#She will act like I am lazy and gaslight me if she doesn’t get her way

[universallydestinytaco]

:’)

[i-luv-queen]

The Queen of all Cosmos has so much character, and I am tired of people acting like she doesn’t!!

The Queen is never talked about, and it hurts my soul.

She’s been there since the very beginning. She was in the very first concept featuring the Katamari characters, Action Drive.

This original concept may remind you of Princess Peach, which I can agree with. However, just like her, we know she is more than a “damsel in distress”. She is powerful while being feminine!

She’s extremely strong, and very fierce. I’m really glad We ♥️ Katamari states that she is feared by The King, especially with the prior knowledge that he was too lazy to save his own wife.

Yes, we know she’s a little ditzy, but that makes her even more charming.

Her description on the original Katamari Damacy website reads:

“Prince's gentle mother. She's dreamy, but she's also determined. Her favorite food is gratin. She always carries it with her. She married the king for love. Her Height: Bigger than a prince, smaller than the king.”

This is not the only time she has been shown to be a daydreamer. In We ♥️ Katamari, one of the credits stage quotes reads:

“All the fans look so happy ♥️ They’re all rolled up in a Katamari, after all. That was another one of my ideas. Isn’t it dreamy?

We can infer she has a creative side and a good imagination. This could be why she doesn’t speak much, possibly. Once again, her We ♥️ Katamari description says: “She has little trouble coming up with delicious dinner menus these days”. We have seen her bake and cook amazing foods!

Just look at that! Isn’t your mouth watering?

After more research, I had initially concluded she was built around the Japanese housewife stereotype, “shufu”. However, the Katamari series already has many stereotypical housewives, such as Mizue Hoshino, Fussy mom, etc. The Queen contains many traits of “shufu”, such as: Cooking, cleaning, doing the laundry, and obsessing over TV dramas. However, she is not submissive to her husband. Usually, the stereotype shows the wife serving her overworked husband, while he complains about his work. Instead, The Queen encourages her husband to help around the house. For example, in A Song for the King of Kings, the King mentions “The lovely Queen scolded us about the way we fold laundry”, most likely due to his royal upbringing. He states in a Tweet that his job in the castle is to “press start on the washing machine”, which isn’t much, but goes to show his laziness. Being a housewife in Japan is sometimes regarded as lazy, but in reality, these women do so much work. Katamari portrays this when you realize the King takes all the credit for The Prince’s work, when he barely does anything. The Queen, however, cooks for her family, does the laundry, and scolds the King when he gets out of hands. She does more work than him, so why should she wipe his butt from doing no work? The Queen’s humble origins are a good contrast to the King’s laziness.

The Queen being able to put The King in his place is inspirational to me. An enormous being, capable of destroying galaxies, is afraid of this pink, sweet lady. I do believe sometimes The Queen is petty with the things that upset her. For example, when the King accidentally ruined the laundry when a frog jumped on it, she didn’t talk to him for a few days. However, it makes you think about the interactions we don’t see. The Queen goes through a lot, having to deal with her husband.

Sometimes, I interpret their interactions as the forms of tough love. The King’s appearance consists of cold, gray skin and a muscular build. But the Queen appears as a pink, soft, kind lady. The King uses emotional manipulation, gaslighting, and physical abuse as a punishment for The Prince. I, including many others, are very opposed to this. However, The Queen may scold her husband, but she doesn’t actually try to hurt him. They care about each other. The Queen’s design is plastered in hearts, and is described to be loving and kind. She’s not perfect, but she does care. The King also cares, but his abusive tendencies are incredibly toxic. With this, I interpret them as love being stronger than hate. The Queen, a woman covered in hearts, is able to make an abusive King cower in fear. I think that’s really interesting. Notice how The Queen has never hurt the Prince (at least intentionally)? This says a lot about her. She’s a no-BS lady. She’s feminine, beautiful, but also doesn’t take her husband’s BS. I regard her as a feminist icon.

BONUS! The Queen’s cookies are considered the “tastiest thing in the world” by the We ♥️ Katamari manual.

[cat-in-a-basement]

Main Character Opinion Piece

Ah, opinions. That old chestnut. I do want to get back to sharing thoughts on this cursed series but sometimes lack Motivation (trademark pending). So here’s a list below of the main characters in the main book series and how I would rank them. 

Note: aVoS and DotC are excluded because I have not read them yet. I don’t want to give thoughts on something I have limited knowledge of.

Hollyleaf: 9/10. The perfect storm of everything I like combined with a dynamic story and complex character. She's not perfectly consistent and I recognize those faults but no other warriors character captivates me in how strong a presence she has. 

Squirrelflight: 8.5/10. What I like about her is her growth from annoying apprentice to headstrong warrior. I love she doesn't filter her thoughts and she'll break rules and the societal norm to do what's right. She's selfless, compassionate and complex, and really, really needs a break.

Ivypool: 8/10. I do believe rereading my opinion on Ivypool might lower since she's underutilized in OotS. But more so I love the idea of Ivypool, what she could have been. And that concept colors my perception of her in an ideal world where that happened.

Rootspring: 7/10. Rootspring is very good, until he isn't. Like Feathertail he's very likeable when he's taking on an active role as Rootpaw, but when he becomes a warrior he loses some of the dynamic-ness and personality he had as an apprentice. Come TPoNS, he's become a window reacting without any flair of the personality he once had.

Dovewing: 6.5/10. I used to dislike Dovewing, finding her hard to read about in OotS because she acted like a child (as children are want to do). While now I've grown to appreciate her more, she doesn't leave a big impact on me. I don't have a lot of investment in her character, and so I am indifferent to her in the books.

Jayfeather: 6.5/10. Jayfeather I have complex feelings about, because while I do think he's a good character, I for the life of me cannot make myself like him as a person (er, cat). I have settled on indifference towards him because he has settled into his role as gruff medicine cat and I just sort of mentally check out.

Firestar: 5/10. Firestar...is a warm bowl of soup. Not bad, not amazing, but it fills the belly. I don't gravitate towards him as a character because he's a very safe, very mild character who acts as the typical hero in a young adult/children's novel. I can't say I hate him, but I don't particularly care for him either.

Bristlefrost: 4.5/10. Bristlefrost being so low here is a crime I'll never forgive. She started out so strong, with sound character development, hopes, dreams, ambitions. But it unraveled so quickly, with some of the worst character regression I have ever seen. We need to be going up, not down!

Leafpool: 4/10. Leafpool never started out strong for me, but I actively began to dislike her after how she treated her apprentice/son, and especially after her actions in Leafpool's Wish. She's selfish and bitter all without the intrigue that would bring. I find it hard to accept what the books say as her being a gentle and kind figure when she doesn't act like it in my books.

Lionblaze: 3/10. Lionblaze in PoT was angry hot head guy. Okay, not as good as his siblings but not offensive. Lionblaze in OoTS does nothing but mope over Cinderheart or act as a window. Boring, lazy. Where did his personality go? It's like an incline where he somehow keeps getting worse. By TBC he's at the worst he's ever been and even with his shitty behavior he is continually rewarded for it. You want to get on BC's bad side? Be terrible with no intricacy and get rewarded for it.

Shadowsight: 3/10. Of the three PoVs for TBC, Shadowpaw had been the weakest for me. But it became apparent the writers really wanted him to suffer, even is the injury was literally falling off a cliff. What is so infuriating about Shadowsight is he actively warps the story so he can be painted in a sympathetic light and he does not grow, he does not learn, we're expected to watch him suffer and go 'yep that's a character.' It's especially awful he warps other characters around him for the sake of his suffering.

Bramblestar: How did we get from sweet, brave, dynamic Bramblepaw...to this. As Bramblepaw he was good, very good. He had a great arc denouncing his father and teaching Firestar to not judge him for his father's crimes. Bramblepaw is a 7/10. 

But Brambleclaw completely regressed in character to suddenly need his father's approval, and was a moron who didn't listen to Squirrelflight’s concerns 'hey, uh, your brother is kind of evil', and — oh, found it difficult to decide whether or not to kill his leader and commit treason. Firestar should have not made him deputy. I imagine Bramblepaw wouldn't want to be deputy after that if he was still that same character. But no, he gets rewarded for his character regression and idiocy. 2/10.

Bramblestar? He went from idiot rewarded for bad ideas to emotionally abusive partner. His cold shoulder to Squirrel in OotS is manipulative, his actions in SqH are disgusting and gaslighting, and to top it off, the narrative treats him as a good and kindly high king when he clearly has not earned it at all! GOD, I hate Bramblestar. 1/10.

Stormfur: 1/10. By all rights, Stormfur shouldn’t be considered a main character here. But he is so very bad I felt it was my civil duty to include him. If there's one thing worse than being actively shitty, it's doing nothing at all. Stormfur is a dead fish and even then the dead fish probably has more personality. He's the lowest because I cannot think of a single good thing about his character or story. He's bland and boring, does absolutely nothing and gets rewarded for it.

[yellowocaballero]

Continuation of Human Relations (Oh My God, They Were Roommates)

This is a 16k story that’s a bit too short for AO3 but a bit too long for Tumblr that acts as a continuation of my Archivist!Sasha and Immortal!Jon fic Human Relations. I recommend that you read that before this. This story takes place between S2 and S3, and is about Sasha and Georgie’s roommate adventures. I’m uncertain if I’ll continue this and post it on AO3, post it on AO3 as it is, or what, but for the time being I’ll at least post it here. 

Serious content warnings for discussion of abusive friendships, gaslighting, discussion of 19th century racism, implied transphobia, and discussion of police brutality. Nothing more serious than what we saw in Human Relations, but it does have a much more explicit investigation of Jon and Elias’ relationship. Rest under the cut. Happy Birthday, @magickko. 

EDIT: HAHA READMORE DIDN’T WORK, YIKES. 

Sasha dreams, every night.

Nightmares, mostly. Statements given and Statements stolen run endlessly through her head in a scrolling loop, crying out for mercy, as its figures cry and scream. Sasha looks at them through a camera, pushing the button and clicking the shutter again and again and again, searching for that perfect shot frozen in time. 

A woman, trapped under a thousand pounds of dirt and crumpling metal. Snap. A woman, chewing keycaps, eyes riveted on a flickering screen. Snap. A woman, lost in her fiance’s grave, pleading for someone to find her. Snap. 

A man, eating canned peaches, alone. Snap. A man, swinging an axe with a frantic strength born of terror. Snap. A man, and the look in his eyes, betrayed. Snap. A man, gunshot wound leaking blood out of his chest, eyes rolling in the fluorescent lights. Snap.

When Sasha wakes up she is always surprised to find herself in a guest room, always out of place and out of time as she stares up at an unfamiliar ceiling. Maybe the worst part is those two seconds after waking, where she doesn’t know where she is, adrift in time and space. Then she remembers, and she’s faced with the situation all over again. 

Namely, the fact that she was couch surfing in the Grim Reaper’s guest bedroom. 

Sasha dreams, every night.

Nightmares, mostly. Statements given and Statements stolen run endlessly through her head in a scrolling loop, crying out for mercy, as its figures cry and scream. Sasha looks at them through a camera, pushing the button and clicking the shutter again and again and again, searching for that perfect shot frozen in time. 

A woman, trapped under a thousand pounds of dirt and crumpling metal. Snap. A woman, chewing keycaps, eyes riveted on a flickering screen. Snap. A woman, lost in her fiance’s grave, pleading for someone to find her. Snap. 

A man, eating canned peaches, alone. Snap. A man, swinging an axe with a frantic strength born of terror. Snap. A man, and the look in his eyes, betrayed. Snap. A man, gunshot wound leaking blood out of his chest, eyes rolling in the fluorescent lights. Snap.

When Sasha wakes up she is always surprised to find herself in a guest room, always out of place and out of time as she stares up at an unfamiliar ceiling. Maybe the worst part is those two seconds after waking, where she doesn’t know where she is, adrift in time and space. Then she remembers, and she’s faced with the situation all over again. 

Namely, the fact that she was couch surfing in the Grim Reaper’s guest bedroom. 

Georgie Barker wasn’t a mystery, and she’d be the first to tell you.

Of course you’re welcome to stay as long as you need, honey! I always love having Jonah owe me a favor. Don’t worry about the cops and the law, nobody will ever find you here. Seriously, the entire department’s in my pocket. It’s no hassle having you here, it’s a big flat! It’s been years since I’ve had a roommate, this’ll be fun!

The one thing she hadn’t understood was Sasha begging her not to let Jon in to see her. He knows exactly where you are, Georgie pointed out. He knows you’re not actually a murderer, Georgie said. He might be able to help explain some of what’s going on, Georgie hinted. Jon would respect my wishes, but if Jonah really wants him to talk to you, he’ll definitely do it...

“Please,” Sasha had croaked, the uncomfortable morning after she had stumbled into Georgie’s flat. The Admiral wove around her legs, purring up a storm, and Georgie was munching on avocado toast and sipping pomegranate juice. “I just - I just need some space.”

“Why?” Georgie asked obliviously. That was something that Sasha was rapidly learning about Georgie - she didn’t hold back with impolite questions, or her opinion. She seemed to be regarding Sasha’s life as her own personal Youtuber Drama, which Sasha really didn’t know how she felt about. Her life wasn’t a spectacle, but she guessed even the warfare and tragedy of ants were of obscure and strange interest to humanity. “He’s feeling, like, totally bad about framing you for murder. I can tell he super wants to apologize to you about everything.”

Martin’s words echoed through her mind, from what felt like a decade ago: Jon had ruined Martin’s life, but to him it was as simple as a momentary inconvenience. “I don’t want his apology,” Sasha croaked. “I want not to be on the run from the police. I want to go back to my flat. Unless he’s going to make me human again I don’t want any stupid apologies. They’re useless.”

“Hm. Well, you’re free to stay here as long as you need to, of course.” Georgie sipped at her tea. They were sitting around the breakfast table, Sasha desolately shoving eggs into her mouth as Georgie drank her tea that Sasha was reasonably sure was spiked with brandy. Rich people were literally never sober. “It’ll be so much fun, like a sleepover. We can do each other’s nails and talk about boys!”

“My boyfriend thought I was a monster for the past month and now thinks I’m a murderer,” Sasha said flatly. 

“Oh, I see.” Georgie tapped her lips thoughtfully. “We have to get you laid, huh?”

“I am literally on the run from the cops.”

“That’s very sexy to some people,” Georgie assured her. 

After that, Georgie waved goodbye and swanned out of the house, either going to her studio to work on her podcast or doing some work for her real estate empire or writing a best-selling book or schmoozing with celebrities or attending parties at exclusive nightclubs or working part-time as a bartender just for gossip or devouring souls. Just from Sasha’s one day at Georgie’s flat, she knew that she did all of these things and then some. It was a stunning contrast to Jon’s laziness, or Elias (Jonah’s) single-mindedness. 

Maybe you lost the energy to be so productive after your two hundredth year. Sasha didn’t fucking know. Hopefully she would never know. Or maybe Jon just appeared to be lazy, and every moment that he was complaining about being bored he was secretly manipulating world leaders. Maybe Jonah’s dedication to spreadsheets and dress code was a front, and he was secretly pulling the puppet strings of her entire life…

In the empty spaces of Georgie’s spacious flat, it was easy to be paranoid. Sasha lay on her luxurious couch, hands folded across her chest like a corpse, trying not to think of anything, thinking of everything. Thinking of Tim: of his smile, of his scowl, of his cold looks given to someone he had thought was a stranger. Thinking of Martin: his warm smile, his sharp looks. 

She struggled to think of other friends, other family members who gave her comfort, but drew up a blank. Her parent’s faces were blurred after ten years of no contact, not so much forgotten as repressed, and her baby siblings were likely unrecognizable to her now. Almost as unrecognizable as she was to them, probably. Tim, her boyfriend who hated her, and Martin, her subordinate who she had almost never had a conversation with that wasn’t about work or Jon...that was it. All the friends she had in the world. She was sleeping in the guest room of a podcast host/Grim Reaper whom she had met once, and that was all she had.

Loneliness was Sasha’s constant companion. In a crowd, in her family, in the world - no matter how many people she had been surrounded by, she had always been alone. She had never had anybody in the world to rely on besides herself, and for the first time in a long time she was achingly aware of it. Nobody who loved her was going to help her. She was alone now.

After an hour of lying on the couch and crying, Sasha desolately watched Netflix cooking shows on Georgie’s gigantic flat-screen TV, trying very hard to think of absolutely nothing at all. She only moved to pet Georgie’s silky long-haired cat whose name she had already forgotten, and even he left quickly once she lost the energy to give him attention.

That was how Georgie found Sasha when she came home: lying on the couch, still dressed in borrowed silk pyjamas, watching idiots on television fuck up cakes. Georgie’s arms were laden with shopping bags, with names of exclusive London boutiques sprawled along the side, her deep black pits of eyes hidden by designer sunglasses. She burst through the door happily, her cat running up to her and winding through her laps as he purred, and easily kicked off her red pumps. She stopped in the doorway of the living room, looking strangely excited. 

“Sorry I’m back to late! Utterly bogged up at work, there was a plane crash and I was processing corpses for hours. I had to do some serious retail therapy just to deal with the tedium - darling, have you moved?”

Sasha grunted. 

“You look like Mikey Crew threw you off the Shard,” Georgie said sympathetically. “Utterly disastrous. Don’t worry, Aunt Georgie’s here to make you feel better.” She lifted her bag triumphantly. “I bought you new outfits!”

Sasha eyed her warily. 

“You get no say in this,” Georgie said kindly. “Chop chop, we’re doing face masks too.”

That’s how, somehow, Sasha found herself playing an unwilling dress-up doll for the Grim Reaper. Georgie had taken Sasha’s casual mention that she had no clothing besides her work pantsuit to heart, and had hit up her favorite boutiques for ‘cute outfits that accentuated her figure and made her eyes pop!’. Or something. Sasha wasn’t much one for fashion. 

As it turned out, Georgie Barker had a walk-in closet. Because of course she did. 

The looks ranged from Sasha’s usual, as Georgie put it, ‘sexy librarian’ look, to ballgowns, to tennis outfits, to moddish, to vintage, to wintery. It was February, the seasons lingering in British chill, and according to Georgie the perfect solution to this was a mink coat that was probably worth a month’s rent on her flat. 

Strangely, all of the outfits fit perfectly - and Sasha knew that her measurements were difficult to find. Georgie took it in stride, clapping enthusiastically each time and suggesting accessories and how to mix and match the outfits. 

She would have thought that she was too dead inside to actually enjoy it, but so far as distractions went it actually worked pretty well. Georgie chatted about everything but their actual problems, and Sasha had absolutely no input or choice in what Georgie decided to dress her in, and by the time they had transitioned from nail painting to watching Legally Blonde and eating ice cream from the carton Sasha was actually feeling a little relaxed. 

“The musical’s better,” Georgie informed Sasha imperiously as Sasha dug around in her carton for chunks of cookie dough. Georgie was clutching a glass of wine in one hand, while Sasha was contenting herself with ice cream. Best not to drink when she was this sad. “Reese is such a doll, though. Allergic to shellfish, poor dear, but I told her not to let Leo pick the restaurant.”

“What I’m wondering,” Sasha said carefully, teeth cracking into the frozen chunk of cookie dough, “is that half the time when I see you, you’re dressed like a 2008 goth in jeans and t-shirts.”

“Oh, honey,” Georgie said pityingly, patting her hand. “I used to spend two hours getting dressed each morning. I’m never doing that to myself again. You, however, clearly have never had nice clothing in your life. It’s written all over your face. People’ll walk all over you if you always look like you’re straight from a charity shop. We gotta buy you some self-confidence.”

“Thanks. I think.” On screen, Elle flourished and achieved her dreams. Sasha tried not to feel jealous. “It’s not really as if I had a lot of girly sleepovers as a kid…”

“Word,” Georgie said sympathetically. She patted Sasha’s hand again. “Jon was the same way, you know. I can’t count the number of times I’ve had to renovate that boy’s wardrobe. He has no idea how to dress to impress.”

