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dweetwise · 4 years ago

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a silly thing i wrote about felix and ace reacting to cheryl and feng dating <3 once again inspired by @skllyr‘s lovely art, along with my need to write a grumpy, overprotective felix.

ship(s): cheryl x feng, felix x ace warnings: none word count: 3020

Felix’s adventures in questionable parenting

“I'm… dating Min.”

From everything Felix expected to hear Cheryl say when she pulled him aside after a trial, this has to be the very last thing on his list.

It takes him a few seconds to even properly process the confession, and when he does, he's only more confused.

“Min? Feng Min?” Felix asks, baffled.

“Yeah…” Cheryl says, shuffling her feet self-consciously.

And Felix just stares, not having any idea how he's supposed to react to this information.

His not-quite-daughter but the closest thing he has to one in this world, dating one of the worst troublemakers Felix has ever met? The girl who has left him to die countless times and then made fun of him for getting killed afterwards? The one who bullies killer and survivor alike, having made even Leatherface cry mid-trial?

That Feng Min?

“I'll… give you some time to think about it?” Cheryl suggests when Felix is frozen in place for a whole minute.

He doesn't protest when she walks away, only gaping in confusion while trying to wrap his head around how on Earth the brilliant girl would ever fall for such a self-centered and obnoxious person.

Still, he decides he should get a second opinion.

So he seeks out Ace, partly because his boyfriend loves gossip, partly because he wants someone to tell him he’s not being ridiculous for disapproving of Cheryl’s terrible new girlfriend.

“Hey, handsome,” Ace greets him with a grin and a wink, but Felix doesn’t have time for flirting.

“Cheryl just told me she's dating!” Felix exclaims, fully expecting Ace to be just as shocked as him.

“Huh,” Ace says instead, not looking the least bit surprised. “Good on her for finally telling you.”

“Wait—you knew?” Felix asks.

“Honey, half of the fricking camp knew,” Ace snorts. “I've seen them holding hands and making o—”

Upon Felix's scandalized expression, Ace interrupts himself.

“—ooaan effort to get to know each other?” the man finishes instead, complete with a sheepish grin.

“And you're okay with this!?” Felix demands, astonished that his boyfriend not only knew, but didn’t think it was big enough of a deal to tell Felix about. He knows Ace isn't as close to Cheryl as him, but the gambler has also taken the girl under his wing following Felix's lead, always calling her "kiddo" and going out of his way to protect her in trials.

“If she's happy, who cares?” Ace merely shrugs, infuriatingly carefree as always.

“I care!” Felix protests. “Feng is a mean person and not suited to be in a relationship before she fixes her attitude! She's going to be terrible for Cheryl—you know how sensitive she can be!”

“Opposites attract, babe,” Ace smirks, placing a hand on Felix's knee.

The gesture manages to calm Felix after his little outburst, and he pauses to consider that maybe Cheryl and Feng aren't that different from him and Ace. He knows Cheryl is almost just as reserved as him, slow to make friends and needing time to come out of her shell. If she has taken to Feng just as Felix did to Ace, against everyone's expectations, he should respect her decision. A small smile spreads over his face as he places his hand on Ace's, realizing that maybe they're not as different as he thought—

Well. There's the notable exception that Ace isn't a complete bitch to everyone around him.

“But nobody even likes Feng!” Felix continues his rant, making Ace snort and shake his head in amusement.

“I like her,” Ace points out.

“You like everyone,” Felix huffs, rolling his eyes, annoyed at how difficult Ace is making it for him to be a judgmental bastard.

“Well aren't you just a ray of sunshine today,” Ace grins, pinching his cheek. “I know you’re not Feng’s biggest fan, but you should give her a chance. For Cheryl.”

“I know,” Felix sighs in defeat. “God, I hate it when you're right.”

The following day, Felix approaches Cheryl when the camp is mostly empty, fully intending to at least appear supportive despite his justified concerns. But as he tries to tell Cheryl he’s happy for her and thinks they’re a good couple, the girl isn’t having any of it.

