#Yeah! I know next to nothing and know almost nobody else who has been diagnosed with UDD. I was just (probably) diagnosed yesterday

[that1britishperson]

Another World - Chapter 1

pls note that this story does contain mentions of mental illness such as; social anxiety, depression, anxiety, and ocd. this is to spread awareness, as i am diagnosed with three out of the four. i understand it is not fun and it can put a huge burden on your life, and some things are better to be talked about than left in the dark. always remember that there is help and know that you are loved and that you are not alone.

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[6 months earlier]

It was the same thing almost every day. Her parents arguing, failing almost all of your classes, going to meet your therapist. And every day, she comes home from school and locks yourself in the only place where she could feel secure; her room.

"And how are you doing today, Miss [L/N]?” The therapist had asked. He had a notepad with a pen his daughter gave to him. Mr Meaner crossed his legs while looking in your direction, hands folded on top of one another while he waited for a response.

[Y/N]’s head was thrown back against the leather sofa as she stared at the ceiling. The old lights were replaced with a chandelier with crystals on the side, it wasn’t too bright but enough to make the room feel cosier. “Same as any other day.” And it was the truth. She didn’t have many friends. It wasn’t like she wasn’t a likeable person, it’s just her anxiety telling her that nobody wants to be her friend.

And that is something the young woman hated. Feeling as if everything was her fault, that the reason nobody wanted to hang out with [Y/N] was because of the parents or that she came off as ‘weird’. “I see... And how are you doing on sleep the last we talked.”

Silence.

That was a good question. If only it were that easy to sleep in the current situation - but it wasn’t. The yelling, throwing, it kept her up most of the night and even with the prescribed medication, it was not enough.

“I haven’t slept in a few days.”

Mr Meaner sighed and took off his glasses and placed them on the desk. “Do you have anyone else you could stay with?” 

“No. Almost all of my relatives are in California or out of the state. Nobody that I know is in New York.”

The therapist nodded his head and took a moment to figure out what to do. Mixed with [Y/N]’s social anxiety and insomnia, he understood that it was not easy to make friends and get out and meet new people. “You mentioned last week that you have a computer?”

Rising her head, she finally looked at the person who has been listening to her vent and help the young woman cope for almost a year, “yeah.”

“Okay,” He nodded, “I want you to do something for me [Y/N] - it’s to help you and settle your anxiety. Try making YouTube videos, music.. anything like that. I understand it sounds crazy now, but I promise in the long run that it will help you.” 

“Absol-” She began but was immediately cut off.

“You don’t even have to show your face. I realise that you may be nervous, but doing this with help soothe your nerves when you talk to people. Give it a week, and if you do not like it then you don’t have to continue. Just give it a try.”

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And so, that's exactly what she did – almost a week later. After using the last of her birthday money buying a few games for her stable PC, and having the recording fail about five-time; she managed to film -webcamless-. 

It was called Fallout 3, as it was always her favourite out of all of the four and was really great at it -- aside from the national guard depot, as she had little to no grenades and had died quite a bit, however, it was nothing editing couldn’t handle.

‘There you go,’ [Y/N] whispered to herself after she was done with her editing, it was not the best but would get better if she were to continue, ‘All you have to do, is it publish.’

To her, that was easier said than done. Many thoughts had run through her head:  What if they didn’t like it? What if someone pointed out how she mixed up her words because of her nervousness? Would they call her out for not being able to get the vault 87?

As these thoughts carried on, the cursor slowly inched towards the ‘publish’ button. And just like that, it was done. Out, for anybody to see.

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The following morning she awoke to the phone buzzing, signalling that somebody was calling her phone. Groaning the young woman rolled over and picked up her cell that was on the nightstand next to the bed, being careful not to knock the [favourite colour] lava lamp on the ground. It was a gift that her father had gotten her on her eighteenth birthday just last week, and it’s something she would always remember because that day felt like everything was normal again -no parents fighting, staying up watching movies until all of them had fallen asleep. 

Once in a blue moon would that happen again. “Hello?” Her voice was raspy, clearly telling the person on the other line that she had just woken up and most likely disturbed her.

“Hey honey,” It was her Nan and the only one in the family who she actually liked, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.”

[Y/N] gave a soft smile even though the elder on the other end couldn’t see, “No, Nan, it’s okay. I had to get up soon anyway for school.”

“How are you doing there?”

“I would say I’m doing good. Although [major] is beating me up.”

A laugh was heard on the other end, “I am sure you are doing the best you can, sweetie. What about your parents? Did anything change?”

And there was that question.

“Same thing, different day.”