“Do we have to talk about Jon right now,” Sasha groused. “He’s the last person I want to think about.”

“He means well,” Georgie soothed, as Elle Woods proudly proclaimed on television how she, yes, she, was a strong independent woman - who didn’t need a man! “It’s not his fault he’s stupid. He’s just so helpless on his own, you know, he needs girls like you and me to make sure he’s not wasting a decade fixating on obscure Bolivian religious practices or whatever.”

“Helpless? He’s a two hundred year old man.” Sasha spitefully grabbed the bottle of wine from the coffee table, pouring it into a spare glass and drinking it quickly. It probably cost thousands of pounds, but it just tasted like wine to her. “It’s not my job to make sure his little feelings aren’t hurt.”

“Of course not,” Georgie said, but Sasha had the sense she was being calmed instead of listened to. “But Jon’s...you know.”

“I don’t, actually.”

Georgie made an interpretive hand gesture. Sasha stared at her blankly. 

“...I still don’t.”

Georgie sighed. “He’s delicate. Jonah babies him, honestly.” She patted Sasha’s hand for the third time, making her skin crawl. “Don’t worry, I won’t let him see you until you’re ready to forgive him. Every woman has the right to some time to herself after a guy fucks her over. You two’ll patch things up, right as rain.”

There was nothing Sasha wanted to say to that, nothing she wanted to think about, and she kept drinking her wine and watching the movie, out of lack of any other options.

That night, she drunkenly tipped into bed, so blasted that she slid immediately into sleep and did not dream. It was the first relief she’d had in what felt like a very long time. 

It wasn’t Sasha’s job to fix Jonathan Sims. 

It really, really wasn’t. It wasn’t her job to make him feel better, or forgive him, or save him from himself. If Martin wanted to waste his time and energy doing that, then god fucking speed, but Sasha had other priorities. She had been profoundly fucked over and had her trust abused by three different men lately, and she wasn’t going to be the one to patch things up.

Two of them she had no desire to patch things up with at all. Two of them she’d be perfectly happy if she never saw again. The last one...Sasha didn’t know what she felt. But that was nothing new. 

That being said, as Sasha chewed her way through hangover medication and an acai bowl the next morning, Georgie’s inane chattering about tricking some celebrity or another into taking her to Hungary for authentic Hungarian food didn’t register nearly as loudly in Sasha’s mind as her words about Jonah and Jon. 

Jonah babies Jon. That was what she had said. It...it was accurate, right? It had to be. Georgie had known Jonah and Jon for a hundred years, and Sasha had barely heard one authentic conversation between them. She’d known them for a year, and known Jonah’s true nature for maybe a few days. There was no way Sasha understood their relationship better than Georgie did. It just didn’t make sense. 

Finally, she put her spoon down, cutting Georgie off in the middle of her ramble about the majesty of Hungarian food made by genuine Hungarian grandma hands. “What did you mean, ‘Jonah babies Jon’?”

Georgie blinked at her, clearly barely remembering the conversation, before recognition dawned. Then she shrugged, sipping her protein smoothie. Which may or may not be spiked. It seemed as if her solution to hangovers was to just not stop being drunk. “Oh, you know how those two are. Jon swans around the world doing whatever he wants, Jonah holds the fort down at home. That’s why Jon’s fun, you know.” She sighed nostalgically. “Romantic cruises to the Bahamas for two months, we tear up the Bahaman government and start a minor military coup, then we take a tour of the beaches. You haven’t lived until you’ve dug your toes into Bahaman sand.” 

That was something Georgie said frequently: you haven’t lived until you’ve done X, Y, or Z. It seemed as if Georgie was very intent on living, and very intent on defining it in discretionary ways. To Sasha, living was simply the act of not being dead, but Georgie was almost fanatical about experiencing life. 

“If he’s so much fun, then why did you break up?” Sasha asked, before she realized what she said. “I mean, it’s really none of my business, feel free not to answer that -”

But Georgie just laughed lightly. “That’s just how Jon and I work. We spend a few weeks together in bliss, and then we go our separate ways for six months or a year or whatever. Work’s always taking us different places, and seeing each other all day would make us hate each other. Some people work best when they’re not in each other’s pocket.” She took a long drag of the smoothie before speaking again. “Besides, he’ll always be second in my life to having fun. And I’ll always be second in his life to Jonah. It’s just how we work. It works for us!”

It seemed to. Last Sasha checked, Georgie and Jon seemed to be very amicable despite being exes. Lackadaisical, on-and-off, passionate yet going years without seeing each other - it was a relationship uniquely in the providence of workaholic immortals. 

It wasn’t until Georgie had already waved goodbye, making Sasha promise not to spend all day on the couch again, that she realized that Georgie hadn’t quite answered her question. 

An image flashed through Sasha’s mind - Jon’s face, as he dared to disagree with Jonah, and was utterly ground into the dust for it. 

There was something more to this. Something that wasn’t obvious on the surface, something that was so well hidden maybe nobody even knew it was going on. Or maybe it was deeper than that, more insidious: maybe whatever was going on was so well-known and pervasive that it simply wasn’t spoken about. Not polite, not the kind of thing you say about your friends, not normal. Not in polite company. Not vocalized. Utterly taken for granted. 

Sasha walked into the guest room, pulling out her phone from her bag and staring at its blank screen. Holding her breath, she hesitantly turned it on, staring at it blankly as it slowly booted up. 

She shouldn’t be turning it on. She was perfectly aware of how, given a warrant, the police could track cell phone location, texts sent and received, everything. She could do it herself. The crushing weight of surveillance, the fear of being found and seen and rooted out, settled over her shoulders like an old, familiar friend. A comforting blanket to wrap herself up in at night: where, even if the fear was terrible and awful, at least it was familiar. 

You could get used to anything, Sasha thought. Any behavior, any fears, any horrors or tragedies - anything could become normal, given enough time. A year. A hundred years. After two hundred years, maybe you wouldn’t even recognize it as happening at all.

Like a flood, the text messages poured in. Notifications chimed in a cacophony, as text after text after text popped up on her phone. Missed calls. Emails popped up, notifications from the doorbell camera, reminders from her fucking Duolingo...

Dizzily, Sasha scrolled through the texts. Lots from Tim, as expected, and a few from Martin, as expected. Some texts from her mother, which - which wasn’t expected. At all. Sasha hadn’t even known that she knew her number. 

Sasha’s brain stuttered over the Spanish, having been years since she spoke it. Her brain also stuttered over the gratuitous misgendering, which was also blissfully novel yet just as uncomfortable and upsetting as ever. Translated, it was a slightly accusatory question about why the police had been calling them about her whereabouts. What had she done? Had she gotten in trouble?

No matter what you did, the text read, God will forgive you. Just call them back. 

Sasha stared at the texts, brain buzzing. She felt sick. Forgive her? They’d forgive her? They thought she’d done it? They thought she was capable of -

Horribly, awfully, tears pricked at her eyes. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe you never really grew accustomed to pain, even if it was felt a thousand times. Maybe some pain you never acclimated to, never scarred over or calloused. Maybe sometimes the more you were hurt, the worse it hurt. The pain her parents gave her - how they cut off contact, the misgendering, the coldness - hurt just as badly at thirty six as it had at twenty six, at twenty, at fifteen, at nine. It had always hurt. 

So stupid. Sasha deleted the text messages. She didn’t have time for this. She wasn’t a child. She was thirty six goddamn years old, that was way too old to still care about your parents. To still need them.

She clicked on Martin’s texts next. The first one had a timestamp before the murder, the rest afterwards.

Martin: where are you?? I found Tim (he tried to kill me w/an axe but we’re ok now) and were trying to get out of here. I explained everything to him. We’ll meet you in the archives. 

Martin: Police are looking for you. I know you didn’t do it so call me back. Tim’s worried. Jon doesn’t seem that worried...

Martin: Shouldn’t text you anymore. Please be safe & careful. 

Jesus. Jesus, she had been terrible to Martin. She was a rotten friend. Sasha hiccuped, rubbing at her eyes. She needed to get him a gift basket. Five. He was a freak, but he was her freak. Maybe. 

Finally, almost holding her breath, she pressed on Tim’s messages. There were a lot of them - more than was safe, Sasha distantly registered. The first five were from the same time Martin had sent the second text. She guessed it was right after the police finished talking to them. He had called her slightly before - likely when they found the body - but there were also two texts from two am last night. 

Tim: pick up your phone

Tim: pick up your phone are you okay im so sorry

Tim: baby please please pick up

Tim: we need to talk & im sorry & i hope ur safe

Tim: dont text me back 

Then two texts from two am:

Tim: to warn you im drunk but im sorry (AND DRUNK) but in my defense im a shitty boyfriend. If you want to break up its fine but id like to make it work but i get if you cant because cops i guess. Bitch tonner wont stop bothering me make her stoppp

Tim: I love you and I wish that was enough. 

Sasha rubbed at her eyes, exhausted. She wished it was enough too. She knew it wasn’t. Strongly, like burning, Sasha wished so desperately that she had never met Jonathan Sims. Maybe, in that world, things were okay. She and Tim were happy. 

She scrolled through the rest of the notifications. Strangely, she even had two texts from Melanie. 

Melanie: Hey, I heard what’s going on. I know you couldn’t have done it. A LOT of cops are bothering me - Hussein and Tonner have called like five times. I think you know them? For legal purposes I’ll say that you should turn yourself in or whatever. 

Melanie: oh and Martin said to tell you that Mr. Bouchard’s been asking me a lot of questions about what im doing and my job situation - dunno y tho

That….probably wasn’t good. 

No texts from Jon. She wouldn’t know what to do if he had. She doubted he knew her number, or how to work a phone. The last thing she could deal with emotionally right now was an apology. She didn’t know what to do about Tonner or Hussein or Melanie. Those were all problems she couldn’t fix right now. 

Really, there was only one problem she could fix right now. She walked over to the door to the balcony, carefully stepping out onto the 20th story balcony. She carefully ejected her SIM card, snapped it in half, looked underneath her to make sure there were no passerby in the exclusive London neighborhood, and forced her fingers to release from the phone so she could watch it fall twenty stories onto the concrete. 

She imagined a smash, a crack, but it didn’t make any sound at all. Sasha forced herself to step back inside, leaving the past behind her. 

There was a lot Sasha had to force herself to do that day. Georgie owned a few laptops, but she hadn’t given Sasha permission to use any of them yet, and she didn’t want to intrude. Despite Sasha’s own...reservations about her personality, she really was being incredibly kind by letting her stay and trying to cheer her up. She did, however, have a great deal of antique books, and Sasha eagerly cracked open the first edition copies of fiction novels from the 19th century. Was that a first edition Pride & Prejudice? Oh, score!

She wasn’t hungry, but she forced herself to eat. Food tasted like ash in her mouth, but that always happened whenever she was upset. She forced herself to take a shower, impossibly intimidated by Georgie’s small army of hair care and hygiene products, and even cautiously let herself take a bubble bath with a bath bomb. It was...weirdly luxurious, but maybe not surprisingly. Georgie’s bathroom was like the Queen’s, and you could practically swim in the bathtub. It was intimidating and weird and uncomfortable, but Sasha forced herself to appreciate it. How many people got to take a shower in a stall with five different showerheads?

Halfway through the day the housekeeper came in, terrifying Sasha deeply, and she retreated to her guest bedroom to let the woman work. She inspected her newly painted toenails glumly, halfway through Pride & Prejudice, forcing herself not to think about how Jon could have been a background character in the novel. Wasn’t he in his twenties in this time period? Wasn’t that when he and Jonah Magnus had -

Sasha drank more wine, and put on another cooking program. She hadn’t watched telly all day, so technically she could tell Georgie that. Besides, it wasn’t as if there was anything productive to do. No work, which sucked when she was a workaholic. No computer to waste time on. No friends she could talk to without the police investigating her. She couldn’t go outside, again due to the aforementioned cop situation. Her life was her work, and her bosses had just framed her for murder. 

Somewhat buzzed, Sasha stole several pieces of intricate stationary and wrote down everything Leitner had told her before he was murdered. It wasn’t nearly as much as she wanted, yet far more than she knew what to do with. Halfway through her notes deteriorated into a bizarre sort of mind map, lists of cases connected together and obscure monsters and figures pointing to each other. Salasea and his endless array of dangerous trinkets, mysterious yet lonely ship captains, Michael and his gently twisting deceit, Gerry Keay and his bizarre heroism, Leitner and his ruinous imprints, Agnes and her desolate fate, and the oft-mentioned yet barely understood man, whose name was whispered by shadowy figures entrenched in  the supernatural world, Jonathan Sims…

Did he know? How often his shadow stained her statements? Did he care? Did he know how thoroughly he had ruined her life? 

She scoured her memory for hints, writing down everything she could remember of his cameos in random statements. Of Leitner’s testimony, the immortal figure who so easily attained what Leitner and Mary Keay had spent their entire lives grasping for. Was there a hint to his true nature, his true allegiance? 

In the corners of the cute stationary, Sasha doodled a small eye. She stared at it, and couldn’t help but fight the notion that it was staring back. 

She scratched it out, feeling paranoid, not feeling paranoid enough. 

A few hours later, Georgie came home, and Sasha fought the pathetically hopeful trepidation. When she heard the front door rattle she left her room, intending on welcoming Georgie back and proving that she hadn’t been watching telly all day, but she stopped short in the hallway when she heard the loud sound of voices. Specifically, the loud sound of Georgie’s still slightly unfamiliar voice, and the quieter tones of a voice that was far too familiar to her.  

“ - if you’ll just let me talk to her, she’ll understand.”

“And she said that she’s not seeing you,” Georgie said firmly. Sasha held her breath, pressing herself up against the hallway wall. Next to her was a doorway that led to the living room, that led to a foyer. If she craned her head she could just barely see Georgie standing in the foyer, arguing with a figure holding a leather briefcase that made Sasha’s heart leap into her throat. “You really did screw her over, you know.”

“I know,” Jonathan Sims whined. “I want to apologize. It’s not my fault. Jonah got pushy again, you know how he is.”

“Ugh, tell me about it.” Georgie scoffed. “Did something happen between you two? Sasha was asking all sorts of weird questions.”

“Just Jonah being his usual insufferable self,” Jon said, so carelessly and casually that if Sasha hadn’t known better she would have believed him. “It probably alarmed her, seeing how that man really is. I’m sure she’s feeling very overwhelmed right now.”

“She really is, the poor dear,” Georgie said sympathetically. Sasha’s hands clenched into fists. “But you aren’t getting past this foyer, honey. I’m sure she’ll want to be friends again once Jonah gets the cops off her case.”

“Martin’s giving me a hard time,” Jon sulked. “Says this is all my fault that the dreadful little wolf girl is sniffing around. It’s not my fault. If my Archivist just let me explain, she’d see that it’s not my fault.”

“That Blackwood boy’s always giving you a hard time,” Georgie sniffed. “I don’t know why you’re so obsessed with him. He’s overly moralistic and doesn’t know how to have fun. You spend too much time with him.”

“Don’t tell me you’re jealous, Georgina Barker,” Jon teased. He stepped forward a little closer, and although Sasah couldn’t see his face she had the feeling he was smiling. “It’s a bad look on you.”

“Idiot,” Georgie said fondly, “everything’s a good look on me.” She stretched up on her tip-toes to kiss him on the cheek. “Ditch him and come party with me, darling, I’ll show you a wonderful time. Maybe after all of this nonsense blows over.”

“Judging from what I can make out of Jonah’s monologuing, we ought to get our parties in while we still can,” Jon said glumly. He opened his briefcase, passing a manila folder to Georgie. “Give her these. She’ll be getting hungry. Tell her that the top one is from work, and the second is from me.” He hesitated for a second. “You really think she’ll forgive me?”

“If it’s not your fault, then why do you need to be forgiven?”

Jon was silent for a long minute. Finally, he said, “I’ll talk to you later, Georgie. Love you.”

“Love you too,” Georgie said easily, casually, as if she had said it a thousand times, a million times. “Take care of yourself.”

She stood in the foyer after he left, arms folded, one delicately manicured finger tapping against her arm. She eventually turned around, poking her head into the living room. 

“You can come out, darling, I don’t bite.”

Sasha guiltily stepped into the living room, crossing her arms defensively. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop.”

But Georgie just rolled her eyes. “Please. My best friends are Jonathan Sims and Jonah Magnus.” She looked thoughtful for a second. “Well. My oldest friends. Anyway, if you’re in the same house as one of those Beholding types you aren’t getting a private conversation. I’m super used to it.” She held out the manila folder, and Sasha cautiously stepped forward and took it from her. 

“Beholding types?” 

“Oh, you know, you and your lot,” Georgie said dismissively. “Can’t do anything about that annoying little megalomania the Eye gives you. Have fun with lunch, I have to freshen up. It takes ages to get the scent of Jon’s musty old books off me.”

But Sasha was already tuning her out, because in the manilla envelope there were two Statements. They thrummed under her fingers, charged with energy and power and fear, and Sasha could feel herself gripping them. The first one was a classic Magnus Institute Statement, just like she would have read at work, but the second was what looked like a photocopy of a piece of paper. Judging from the ornate script, it was old, and when Sasha’s eyes wandered to the date her eyes widened. July 21st, 1823. 

She looked up, already frantically searching for a tape recorder, and immediately saw one sitting on the coffee table. She didn’t think twice about it, already sitting on the plush white couch and setting the papers out. Which one first - oh man, they were both so exciting - her fingers drifted to the one Jon gave her, and she picked it up. That one, then. 

Sasha James pressed play on the tape deck, feeling a familiar thrill go through her at the gentle whirring. She cleared her throat. 

“Statement of Sasha James, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, regarding a letter sent by Barnabas Bennet to Jonah Magnus. Statement begins.”

And, as Sasha’s blood ran cold, she began to read. 

My dearest Jonah,

I hope you are well. It was an absolute pleasure to vacation at your estate this summer. I’ve never had such interesting conversations with a like-minded individual, and since returning to my own estate I have been sorely missing your company. You have introduced a great deal of brightness and acute interest to my life, and without you the luminescence of Heaven does not thrill me. How I wish you were around to thrill me again!

Do not concern yourself - I have maintained my studies. The library you loaned me is of great interest, and I have been spending many a quiet night bent over one of your occult tomes. I have never felt so enlightened. A world is opening up before us, Jonah, one of richness and wonder, and for the first time in many years I find myself excited to rise each morning. I thank our Heavenly Father each day that I was so fortunate as to cross your path. You must remind me to discuss with you the report by Smirke in detail - fascinating! Theoretical, of course, all theoretical - but the concept of classifying the devils that so bewitch man into fourteen unique taxonomies fascinates me. We must discuss it. 

Jonah, I trust that this letter reaches you in private, and that you shall not betray my confidence by discussing it with anyone. I have a private grievance I wish to address with you. It is regarding your boy, the one kept so close in your confidence and trust. 

I would never hasten to question any of your decisions, for I trust they are made with great deliberation and forethought. But I must question why you keep that boy so close to you. His air is strange and fey. While summering at your estate, I would frequently see him awake at late hours, pouring over some tome or report or another (I would swear that he reads better than I!). I know he’s somewhat of a project of yours, bringing him into Christianity and your charity, which will surely be rewarded etc etc, but I cannot shake my strange trepidation. 

If I were to be quite honest, my fear of him. 

He always asks questions. Disturbing and distressing questions. And when I deign to answer them, he acts as if he truly understands. Moreover, that he understands more than me - that he possesses some secret knowledge that only he has obtained. I catch him listening at doorways and around corners frequently, and no matter how many times I box him about the ears for it he will not cease. You encourage it, allowing this behavior. Even after I reported to you the pagan rituals which I am confident he is performing, you brush me off. You two are strangely close. I’m simply concerned for you, Jonah. Please heed my advice: that boy is trouble. I fear that he will bring you into trouble also. Do not allow this paganism to steer you away from the light of our heavenly Father. I understand that the occult is of great interest to all of us, discovering the secrets of the world and its many mysteries, but it is only an academic interest. I would never go so far as to partake of these devilish rituals myself, and you ought to dissuade yourself of such a notion also. Do not allow that John to lead you astray. 