“For someone who lied his entire life, you sure are shit at it,” Cheryl huffs, the unexpected honesty catching Felix off guard. “Now tell me what you really think.”

He always forgets that she’s much more perceptive than her years would suggest, able to read Felix better than people twice her age.

“I… don't think she's good for you,” Felix confesses hesitantly.

“Why?” Cheryl prods, her determined gaze practically boring into his soul and making Felix feel incredibly small. When he’s quiet, not able to decide how much he should say, she continues impatiently. “Come on—you can't just say that and not give any reasons!”

“I don't want to be mean,” Felix says, pretending like he hasn’t been secretly shit-talking the gamer for the last twenty-four hours.

“I told you, be honest,” Cheryl pushes.

“Alright,” Felix sighs, before taking a deep breath. “I think she's a horrible teammate, and not a good person. She's unpredictable and a bad influence, and I don't know what you see in her.”

Instead of being upset, Cheryl huffs and cocks her hips, raising an eyebrow.

“Really?” the girl asks.

“Um… yes?” Felix hesitates under her strangely calm demeanor.

“And that isn't a bad influence?” Cheryl asks, nodding somewhere behind Felix, who turns and sees—

Ace, who looks to be eating the contents of a toolbox.

“Ace!” Felix hisses. “Excuse me,” he says to Cheryl, who merely snorts in amusement, Felix hurrying over to his boyfriend making an idiot out of himself in front of some of the others.

“Uh-oh, mom's here,” Nea snarks when he approaches the scene, Meg giggling next to her at the joke.

Ace offers Felix a wave and something that might be considered a smile, if his mouth wasn't stuffed to the brim with mechanical equipment. And to add insult to injury, he adds another grimy gear into the mix from the toolbox.

“What the hell are you doing?” Felix demands.

Ace holds up a finger, wordlessly telling him to wait while inserting yet another brand new part, grimacing as he tries to fit it into his mouth.

“We have a bet, shoo,” Meg explains, shoving at Felix who is blocking her view of the occurring trainwreck.

“What could you possibly have bet that warrants this kind of idiotic—” Felix starts, annoyed.

“We bet five keys he couldn’t fit ten brand new parts in his mouth,” Nea explains.

“And he took it?” Felix exclaims, glancing at his boyfriend who, somehow, seems way too pleased with himself considering the situation. “Of course he did,” Felix sighs in fond annoyance, wondering why he’s even surprised at this point.

Suddenly, he remembers Cheryl, turning around to address her only to find her gone.

There’s a high-pitched laugh from the other side of camp, Felix recognizing the grating sound even before he sees its culprit, eventually spotting Feng Min and Cheryl standing next to each other with Feng… laughing at Cheryl and hitting her arm?

“Find me when your mouth isn’t occupied,” Felix sneers in Ace’s direction, annoyed at how the entire thing turned out, Cheryl not heeding his warnings and immediately going back to Feng—

And then Meg bursts into another fit of giggles and even Ace barks out something that might be a laugh.

“Woah dude, TMI!” Nea jokes, putting her hands over her ears with a shit-eating grin.

And Felix finally realizes the joke.

“Not like that!” he insists, feeling heat creep up his neck from embarrassment. “To talk! Nothing else!”

“Oh, like all the times you’ve disappeared to ‘talk’ even in the middle of a trial—” Meg starts.

“I’m leaving!” Felix announces, ducking his head to feebly try to hide his blush while stomping away from the group and their filthy minds.

He ends up at his and Ace’s shared space away from the campsite, sitting next to the overflowing trunk of items while absently picking at some prayer beads attached to a broken key.

“I’m here!” Ace’s voice eventually announces. “What were your other two wishes?”

Felix snorts and doesn’t even look up, continuing to fiddle with the item in his hands.

“Did you win?” Felix asks, spinning one of the beads around its axis.

“Ta-dah!” Ace declares, squatting down in front of him to show him a handful of skeleton and dull keys. Felix hums in acknowledgement, still lost in thought, and Ace carelessly dumps the items into the trunk before sitting down next to him.

