enjoys, or takes for granted.

But when one focuses on these little things, recognizing and appreciating them, they soothe resistance born of bogus beliefs about life. Those bogus beliefs make the troves invisible. Meanwhile, these little things, things bogus beliefs make impossible to see, add up to larger blessings. They add up to things we desire, like more money, better work, peace and happiness and, yes, even love.

Castles and buttons both seen easy

Over time, as resistance gives way to a positive focus, one discovers their place at the center of the Universe. There the Universe reveals its conspiracies. There are co-created processes happening all the time that deliver to everyone everything they want.

The revelation transforms human consciousness. It creates in the individual an unshakeable certainty of one’s eternal, invincible and blessed nature.

Only those who line up with what they want get this gift. The giving of which comes through becoming Positively Focused.

Focusing on the little things is the first step. These little things Abraham calls “buttons”. Once they become visible, seeing those things we really care about, the greater manifestations, gets easier. Abraham calls those greater manifestations, “castles”.

But again, perceiving accurately the buttons unfolding in order to see castles unfolding one must cultivate that chronic positive focus. When cultivated, nurtured and maintained, resistance born of negative beliefs fades. Then, like my client, the Positively Focused person sees the bewildering reality of physical reality: the Charmed Life.

From there, buttons cause a giddy delight. Your gaze fills with them. Then and only then, riding on the momentum of evidence your Charmed Life exists, your castles start showing you steps leading to their unfolding. Like this other client expressing his wonder at how well the practice works:

Are you ready?

So by deliberately focusing on life’s positive aspects, one gradually lives a chronic state of experiencing buttons lining a path leading to castles. The bigger, full-blown manifestations waiting for everyone in their version of the Charmed Lifeexist. The question is, are people ready to experience them?

Whether you are or not, I love being chronically Positively Focused. Like my clients, I see more and more evidence of unfoldings consistent with what I want. Nothing is off limits. Everything is possible. I create a life rich in abundance of all kinds.

It’s gratifying seeing my clients get there too. And when they appreciate getting there, I revel in their appreciation.

For as they do that, it confirms my own process, my own practice, my own expansion. Then our sessions become what they ultimately are: opportunities to revel together in the unfolding or our creation-rich Charmed Lives.

Are you ready for yours?