I wish you most well. I am encountering some trouble of my own - debts and such - but do not concern yourself with them. The situation is well-handled. I hope to write to you again soon.

Yours, faithfully,

Barnabas

...supplemental.

Jon. Why did you show me this?

Is this your definition of vulnerability? Of honesty? What, are you trying to justify your decisions to me? I get it, it’s disgusting. These people were disgusting to you. I can’t know how you feel, but I think I - my parents -

What I mean is, I can’t understand. I can’t imagine how hard this must have been. I understand how Jonah was the only one to… ‘get’ you or whatever. How he was the only person to see how brilliant you are, how much you have to give. 

But, Jon - I don’t think Jonah thought any better of you than Barnabas did. He was just better at hiding it. I don’t know, I didn’t know him and I still don’t know him - but you get that the way he talked to you back then wasn’t right, right? You get that it was fucked up, right?

I don’t know. I don’t think you get that. I don’t think anybody does. Georgie’s too close to it, too used to you and Jonah’s ‘quirks’ or whatever. I...don’t know anything Martin thinks, but I feel as if you’d be pretty invested in keeping this from him. But I’m close enough to you to see it, and I’m far enough away from this that I understand. Something’s really fucked up about this situation. I’m worried I’m the only person who sees it. I hate being that person, the person who Sees it all, who knows it all, but is powerless to do anything about it. You understand, right? You understand how much this is hurting me?

I’m not sure you do. If you’re showing me this, trying to show me how hard you had it, how misunderstood you were, just so I forgive you...I don’t. And it’s manipulative, so cut it out. I’m not sure if you’re consciously doing that, I really don’t think you’re emotionally intelligent enough.

But you aren’t dumb, Jon. I know it’s a defence mechanism or whatever to pretend that you are, to act childish, but you aren’t. 

Ugh, listen to me. I sound like Martin. Disgusting. I don’t give a shit about this, I’m not your therapist. But you keep on making your problems my problems, and I’m not tolerating that. We’ll talk when I’m not fucking wanted for murder for something you were complicit in. 

Get your act together. I don’t forgive you. Statement fucking ends. 

As if Sasha’s life wasn’t hard enough, Georgie wanted to go dancing. 

“I am literally wanted by the police.”

“The nightclub’s so dark, nobody’ll even see your face,” Georgie promised. 

“Shouldn’t I be spending my time working on my conspiracy theory board?”

“Honey, no offence, that thing is so tacky.”

“I hate clubbing.”

“You’ll like the way I do it!”

“I really don’t want to -”

“Tough nuts.”

So, of course, that’s how Sasha ended up shoved into a tight dress, heels, and makeup, pushed into a taxi, and quickly deposited in front of a warehouse looking building. There was a long line out the door, of women with straightened hair dressed somehow identically, yet way worse, than Sasha, all looking very cold. Georgie looped her arm through Sasha’s, white teeth flashing as she grinned widely, and escorted them both straight through the doors and past security. 

She, it seemed, was a known quantity. Sasha, who had spent the last year working in a mill to feed evil psychic vampires and the ten years before that locked in academia, which was basically the same thing, was not a known quantity to any nightclub. She had not been clubbing since uni, which was approximately five lifetimes ago.

“I’m still not sure this is a good idea,” Sasha said into Georgie’s ear as they transitioned from the furiously cold February air into the swelteringly hot club. It was dim and smoky, the noise overwhelmingly grating at her ears. After so long in a quiet office, in a silent flat, she could barely handle it. 

Georgie said something to her. 

“What?” Sasha yelled. “Georgie, I don’t want to be here!”

Georgie frowned at her, and unlinked their arms so she could reach up on her tiptoes and clasp Sasha on the shoulders. “You have been accused of murder! You just split with your boyfriend because of clown trauma! You haven’t had fun in years! You deserve this, queen!”

You know...maybe she did. 

Georgie pressed a drink into her hands, mysteriously procured from somewhere, and without thinking too hard about it Sasha downed it in one gulp. Georgie whooped, clapping her on the back, and directed her towards the bar. She flashed her platinum credit card at the bartender, and suddenly Sasha was MVP of the night. 

You know, Sasha thought dizzily as she was given a toxic blue drink and pushed onto the dance floor, maybe she did deserve this. Didn’t she deserve to have fun? After the way things ended with Tim, couldn’t she just act like a normal girl and go clubbing with her friends to dance away the pain? She was almost forty, way too old for this, but maybe she could forget for a little bit. She had never had the opportunity as a teenager, not even as a young adult. Couldn’t she do this, before she died?

Maybe women closer to forty than thirty dealt with this with - with book clubs, with sisterhood, whatever. Maybe women closer to forty than thirty were married, had kids of their own. But Sasha was just Sasha, stuck in a literal dead-end job, going nowhere good, and this was all she would ever have. 

Maybe Georgie was right. Why not live, before she died? Everybody on earth died - everybody, that is, except for a small group of people who were willing to sell their soul for the privilege.  At least maybe this way she could have whatever joy she could fit into her life before all opportunity was lost, and she was lost. 

A man sidled up to her, asking for a dance, and she evaded him. But then there was another one, and another one, and Sasha found herself fleeing back to the bar and ordering another drink. Too soon. Way too soon. She found herself digging in her borrowed purse, searching for her phone, wanting to call Tim or talk to him or ask him if they really were broken up so she could have rebound sex with random dudes in bars, but the purse was empty of both a phone and a wallet. That’s right - she had destroyed it. Because the cops were after her. 

Next to her, out of the corner of her eye, a man sat down at a barstool. He said something to the bartender and leaned towards her, mouth spilling something obscured by the crush and heat and sound of the club. He seemed to be asking if he could buy her a drink. Sasha shook her head dizzily, confused and lost. Then he leaned in closer, and Sasha could smell the alcohol on his breath. 

“Are you sure? I’d like to dance with you!”

Sasha shook her head no again, frantically. 

“Aw, come on -”

Then, as if by magic, Georgie was at her elbow. Unintimidating, not more than one hundred and seventy centimeters, with teased hair and sharp black lipstick and eyeliner, she raised an eyebrow at the guy. But there must have been something in her eyes, or a lack of something, because the guy rapidly slipped off the barstool and melted into the crowd, leaving the drink the bartender slid onto the counter behind. 

As if she had planned it, Georgie easily stole the drink and knocked it back. She tugged Sasha down, yelling into her ear. “Come with me, darling, let’s check out where the real party is.”

Without taking no for an answer, Georgie grabbed Sasha’s hand and tugged her through the outskirts of the crowd, ducking and weaving between small clusters of people and women dancing the night away. Sasha’s vision swam, details and faces lost in the endless ripple of flashing lights and sound, until all she felt was Georgie’s cool hand in hers, and it wasn’t until they emerged from the choppy sea of people into a small hallway off the main room that she felt like she could breathe. Sasha’s head swam with movement and smoke, and she was barely cognizant that they were in a hallway for a bathroom or something. 

But Georgie walked confidently past the bathrooms, into what appeared to be a storage closet. She confidently opened it, halting at the door frame to glance backwards at Sasha. A smile quirked at her bow lips. 

“You coming?”

Sasha, slightly intoxicated though she was, couldn’t fight the skepticism. “This is where the real party is? A supply closet?”

“Oh, my dear Archivist,” Georgie said, smirking slightly. “The world is full of far more delights than you could understand. Follow me, and stay close.”

Then Georgie stepped forward, disappearing into the closet, and as little as Sasha wanted to step inside more dubiously supernatural hallways she wanted to be left alone in this club even less, and she ducked after Georgie into the unknown. 

The unknown, as it turned out, was another club. 

Or, more accurately, a pub. It was a nice pub too, all smoky yellow lights and burnished wood booths. The booths were upholstered in soft and cushy looking brown leather, and the sound where nowhere above a quiet murmur. It didn’t seem to be abandoned, the shadows at some booths deeper than others, but for the life of her Sasha couldn’t puzzle out the faces or figures of anybody at these shadowy corners. There was a single bartender, wiping a grimy glass over and over. He nodded at Georgie when he walked in, and Sasha was forced to wonder how many dubiously physical supernatural bars and hang-outs existed in random back rooms of mundane stores. Were these things just everywhere? Or were there only a few, and so long as you had the right key any door could be an entrance? It was just Sasha’s intuition, but she felt as if it was the latter. 

What would, could Georgie open up for her? What power, what majesty? What world of power and control could Jon give her, that Jon was trying to hard to give her that she kept refusing? Nobody was telling her the cost. Nobody was letting her make a decision. She was being swept up in the wake of giants, and Sasha was just trying to keep her head above water. 

Georgie was still walking confidently down the aisles, and Sasha stumbled trying to keep up. Finally, she came to a stop in a back corner, utterly secluded with a booth that stretched the entire corner, large enough for seven or more people. Georgie turned to Sasha, smiling broadly, and Sasha tried not to feel intimidated. 

“Honey, these are my friends. Girls, this is my new roommate, Sasha James!”

With a flourish, she made a little tah-dah motion, and the smoky yellow lamp above the table flickered on. 

The table was crowded with women, or women appearing people. Absolutely none of them were familiar. No - in the corner, there was one person who was familiar. Michael, blonde hair hurting her eyes in curly ringlets, hands in his coat pockets. He smiled crookedly at her, jarring her adrift. 

“Uh,” Sasha said, confused. Who were these people? “Hello?”

A short East Asian woman in a white tank top and black jeans scowled from where she was slouching in her seat. “One of those Beholding patsies? Please, Georgie, they’re so insufferable.”

“I like this one,” Georgie said cheerfully. She slid into an empty seat, and Sasha cautiously sat next to her. “Play nice, everyone.”

“You’re such a grouch, Jude,” a woman said, leaning forward and looking interestedly at Sasha. Her eyes were dark and big, her head cocked, giving her an almost insectoid air. “It’s a pleasure to meet you in person finally, Archivist. I’ve heard so much about you. You’re really making waves in our little community.”

“Patsy Archivist,” a tall and burly white woman with cascading brown hair said shortly, taking long gulps of a pint. “What’s impressive about that?”

“I’m impressed with anyone who puts up with Sims and Magnus long enough,” the insectish woman said. “No offence, Georgie.”

“Oh, they’re insufferable,” Georgie said cheerfully. “Have you heard how those two like to socialize? They go to galas. With those awful little Fairchilds and Lukases and whatever. It’s just tragic.”

“Word,” the insect woman said, raising her glass. The rim seemed to be coated in cobwebs, making Sasha feel vaguely ill. “Much rather have a pint at a nice little pub with friends. But we haven’t introduced ourselves, have we? My name’s Annabelle Cane. I’m sure you’ve heard of me in all those little stories you like.”

Anabelle Cane. Sasha swallowed. “Yeah, I’ve heard.”

“A proxy Archivist she may be,” Michael said serenely, “but perhaps our most successful yet. She’s already coming along so much further than Gertrude ever did.” He winked bizarrely at Sasha. “Michael, but you already know that. They and them, if you please.”

Oh. Sasha blinked at them. “Thanks for...saving my life back there. And Tim’s and Martin’s.”

“My pleasure,” Michael said affably. “You’re the most fun I’ve had in awhile. Always nice to have the Eye owe me a favor.”

“They’re just mad they didn’t get to kill Gertrude,” the brunette said evenly. “Julia Montauk. You should know me too, I think. Is it true you killed someone?”

“I definitely didn’t,” Sasha said heatedly. “It was a set-up.”

“Relax, we’re all killers here,” the woman in a tank top said. She scowled at Sasha. “Jude Perry. What the fuck do those old money ponces think they’re doing, installing another patsy Archivist this late in the game? I would have thought that they learned their lesson after that bitch Gertrude.”

“Archivists are quite slow learners,” a woman piped up. She sat in the corner, strangely oddly. Her skin was shiny and strange in the dim light, almost plasticish, and her dark eyes hadn’t moved from Sasha’s face since she walked in. “Nikola. A pleasure, Archivist.”

“Are you guys all…” Sasha trailed off uncomfortably. “You know?”

“Serial killers?” Julia Mauntauk asked flatly. 

“Inhuman monstrosities of plastic and flesh?” Nikola inquired. 

“Daughters of fear entities that control our every action?” Annabelle said. 

“Embodiments of unknown concepts made sentient, forced into a shape that cannot suit them, locked in flesh and fractal prisons, always screaming in endless turmoil, unable to understand the horrors of the concepts of ourselves, always searching for the sweet release of death that can never quite be obtained, because that which does not live can never die?” Michael said serenely. 

“Assholes?” Jude Perry said flatly. 

“The sexiest Avatars around?” Georgie asked. 

How did Sasha’s life devolve to this point. 

“...yeah,” Sasha said. “Hey, where can I get more drinks?”

Unsurprisingly enough, the drinks came very fast. Service was excellent when you hung out with eldritch women, Sasha supposed. 

The conversion flew thick and fast after that. In Sasha’s experience, joining a new group of established friends meant being ignored for favor of pre-existing dynamics. It was always uncomfortable, and no small part of why she just didn’t join new groups. Tim had never had that problem - he had a loud and persistent personality, the kind that made you pay attention to him. He dominated any room he entered, by force if necessary. It always seemed exhausting to Sasha, but Tim didn’t really seem to have anymore real friends than she did lately. His personality was like an ocean, overwhelming and everywhere, but when his mood turned sour it was just as intense. Gulfs of pleasure, intense pain - it seemed exhausting, to feel so deeply. God knows Sasha didn’t. 

But today, in this group, she seemed to be novel. Maybe new fear avatars were a rare enough thing, or at least ones with Georgie’s seal of approval. They aimed a barrage of questions at her, and Sasha did her best to keep up with each one.

How did Sasha know Georgie? Mostly through a mutual enemy. Oh, fuckin’ Sims, right - you guys friends? No, I hate him. You guys fucking? Ew. Right, right, Sims is a giant prude - actually I heard that he doesn’t really - no, Jon decided a while back he doesn’t do that, and we all respect his decision - ew, though, nobody wants to imagine that. So why are you two friends? We’re roommates, mostly, I’m kinda on the run from the cops. Who’d you kill? Nobody. Who’d that old fucker Bouchard kill? Jurgen Leitner, mostly. 

“Cheers to that!” Julia said abruptly, raising her glass. “Hate that fucker.”

“Good riddance to bad rubbish,” Annabelle said, downing her own drink and what seemed like an improbable quantity of spiders. She leaned over the table to where Sasha had hastily been stuffed in, beetle-black eyes gleaming. “But really. What are you doing here?”

“As I said,” Sasha said uncomfortably, “I got framed for murder -”

But Annabelle just waved her hand. “No, no, we know that. I’m asking what are you doing here? With people like us, in a place like us? You’re just a sexy librarian. Your highest goal in life was owning your own cottage house one day. How’d you get wrapped up in the tangled web of our world?”

Sasha’s mouth ran dry, her head spinning in a way that didn’t really seem to have anything to do with the alcohol. How had she ended up like this? Who was to blame?”

“Jonathan Sims,” Sasha said dizzily. “He -”

“Didn’t know you Beholding types were in the process of lying to yourselves,” Annabelle said, casually yet brutally. “No, really.”

Sasha opened her mouth, then closed it. Finally, she said, “I guess I just asked all the wrong questions.”

It was a pretty way of dressing up the real answer: that Sasha didn’t know. 

Maybe her thoughts were obvious, because Georgie cooed sympathetically and slung an arm around her shoulders. “Cheer up, honey, it’s not so bad. Not everything happens for a reason. Sometimes it’s just your own rotten luck.”

“Speak for yourself,” Jude called, lifting her glass. “I love my fucking life. It’s hookers, coke, and blow from here to Scotland. The life of a woman with power’s a thousand times better than the life of a woman without, James.”

“What is with you people and hedonism,” Sasha muttered. 

“Why not?” Nikola asked, tilting her head strangely. “Life’s so short when it’s this long. It’s just bread and circuses, Archivist. We all need...entertainment.”

“Humans are always trying to make sense of it all,” Michael said arily. They were digging their fingers into the table, scoring long grooves in it. “When you know there’s no meaning, no purpose, then everything else just...falls away.”

Sasha didn’t know if she believed that, but she bit her tongue. Instead, she said, “What about those Avatars like Magnus or Raynor? They seem really...driven.”

Georgie giggled, light and airy, and leaned in. “That’s because they don’t know.”

She shouldn’t even ask. She shouldn’t - “Know what?”

Georgie smiled, sharp and wicked. “That there’s no point.”

And that was all she would say on that for the night: conversation after that devolved into parties, restaurants, drugs, and conquests. Maybe the women were right, in their own clearly demented way: that without death there was no meaning, when when there was no meaning only pleasure held any significance. If there was no afterlife, no reward or punishment - which Sasha didn’t believe, but they seemed to - then there was no reason not to do what you wanted. To have fun. To take revenge. 

If all Georgie wanted was to have fun, and if all Jon wanted was revenge, then what did Jonah Magnus want? Sasha didn’t know. She had the feeling that if she didn’t figure it out, she wasn’t going to live much longer. 

Why had Jonah Magnus done this to her? What was the point of framing her for murder? She couldn’t do her job like this. What’s the point? 

Half-drunk, head spinning, she found herself vocalizing this. Somehow, Annabelle Cane had ended up sitting next to her, letting spiders run along her slightly too long and too jointed fingers. Annabelle Cane just smiled at her, jaw slightly slacking open to expose teeth. 

“Maybe it’s just to fuck with you,” Annabelle posited. “Why not? Do you think he has another reason?”

“I don’t know,” Sasha groaned. “I don’t know anything. Everything’s confusing and terrible. I could never understand those psychopaths.”

“You won’t make it very far in this line of work if you never ask why,” Annabelle scolded. She paused a second, spider running thoughtfully across her eyeball. “But too many questions damns you just as effectively, I suppose. Hm. Jonah’s quite good, isn’t he.”

“Why me,” Sasha groaned. “Everyone’s trying to keep shit from me, it fuckin’ - it fuckin’ sucks, man. It sucks. Nobody would tell me what’s going on, but I don’t think anybody knows what’s going on. Not even Jonah, or Jon, or - or anyone. Nobody but me.”

Annabelle blinked at her, somewhat curiously, before leaning in. Her perfume lingered in the air, a heavy rosy scent. “Do you know something that Jonah doesn’t?”

“Yeah,” Sasha slurred, world fading in and out. “Jonah doesn’t know that Jon -”

Then the world faded into black, and Sasha fell asleep. 

If she had felt too old for this at the nightclub, she definitely felt too old for this hangover. Sasha spent twenty minutes crouched over a toilet bowl, reluctantly shoved the Eggs Benedict in her mouth that Georgie insisted was a hangover cure, somehow, and refused the Bloody Mary that Georgie also insisted was a hangover cure that her Mum used to feed her. The thought of Georgie’s Mum filled Sasha with a deep fear, incapable of imagining somebody who was both likely born in the 1800s and who had raised a hellion like Georgie. 

When Sasha mumbled this to Georgie, she didn’t look offended. She just smiled, strangely fond. “Oh, none of this is my Mum’s fault. She was a darling, her and my Da. My childhood was positively idyllic. All things considered, you know.”

Yes, Sasha thought, struggling to imagine 1910s London in her mind, idyllic. She took another look at Georgie, squinting slightly as her head throbbed. She definitely seemed younger physically than Jon, but Jon had a particular way of carrying age about him that had nothing to do with his appearance. “When did you stop aging?”

“I forget, honestly,” Georgie said airly, sipping her own bloody mary. For some reason, Sasha didn’t believe her. “It always takes a while to notice, you know. I suppose, logically, it would be about when I died the first time.”

That, more than anything, alarmed Sasha. “I thought you couldn’t die.”