“So, how'd it go with Cheryl?” Ace asks, wiping some residual oil from the corner of his mouth following his bet.

“Well… I may have told her I don't like Feng,” Felix reluctantly confesses.

“I… okay,” Ace says, clearly fighting a smile at Felix’s social incompetence. “It’s… good that you were honest?”

“Why does that sound like a question?” Felix says, sulking.

“Aww baby, don’t pout,” Ace says, wrapping an arm around his waist and pulling him closer. “I know you tried your best. We can tell her together, if you want. Just to make sure she knows you support her!”

“Thank you,” Felix murmurs, leaning his head on Acer’s shoulder. At least he has Ace, who despite his eccentric personality is always there for him.

If only Cheryl would also have the same kind of support from her partner.

“What the hell does she see in Feng, anyway?” Felix mutters, not able to stop himself from engaging in another round of shit-talk.

“Well—” Ace immediately starts.

“That was a rhetorical question,” Felix snaps without any actual heat. “She couldn't have chosen worse if she tried.”

“Oh, I don't know about that,” Ace grins. “What about, say… Élodie?”

Felix can't help the disgusted face he makes. No matter how much he pretends for the sake of keeping up appearances, he still doesn't like the Frenchwoman.

“Or David?” Ace eggs on.

“Oh, god,” Felix says, shuddering at the thought. “I see your point—”

“Legion?” Ace continues.

“Shut up! I get it, I get it! Feng is fine,” Felix says, going back to his brooding.

“You're not… upset with this whole thing because Feng's a girl, right?” Ace asks, his good-natured smile masking something unpleasant.

“What?” Felix balks. “Oh, heavens, no!” he hurries to explain. “After what I went through with my—ehm, sex… s-sexuality—” he stutters, still not comfortable talking about the subject when it comes to his own preferences, even in the arms of his very male partner.

But judging someone else for theirs? He wouldn't even dream of it.

“If anything, I'm just happy she's figured it out so early,” Felix admits.

“Okay, good! So Feng—” Ace starts excitedly.

“Is still on my shit list, regardless of her gender,” Felix deadpans.

Ace sighs and holds his hands up in defeat.

“Well, I tried,” the gambler says, before a familiar smirk appears on his features. “Now give me a smooch.”

“While you taste like a ten-year-old toolbox? In your dreams,” Felix huffs, curling up against the man instead in an attempt to save his tastebuds.

Finding the right opportunity to pull Cheryl aside seems to prove difficult, as any time Felix spots her she’s either with Feng or Ace is stuck in a trial. And after his previous failure, Felix isn’t ready to try confronting the girl alone.

But the Entity always seems to have a strange sense of humor or just impeccable timing, because after just a few short days Felix finds himself materializing at the pre-trial campfire with not only Ace and Cheryl but also Feng, all standing in a neat little row like the Entity placed them there purely to annoy him.

Great; just great. Just because Felix begrudgingly accepts the gamer, doesn't mean he wants to spend time with her. He’s been lucky to avoid any trials with her ever since Cheryl’s confession, but of course this would be the time they’re put together in one, when he’s supposed to have a heartfelt conversation with his foster daughter.

It’s a while before anyone says anything, Ace looking at Felix expectantly, Cheryl avoiding eye contact with Felix, and Feng clicking her flashlight in an annoying habit.

“Let's go, lesbians!” Ace eventually cheers, trying to muster up enough excitement to break the awkward silence.

“Try to actually do gens this time instead of just jacking off into chests,” Feng snarks just as the fog sets in.

And even though Felix knows she’s right and Ace could afford to do a lot less looting, he still shoots her an annoyed glare for daring to insult his partner, right as the fog takes him.

The trial starts much smoother than expected. The Hillbilly seems to be focused on chasing Ace and Cheryl, and Felix manages to get two generators done in between unhooking and healing them. Feng, as is typical of her, sticks purely to generators instead of going for any altruism for the first half of the trial, but then pulls through and unhooks Cheryl from the proxy camping killer.