“Not permanently,” Georgie said, as if this was somehow obvious. “Eat your eggs, they’ll get cold.” Sasha frantically shoved eggs in her mouth, desperate for the story. But Georgie just sighed and propped her chin on her hand, eyes distant. “You know how it is. Small town girl, grew up in North Birmingham, Alabama - back when it was just a tiny little thing, you know. I wanted to be a star. I always did. Scared of dyin’ in the dirt. If I was gonna die young, I wanted to do it where everybody knew my name. So long as they remember you, it’s no kind of death at all, really.” She sighed, lost in memory. “I could sing so good...so I went to Harlem, ‘cause all my friends and I always had dreams of going to Harlem and making it big singing in the jazz clubs. They didn’t get so far, staying at home with their babies, but I did. Wasn’t really made for babies and such, I think.” Something strange emerged in her words, the last vestiges of a Southern accent. “I was pretty, and I could sing, and I took to the spotlight like a duck to water. It was tough, but man - if it ain’t tough, it ain’t worth it. I worked so hard. Like I was working myself to death, almost.”

She trailed off, birds softly trilling outside, and Sasha was silent. 

Quietly, Georgie began speaking again. “Got into some trouble. You know how it is. I spent dozens of years wondering if it was my fault, if there was something I coulda done differently, zig instead of zag...but now, I don’t think so. Just my own rotten luck, you know. Put my trust in the wrong people. Had the wrong sentence whispered into my ear.” She shrugged listlessly. “Couldn’t handle the truth. Just another girl who couldn’t handle the limelight, that was what they said. But I was set up to fail. All those jazz clubs were ganger run, you couldn’t avoid it. Every girl in that golden age fell prey to those men, same as I did. I just wanted to feel again. Tried everything once, just to feel something.” She sighed, taking another drink. “Got shot. Got back up. I remember it, clear as day. Must have been 1923. I scrubbed the blood out of my show dress and went back on stage that night, cuz you can’t get a rep as a flake. They said, that day...that day was my best performance.”

She trailed off, Sasha finally alert. She wanted more details, almost desperately, but she kept her mouth shut. She didn’t want to risk putting the whammy on her host, even if she wasn’t sure that she could. If Georgie was being purposefully vague...well, Sasha wasn’t entitled to her pain. 

Instead, she said, “I bet you were good.”

Georgie smiled at her wanly, eyes far away. “I was the best.”

They sat in silence for a little while, eating their food, Sasha’s head ringing and mind buzzing. What about this picture was she not understanding? What was so important that she was missing?

Finally, Sasha carefully floated, “I bet you must have met Jon soon after.”

Georgie looked up from her bloody mary, surprised. “Oh, yes. Just a few months after. He must have caught the word on the wind, you know, of that singing girl who got back up after getting shot in the lungs.” She sighed, propping her chin on her hand again. “Saw him in the front row of my club. He was so handsome, and so finely dressed. But there had been something strange in his eyes, you know? Like little marbles, reflecting the lamps. He caught up to me afterwards, and I figured he was just another fan to squeeze dry, but he told me in his funny little accent I’d never heard before that he could help me.” She swallowed, looking away. “That he could help me understand what was happening to me. Why I was having those strange dreams, seeing those strange tendrils. I guess he was right. After I met him, I understood it all. Things moved fast after that.” She smiled weakly at Sasha. “I suppose you know the rest.”

She really didn’t, but Sasha understood the dismissal for what it was. “Yeah. Thanks for telling me all of that.”

“It’s no secret,” Georgie said dismissively. She smiled cunningly. “A hundred years later almost exactly, and what I did to those gangsters was still my finest work. They say that if you pass by an old building on St. Nicholas Avenue, you can still hear the screams. Anyway, I have a meeting with my land development company in an hour, must run, ta!”

On that distressing note Georgie swanned out the door, and Sasha was left alone with nothing but a stack of conspiracy theories, an opulent flat, and bad memories. 

Time seemed to move quickly, yet sluggishly, after that. After another day of writing down literally every Statement she could remember off the top of her head and trying to fit them into the weird and seemingly kind of arbitrary categories that Leitner had given her, she had hit a roadblock. She couldn’t remember any more Statements, she didn’t have access to them, and the ones she did remember she either already sorted or couldn’t dredge up enough memory of them to sort them in a satisfactory way. Either that, or the Statement itself was just incomprehensible - Sasha still didn’t know what the fuck was going on with Tessa’s problem. She tended to have a better memory of the ones that seemingly mentioned the Avatars in the background, just because it had been so startling to actually meet them - and a few even mentioned Jon, usually in context of Salasea or any Eye Statement. 

When Georgie came home that night, they watched another movie and they both studiously avoided mentioning anything supernatural. Best not to take work home with you, even if Sasha had never quite been good at that. 

The next day Sasha did what she should have done in the first place, and hacked into the Magnus Institute server. 

It was seriously, comically easy. Sasha had installed a backdoor connection to the desktop of her work computer from her laptop ages ago, and all she had to do was borrow one of Georgie’s laptops and redownload the program. With an easy virtual desktop she was already in. It was somehow satisfying to see all of her work programs pop up on the borrowed laptop, and it was almost a relief to access the Archive drive that connected all of their computers. More importantly, where they all put their research follow-ups and the spreadsheet that documented the debunked, uncertain, and verified statements. It had gotten to the point where if the statement refused to record on the computer they automatically put it on verified, but what Sasha really wanted from that spreadsheet was the one sentence description they had all put for each Statement. 

From there, it was much easier. Sasha, sick of the disorganized conspiracy theorist aesthetic, made her own spreadsheet and began categorizing the verified Statements that way. Much more reliable than working from memory. 

If only she could actually access the Statements...Sasha’s life would be so much easier if everything could be digitized. The debunked ones were typed up, filed, and recorded, but the verified ones only existed on paper. Couldn’t be typed up, couldn’t be recorded. It was so stupid. 

Sasha checked the clock. Eleven am on a Wednesday. They were definitely all still working. Maybe…

It was an invasion of privacy. Did she actually care about that? No. Was she worried about apparently being locked into an employment contract with an...entity of some sort that preyed on invasions of privacy? No, although she felt like she should. Was she concerned that Jon and Jonah were trying to turn into her a conduit of this entity’s power into the world, probably gradually turning her, if not evil, at least into a giant dick? Somewhat. 

Words echoed through her mind, and Sasha’s fingers halted over the keyboard. Her powers manifesting differently than Jon’s...her unique skill with hacking…

Well, that was just kind of offensive. Sasha had worked hard for her skills. They weren’t given to her by Jon’s weird god. Also - seriously, a god? It was just a malevolent eldritch entity living in a separate dimension that encroached tendrils into Sasha’s life. There was nothing divine about it. That was just offensive. Sasha was a good feminist, transgender Catholic on the run from the law and didn’t worship false idols. 

It was only then that Sasha noticed a folder on the drive that she hadn’t created. It was labelled ‘For the Archivist’. Despite herself, she clicked on it. 

It held a few pdfs. Sasha clicked on one curiously, and saw that they were photocopies of statements. No - of Statements. She was already recognizing this one as one of those spider ones. She quickly printed them all out, conscientious of how easily supernatural files corrupted, and quickly exited the drive and the virtual desktop.

It wasn’t until Sasha was already in the kitchen and pulling down a bottle of Jack that she realized what she was doing. She sighed, replaced it, and fetched herself some sparkling water instead. She drank it slowly as she returned to her laptop and logged remotely into the police database, which she already had a backdoor into. 

It occurred to Sasha, perhaps belatedly, that if the police found her laptop and the incredible variety of highly illegal programs meant explicitly for accessing secure servers she was probably triple going to jail. This time, for something she had actually did. 

All of the hacking had never felt illegal. It had just felt...well, fun and necessary. It had never been about whether or not she should, it had been about if she could. 

Was that how it had started for Jon? Collecting household secrets because he had to, so secure the money and influence he desperately needed, because he could, because it was fun? 

Whatever. Sasha shook herself. She could have her moral crisis after she was no longer on the run from the cops for murder. This wasn’t the time to be squeamish about something that wasn’t hurting anybody. She knew, as Jon probably did, that just because something was illegal didn’t make it wrong. 

It was easy to log onto the police database and check out her own open case. She frequently checked out open homicide cases for fun, but it somehow hit a little different when it was her they were talking about. Incident, Senior Citizen, Offence: First Degree Murder, Location of Arrest: N/A, yeah, yeah, yeah…

One victim, a John Doe. Foul play was suspected...yes that’d be the gunshot wound. No witnesses. Reporting officer’s narrative...Elias Bouchard and Jonathan Sims the Fifth had walked into Head Archivist Sasha James’ office to discuss work with her when they found the body. Both were shocked and called the police...gun found at the scene had her fingerprints and the ballistics matched...suspect still at large. Friends and family had been contacted, everyone denied knowledge of where she was. Suspect had a noted history of mental illness...great…

The officers dispatched had been Alice Tonner and Basira Hussein. Sasha found that strange: Basira had history with one of the witnesses and the suspect, wouldn’t it be unprofessional to send her out? 

There couldn’t be that many sectioned officers, Sasha reasoned. Even if the incident hadn’t officially been sectioned, because the police report still existed, as a general rule if something happened at the Magnus Institute it was sectioned until proven otherwise. Even if the murder itself was seemingly mundane. 

Out of curiosity, she searched up Detective Tonner’s records. Been on the force for a long time, worked her way up the ranks. Very, very few cases and incident reports for a detective who had been on the force as long as she had. Sectioned, obviously, but even Basira had more official cases than she did. When Sasha clicked on the incident reports, they were extremely spotty and strange. Obvious details were omitted or censored. 

Something cold began to creep down Sasha’s spine. She found the arrest records of the latest four people with official records of Detective Tonner arresting them. 

Almost all of them had entered custody with bruises, cuts, and in one case a broken limb. They all had records down as ‘resisting arrest’. Sasha felt sick. 

There was one case that stopped strangely short. A clear perp, a rapist but one with little evidence, who Tonner had quickly caught. That was where the case ended: the report that Tonner had found his hiding spot, but no arrest, no trial, no prison sentence. When Sasha investigated the perp, she found that he had unceremoniously vanished shortly after Tonner had reported that she had found his hiding spot. A month later, a death certificate had been filed. 

Sasha stared at the death certificate, nauseated. This was who she was dealing with. A vigilante, some batshit pig who had obviously decided that the law was best taken into her own hands. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy, but...if anybody looked at Sasha’s case on paper, they’d say the same thing. 

And that was just the cases on record. It was the only obvious instance Sasha could see of Tonner having offed someone just because she felt like it, but cops were good at covering shit like that up. How many other arrest records had fallen in the cracks? How many other dead perps that nobody gave a shit about? How many sectioned cases? 

God, Sasha was fucked. 

She begged off hanging out with Georgie that night, instead staying in bed with the covers pulled tight over her head as if that could ever protect her. Why was Jonah doing this to her? What did he have to gain? If he wanted her to die a mysterious death in the bottom of a ditch, why wasn’t he man enough to do it himself?

Tonner was going to murder her, Sasha thought hysterically, and she was going to pat herself on the back for keeping another monster off the streets. 

And Jon knew. The fucking hypocrite. He wasn’t going to help her. Nobody was. But, god, she was so alone…

The next morning, as if she knew, Georgie slipped Sasha a burner phone over the breakfast table as they both robotically ate quiches. 

“It should be untraceable, but just know that anybody you call you’re putting at serious risk,” Georgie warned, before her expression softened. “This’ll all be over soon, honey. I promise.”

“Did Jonah tell you that?” Sasha asked bitterly. 

“Nah. I just know those two.” Georgie delicately ate a forkful of quiche. “They get bored of terrorizing humans pretty quickly. Now, Michael’s a different story. They’ll terrorize someone for decades. I’ve seen them do it!”

“Great,” Sasha said. 

It seemed to be at this point that Georgie realized she was actually making Sasha feel much worse, because a slightly panicked expression crossed her face and she quickly reached out to pat Sasha on the hand. “But I’m sure they won’t do that to you,” Georgie said quickly. “They love you! Jon especially. Jonah’s just on another of his little power trips right now, he’ll get over it. And Jon, like, feels really bad about this whole thing. He’s been super annoying about it, actually -”

“See,” Sasha said, standing up to clear away her dishes, “I would rather handle an enemy who obviously wants to kill me than a friend whose good side I always have to be careful to stay on, who I can’t afford to ever make mad. I guess that’s the only difference left between me and you people.”

She angrily put her dishes in the sink, where the housekeeper would do them, and stalked to what was rapidly becoming her room, slamming the door. 

Flopping down on the bed, she stared at the burner phone. Tim wouldn’t be at work yet. They could talk. They could - 

Do what? Get back together? Split up? Could he explain, beg for her forgiveness? Did she have to apologize too? Sasha didn’t understand. 

That was rare for her. She understood a lot of things, or at least she thought she did. Maybe she had been lying to herself, about everything: that her and Tim were a good idea, that Martin was sketchy,  that Jon was evil, that Jon was kind, that Georgie just wanted to help her, that there was nothing that Jonah Magnus would do to her, that she was safe and human and a good person. 

God, her capacity for self-delusion was ridiculous. But maybe people needed a little bit of self-delusion to survive. Nobody could live in complete honesty, in full sight of their flaws and shortcomings. You could burn away, living like that. 

No. No time or space for fear. Sasha wasn’t afraid of anything. If she kept telling herself that, maybe it would be true. She desperately punched in a number that she didn’t remember memorizing, holding the phone desperately to her ear, her one connection to humanity. 

It rung, and rung, and one, and Sasha’s heart thumped in her chest. 

Finally, the ringing stopped, and a slightly sleepy voice punctuated the dead air. “Hello?”

“Tim, it’s me,” Sasha burst out, everything she wanted to say to him rushing through her throat and choking her, and she burst into tears. 

Distantly, through the sound of her crying, she could hear Tim on the other side losing his shit, and eventually wrangling himself to calmness. 

It was almost funny, how they could work each other up like that. Eventually, by the time Sasha had managed to wrangle her own crying, Tim had calmed himself down enough that he was able to clumsily try to cheer her up. 

“We’re all fine. Everyone’s perfectly safe. Martin’s gotten, uh, even more annoying since you left, and we’ve technically hired Melanie, which is - not good but it’s funny? Are you still crying? Please don’t still be crying.”

“I’m fine,” Sasha hiccuped. She rubbed at her red eyes. God, she’d missed him. “Tim, what happened?”

The line was silent for a while. Finally, he said, “Is this line secure?”

“Uh - probably? I mean -” Sasha quickly checked herself. She didn’t want to mention Georgie. The less he knew the better. “ - it’s a burner, if that’s what you’re asking, and I’m not the one who bought it.”

“Where are you living?” Tim asked harshly. “Are you homeless? You have to come stay with me, I can -”

“You mean the first place Tonner will look?” Sasha shot back. “No. I’m safe, I’m dry, things are fine. That’s all you need to know.” She softened her voice. “I promise, if it was safe I’d tell you more. I want to see you again. Tim, I - I’m really sorry.”

Tim laughed hoarsely, without humor. “Shouldn’t it be me saying that? I’m the one who thought you were a monster.”

“...yeah, that one’s on you.” Sasha sighed miserably, lying down on her bed, wishing Tim was next to her. “I am, though. A monster, I mean. Tim, I - I’m definitely not entirely human anymore.”

“God, Sash, that’s the least of our problems right now,” Tim said, laughing slightly again. “Can you just tell me what happened? I know you didn’t fucking do it. That dick Bouchard keeps playing dumb and his shitlead lackey keeps on avoiding the Archives. I bet Sims killed that old man, right? He totally did. Martin keeps on saying that his precious Jon wouldn’t let you take the fall for something he did, but I’m not so sure.”

“I...it’s more complicated than that.”

Sasha explained in short order. For once, Tim was totally silent the entire time, letting Sasha dispassionately recite the entire sad story. She finished it at Michael helping her escape, not detailing where she had been dropped off. 

Finally, after a long silence, Tim said, “So this is my fault.”

“No, it’s not,” Sasha said harshly. “You were manipulated, same as I was.”

“I’m the idiot who -”

“Yes, you were being an idiot. You should have talked to me, talked to anyone. You should have done anything other than your homicidal partner in crime. You definitely shouldn’t have been buying a fucking black market gun when I know for a fact you have no idea how to shoot. But you tried playing hero and you played straight into Magnus’ hands. You fucked up. Okay? Now let’s try to do better.”

More silence, until Tim sighed. “Can’t believe the Douche’s Jonah Magnus. Explains why Sims is always playing lackey for him. Can’t wait to spill to Martin how his boyfriend framed his boss for murder.”

Sasha chewed her lip, uncertain. She hadn’t shared the details of Jonah and Jon’s conversation too closely - it had seemed private. “See, I’m not sure this is...entirely Jon’s fault.”

Tim groaned. “Not you too! Why is everyone but me and Melanie a fucking Sims apologist?”

“Jon and Jonah are...they’re weird, okay?” Sasha moved to chewing her hair, uncertain of how to describe it. If it should even be described. It seemed so private, so unsuitable to name...but maybe everybody thinking that was how these things stayed perpetuated for so long. “I think Jonah’s kind of, you know, abusive?”

The line went silent again. 

“Wow,” Tim said finally, “Martin’s going to be so disappointed his boyfriend’s taken.”

“They’re just friends! I think. I’m like, ninety percent sure. But you didn’t hear them, Tim. They’re really...it’s messed up. Trust me.”

“Jesus, Sash, why are you defending someone who fucked all of us over like this? Sims is a big boy, he’s responsible for his own shitty decisions and the shitty company he keeps.” Tim snorted. “I’ve heard them talk, anyway. If anything, Magnus is the one always giving into Sims and his little tantrums. Jesus, I just want to throttle the both of them.”

“Maybe you need to get over your anger issues and focus on actually solving the problem for once,” Sasha snapped. “Nobody has time for your revenge fantasy, Tim! We need to fix all of this.”

“Which one is it, Sash?” Tim asked coldly. “Was I manipulated, or was it my anger issues and hero complex? Are you going to decide if this is my fault or not?”

Sasha’s heart stuttered in her chest. She didn’t know how to explain to him what she knew - that it was everything, that it was all of the above, that he was manipulated through his anger issues and hero complex, that Tim had been pushed in a direction but he had taken the steps all by himself. But she couldn’t blame him entirely, because Sasha had been manipulated the same way, and so had Jon and Martin and Georgie, and if she started thinking like that then she would have to start hating the whole damn world. 

“Tim, are we going to stay together?” Sasha whispered, broken-hearted. “Can we even still be together? I love you. I want you here with me. But there’s so much ugliness that’s growing between us. I don’t know if this can be fixed.”

A long silence again. Sasha wanted to be there with him, to read his face, to see what he was thinking. She had always understood him so well, or at least she thought that he did. 

“I love you too,” Tim said finally. “I want to fix this too. I - I don’t know, Sasha. I love you. The thought of you alone, in danger, and not even knowing where you are, is fucking me up. It’s like Danny all over again, Sasha, I can’t handle this. Can we have this conversation again when I know you’re safe?”

“Okay,” Sasha said, and she knew that this was probably the best both of them could do right now. “Are we staying together?”

“...I don’t know.”

“...are we breaking up?”

“...still don’t know.”

“Okay,” Sasha repeated again, and sighed. “I won’t call you from this phone twice. I’m doing the best I can here. I’m safe, I think. Things will be okay, Tim.”

“Sash,” Tim said, “I don’t remember the last time things were okay.”

And neither did she, and they both knew it, and she hung up on him without saying anything further. She lay on the bed, listening faintly to the sound of the housekeeper vacuuming, staring up at the fan as it beat in a steady rhythm on the ceiling. 

Was Tim right? Was she reading too much into Jon and Jonah? It wasn’t her job to fix Jon, to puzzle out his weird psychology. Maybe he was just an asshole without a spine,and there wasn’t anything more to that.