And then the gamer proceeds to lead him straight to Felix’s generator.

As Felix is hoisted up on a hook, the last generator gets done. Felix doesn’t mind being hooked since it’s his first, more than happy to buy his two teammates dead on hook some time to escape, but he sure as hell isn’t happy with how the thing panned out.

Right as Cheryl is chased out of an exit by the killer, the Entity’s claws descend on Felix in the second phase of the sacrifice process. Ace, injured, is making his way over from the other side of the map, but he barely makes it halfway before he runs into the killer chainsawing across the map.

Felix curses under his breath, annoyed over dying on his first hook because of the selfishness of one of his teammates. Maybe Cheryl will finally see Feng’s true colors, seeing as even now the girl is just—

—running to unhook him at the last second?

The gamer doesn’t offer an explanation, merely grunting from exertion when she pulls his larger frame off the hook while Felix just gapes in confusion.

“Run, you fucktard!” Feng screams when Felix takes half a second longer than she’d like to take off in a sprint.

Luckily the killer still seems occupied with Ace and isn’t returning to defend the exit, and they manage to make it there with plenty of time to spare before the Entity forcibly ends the trial. Felix is just about to suggest they leave to give Ace a chance at the hatch, when he hears the chime of said hatch being opened with a key, signaling the man’s escape.

Now just the two of them remaining in the trial, standing in the safety of the exit gate, Felix sees an opportunity and takes it.

“Thank you for the rescue,” he says, but doesn’t get an answer, Feng merely glancing at him in distrust before looking away. “I don't know if Cheryl told you, but—” he starts, wanting to clear the air.

“You were a cunt about us dating?” the girl snarks, crossing her arms. “She mentioned it, yeah.”

“I see,” Felix says, cringing from embarrassment. “I guess I never realized how much you do for the team—and especially for Cheryl. I'm sorry.”

“Ugh, spare me the fucking sob story,” Feng scoffs. “I'm gonna be with her regardless, but you not acting like a bitch about it will make Cheryl happy. So… I guess it's fine.”

She's crossing her arms and looking away in a gesture of indifference, but is also hiding her reddening cheeks behind her bangs and showing a side of her Felix has never seen before.

“Truce?” Felix asks.

Feng looks at him warily, but then she smirks.

“Only because I could kick your ass any day.”

Felix finds himself huffing out a small laugh in amusement, and when the killer finally comes to chase them out, he’s not even annoyed at the girl’s obnoxious crouching and taunts.

As soon as they make it to the other side of the invisible threshold of the trial grounds, Cheryl and Ace are there waiting for them.

“There you are!” Ace scolds while Cheryl looks between the two, hesitant. “I thought you'd killed each other!”

"We had to stay to say bye to Billy,” Feng says.

And then Cheryl comes up to her and grabs her hand.

“Thank you,” she whispers with a happy smile, and Feng bristles like an angry cat.

“I don't know what you're talking about!” Feng exclaims and stomps further away in embarrassment, tugging Cheryl along with her.

Meanwhile, Ace sidles up to Felix, giving him a wink.

“I told her everything,” Ace explains. “And I also mentioned Feng saved you. You ever consider Cheryl might be a good influence on her, instead of the other way around?”

'No,' Felix should say if he were being completely honest.

“I still don't like her,” Felix says instead.

“Aww, it's okay," Ace says, before turning to where the girls are walking ahead of them, chatting away. "We make a good team, don't we kids?” Ace calls, smirking.

“Sure, grandpa,” Feng shoots back.

Ace gasps in shock and Cheryl has the audacity to snicker, pulling Feng along by her sleeve to continue their conversation in private.

“Well?” Felix prods, raising an eyebrow.

“Oh this means war,” Ace says with a mischievous grin.

When his lover leans in to whisper about replacing all of Feng's skeleton keys with broken ones, Felix feels a smirk tugging on his lips. Even if he no longer minds them being together, he can at least get petty revenge for all the times the gamer has been less than polite to him.

Smiling pleasantly as his boyfriend goes on in detail about putting bugs in the gamer’s toolbox and other practical jokes, Felix decides that if worse comes to worst, he can always just blame Ace for being a bad influence.

#riconti #felix richter #ace visconti #cheryl mason #feng min #cherylmin #dweetwrites #dbd fanfic #dbd #dead by daylight

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lhistoiredehannah-blog · 8 years ago

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We are not the snide comments uttered by cowards dressed as friends. We are rich social tapestries. We are complex amalgamations of our interactions. More than a sneer, or a sum, or a reduction of some fuzzy anecdote as it slides from the memory. Do not allow yourself to be compartmentalised. Not only are you a piece of art in your own right, but your colourful threads weave in and out of more lives than you can imagine.

My tapestry is messy; mostly there are colours, so many colours, dotted with grey masses and black masses from when the sun hid behind cloud. I will not allow a person to weave grey thread as I remember that life has a rather tactile ability to provide that itself.

It started with two: deep green and bright red. A reserved man and a vibrant woman, riding the wave of uncomplicated love that characterised that period, for them. She taught me to love passionately, to tie laces and to not be jealous. To be daring, to exaggerate, to tell the truth even where it might hurt. I remember her loud stomach laugh, but I also remember her angry, flushed shout. He taught me to love quietly, to read, to be curious and remain sceptically asking questions. I was a loud girl. A brave girl. A scuffed knees, scuffed shoes, singing in the rain girl. I was a ‘not-afraid-to-be-top-of-the-class’ girl.

Soon the red and green were crossed by a thick, navy blue. An honourable man, a strong man with a weakness. Me. He taught me what she had, though uncensored. He taught me to be true, to be blunt as a flint, to not be afraid to drive off road. Alongside it, a pastel pink, the woman with the warmest smile. She would teach me to add soft edges and to appreciate the virtues of sometimes just caring. She taught me that silly was OK and that your age had no correlation to whether or not you were actually young.

There is a tiny thread, a growing thread that runs alongside me as these four mammoth adults teach me who I can become. He is little and blonde, a face speckled with freckles, and he becomes my side kick. He teaches me how to be the eldest and I teach him how to be the youngest. Later he will teach me how dangerous the ego can be. He will also teach me more about identity, about the fluidity of social labels, than any book or analysis ever could have done. He will teach me tolerance and understanding and the beauty of diversity. But that will come later.

The greys start to run through. Bureaucratic beige: the man with the cords teaches me that you cannot cure by asking how things make you feel. It just is not enough. Clerical NHS turquoise: the ladies in blue teach me that lying doesn’t work. The green thread starts to fray. The red thread becomes scarlet, with passion, with strength. Some days the red is a flame, some days it is blood. Some days I avoid both, I avoid everything, and it teaches me that absence pauses time. Without people, a person becomes nothing.

A boy on the outside taught me that the outside, in reality, was just someone else’s inside. He taught me that jagged bones were the same as thin, red cuts. He taught me that deflection was as valid a way as any to plaster up holes. His maroon continues to thread across my tapestry because friendships like these never cease to be. This boy sees the darkness, but somehow together, we can still see.

At this point I was learning lots of lessons, from lots of people, and the picture becomes a flash of primary colours. It’s all basic and brash because I am unable to comprehend the beauty of subtlety. I learn skills and knowledge that I may never need. I learn that boys like girls who smile and giggle, and I learn that I am frankly not like that. I learn that spending years in a cave had left me very far behind. I try to catch up and keep falling. I learn from other people’s adolescent mistakes rather than making them myself. The couples teach me what I need from love and loss. The competitors teach me ambition. The rejection teaches me my place.

Everyone leaves.

A person becomes nothing. The canvas becomes blank.

Fleetingly, customers teach me how selfish people are. Staff teach me how stupid people are. Being hungry teaches me how strong life is. It teaches me how to separate the mind from the body. It teaches me how to be selfless whilst simultaneously being labelled the most selfish of all. ‘How can you do this whilst your mother is sick? A person can only handle so much. I have to choose and I do not choose you.’