No. Sasha didn’t believe that. This was a puzzle that she hadn’t solved yet, and she had the feeling that at the heart of this puzzle was the key to finally keeping herself and Tim safe. She couldn’t abide a mystery, couldn’t trick herself into thinking that the truth wasn’t important. The truth was all Sasha had. She couldn’t close her eyes to it, that awful and ugly reality. 

Tim...he had been such a bad idea. But he had always been her favorite one: the way he could always cheer her up, his bright and bold smile, his courage and heart and sensitivity and vulnerability. He had loved her, truly and wholly, for who she was. He knew the ugly corners of her and loved them as much as he loved her best attributes. 

Was that still true? Was Sasha turning into a person that Tim just couldn’t love? Was Tim turning into someone that Sasha couldn’t love? 

People changed. Sometimes they changed apart. And for some strange reason, Sasha just couldn’t bear the thought of that. 

Lying on the bed of a grim reaper, crying like a broken-hearted teenager, Sasha didn’t notice that the housekeeper’s vacuum had stopped running. She didn’t notice the knock on the door, or the creak of the door opening, or the gentle rise and fall of voices. She only heard it when there was a soft knock at her own door, and she was forced to roll off the bed to open her bedroom door. 

Standing in front of her, looking nervous, was the housekeeper. Standing behind her was Jonathan Sims. 

He looked pretty bad, Sasha noted clinically. Eye bags, even more pronounced than usual, stood starkly under his eyes, and his hair wasn’t as cropped short and styled as it usually was. It had grown out a little, making Jon look more like a tired modern guy walking the streets of London than a centuries old immortal psychic vampire. He was still dressed in a suit, as he always was, but the suit jacket was off and his dress shirt was rolled up to the elbow.

He stared at Sasha, probably registering every minute change in her appearance as she did his, before glancing down at the housekeeper. “You’re excused for the day. Thank you for your time.”

He passed her something - probably neatly folded bills - and nodded at her as she shakily nodded back and escaped the flat as quickly as possible. Jon stepped backwards in the hallway, gesturing for her to come out, and walked back into the living room. Because Sasha was just slightly too prideful to barricade herself in the bedroom, and partly because she wasn’t sure that Jon wouldn’t break into a woman’s bedroom, she stepped out into the grandiose yet cluttered living room with him. He stood in the center, hands in his pockets, looking over the flat with a clinical eye. 

“Georgie’s sense of interior decoration is as immaculate as ever,” Jon noted clinically. “She used to spend months getting every house we ever lived in just right. Said it was her job as lady of the household. She had never been a lady of any household, of course, not in the way that Jonah and I had once known - but her fun’s important to her, and it doesn’t hurt anybody important.” He sniffed slightly. “You coming to stay here was for the best after all. She’s been lonely, I think.” 

“I’m staying here because I’m homeless,” Sasha said flatly. For the first time, she noticed a small manila envelope under his arm, tucked slightly into his back pocket. “Because of you.”

“I’ve kept your flat for you,” Jon said eagerly, stepping forward, and letting his cold mask fall. In him now was something eager, something almost pleading. Sasha forced herself not to step away. “All of your possessions are intact, and I can get your bank accounts unfrozen easily enough. Once all of this blows over, your life can be right back to normal.”

“Wow,” Sasha drawled, crossing her arms, “how kind. Were you so busy being this nice to me that you forgot that Georgie barred you from this flat because I don’t want to fucking look at you?”

“She’ll get over it,” Jon said dismissively. “She’s been wanting us to make up, anyhow.” He stepped closer again, fluorescent green eyes fixed on her large and warm brown ones, and Sasha fought the tingle crawling up her spine. “Sasha, I really am sorry. Jonah was out of line in what he did. But - but you know, he really does know best. Even if it doesn’t seem so. What we’re doing now, it’s for the best for your development. I promise this will all blow over soon, and things will be better. For all of us.”

“For a subject of a truth god,” Sasha said, voice dripping sarcasm, “you have a unique ability to lie to yourself.”

Jon puffed up, scowling down at her. “That’s ridiculous. I -”

“Does Jonah Magnus respect you?” Sasha pressed. 

Jon...hesitated, and they both saw it. Jon frantically tried to cover, quickly saying, “Of course he does. I’m his partner, and we’ve been partners for two hundred years. There’s nobody on earth he respects more than me. There’s nobody he respects but me.”

“Then why does he talk to you like you’re an idiot?”

“He talks to everyone like that.”

“Because he doesn’t respect anyone but you. You just said that. But if he respects you, then wouldn’t he talk to you differently?”

There it is - Jon’s shoulders hunched slightly, unconsciously on the defensive. “Does he give you equal input on decisions?”

“I always give my -”

“Does he listen to them?”

Jon was silent. Finally, slowly, he said, “Jonah was right. He said you’d get like this.”

Fuck. Sasha’s heart sank, even as her jaw dropped in incredulity. She had lost him. “You must be kidding.”

“He said you’d get jealous.” Jon crossed his arms, turning slightly away from her, but what he clearly meant to be a closed-off stance just seemed defensive. “He said that you’d get upset that I’m more loyal to him than to you. What we’re doing now is for your own good, Miss James. You’ll see one day that this - this unpleasantness is helping you grow.”

Unpleasantness? Unpleasantness?! Putting her life at risk was an inconvenience? “I’ll see, huh?” Sasha said bitterly. “Just like you saw? Just like how you changed your mind from this being cruel and traumatic to it being a momentary unpleasantness?” She barked a short laugh, not very humorous at all. “I was there. He called you stupid, he said that you couldn’t trust anybody but him, and he called you an idiot. Are those the words of someone who respects you? Of someone who even likes you?”

Jon stiffened, mouth tightening, and he broke eye contact and looked away. “Don’t concern yourself with the private business between Jonah and I.”

“When you’re having the conversation over a cooling corpse that you framed me for then you’re making it my business, you absolute shitheel!” Sasha yelled, finally losing her temper. “Your bullshit is ruining my life! Your complete inability to stand up to that sack of shit is ruining my life!”

“Shut up!” Jon yelled, seemingly having taken her losing her temper as permission to lose his. Distantly, Sasha was aware of his stupid this must have looked: two fully grown adults, yelling in a living room like children. “You’re a spoiled child who doesn’t know anything! All I’ve ever done is try to help you, and you spit in my face! You’re no better than Martin!”

Abruptly, strangely, Jon stopped short. He seemed almost embarrassed, almost in pain. 

And just like that, Sasha knew. “He’s not letting you see Martin, is he.”

For just a split second, Jon’s expression crumpled, but he forced it back into his haughty mask. “I decided that it was best I didn’t waste my time with manipulative traitors.”

“Was that your idea?” Sasha asked flatly, abruptly extremely tired. “Or was it Jonah’s?”

Jon was silent. They both knew the answer. 

“If you walked up to Jonah now and told him that you wanted to start dating Martin, do you think that you’d leave that conversation still wanting to do it? Or would you somehow decide, all by yourself, that you’ll end up doing what Jonah wants anyway?”

Jon didn’t say anything.

A strange mix of emotions swirled in Sasha’s stomach. Anger and disgust mixed with pity and sadness. What had Jon been like, before he met Jonah Magnus? Had he been a good person?

But maybe that wasn’t so important. Maybe the question that had to be asked was - what kind of person would Jonathan Sims be without Jonah Magnus in his life?

All at once, the fight seemed to go out of Jon. His shoulders sagged, and he abruptly deflated. He looked down at the ground, ashamed and aware of it. He had always been aware of it. He had just been lying to himself. Maybe it was impossible to live without it. 

“I don’t know what to do without him,” Jon said quietly. “I’ve never - I need him.”

“You don’t,” Sasha said, abruptly exhausted. “You want to help me, Jon? You want to protect me and Martin? You can’t do that while staying friends with Jonah Magnus. You have to choose. So long as you stay close to him, you are going to stay within his complete control. That’s what he does. He controls everybody and everything. And you’re letting him. You’re justifying it. You’re doing his work for him. Everybody around him is - even Georgie. There are two people in your life who are trying to get you away from him, and he’s trying to convince you to cut them out of your life. You think that’s a coincidence?”

Jon opened his mouth, then closed it. Weakly, he said, “You’re wrong.”

“I need your help, Jon,” Sasha whispered, and to her shame found her voice cracking. “I need someone on my side. I can do it alone, but - but I’m scared. And I don’t want to. I need help. I’m scared.”

But she knew, even as she said it, that Jon was scared too. He couldn’t reach out a hand to her - not now, not here. Jon had carried around his fear for hundreds of years, pushing it down and pretending it wasn’t there, and it informed everything he’d ever done. Scrambling for power, exerting that power, desperately dominating even as he was dominated - it stemmed from that fear, all of it. And Jonah Magnus kept those flames fanned, because a Jon who was afraid was a Jon who could be controlled. 

A Sasha who was afraid, who was isolated, who was trapped, was one who could be controlled. 

The realization was dizzying. Somehow, the thought that kept running through her mind was - who’d do that? Who was such a terrible person that they’d go through all that trouble, all of that plotting, just to make someone suffer? Not because they disliked them, not in revenge, not because of any human emotion - but just because it was convenient? Useful?

Because you could?

So this was what power did to a person, Sasha realized. So this was what power and immortality and money and supernatural gifts did to you. It made you someone who Sasha could never hope to understand, whose depths of depravity she could never truly rationalize. To Sasha, who prided herself on knowing people and being able to understand them and their motives - it was almost a relief, almost a blessing, that she couldn’t possibly understand the motives of Jonah Magnus at all. 

Jon stared at her, fluorescent green eyes wide, and for just a minute she could see the fear that she knew was there written all over his face. For just a minute, Sasha and Jon were scared together, both trapped in tumultuous waters that they couldn’t control. For the first time Sasha empathized with Jon. 

Jonah Magnus was somebody that Sasha could never understand. But Jon was, and for the first time Sasha knew what Martin meant when he said that he felt as if Jon had been a good person, a long time ago. 

You can’t understand someone and hate them. Not really. You could be angry, upset, betrayed...but if you really understood someone, backwards and forwards, true hate was difficult to find. 

“I have to go,” Jon said, almost dizzily. He shoved the manila folder at her, both of them having forgotten that it was even there in the first place. He glanced at it, frightened and guilty. “Be - be careful when meeting Jude Perry. Don’t take her at her word. I have to go.”

He fled, as if the hounds of hell themselves were snapping at his heels, and Sasha was left standing in an opulent hallway, clutching a manila folder as if it was a time bomb, completely certain that it was meant to hurt her and cause her pain and damage her, completely certain that she was going to read it anyway. 

Like Jon - what choice did she have? 

But as she stumbled back to her room, as she sat down on the comfortable chair and thumbed on the tape recorder that sat at the desk, the words of Jonathan Sims ran through her mind. His warning. A clumsy attempt at protection. At the very least, a signifier of desire. 

Sasha knew, as she sometimes knew things, that Jon had started out somebody who deeply desired to protect others like him. To take revenge, to grab power, yes, but also to spread that precious knowledge and resources around. He had never stopped thinking of himself as one of those vulnerable people, people who society had stepped on and ground into the dirt. Deep down he had just wanted things to be fair, wanted some justice in the world. Jon, at one point, had only wanted to help. 

Maybe she wasn’t so alone after all. 

“Statement of Sasha James, Head Archivist…”

[dazes-on-dazes]

11.30.2020 - Introduction

I suppose I should introduce myself, I’ve done that with every paper journal, after all.

My name is Morrigan (a pseudonym, of course), I am 16 years old, and a Junior in high school at the time of writing. I struggle academically and socially, I’ve never had many friends and school is gradually becoming more and more stressful.

My biggest and most current stressors are school, my mother, and my own mental health. School is rather self-explanatory, I have ADHD and everything is hard even with medication. I forget to do work, turn the work I did in, remember important details, it’s exhausting.

My mother has never been much help either. She continuously discredits my issues and believes that I am simply being lazy and I do not want to work. I can’t tell her anything about me or my issues anymore, as she will surely use it against me in the future. She gaslights and manipulates like its a damn Olympic sport. She’ll use anything against me, my school extracurriculars, her own martyr complex, my grades, opportunities to be with the few friends that I have, and her monopoly over the house. 

I’m closer to my father, needless to say, not that he is much better in the long run. He was raised in a military family, then later joined the navy. The Military is all he’s ever known, so I don’t hold it against him. However, it is still a bit damaging, at least in his relationship with his kids. He isn’t cruel or overtly aggressive, he’s just distant. It’s a trend in fathers from what I’ve seen from others, The father is super distant and you can only really connect in any meaningful way over music, you have a few conversations that don’t mean much and he mentions something traumatic that happened in his childhood and you never speak of it again. 

Most of the time it’s like that, we coexist in the same area and leave it at that. However, Occasionally, He’ll let me talk. In reality it’s less talking and more info-dumping, but he will still let me do it. And he will listen, sometimes, and it means the world to me. 

I remember a conversation we had while he was making dinner, We were watching Aliens v Predator while he was working and the Predalien shows up on screen, naturally, I mention some fun fact about it and he asks a question. I launch into an impromptu lecture on the Xenomorph lifecycle and biology. We talk about hybrid aliens for a bit before I start explaining the AvP timeline, he let me continue until Mom got home, where I stopped of my own accord and stayed quiet the rest of the night.

I don’t have that with my mother. I stopped being enthusiastic about things around her a long time ago. Every time I try she would cut me off and say that she doesn’t understand what I am saying, and continue to cut me off when I try to explain. When she is feeling what I presume to be jealousy, she cries and whines about how I never tell her about my interests and that she wants to learn, which she has never said or shown through her behavior other than that one moment.

I think it’s the control aspect, Mom likes having control over things. Whenever I get a little more adventurous with my makeup or clothes she gets upset and makes me go change, whenever I show any symptoms she gets upset and tells me I’m embarrassing her. It’s always “You represent this family/You carry the family name” even though the logic doesn’t make much sense to me. It even might not be control, it might be something completely different.

There are periods where there aren’t any conflicts between me and her, what I’m going to call Peacetime. Peacetime is when I haven’t done anything to upset her, I bend to what she wants and everything is kept in such a manner that is inoffensive to her. When I stumble out of lockstep by pushing the boundaries for what I can do a little too much can set her off and send us into Conflict. What ‘too much’ actually is is a mystery to me, one day it could be extra wings in my eyeliner, the next it could be me showering in the dark. 

Conflict is never good, at best Mom is passive aggressive and short, at worst she is physically aggressive, yelling and dragging the whole house into an argument. Her emotions have always affected everyone. If I was the one to set her off, Dad might come and talk to me, tell me that I should apologize, that I should just relent to keep her happy, even if I was only asserting my boundaries. I’ve found myself doing the same with my sister when she conflicts with Dad, though her situations are usually different and largely her ignoring small requests.

Other than my mother and her tendencies I hope this blog can act as a journal of sorts or a Coliseum for Thoughts if I were to interpret it in a more flowery way. Others may find value in it if they were to find it, and I hope it helps me.

Until next time,

Morrigan

[keenathered]

Thursday, February 6, 2020

both of them last night - you've always done what you've wanted. is that right? done what I want? are you sure? really sure? seems to me I've been walking on eggshells all this time but to you I've been disobedient. and if I point out the toxicity, the hypocrisy, I'm bathameez. I said he spent 1 billion rupees on my education because if it's not extreme, he doesn't hear/believe/remember and I got the - tumne mujse bathmeezi ka jawab diya he. when was the last time I heard that! and here I was thinking I'd never hear him say that again. silly me. I did clarify that we were talking about me and not him and he repeated what I said back to me. I write all this because I was able to keep myself 90% more calm than I have been when he throws my failures back at me. tum lazy hogayi ho. omg, say something new. you've said that about a thousand times. both of you.

apparently, only a friend will tell you like it is. but he's staying what has happened. how is that telling me like it is? so, back to the 90% - instead I was listing the toxicity, fallacies, mansplaining, and overall boomer way he was speaking. omg, and the projecting. most of what they say when they're talking to me is projecting - them and people, apparently. I'll stand there, look them in the eye, and listen. she's started doing that now but when has she not copied me? on the phone, second or third year. in person, since I got back. even the vocal fry - this is the second voice/way of talking she's adopted and then claimed she's always done it. she's the gaslighter of the two. the first thing was making her s's super spitty behind her teeth but it was esp bad when there was an 'st' in a word. but if I were to point out my misophonia, I'm the wrong one. apparently, she got over hers so nobody should have it. ???

another thing he's been saying is that starting work means I'll be too tired to do anything else. because I'm only getting older. because he was unable to get his Masters when his family was young. he said that when I was in my 20s, too. but if I start to talk about his anxiety then we're talking about him again. that's ok, I didn't want to make my point anyway. (he said ang-jiety - twice - hahahaha, idiot. because first he can pronounce z in his mother tongue and second he should know better). these past few days, he's been trying to get a rise out me and it's not working. can I say how proud of myself I am? 95% proud of the growth and 5% proud of the petty.

but now that I've worked myself up, let's talk about her "active" listening. she'll make the right sounds and the right laughter at the right moments but is she really hearing what you say? she's never bothered to learn to listen. it's not worth it. you're not worth it. nope! she thinks she's hacked it because active listening takes work and who wants to be working every time someone talks to you? but then later complain that you don't come downstairs/only talk when you wanna/etc. also, don't try to teach her how to socialize - she won't see how she's embarrassing you in public - because that'll cause a meltdown. "no, I'm wrong. no, I have to change." ??? even animals learn at an early age but you don't see them breaking down and retreating into their shells (metaphorically)? I see these opportunities to fix and she'll make centimeters of progress but it's all a trap. just like the trap she laid on Monday - why don't you ever leave your room? don't you get (lonely was implied)? he later parroted that you never leave your room because tum lazy hogayi ho. she also gave off all the signals that she really wanted to know and that she'd actually listen. I was surprised at her attempt to understand and lemme tell ya, I wavered but thankfully I was listening for that 2% called it for the trap it was.

I see all these people living their lives not bogged down by their parents toxic bullshit - the parallels to the patriarchy and internalized misogyny are not lost to me - and I also want to be free. this is how they've kept me under their "control." that control was always mine. it was the culture telling me that control belonged to them because 1) they're older and 2) they're my parents. that culture is also toxic bullshit. to get respect, you must first give respect. I can see Abu not respecting his children but demanding he be respected. I'm sure I've always been this way - the great rending - and my reaction - as now - was to be angry then to cry and be mocked and then to dissociate. I can see that happening but I don't remember. you respect someone by acknowledging that they're their own person, with preferences, with boundaries - not some codependent horseshit. you let that person tell you who they are. you don't assign them a role you've made up in your head and then punish them for not acting like it is in your head. no one knows what going on inside your brain except you. but if I point out this toxicity, then my mother didn't raise me right/she wasn't allowed to raise us like she wanted. growing up, she gave us the max amount of her time which she thinks was good. the picture in my head is that we were stuck together with molasses and I've been trying to get away from her but keep getting pulled back. like I've said before, you can't spell smother without mother. just thinking about it raises my heart rate, lolol

[miyori999]

Classic Gaslighting and BPD

I sound like a bit of a jerk, but this was a discussion I had with my mom. Keep in mind that I never once yelled back at her.

Me: "Mom, I'm gone during the work week! I can't help out in the yard on those days, because I'm gone for nine hours that day." Mom: "All I'm asking for is a little help and neither of you (me & bro) will help me." Me: "Who does the dishes every day? Who takes out the trash at five am every morning? Who scoops the litter boxes every day? Who vacuu--" Mom: "Girl. Stop!" Me: "I pay rent. I clean the house. I pay the electric bill. I do work in the yard just about every Sunday and Monday. I'm the only one of us that has a job." Mom: "You think you're better than me? You know I'm disabled! I have a di-sa-bil-i-ty!" Me: "That's not what I meant!" Mom: "Who f*cking drives you everywhere?" Me: "Mom. I take the bus. You literally drive me one mile from the stop home." Mom: "I buy groceries, I pick up medications--" Me: "When was the last time you actually went in a store?" Mom: "F*ck off." Me: "Mom!" Mom: "You always use the job thing like it's so important that you--" Me: "No, I was only using it to say I'm not at home, so obviously I can't do things at a place where I'm not at." Me: "(my bro) is home all day.' Mom: "Yeah, but I can't get his lazy @$$ to help me with anything anyways." Me: "So why are you yelling at me? Why are you putting pressure on the person who actually does stuff around the house." Mom: "Leave." Me: "Mom. I never said I *wouldn't* help, I just *can't* help because I'm physically not available during the week." Mom: "Just leave me alone." Me: *near tears* "Okay."