How does disappearing constitute a selfish act?

With that,

The green thread SNAPS.

Six skeletons teach me how complex a person can be whilst masquerading behind a single word. Being anorexic is easier than being Ella, being bulimic easier than being Ellie. Being crazy is simpler than being a mum and crying at a dinner table somehow makes sense when you live in a bubble. Bitching over a garden cigarette somehow made the difficulties seem legitimate. Being trapped taught me all the things I didn’t want to be. I filled the crevasses and I followed the rules and I left.

A week of sirens.

‘I can’t do this anymore.’

I pinch my eyes closed. The sobs that reverberate through the thin semi walls teach me that strength is sometimes the ability to bow down and let go. The whispers teach me that people in love can be the most selfish of all. The long nights that never seem to become days chip away at respect, at colour and at life until that crisp November morning.

The red thread is tied in a thick, tangled knot.

That moment taught some to seek hope in God. It didn’t for me. For others it dug up countless lessons she had already championed. Stories floated to the surface that she had never pushed. I realised how many lives she had touched. She taught me what it means to be inspired.

But man was I tired.

The chain breaks and every thread starts to fray. People do not know what they can say.

The bones resurface and the face becomes gaunt. The boy with the scars takes me by the hand and I know that I love him though I don’t know what that means. We watch the stars and make the kind of jokes that make other people shudder. I spend days being spoon fed and not knowing who I am. I build something from the ripped shreds, though my memory plays tricks on me and I somehow can’t remember who I was before. In the whitewash, a hospital bed becomes a cross road and I turn right.

This time eight skeletons teach me that easy isn’t always good. Each pointed chin got there through pathetic lies, each rib represented a relationship they had severed and an opportunity they had elaborately by-passed. ‘You’re better than this’ went from cliché to truth, because I was. The doctors taught me the cockiness of the human mind. In recovery, I learnt the relationship between selfish and selfless, and how they are both arcs on the same circle.

Walking out the door, walking head held high, I realised I was eighteen. I realised it was my time to be selfish because it was my time to learn. The pastels of the EDU and the ICU and the hospice abruptly become brighter: sharp and alive.

Sambuca taught me how to mix, with lemonades and sours and garish liquids I can’t even comprehend now. Pink and red and green and blue. Artificial colours of artificial memories with an edge of sharp alcohol that somehow makes them feel like pop-art.

A pin-up red head taught me how to get phone numbers and how to look like a girl a man would want to kiss. A brunette with an STI taught me that a kiss was enough, for now at-least. Weed taught me that I could finish a tube of Pringles with ease. My return taught me that the people I had once idolised were just people, and I was one too. The foundations were built for relationships with strength and I got about with my hammer.

I learnt to love the boy who I had antagonised over as a great, clever friend. A blue thread. I learnt to shelf my envy to appreciate the arty girl for her deep heart and creative soul. A gold thread. I learnt to be a sister to the sisters, to be wild-card for the partiers and to be a rock to the fleeting worriers. My circle grew like my mother’s and that made me feel pride. I made sure to give more than I took and that always paid off.

I met a boy and he taught me how quick you can lust then lose. That was a lesson I will never cease to thank him for. I wasted my first flirt with pink with a boy I could never had built anything more with. And that is not an insult, some people are just not made to be.

New city, new canvas. Black over white. Nights over day.

I am independent in the dark. My past has made me someone who is somehow more prepared than the teenagers that hustle around me. I am a sleek and sassy adult and I work out what I value. A muscly boy teaches me that I value the kind of strength you find in Northern honesty and a complete disregard of the norm despite the ability to espouse it. His thick, metallic strand still supports me today. A blonde teaches me not to use and abuse, and the ripples she casts somehow provide me with great friends who believe they’ve been wronged. Mistakes teach me that your own mistakes make the best stories. And I never stop telling them.

There is a plait on the black, my thread crossing with that of two boys. I think that I am in love again and I probably am but it’s different this time and I ruin it. I am cut lose and I realise that I don’t like drama as much as I had thought. But it makes for good stories. Plus I get laid. So I cannot complain (though of course I did). As an adult I somehow bring these two back as friends. It’s crazy how petty the past can seem.

I learn way too much about the New World. I then learn that the term does not include Africa. This is when I vow to only write essays when sober. I break the vow to discuss Machiavelli on a bottle of Glens. I get a first.

I move each year, in a little circle around a little town strewn with litter and shattered bottles. I pretend each shabby room is home because I can’t even remember what the green thread ever meant. I feel like an atom and I base myself in the people I choose. I make shallow friends and deep friends. I loose some because I don’t treat them right, but that only teaches me to change my approach. Then there are those who don’t treat me right, but for some reason I fail to lose them.

A dark November brought me a new thread, a strong one which had more impact than anyone for some time. A boy with deep brown eyes made me feel like a woman. He told me he loved me. I loved him back. We did stupid couple things. We went from honeymoon haste to deeply comfortable. We had three years, but that was enough. This bright yellow took me to Germany. It taught me to enjoy the succulence of wine and to despise the selfishness that came with wealth. I learnt to love more passionately than I ever had, and I learnt to resew broken threads. He taught me to communicate but he also taught me that beauty can rot and sweet can turn sour. He taught me that nothing is black v white, because nothing is so simple.

When he said goodbye he taught me to heal, and that nothing can be reduced to simply one man’s fault. I was independent again and his paradigm had led me through such rich changes that I now stood an adult with the world being seen through new eyes. In this relationship I created a new world and just because he left my side didn’t mean we both had to leave that world. That’s what it means to be an adult. It’s an acceptance of the flowing nature of time, and the appreciation of shapes that don’t need to be sharp.

Yellow, like red, and like blue, and like maroon, will probably shape how I think for some time. And I do not resent that, I respect it.

My canvas is now beige. I am an adult now, who pays taxes and reads politics. I get excited when the chamber erupts (sometimes I heckle along). Wild farm girl would have been so disappointed. I only hope she would be appeased by my less civilised behaviour when I’m presented with a glass of fizz.

Most of the tapestry now is pure, the colours are clean and their trajectories are straight and toned. I have the subtle autumnal shades of my flatmates, the couple who have taught me how friendships and love should be played. They have taught me raw, human, honest happiness. I have the silver influence a blond drug user who never stops teaching me how ambition and knowledge don’t stop an individual from indulging in whatever the fuck they want.

I have a new thread, a pale blue that is warm and young and right. It fits alongside me as though it has always been there and it makes me feel so much less afraid.

I have others, new friends and old friends. Revitalised loves and memories that don’t stop swelling. I have the kind of people who support and the kind of people that critique. They both balance in a way which helps me grow. I have a new brother in the musical boy, the one who drinks and drives. I have a drinking buddy in the sassy Northern girl who I know will always force my accountability. The artist is still here and so are the sisters and so is the outsider. Some things don’t disappear, they grow.

But my reasons for writing, for confession, they were not to chronicle everything that I have learnt. They weren’t to share wisdom or to be pretentious. They were to note that I am a person with a history. I am a person who makes decisions that aren’t right sometimes. I make choices based on less than fact. I make mistakes.

As an adult, we look at mistakes differently than when we were children. We learn. We feel shame but we bend down and pick up the pieces to glue them back together. There is value in having enough pride to sometimes say ‘no, OK, I was not in the wrong here’ and standing our ground.

I am an adult. I am not a child on the school ground. To act like one would reduce my wealth of life experience to nothing.

Ask yourself, what is your tapestry? Whose threads have contributed to the colourful shapes? Whose threads have been cut, or tied… was it worth it? Who stands out and do they do so for the right reasons?

We learn from everything and everyone. We are built from our experience. Sometimes people are malicious, shallow and nasty. As an adult, these people are to be pitied and learnt from. And finally, if they continue to act as a sharp, threadless needle, unpicking more than they sew, chuck them. They are not worth the ground beneath your feet.

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