*7 minutes later*

Mom: *knocks on door, asks, smiling like nothing happened,* "Would you make some chilli dogs for dinner?" Me: *still frustrated because we literally* just *had an argument* "For everyone or just like me and (bro)" Mom: "Three dogs, your dad just wants chilli." Me: "Not a problem."

Also of note, I also have a disability. Multiple if you factor in PTSD and my hearing aid. I’m very much coming to terms with the fact that my mom treats me differently than when I was a little kid. Almost as soon as I graduated high school, I became a person in her eyes, and she hates people. She started yelling at me, and doing this sort of thing. I am a very stubborn and strong-willed person, but I love and respect her, so I never stand up for myself when she does things like this, because I am well aware that I’ll come off feeling like a jerk. I still do after this, because I said some things more flippantly than I meant (who does x, who does y).  What’s going on here though is something I just recognized as happening to me. I never thought of gaslighting as anything a person does unintentionally. It always seemed malicious and narcissistic. My mom doesn’t actually want to make me feel “crazy” or hurt me, she just...is like this. She has Borderline Personality Disorder, which means she only views things in black and white. Even if our house is spotless, it’s actually filthy to her because the cat’s scratch post is kinda ratty (from the cats using it). She yells at me for napping after work (I work from 7am-4pm) instead of raking up the yard and using the wheelbarrow to deposit bark into out dump pile. For not immediately watering the garden. For not pulling weeds, and all that before taking my nap. I’m still cooking dinner about half the time, I still vacuum, sweep and do the dishes every night after my nap, and by the time I finish I have about an hour to relax or shower before bed. 

I don’t have children to take care of like she did at my age, I know it could be a lot harder, especially if I worked full-time, but you choose to have children. I’m living at home out of necessity because even if I was working full-time at something that wasn’t barely over minimum wage, I couldn’t afford an apartment yet. I don’t even have enough saved up for a security deposit.

What Bothers Me Most is the Gaslighting. How she yells at me, and tells me how lazy I am, and tells me to leave me alone, and then a few minutes later acts like everything is fine and dandy. How she ignores what I mean for one or two specific words I use out of a sentence. It’s terrible and awful and I know she is this way because of her disability but I just can’t continue to excuse it. I’m also terrified that I’ll become used to this. That I’ll end up with a guy who’s just abused me but then makes popcorn to watch a movie with me a half hour later. Or worse. I’ll start doing it myself. I don’t want to become her. Every single one of my coworkers I’ve had is impressed with my work ethic. Every single one of them thinks I work too hard, and thinks it’s sweet that I help them with work once I’ve finished mine. The office ladies at the two schools I work at are always telling me I’m a sweetheart even though I only see them a couple minutes a day. One of them told me today that I’m the only one in my position that actually keeps an accurate log of my hours, and how I could fudge the hours up a bit. I’m way too honest to do a thing like that, though, in addition to how hard I work at what I do. This is both because I always give my mom 120% and it’s still not good enough, and it also feeds into my ADHD in the most awful of ways  

“ …people with adhd cope with this huge emotional elephant in two main ways, which are not mutually exclusive.

1. they become people pleasers.  they scan every person they meet to figure out what that person admires and praises.  then, that’s the false self they present.  often this becomes such a dominating goal that they forget what they actually wanted from their own lives.  they are too busy making sure other people aren’t displeased with them.”                                 https://www.additudemag.com/rejection-sensitive-dysphoria-and-adhd/

I just...I wanted to...I don’t know.

[levinea-yuuki]

I've been thinking recently

We don't have much foundation. Both Millennials and Gen Z are stuck with so much responsibility for our futures. We're judged for our quirks, called special snowflakes by the most entitled generations, and tossed out on our own by Baby Boomers and Gen X.

Now I definitely don't feel like a Generation Z child because of two reasons:

I'm 22 years old and that just makes me feel like a millennial based on the whole structure and my lack of a sense of timelines.

I've never gotten into fortnite or the majority of these memes or dabbing.

But honestly that is not going to stop me from enjoying watching all of these people having dance-offs or making cleverly woven jokes or saying things I'll never fully grasp, (I still don't understand "worm"), or simply feeling refreshed about the open-minded beliefs of equality and acceptance, understanding, and kindness. Pour as much of that on as your hearts can show.

Getting back to the point. Though there's not much of a generation gap between Millennials and Generation Z in my point of view, seeing as we're both dragged into the same issues that arose with having to deal with the baby boomer generation in the same manner that we're having to deal with Gen X, though maybe not to the same extent, I feel like the older Generations are trying to shove a gap between us or push the blame.

This link takes you to a website that expresses just how much there is to think about with what Baby Boomers have done to our economy... Even though they blame millennials. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/apr/29/millennials-struggling-is-it-fault-of-baby-boomers-intergenerational-fairness

It's not just our economy that I'm worried about in the long run.

We can repair that type of damage, what I'm really worried about how the younger ones are raised. Striking on a highly personal and sensitive note, my mother born in Gen X married young to my baby boomer father and had my brother and me, my brother being in the millennial generation. After seventeen years of supporting us, forced into not seeing us very much at all with working two jobs and still expected to cook and clean while he made no effort to get his own job, criticized her for everything she did as well as prevented her from having literally any friends in or out of work, she got out. Good for her, right? She left the abuse, lived a little, remarried, and had my siblings.

Now here's where it gets sticky.

This left us with our father (me as a sheltered albeit pampered 11 year old and my brother the inexperienced 16 year old who was also pampered) because he fought her in court and somehow won full custody of us. It came to the point where my brother was suddenly the sole money maker for the household (while also in school) in the time frame of a week after she left because dad still refused to get a job but insisted on smoking and drinking a six-pack a day anyway. At the same time his pride got in the way of accepting my mom's help because she had optional child support and when he did accept it he immediately went and spent it on his booze, so she ultimately stopped the fruitless. He cut ties between my mother and us and pretended everything was fine and dandy now that she was gone. When he died of an impending and incurable death triangle (kidney failure, liver failure, and sever diabetes) almost five years later we were left with his debts and he didn't teach us a single thing to get us started. Almost three years later, I left to live with my mother because she found us and got back in touch. My brother rejected her offer and went out on his own, swimming in the unbacked pride dad had set, and since then has been entirely incapable of holding a job for more than a few months before he's fired for one thing or another. He still refuses to speak with her.

Now on my end, everything started fine. I was expected to do some of the chores, finish highschool, and I finally had the chance to learn who my mother was the first time in my life... but once I had settled in I came to understand that she was in a constant defensive state anytime she was questioned and was afraid of moving forward. She suddenly had a late teenage daughter that didn't know a single thing about living. To this day four years later she has had a very easy-to-boil temper. It started as a self defense mechanism, she had to become this way to keep herself alive with my dad as a husband, but she became more than the overseer of the new family, she became an overbearing abrasive woman to make sure things were going her way so that there was no way she could slip back into what she had been living in.

She is now the type of person who considers pain to be a competition, a concept of reality she got from her father, my father, and her generation as a whole. Her existence is work, bills, her new spouse, and figuring out how to set me on my siblings on the best path. She has experienced more pain than I can picture, lived a longer life with many challenges, gave every ounce of effort to get back to her senses and I respect that wholeheartedly, but what I can't seem to respect or handle is her needed to feel like she's right all the time even when she's dead wrong, how deaf she is to the hurtful things she says, and how she goes about getting things done.

It's not just life she tackles harshly now, but pain is measured on her own set of scales. It is her competition in order to feel sturdier about her situations and I see this a lot in her age group, frequently and everywhere, but in the process of all of this she invalidates anybody else's difficulties if they are less than her own. In her eyes, "if I can tolerate it then you should be able to" or "if it's not bothering me then it shouldn't bother you" is the only reality. There are no extra spoons or forks, no in between, no consideration for how somebody else perceives a situation or how much somebody else can handle before they burst, and particularly with people in my age group she holds absolutely no patience. It's almost like she considers us a to be hypochondriacs because we haven't learned how to "suck it up" or "save face" when the physical aches or mental loads are too much, or the shambles they've left our economy in and voting Trump in because they think he will just fix it right up like changing a tire. It's entirely irresponsible, immature, inhumane, and unreasonable. She and most people her age, and people like my father, are incredibly blind to it. I can no longer respect them or trust them.

Now here's the kicker.

She as well as many other mothers claim that people in my age group have tunnel vision, that each day is brand new for us, that we don't know hardship or real stress, when in reality we are all facing the teeth gritting consequences for their choices. We are trying so hard to have optimism and open hearts, the patience they lack, and the wisdom to break free from their mislay of twisting roads and bare minimum guidelines.

As an example of her mindset and the challenge it presents, she believes I am entirely incapable of taking care of stressful situations when she hasn't taught me how, just like my father but and almost an exact opposite sense. My father pampered me and sheltered me, my mother drowns me only in harsh reality and expectations. It's not just her, the society these Generations have built are also malfunctioning and sending catless mixed messages. There are scores of American schools that don't teach a lick of daily knowledge like how to clean without making freaking mustard gas or how to go about sewing on a button. Cooking, paying bills, skills like changing a tire or what to do when the electricity goes out and it's not the breaker. Finances and taxes. They believe that schools only need to teach things like the states and capitals, sports, math, language (but only English and Spanish, I wanted to learn Japanese and sign language guys...), wars, a collection of science subjects, and maybe music. They've cut the budget for anything else. Screw the general public. Even my mom acts like her goal is to become middle class so that my siblings have more opportunities to learn what they need, but she's so fixated on raising her rank in society's standards thinking that it will solve everything she can't comprehend the real issues.

She believes I don't get certain responsibilities done the instant she tells me to because I'm lazy or inconsiderate, but mostly it's because my mind doesn't allow me to multitask like hers does, or I'm not sure how to go about it because I have to teach myself, and therefore it's just one more thing she has to add to the list of what I am not putting any effort into. She doesn't understand, or maybe she doesn't WANT to understand, that I have anxiety when I'm put on the spot because if I don't have a moment to think about what to do she chooses to scream at me instead of simply suggesting a solution or helping me think, and then decides to take over the responsibility with an added bonus of guilt-tripping and gaslighting. After years of this I've grown apathetic to her to the point where she has started calling me heartless and disrespectful. It is incredibly difficult to respect somebody who treats you like a tool that needs fixing but also doesn't make the effort to find out what's wrong in the first place.

I've read so many cases of this, just terrible awful parenting, it's to the extent where it's old news and that's unfortunate because it still hasn't changed. Make situations like these current news, spread them with a warning for our future, this problem has been around for so long it is almost entirely ignored by the older Generations in exchange for the opportunity to push blame. I myself have gotten so tired of asking "what is wrong with them? Why don't they see what they're doing? Don't they understand how harmful this is?" I see my mom giving sexist excuses about the behavior of men into the mind of my younger brother, I see her pushing my sister to tolerate him instead of stopping him from acting this way, and I think, "why can't they take responsibility for the damage they've done, re-evaluate themselves, or feel any regret for the stigma they choose to keep planting in young minds?" At every turn I'm invalidated, and though I'm expected to watch my siblings, I'm not allowed to stop them if they choose to play recklessly, rebel, or cock an attitude if I tell them they need to do something like brush their teeth or put a toy away. Unless there's an obvious chance of injury, I'm prevented from intervention. What kind of children are these siblings of mine going to grow into with this mindset? What are the claims that her generation are going to throw on them when there's no one else to blame? Why am I expected to relent to her demands and stretch and mold myself into her concept of what an adult should be if I can't suggest a compromise or take a stand? How am I or anyone else supposed to know what to do in shaky situations is if were not given the chance to learn, shown an example of how, or charted a better path instead of setting expectations and just demanded to reach them? I can't stand this. Each of these generations all hold individual, unique, brilliant people but the younger ones are treated like entirely different entities based on societies obsolete standards and malformed beliefs. This needs to change.

[whenwomenrefuse]

4 years of physical and psychological abuse

When I was 18, I had two friends who were in a relationship, they had been dating all through high school and started to have problems. They decided an open relationship was the best way to deal with it, and I got involved. Eventually I ended up spending all my time with the guy, while the girl was hanging out with another dude she had met. They broke up, I was there the night it happened, and I remember hearing her telling him what a shitty person he was, and the threatened to kill himself, he tried begging, he swore he was having a panic attack. That should have been my first sign to back off. We eventually started dating because I was constantly picked on growing up, I thought no one would like me but him. He gave lots of advice and acted like a shoulder to cry on before we got together, but after we started dating it was all about his needs and wants. We moved in together, and he began demanding things of me.

He would make me drop whatever I was doing just to go sit by myself at his restaurant job for two hours instead of being alone or hanging with my roommate or friends. If I wanted to go somewhere he had to come with me. If I wanted to stay out and hang with my friends who I hardly ever got to see, he would call me a selfish bitch, because we supposedly had to leave together, and he had work the next day. He would call me all the time, if I didn’t pick up he would instantly accuse me of cheating on him.

The physical abuse began about a year into the relationship. He was a pretty smart guy, presented himself as much smarter than he actually was, but he used this to gaslight me, and manipulate me. When we would fight, he would restrain me, once by choking me. He refused to let me leave and when I got really angry at him, when I started to lose control due to the constant barrage of insults and manipulation, he smacked me and told me I was a crazy unlovable bitch. He claimed I was a while who wanted other men. He also was deeply perverted.

He would try his hardest to cause me pain during sex. I am into rough sex, but he literally would try to hurt me through penetration. He choked me until I blacked out, and when I asked him to stop because I was in pain, he shoved my face into the pillow and continued to have sex with me, pretending to never hear me. I once was in so much pain I began crying, and it only seemed to encourage him, he began thrusting even harder. I was raped like this several times. I told him I didn’t want to have anal sex, he told me it would be easy if we had lube, I said no on multiple occasions. He gave me a UTI and ripped my anus by putting his dick into my ass as hard as he could right when we were having normal vaginal sex, I immediately said I wanted to stop, and screamed out in pain, and he continued to have sex with me, or rather, raped me. I would often consent at the beginning of sex, mostly to keep him from getting aggressive towards me, but halfway through I would be hurting from how hard he was going, and I’d ask him to stop, and he wouldn’t. I even woke up to him trying to get my underwear down in my sleep, because I stopped wanting to have sex all together as the abuse got worse.

I became unemployed due to a mental break I suffered, I have mental health issues that he would constantly use against me. “You’re unemployed because you’re lazy.” “You’re a crazy fucking bitch, I never said those things!”/“You’re a crazy fucking bitch, no wonder you don’t remember me saying those things!” And my most favorite, “You’d be nothing without me.” I hated him. Moths went by and I ended up cheating on him because I felt so ugly and unloved and couldn’t see a way out. I broke up with him very shortly after, in a therapy appointment, to avoid him making a scene or hurting me. After we broke up he texted me saying he had a lump on his neck and he probably has cancer, just to get sympathy. He sexually assaulted one of my closest friends, and he started dating an 18 year old, someone he can easily manipulate being 25. I saw him at the store the other day and he looks like complete garbage.

I’m 22 now, and I still have war flashbacks and anxiety about our time together, honestly I probably always will, but I’ve had a lot of great times and sexual encounters since we’ve broken up, with people far more interesting, intellectual, and attractive than he ever was. I never reported him to the police because I honestly don’t even want to think about it anymore. Reliving the trauma every single day only to maybe get a conviction…it just isn’t worth it to me. I’m still hanging on by a thread. But I’m better than I was. And if you need a way out, fucking dig one if you have to. Claw and kick and fight your way out. Abuse is toxic and you deserve better. Don’t waste your life with someone who doesn’t respect you or your space or your wishes.

[exmormonrants]

Narcissistic Abuse

I’ve been looking at a bunch of articles about narcissistic abuse and how to deal with those who are narcissists if forced to, and I found two websites that are amazing.

The first one gives eleven signs that you are indeed a victim of narcissistic abuse. They are as follows: experiencing dissociation as a survival mechanism, walking on eggshells, putting aside basic needs to please the abuser, struggling with health issues like anxiety and depression, develop a pervasive sense of mistrust, self harming tendencies, self-isolation, comparing yourself to others and even blaming yourself for the abuse, self-sabotage and self-destructive behaviors, protecting your abuser or even gaslighting yourself, and fearing doing what you love and achieving success.

The scary thing that for me other than self harm, which could be replaced with comfort eating, I exhibit all of these traits. Especially recently I have been gaslighting myself since my mother hasn’t attacked in a long while, and my anxiety has skyrocketed as I have been forcing myself to do what I love and achieve success. Achieving success absolutely terrifies me and I never knew why until now.

The problem with this information is trying to figure out what now? Obviously knowing that this is happening is helpful, but the abuse is still happening. For those who are still forced to be with narcissistic parents or family members, how are they able to cope until they can get out?

That’s when the next website comes in, which gives steps that are extremely beneficial. The first true step is to allow the grief process to settle in. It takes incredible strength to be able to realize that your parents won’t truly love you. It takes courage and so much energy to reprogram their hateful words and actions and to take steps to better your situation. Once you are able to start the process of change, there are five steps that are given.

The first is thinking before speaking. Think about the conversation and plan accordingly. Figure out what triggers their abuse and make sure to not set those off. Set reasonable expectations of what will happen. They aren’t going to magically change and suddenly become the parent that you want desperately. They are most likely going to stay exactly as they are.

The second step is to remember that it’s all about them. Expect that all conversation will turn to the narcissist. Anything related to you will go back to them. My mom does this especially, everything is always about her or what she thinks. To help with this, keep answers short and sweet and avoid giving away too much information. Narcissists will use information against you and to their advantage so keep it at a minimum. Since narcissists will turn the conversation towards them anyways, I found that a big reason why my Mom hasn’t attacked me in several months is because I purposely make it so we are only talking about her. I might talk shortly about myself or my take on something, but the conversation always goes to her. Sure, this might lead to me having to listen to her complaining about how everything doesn’t meet her expectations for a few hours at times since her narcissism has isolated herself from her friends and anyone to talk to, but it is better to give up a few hours of my time talking about her than having several days of screaming and manipulation.

The next three are things I still need to work on, and that’s due to them being a lot harder than shutting up and listening, as they require standing up for yourself. The third is to refuse being interrogated. A tactic narcissists use often is overwhelming you to a state of heightened anxiety so you are less able to think straight. My mom would start screaming and slamming doors to make me not be able to think clearly and make the whole situation worse. This is about power and control for the narcissist. As soon as this begins, you need to slow down your breathing and remain calm despite the urge to match the abuser’s energy. Answer the question you wish the narcissist asked instead of what was asked and follow it with a compliment. The compliment may be confusing, but it can disarm and distract narcissists which will decrease the hostile energy. Know that this will take several times in order to work. The first time I did this my mom screamed even louder saying I didn’t love her and was a horrible daughter and slammed doors and told dad that she couldn’t be nice to me but had to show who had the most power. After several times of this however, my mom has given up yelling since it isn’t working but instead turns to other tactics.

Verbal assaults are another tactic narcissists use to those they deem as a threat. They may be aggressive (you are lazy), passive-aggressive (your sibling is so successful), or guilt ridden (I invested so much in you). The narcissist is trying to display their superiority, and if you become defensive then they will have won. Instead, the comment should be ignored or you should say “that’s not appropriate” before again offering a distracting compliment. Even if these words hurt incredibly, forcing yourself to look like it does absolutely nothing will eventually lead to the narcissist stopping since it isn’t giving them what they desire. I am currently in the middle of this tactic and I can say that after the first few times of ignoring, it has indeed worked.

The last step to remember is to be free of victimization. This step is important, since this is what a narcissist will use when all else fails. They make themselves become a victim to guilt trip you into submission. They use a “woe is me” routine that is customized to your weaknesses and vulnerability. It is very effective, because otherwise they wouldn’t use this. It helps to view this as a two year old tantrum. The more positive or negative attention that two year old gets, the more it will be repeated. The key is to ignore their conduct entirely. Just like a two year old, it will take several attempts before the new reality sets in and is not repeated. My mom definitely uses this as we are transitioning past the verbal assaults. Just two days ago she whimpered and used baby talk saying that she felt incredibly awful with pain and oh could you pleeeaase pick up your baby brother? I said yes, and within a second she was talking normally on her phone with someone acting quite the opposite of what she was portraying. What is important is to act like they are a two year old and ignore the victimization while rewarding normal behavior. I hate it when Mom uses this tactic since I know it is manipulation. However, if she asks normally for a small favor like helping hang up a frame or picking up a few items from my room and I refuse and don’t do it, then she will feel like she is forced to use victimization to get what she wants.

It could be a few weeks to a few months, but if you are determined and dedicated with these steps, these new boundaries will become habits for the adult and the impact of the narcissist will be greatly diminished. It results in being able to be in a much safer and healthier environment, even if it feels like your parent has been diminished to a small child. It takes incredible strength to implement these steps, especially in the beginning. Their tempers will flare up as they suddenly feel threatened and try to get you to behave as you once did. However, if you keep at it, they will eventually adapt to it and the relationship will go from extremely toxic to bearable. It takes extreme bravery to implement these steps, and I have so much love for all of you who must deal with narcissistic parents <3

Sources again because it’s seriously an excellent read:

https://blogs.psychcentral.com/recovering-narcissist/2017/08/11-signs-youre-the-victim-of-narcissistic-abuse/?li_source=LI&li_medium=popular17

https://pro.psychcentral.com/exhausted-woman/2016/07/how-to-set-adult-boundaries-with-narcissistic-parents/

[2021sarahqshenanigans]

June 20, 2021

I finally wrote about it...

Dear Dad,

There’s this line in my favorite book “She feels that even she doesn’t know what her family are like, that she’s never adequate in her attempts to describe them, that she oscillates between exaggerating their behavior, which makes her feel guilty, or downplaying it, which also makes her feel guilty, but a different guilt, more inwardly directed.” There are no better words to articulate how I feel about our family. And more specifically you.

There are times, many times, that I’ve chastised myself for being too sensitive. Over-dramatic. Gaslighting myself into believing that our relationship wasn’t as problematic as it felt. Times that I’d look around at all the people enabling you, that loved you, and spending time with you. and I would feel like a garbage person for not understanding why. For having such a different narrative.

And it was so lonely. Not knowing what they saw in you, that I couldn’t. Watching them be comfortable and content with the ‘love’ that you gave them. Trying to decode why I wasn’t satisfied with that same love, and eventually coming to the conclusion that it was because it wasn’t the same love. Because it wasn’t love. Or maybe to you it was.

But lately, I’ve been trying to rack my brain for moments, literally any moment, that I felt happy, and safe around you. And it’s heartbreaking, because I can’t think of 1. 1 moment that I enjoyed your company. Any conversation that lasted more than 10 minutes between just the 2 of us.

And it didn’t count if you were drunk. Because that is when I felt the least safe. Because any rare declaration of kindness just came out maudlin and slurred. Like a sweet so saccharine it hurt my teeth.

So I villainized you. And often over-villainized you. Because it gave me control over the narrative. Painted you as this bad person that I wanted nothing to do with. But in truth... You were my dad, and you treated me like my mere existence was this tremendous burden. An inconvenience.

Like maybe, if I was a completely different person, a person that was easier to digest, someone less broken and needy, that then and maybe then you could love me. But not the me that I actually was. And I don’t understand why.

I didn’t want much. I just wanted a dad I could hug, without feeling panic. A dad that was kind. That believed my pain. Both physical and mental. That didn’t shame me for twisting an ankle, or feeling sad. And I don’t why that was so hard for you. To believe me. To tell me that my feelings and my pain were valid.

Maybe because it made you feel like you failed. And you did. But not because it was ‘you’ that caused them. It was because you resented me for them. Blamed me. Gave me all of this unkind dialogue for situations I had no control over. Words like stupid. And selfish. Lazy. Arrogant. Manipulative. Fat. Unkind. Rude. Ungrateful. Spoiled... Unloveable.

I spent years in a state of mental inertia . Going to Doctor after Doctor in the hope that they could give me some magical diagnosis to explain why I was the way I was. And that once I got it, I could finally move on with my life. I could rub it in your face, and the face of every person that ever doubted or shamed me, that made my pain seem small and say ‘HA, see this word here? See this explanation. I bet you feel really shitty for treating me the way that you did. Don’t you?’

And, to be fair, that wasn’t on you. It was on me. On the girl that felt she was owed an apology before she could move on. From you. From mom. Sydney. From teachers. And Doctors. God. Mental health institutions. Friends that walked out of my life. Boys that treated me like an object. A town that never understood. Money my family didn’t have. Privilege that was never available to me. A body that couldn’t sleep. A body that ate too much. Joints that would dislocate. Seizures that made me piss myself. Emotions I could never regulate. A brain that made me question my own sanity. That fractured at the slightest inconvenience. The years I lost, when the simple act of not killing myself was considered a ‘good day’. But I’m not going to get that apology, am I?

And I don’t think I need one any longer. Not to move on, at least. I think I’m done trying to rationalize and neatly explain the ‘what’ and the ‘why’. I’m done trying to rationalize my pain in a way that would make others understand it. Done trying to decode the meaning and the purpose behind it. And I’m confident that it was real, and true. And I do think there’s more to it. But I’m done searching for it. And I will no longer give space to those who scorned and shamed me for it.

Done trying to find the meaning behind it all. Because there wasn’t any. It didn’t make me stronger. It made me depressed and scared and stagnant. Drowning in my own ennui. It broke me. But I don’t have to stay broken.

You, Dad, are made of stone. You’ll never change. You don’t want to change. You're exactly the same emotionally stunted man you’ve always been. But I’ve changed. And I’m done trying to chip away at the pathetic monolith of your being. Done begging for a love that I don’t even want from you anymore.

But I’m furious. Furious that you get to pet the dog. And go out on the boat. And hang out with my mom. That you’re growing tomatoes. Playing golf. Starting a new job. Furious that you’ve claimed to give up drinking but in a way that allowed you to not have to take responsibility for the pain and hurt you caused me. Furious that I’ve sacrificed so much, for you to simply find relief in my absence. Furious that given the choice between going to therapy to sort out the plethora of fucked up deeply integrated toxicity of your thoughts and behaviors and between losing me forever that it was an easy choice. And you didn’t choose me.

It breaks my heart that my mom loves you. Even though you’re made of stone. Even though she’s better than you will ever be. I hate you for making it hard to look her in the eye. For making it so that I can no longer love her the way that I used to. And I do love her. But not how I loved her before. Because she loves you. And you broke my heart. And she still loves you, despite it all. And it’s not a competition. If you make her happy, I want her to be happy. You better make her fucking happy.

And I want you to know that I’m going to be happy. That I’m going to make a beautiful life for myself. And you don’t get to be a part of it. And I’m not going to thank you. And I’m not going to wish you well. We’re just done. 

Happy Fucking Father’s Day.

[epiphanyx7]

Personal rant:

A long time ago I read something about Stockholm syndrome. It’s not the DSM definition, just something that was being used to describe some kind of long-term abusive situation. I don’t remember the details, or where I heard it, or anything definitive about the memory itself. I just remember that someone, at some time, told me that Stockholm Syndrome existed because people will start to equate love with the absence of abuse. And this isn’t meant to be about Stockholm Syndrome specifically, but I remember at the time feeling that something in that explanation was profound. Love is not the absence of abuse, and it’s a problem if you start to confuse the two.

The thing is that I only sort of understood it at the time. I had learned as a teenager that it didn’t matter what I did, or how I acted. Abuse was an inevitability, and my behaviour didn’t effect it. If I was good, I would be lied to and manipulated and blamed for misbehaviour and told I was worthless, and I would be hit because my mother was angry. And if I was bad, those things would still happen but at least I could tell myself it was actually my fault, that I deserved it. And it was easy to fall into that trap, of thinking that I was in control because I made sure that when she abused me, it was because I’d done something terrible to arouse her anger.

And in the times between outbursts, I knew that the cycle was resetting and I’d be back where I started soon enough. I never thought she loved me during the times when she was nice and friendly, I knew it was a front she was using to manipulate the world around us. I never once believed she would love me, that she would care about me, or that she’d stop abusing me. I wanted it, of course I wanted it-- I was a kid, what kid doesn’t want their parents’ love? But I never expected to have it. I thought it wasn’t there, that she was incapable of loving anyone.

But for the longest time, I thought that my father loved me. I assumed it based on childhood memories of good times-- of when I was sick and he let me cuddle with him, of him letting me fall asleep on him in church, of the way he would intervene when my mother’s abuse crossed the line from emotional to physical. I remembered those things and thought they were love, because I genuinely couldn’t understand how any parent could not love their child.

But the thing is, it’s equally hard to understand how my dad could be the unfeeling, uncaring piece of shit he is -- the uncaring, soulless bastard he comports himself as-- if those memories are correct. I’m sure it’s possible for both sets of experiences to be equally valid, it’s just that it’s not probable.

The thing is, my father’s always been super... lazy, when it comes to putting in efforts for his actual relationships. Entitled and lazy, becuase while he does his work efficiently and is more than willing to go the extra mile for the things he cares about, it’s hard to believe that I’ve ever quallified as something he cares about.

When it comes down to relationships, he follows the path of least resistance. He was always more willing to give me his money than his time. I thought he was bad at communicating, that he genuinely didn’t know how else to be a father. But the thing is, after seeing him interact with his son, it’s hard to compare the relationship he has with his daughters and not feel like I’ve been cheated. He doesn’t care what I have to say. He asks how I am, but he doesn’t want to know about my problems. He wouldn’t let me live with him when I moved across the country (although, I am skeptical of the accuracy of that statement. Given that my sisters lied to get me here, I wouldn’t be surprised if they lied about asking him at all, even though I think I’m still giving him too much credit). I asked him to teach me to drive, and he offered to pay for driver’s ed instead. Sure, there’s no reason why I should see this as a slight, but it points to him not being willing to spend time in my company when he could just throw money at the problem instead.

The thing is, I have gotten so used to being gaslighted and manipulated by my family that I don’t even notice anymore when they’re being unreasonable, I can only notice my own feelings and reactions. So maybe I’m overreacting, but I have cPTSD so maybe I’m not.

I’ll put it like this:

I am looking back at my childhood and asking myself, “Is this love? Or is is the absence of abuse?” And the overwhelming majority of it is merely the absence of abuse. And it’s kind of shocking to me, now, because I had never questioned those happy childhood memories I had. I’d clung to them because they comforted me, but I can’t help but remember how controlling and unreasonable he was. And most of the church stuff was unreasonable even to the other people in the church! I can’t help but wonder-- was it because he actually believed in that garbage, or was it just a way of making sure his wife and children were isolated and completely under his thumb?

Because the real effect of all his ridiculous religious rules was: I didn’t have friends. I couldn’t have friends, because they’d want to watch movies or go bowling or eat meat, and I couldn’t because those things were “worldly” and thus the temptations of Satan. The only people who wouldn’t tempt me with the devil’s influences were other people from our church-- which was in another city, far away. People who I could only see once a week, and never socially because they lived too far away.

And when I finally did start going to public school -- (and the only reason that happened was because my mother was fed up with homeschooling) -- I was the kid who dressed weird, ate weird food, and wasn’t allowed to do literally anything at all because of a strange religion nobody had even heard of. How much of my ability to make friends was stunted because of my own issues, and how much because my parents kept me deliberately isolated from outside influences?

I know it’s probably not fair blame everything on them, it’s just hard to look at my own childhood and think “okay but was that real? Was that because they cared about me or because they were abusers?” especially when the overwhelming conclusion I’ve come to is that most of it was because they were abusers. My father didn’t abuse me, not because he was any less of an abuser than my mother was or because he loved me, but rather because I was too young to really understand the psychological conditioning he used to control my mother and sisters, and eventually because by the time I was old enough to actually be effected, my mother had gotten rid of him.

The weirdest thing is I knew that what he was doing was wrong. I knew that his controlling behaviour was bad, my sisters and I were good at ducking the rules and toeing the letter of the law if not the spirit. I remember at a young age, conspiring with my sisters to distract the parents so we could watch tv. We bribed our youngest sister to pretend to “fall” down the stairs because she was still learning to walk, and then while my parents were comforting her, we watched cartoons. We knew that we’d be in trouble if we were caught, but it was just... worth it to us. And there were lots of other things we did, things that we lied about and compared notes with other girls at our church in order to have ideas. We wore clear nailpolish and told our father that we used hairspray to make our nails shiny. We used clear mascara as well. We raced down the block to stop the ice cream truck in front of someone else’s house. I remember lying to  my parents and telling them that my older sister had a headache and had gone to bed, because I knew she snuck out to go to a party. We all did stuff like that and we thought it was normal, we thought it was what children were supposed to do.

And the thing is, as an adult now I know that children are people and that you couldn’t control their thoughts if you wanted to, and you shouldn’t want to anyways. I know it but it’s so hard to look at my own childhood and realize that a lot of the punishments we accrued were abuse. Who beats a child with a leather belt because they watched cartoons?

There are lots of incidents of abuse that were invisible to me up until now because my parents treated it like discipline. When it comes down to it, even though I knew what the punishment would be, I did the things anyways because the rules didn’t make sense to me. Who tells their child that they can’t watch TV? Ever, I mean, not just when they’re grounded. Who tells their children that they can’t watch Cinderella, because it “contains witchcraft, and witches are evil”? Who tells their children that the punishment for lying is being beaten with a leather belt, and that the punishment for illicit tv watching is being beaten with a leather belt, and the punishment for not doing your chores is being beaten with a leather belt, and the punishment for being disrespectful is being beaten with a leather belt, and that the punishment for --  for everything, for reading a book with supernatural elements, or talking back, or being rude, or being upset in public, or making a scene, or not memorizing a bible verse, or dressing inappropriately, or having a boyfriend, or really just anything at all -- is being beaten?

Because that was it. That was the only “punishment” my parents used to control our behaviour when we were little. Sure, the number of times we were hit varied for specific infractions, but it wasn’t like we knew ahead of time. Any time the rules were broken, we were beaten, and the rules were subject to change whether we knew it or not. Add to that the psychological abuse, the overly controlling and possessive behaviour, the fact that I know at least one time when my father choked my older sister almost to unconsciousness when she was only three years older than me (so she couldn’t have been more than 12 at the time) means that he was as bad as my mother was. Just, not to me. Not where I saw it.

And I knew, I knew when I read my mother’s journal that he had been controlling and abusive sexually. I knew that he had been horrible to her, but I didn’t much care because she decided to abuse me and my sisters instead of leaving him or killing him. So now I am looking at my childhood thinking, did he ever love me? Have I been making assumptions this whole time because I’ve confused a lack of abuse-- in this case, a lack of direct abuse that I recognized as abuse-- with love? And I can’t tell. I have no idea. I know, intellectually, that both my parents are at least emotionally invested enough in my physical well-being that they were both upset when I was hospitalized. My mother held my hand while I was in the ICU, my father apparently was pretty distraught. But then I remember --- brief flashes of understanding as a child, I remember seeing my sister burn his prized possession in the fireplace and having some idea that she’d be... safer if I was with her when he found out, safer because dad wasn’t going to abuse me. I knew he was dangerous, even back then. But my mom kicked him out before he was a danger to me and my younger sister, and then he was mostly just a voice on the phone, someone not paying child support or not paying enough, someone who was entirely absent.

And now I look at him and I can’t help but think, okay. There’s my father the rapist. There’s my father who abused my mother, who used to use a leather belt to beat children who were under the age of 10. That’s my dad.

And I have dealt with all the emotional fallout of my mother as abuser, but now I have the sudden realization that I have never dealt with my father as an abuser. I have all this pent up rage and frustration and helplessness, and I know it’s only coming out now because I’ve been in closer contact with him this past two months than I have been since he lived with us when I was a kid, but at the same time I never had the words or awareness to understand it. So now I’m just... hurt. I’m hurt because I know that nothing has changed, but it feels like something monumental has happened. In a moment I lost the loving father I thought I had, I lost all the happy memories from my childhood based around him, and instead I’m stuck in the world which is objectively the same, but subjectively feels different. Now I’m a person who was abused and neglected by both her parents instead of “just” one.

The thing is I always wanted to believe that someone in my family loved me. And maybe they do, I won’t argue because I’m aware that I’m terrible at recognizing affection from other people because of all the abuse and neglect in my childhood. I don’t see it when it’s there. But it’s so fucking difficult, because I’m so used to being neglected that whenever people try to care for me, I feel like it has to be an obligation or a duty. I feel like the person I appear to be to others is a mask I have to wear, and that I’m ‘tricking’ people into caring for me. And then I have some sort of imposter syndrome thing going on in my own life, where I get angry that people see the mask or care about the mask, I feel like the real me is getting shafted in that transaction, but I’m also constantly putting up barriers to people knowing the real me, because I have to keep everything secret and safe so it can’t be used to manipulate and hurt me. And what’s truly stupid is the fact that even though the mask is me, it’s my public face, but I still feel like people can’t care about the real me if they care about the public me, even though it’s all me! It’s all one person! I don’t have multiple personalities that I know of, so I shouldn’t be jealous of or resentful of my own damn self, and I shouldn’t be angry when people care about the parts of me that I choose to let them see. But I can’t stop.

Ugh. Mental health is so fucking hard.

</rant>

[boombitxh]

Scandal Ruminations 7X03

Some unvarnished thoughts about the last episode and the little things that I thought were poignant.

 Projection is the root of all misunderstanding, and this is the case between Fitz & Marcus. Marcus arrives refreshed and ready to get to work, however Fitz is not in that mindset yet. Marcus interprets this as Fitz being lazy, I interpret it as Fitz taking a breather after being confined to a political pressure cooker for the past 8 years and beyond. This is the first time Fitz is entirely on his own, and we observe his willingness to be self-sufficient via the driving, shopping, cooking etc.

What we also see is Fitz coming face to face with his ghosts, especially the ghost of his father and the ghost of Olivia. The gun is prominent throughout every single act in the episode as its significance intensifies. In the beginning, it is literally stored, as you’d store a relic or something you’ve forgotten that doesn’t bear any importance on your life in the present. The gun is a symbolic callback to Big Jerry, who gave him the gun when he became governor. A congratulatory item in exchange of a professional achievement. Marcus asks Fitz where the revolver came from and who gave it to him but Fitz casually ignores it which indicates he is not interested in discussing his father. The level of danger escalates each time the revolver makes a new appearance, culminating with Fitz sitting on the rocking chair looking rather suicidal.

 The ghost of Olivia is obviously represented via the home he lives in; however, it is empty. As he said “She is not here”, not only is Olivia physically absent, she is also a former shell of herself as other characters have noted in past episodes. I thought this was a great double entendre. Also, this ties into the Lost Girls concept the show has been playing with. Olivia is missing from herself. The upcoming episode is titled “Lost Girls” so I guess we will revisit this concept of absence down the line.

 Back to the matter at hand!

  It is understandable for Fitz to find himself in this stupor because he is confronting the reality of his life, he has finally out-achieved his father even though he is not present to witness it, proving himself, and confronting the fact that the life he dreamt of with Olivia is not his reality. Fitz is faced with the sacrifices he made, reconciling the fact that he was president but finding himself without the domesticity and love of Olivia which he so desperately has shown he wants more than anything.

 Marcus does not know Fitz, so his expectations of him are not based on reality. From the moment Marcus begins discussing Olivia with Fitz he is met with a wall of resistance. Also, the way Marcus introduces the idea of what kind of place Olivia will hold in his presidential library, using Monica Lewinsky as an example, tells us as the audience that Marcus does not have a single idea of what type of relationship Fitz & Olivia had. Marcus eventually explodes and reduces Olivia to a “home wrecking black ho.” Talk about making assumptions here Marcus. Jeez.

  Fitz carefully chooses to highlight her professional achievements as opposed to their relationship, evidence that he is rejecting thinking about their past. We see Fitz reject the notion of relationship repeatedly throughout the episode.

Not including their relationship coincides with Olivia’s desire to not have the type of relationship that is for public scrutiny (& consumption), yet the opposite of what Fitz has always wanted: to demonstrate his love for Olivia in public. I felt that in a way he was honoring her wishes. I don’t think Olivia would like for her relationship with Fitz to be showcased instead of her accomplishments.

  Other things I thought were significant:

 -Rowan using the Malcolm X speech when talking to Fitz. “You’ve been hoodwinked! Bamboozled… etc” This corresponds to the racial undercurrent of the episode, and goes hand in hand with Steve’s activism. Here you have two different black men, both who could use Fitz’s help in their cause and who have different ways of going about it, much like MLK and Malcom X during the Civil Rights Movement.  Clearly, Steve’s need is indirect and comes to Fitz via Marcus. All of this serves to point out that you need the patriarchy to understand these problems, to take charge & to effect change because it is white men who hold all the power for the time being. This has already been mentioned by someone else so I will not go on and on about it.

 -The Olitz signs in the beginning serve three purposes. 1) Tongue in cheek humor that people root for Olitz, a nod to the audience. 2) The normalization of Olitz in canon, the open acceptance canceling out any public perception problems they may have faced in the past. 3) A bitter reminder for Fitz that they are not together.

 -They were smoking Romeo & Julieta cigars. There are plenty of other Cuban cigars that are much more recognizable, like Cohiba for example. This was a nod to the star-crossed lovers that are Olivia & Fitz. (Fitz smoking that cigar and drinking scotch will forever haunt all my VERY pervy dreams. **fans self**)

 -If there is anything I hate it’s when characterization is manipulated to serve the plot more than the character.  We have spent the past two seasons watching Fitz grow. In fact, he has grown so much that we had verbal confirmation of him acknowledging his privilege so I found it disingenuous to have him act so clueless and racially insensitive this episode. I completely understand the tone of the episode, and I accept that Fitz is the stand-in for the patriarchy, but I felt they were doing him a disservice. They made him lazy and entitled so that Marcus could bash him and metaphorically critique the white patriarchy. I am all for toppling the patriarchy but I feel like Fitz is the eternal punching bag on here, and while Mellie obviously enjoys tons of privilege that other characters lack her behavior goes unchecked. I don’t like the hypocrisy of how only Fitz is open for criticism when he is the only character left with any inkling of self-reflection, and who always shows that he understands and listens when people are speaking to him. Maybe it’s because Fitz is the only person on here left that has any humanity and I’m sensitive towards that. I do not disagree with the inequalities Marcus highlighted, they are all VERY real problems that we need to tackle as a society, I just felt that Fitz was both the perfect (patriarchy) and imperfect (sensitive & understanding, always ends up arriving at the right thing) conduit for the episode.

 -Mellie…. Oh, Mellie, girl, you are so annoying even when you are trying to make sense. She says Fitz is a “good man” but paints him as some helpless fool whose only offering in this life is as a golden ticket for other people.  She basically reduces Fitz to the circumstances of his birth: he is both rich & white, something he obviously cannot and did not choose. (Juxtaposes the same concept that one cannot choose to be born black & brown and must contend with the lack of privileges that come from this which is what Marcus/Steve/Rowan was (were) here for in this episode.) I’m so glad that once Mellie got done using Fitz she still finds the time to instruct others on how to use him as well. * HEAVY SARCASM *

 -BTW, Rowan is totally bamboozling Fitz. He is appealing to his love for Olivia so that he can manipulate him into weakening her defenses back in DC. If Olivia is weakened, then Rowan has a higher chance of stealing B613 from her. It’s totally in Scandal fashion to present us with a narrative and then perform the reversal, in this case it appears as if Rowan is experiencing some sort of remorse but it will probably all be some big joke and long-term gaslight for Olivia. Oh, and Olivia, you got a fox in your henhouse. There is only one way Rowan can know about Luna’s death: Jake. It just so happens that Olivia cuts Jake out of her life romantically and that same span of time is when Rowan finds out about Luna’s death. Something significant enough that he can use as leverage to appeal to Fitz. Something doesn’t smell right.

 THANK YOU VERY MUCH TO @sugarsugar95 FOR ALWAYS HEARING ME OUT AND FOR HELPING ME EXPRESS MY THOUGHTS WHEN THEY ARE JUST INTIALLY TINY FETUS IDEAS 

[newwavefeminism]

How Feminists Need to Stop Worrying & Learn to Embrace Critique in the Post Women’s March Era

Erasing a history due to your lack of respect for the sacrifices of the marginalized

It goes without saying that the Civil Rights Movement wasn’t some extra curricular activity. It was a movement that grew from one of the most violent eras of our nation’s history. Civil Right’s leaders put their lives and safety on the line, literally, for black folks to be seen as human beings & full citizens. Civil Rights leaders were assassinated for working to make the invisible humanity of black folk, visible. Many of the issues the leaders called in to question still persist and contribute to black death and injustice. The Million Man March. Million Women March and the March on Washington are all events that have happened for black liberation. The Womens March on Washington, previously titled the Million Women March, obviously lifted inspiration from the work of black activists in the past. Whether or not you support the march, ignoring the fact the movement was co-opted, or acting like it “doesn’t matter” erases the work of Civil Rights leaders, is disrespectful and racist. FULL STOP.

In the same vein, A Day Without A Woman, despite whatever international examples you’re reaching to present, was inspired by the recent A Day Without Immigrants. (This has been verified by the organizers.) This was a very specific collective act designed to counter the violent anti-immigrant narrative in our country right now. Our country’s xenophobia is violent, harmful, and is splitting families apart. Yet our country also pretends that it doesn’t have a dependency immigrant workforces, while we paint immigrants as violent, lazy scourges on society. A day without immigrants was designed to counter xenophobic language and highlight humanity. Once again, co-opting this erases that point - and whether or not you plan to strike you simply CAN NOT close your eyes & ears and ignore that this erasure is very real. Denying this only cements the erasure and devalues the initial message even more.

These aren’t just nit-picky examples. This is to explain that this is a very important trend that deserves to be acknowledged. Ignoring it doesn’t make it go away and it makes it impossible for future events to reflect any type of genuine self awareness.

The invisible labor of marginalized solidarity

Despite the obvious evidence of the Womens March Co-Opting and erasing the labor and efforts of Civil Rights leaders, many black women attended the march. Even I have posted speeches given by black women at the Womens March, and followed it very closely. It is a false narrative to assert that it is mutually exclusive for one to be critical of a movement or event as well as supportive of its parts, some attendees, or learn from the fruits of its existence. As a black female who attended a PWI, I am no stranger to this. For 4 years I learned at an insutition that fundamentally came at odds with my marginalized identity in most ways. (Unsurprisingly my classmates and I were also faced with the response of “you should be grateful to be here” whenever we voiced dissent and critique - so way to be consistent y'all). But to my earlier point, there were many who came out in droves to support and participate in the women’s march who’s identities may not have been represented, celebrated, or fully recognized by the leadership/crowd of their local march. This is not new to the marginalized and it does not have to be explained to us, especially to black women, that in feminism you often are asked to join in and support a cause that may not support or respect the individual intricacies of your identity.

When feminist communities mirror abusive relationships

Perhaps there is a belief that a movement can only grow to represent and support you and your needs if you stand inside of it, put in work and push it to grow. The main problem with that framework is that often times it gets written as this: Put in labor and work if you expect us to validate your humanity. Don’t expect us to want to help you if you keep criticizing what we’re doing wrong. How do you expect me to respect your humanity if you don’t present me your research and annotated bibliography, & an action plan? When unchecked it is wildly abusive, and as the voices of the marginalized are silenced it is poisonous. It loses support, and those who leave for their own mental health, humanity and self value are seen as nefarious detractors who are dividing the movement.

Pedagogy of the oppressors

At the end of the day, this poison looks like marginalized folks speaking out and having their very valid, well documented experiences & critique dismissed as ignorance and naivety. There is this nefarious idea within the greater movement that any dissent is a threat and needs to be taken down. There is also the condescending undertones of “if I don’t know what you’re talking about, it’s obvious unintelligent babble.” Even in instances where someone is merely minding their own business and expressing a thought that exists in the margins of greater feminism, white supremacy comes out of THE WOODWORKS to silence, gaslight and beat down.

Here’s just a brief breakdown of the different, racist & condescending ways others tried to silence me yesterday when I briefly spoke about mere reservations towards the way “A Day Without a Woman” co-opted “A Day Without Immigrants” and how the Womens March on Washington was also co-opting and erasing Civil Rights work.

Imply my points are overused and doesn’t really matter (that the “movement” matters over our humanity, those who want their humanity recognizes are whining)

Question my basic understanding of what the definition of a strike is and how it has worked through history (if she disagrees, she must be ignorant & I must educate her in all my glorious privilege)

Tell me to stop “nit-picking” and “get involved" (calling for critical thought about the erasure of marginalized groups is merely unimportant nit-picking. That I need to stop complaining and continue to provide free labor to those who don’t respect my humanity)

“we all must make sacrifices” (because my black ass doesn’t know what sacrifice is. read: YOU need to sacrifice your humanity for US)

(My personal favorite) I care about what you’re saying, but I think you need to explain this a little more and provide more analysis. (I apparently didn’t care enough to go back and read the 5 other times you already answered this question and explained your point. I think you’re an unintelligent and I’m hoping that if I question you, you’ll realize you’re unintelligent)

tl;dr?

Full disclosure, I’m not saying anything that is particularly ground breaking. I think this is why I’m so surprised that the negative responses came out at full force last night. I really didn’t think that these things needed to still be explained in 2017, but I heavily underestimated the twilight in which people get engrossed into mainstream feminist movements and activities. I’m not telling you to stop supporting to women march, I’m not telling your not to strike. I honestly don’t care what people do either way, i’ll respect your decision one way or another. But what I don’t respect is this willful ignorance and desperate desire to shout out dissent within a movement. 

So just one last reminder: If your movement tells you anyone in the margins of it that poses a critique or challenge needs to be shot down or silenced (as opposed to understood or listened to) - you really need to stop worshipping that movement. Back away from the keyboard, avoid hitting that reblog button, and go do some research.

Further reading:

 Why I’m Skipping The Women’s March on Washington - Jamilah Lemieux

Why I Do Not Support The Women’s March on Washington - Brittany Toliver

[plantohead]

I just rant about how terrible my “mother” was so yeah that’s all. Basically, I legitimately hope she dies soon because right now she’s lashing out about her beef with me and hurting my sisters and I’m not cool with that, but I’m also in no position to put myself between them because I really can’t handle going back into that situation. So yah, this terrible person should just drop dead, preferably soon, like tomorrow maybe.

Sue thinks I would be giving myself a bad image if I aired our dirty laundry but joke's on her because she's the only one that looks bad. She also thinks I'm telling lies, but joke's on her the only liar is her because anyone who knows me knows I am a terrible liar. I can't even play the card game BS. Middle-school me was more hardened than I am now.

Sue was a toxic af person and I can’t believe it took me so long to realize it. She planted the seeds at an early age and undermine my confidence, agency, ability to stand up for myself and enforce boundaries, and my happiness and wellbeing. She would say terrible things, gaslight me, and was all around just horribly emotionally abusive. She made Dan into a toxic person, too. She made me toxic. She plays family members against each other. You had to side with her on everything, and everyone else was wrong about something, and usually something big. Dan was not a good husband. Her oldest child was ungrateful. Her middle child was too shallow and didn't love her. Her youngest child couldn't learn anything right. Oh, but she was never in the wrong. How dare you insinuate such a thing. The mere suggestion could send her flying into a rage. I'd say she was a screaming banshee or a screaming harpy, but the truth is she outscreams them both. Simultaneously. As in, if both were screaming, she'd still win. Distance doesn’t help, either. If she can’t scream at you in person, she’ll just send you more than 300 texts in one day (I let them accumulate one day and literally my notifications were over 300) telling you that you’re a terrible person and the worst child ever and you’re such a loser, you won’t amount to anything, oh and your boyfriend doesn’t actually love because only a mother could. Rinse and repeat for the next 5 days.

I have grown up being told I was lazy. I believed that for the longest time, and I'm still unlearning it. I was lazy despite having learned to play piano, flute, and guitar and having a brief stint with the violin and piccolo. I was lazy despite maintaining high grades while being in marching band in high school and joining the jazz band in my last year (I was terrible by the way, I'm through and through a Classical/Romantic period pianist). I was lazy in uni when I earned top grades while going to concerts, attending ballroom classes, training in wushu, taking additional credits, reading books outside of school, sketching, studying for the LSAT, rehearsing in a band, writing songs, and writing a thesis. She never believed I studied because all she ever saw were photos of when I was having fun. No shit sherlock, I take like 100+ photos and 50 videos of just one concert, and I'm not going to take pictures of my calculus notebooks, please... But so be it, I was lazy, and now every time my work ethic comes into question, I spiral out of control and become exactly what I'm supposed to be: lazy.

I was told that I was ungrateful, hateful, and oversensitive. Never mind that being told you are ungrateful and hateful would lead to some sensitive feelings. Never mind that you are supposed to raise the child you so graciously decided to give life to because it's your goddamn responsibility. Never mind that said child might occasionally hate you when you slam your hands on the table and scream at the top of your lungs at them and call them names, maybe hit them across the face a couple times. Never mind that I might have been ungrateful because you always said you owed me nothing when yeah, you did. Parenting. Love. Some emotional stability. Maybe you should actually try it out. Oh wait, you blew it, go rot in hell.

I was raised such that my talents and accomplishments were turned into an extension of Sue, while all my perceived faults were because I wasn't good enough. I have been made to doubt myself with guilt-tripping, manipulation, and gaslighting. Get this: after I came out about my sexual abuse, at some point I asked to log into my Facebook account on Sue's tablet. I forgot to log out when I returned to uni, but I didn't think it would be a problem. No, I was wrong, BIG PROBLEM. Without my knowledge or consent, Sue monitored all my Facebook activity and messages. She was "worried" because of my abuser. You know, the one that had fled to Japan 7 years ago and who I had blocked on Facebook. That one. When I found out what she was doing, she had the gall to tell me she was doing it for my own good. Not only that, but then this August, I brought it up again because it unfortunately became relevant AGAIN, and she had the audacity to first deny she ever did such a thing. I told her I still had records of it somewhere in my email archive because those things never die. I KNEW I had them, but I hated how I doubted myself for just a second because I was so used to this type of gaslighting. After she realized she couldn't get away with the lie, she played the guilt card again. It was in my best interests. It was because she loved me and was worried. BULL.SHIT. You just fucking lied to my face! You're just trying to cover your ass. What she did was complete disrespect for my boundaries and agency. And that's just one example out of my entire frickin LIFE.

Sue also always made everything about herself. When my flight to Albany for the bar exam was canceled, I panicked, had a meltdown, and cried. Of course, later, Sue would keep saying she was so distraught for me that she also cried. Cool?? Okay??? What, you want a cookie for that or something? Why are you telling me this five times? (I’m not kidding, I counted, it was at least five times.) Or whenever I was having a depressive episode about my abuse, she made it about herself. Oh, she couldn't get up for three days when she first found out, she was so distraught. It was so hard for her to work on my case. Coolcoolcool, okay, well, it was MY BODY HE TOUCHED SO IMAGINE THAT. I used to feel so terrible, and seeing how much it upset her was the one thing that made my sexual abuse really feel intolerable. Now I just want to light Sue on fire every time I think about it. Or any time I was depressed at all, she turned it into a competition. No support, no love. Just, "You don't have a reason to be depressed, if anyone it's ME." OKAY BRO, MORE THAN ONE PERSON CAN BE DEPRESSED, IT'S NOT IDEAL AND IT SUCKS BUT IT'S POSSIBLE!!!!

God and she was so HYPOCRITICAL. One year, I forgot Mother’s Day because first, I think these stupid consumerist holidays are a hollow scam, and second because I was writing a brief for the immigration judge on an asylum case. It was a big case that was very important and could change the landscape. I wasn’t going to slack and throw it. Of course, Sue gets extremely upset despite seeing me work on this nonstop since I got home a week prior or whenever, and later goes into complete screaming neurosis again. Yet, on my birthday, she picked a fight with Dan and turned into an army of screaming banshees and I hid in my room all day to avoid the chaos and her wrath, yet I never complained. And then after she drove out and came back, I played therapist. Did I hold it against her? No, no I didn’t, and the fight really was over something trivial. Yet if I forget Mother’s Day because I’m working on a pressing case, she must once again unleash the army of banshees. I’m really not exaggerating, I cannot begin to describe how she screams, not even my two toddler cousins can match her in volume, harshness, or intensity.

Sue made me play marriage counselor, mediator, and therapist for her. It was the worst. First of all, if you have marriage problems, maybe don’t turn to your child when they’re like 12. Go find a marriage counselor. And stop coming to me every time you have a tantrum (I can’t say fight because it’s always just a one-sided screaming match). Stop unloading on me one-sidedly all the time, it’s not even a conversation anymore when you don’t listen to anything I have to say and just talk about whatever the fuck you want. And stop dragging your husband in front of your children, go get a neutral party for that and stop manipulating us to turn against him. It was always so uncomfortable when she did that. We’d separately tell him in private that we didn’t agree, but any time we tried to really stand up to Sue, she’d start the crazies. Screaming, hitting people, slamming doors, dangerous driving, you name it. I should’ve let her kill herself in a car crash, but that would endanger someone else who doesn’t deserve that.

And there was just the general lack of support for my chosen career path. She always said she never pushed me in any direction and let me choose, but she fails to recognize that "barely tolerating" does not equal actual support. Actually, you can't even say she was tolerating. She didn't like that I wanted to go into public interest. She kept telling me people were going to lie and cheat me, even though there isn't really a way for my clients to cheat me out of anything, just as a practical and logistical matter. She encouraged Dan to join her in speaking about my path like it was some gross fly that had been smeared onto their windshield. I never broke confidentiality, but they would act like they knew my clients and would make disparaging remarks about them simply based on stereotypes and assumptions. When I first got the offer to go to Ghana, I didn't tell her for a week because I knew it would not go over well. When I did finally break the news to her, she pulled out ALL the stops. Crying, guilt-tripping, making it about herself. "Why do my children do this to me?????" she bemoaned. Jesus hell, lady, it's not about you, I’m not doing anything to you I’m just moving to Accra for work. Even if I die in this line of work (which I WON’T??) it’s like, I’m an adult who can make decisions about the direction of my life, sucks. And then she encouraged Dan to disparage Ghana based on stereotypes about the entire continent of Africa. I was going to a "wasteland," and they always said it with such vehemence and force behind their words. That was the truly ugly part, their tone of voice. I corrected them multiple times, saying Ghana was actually quite green, there were beaches, forests, and waterfalls, and that there is actually a sizable Chinese expat community and that I have contacts in Accra and the city is very friendly. My words always fell on deaf ears because they - especially Sue - insisted on their narrow world view. And the irony is Sue always told me I have no life experience, but it honestly seems like the other way around. She told me to buy travel insurance when I need expat insurance. Those two are indeed different things, and it definitely matters which one I get. Don't be stupid, you don't have any life experience.

Oh and she keeps asking for money, like 30k, for costs of raising me and sending me to school. Lmao that bitch can go fuck herself, if anything the ho owes me for IIED.

In conclusion, Sue is a crazy bitch who never should have had children and needs to be contained.