“You know you are always welcome to stay with your gran’dad and I in California.”

The young woman sighed, “I don’t have the money to fly down there, besides if I did, it would put my scholarship at risk.”

“We will gladly fly you here; and there are plenty of opportunities here [N/N]. Besides you are a smart girl, any school down here would be lucky to have you as a student.”

She laid back down and stared up at her ceiling, phone in one hand and the other tracing the patterns that the light gave above her, “I’ll think about it.” 

“Just let us know, I love you.”

“Love you too.” After hanging up, [Y/N] tossed the phone to the side. Sure New York had some great places and many things to do even if you don’t have that much money; however she did have people in Vacaville that loved her (or more so her grandparents and her only friend she made in grade 8 who sadly moved away just before their graduation to grade 9: though both still try their best to talk to each-other.

Her phone buzzed, groaning as she debated weather or not to answer it. Thinking of the latter, [Y/N] reached for her phone and checked to see who was texting her.

                                        New text from Ezra

Speak of the devil.

Unlocking the phone, she made her way to the messages and read what was sent.

EZRA YOU BITCH!

EZRA YOU MADE A YOUTUBE WITHOUT TELLING ME???

EZRA GURL, I HAD TO FIND OUT BECAUSE YOU ARE TRENDING!

EZRA i thought what we had was special 😔

Wait what? She had to go back to make sure she had read that correctly, she was trending?                                                                                                     Exiting the messages, she had made her way over to YouTube and sure enough, she was at #6 for gaming.

Shock ran through her body. Her first video has gone viral overnight. And then reality settled in; she has gone viral in one night.

[wahbegan]

The Scary Asylum Trope (From Somebody Who’s Been Committed)

I can’t help but feel that the very loud and righteous voices of people with the best of intentions....who also have no idea what the fuck they’re talking about often overshadow those with a more nuanced and realistic view of the world because they’ve been through the shit. Especially on this site. In the real world, of course, both are drowned out by the man who both has bad intentions AND no idea what he’s talking about, but either way, the fact remains: people with first-hand experience of the ugliness of society saying shit nobody wants to hear, especially shit that makes the world a bit more morally grey and a bit more frightening than anyone would like to deal with are never listened to. 

 Although it’s often overlooked, I think we can all agree that the mentally ill and substance-addicted are among the most cast-off and overlooked members of society. Junkheads and crazies are already struggling to survive and nobody wants to give them a job, get too close to them, give them money, have them wandering the streets or coming into their businesses. Unlike other forms of oppression, one of the most insidious things about this is it’s opposed by almost nobody. “Don’t give that guy money, he’s a crackhead”, “stay away from that bum, she’s not right in the head, she’s dangerous”, “we can’t give you a job because of your history with substance abuse”, none of these statements are remotely controversial with the vast majority of people. A lot of people get angry when you say they should be or even suggest the mentally ill (not disabled, mind you, just ill) or addicted are even oppressed by society at all. Addicts, particularly. The general consensus is they ARE dangerous, they DO do illegal shit, they ARE unpredictable and unable to work reliably or have an interpersonal relationship with you, and most importantly...they brought this on themselves. This, of course, brings us to that great garbage bin of society’s dregs, the mental hospital.

Okay, so a bit of background. In Senior Year of college, I was alcoholic, cartoonishly depressed, and trying to deal with vague, unspecified shit that may have been trauma or a personality disorder or something I do not know, all I have ever been officially been diagnosed with is depression, but that doesn’t cover everything. I don’t know to this day exactly what’s wrong with me and I’ve gotten too old and used to it to really care enough to speculate. But long story short, one night I got too mouthy about a suicide attempt as I often do...to be honest, I think my crippling fear of the oblivion i believe follows death tends to manifest as loudly telegraphing my intentions to commit so that I have a chance to wake up even if I don’t chicken out at the last second...but anyway. My friend Vanessa came by my door and helped me down out of the home-made belt noose in my closet, and the cops were called. Cue being taken away in a cop car in handcuffs and 96 hours in a mental hospital without ANYONE believing any of my attempts to defend myself or even being put before a judge how’s that for due process ladies and gentlemen?

I won’t say what hospital I was in due to all the horrible shit I’m about to say about its character, but I WILL say when i first got there, many a joke was made about a then very topical certain someone who was known as a whistleblower and/or traitor depending on where you fall on the political spectrum who leaked a bunch of CIA and NSA shit. Oh, yeah, completely unrelated, did I mention I went to the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, VA? Just a fun tidbit.

Anyway, I know this is slow in getting to the point, so let’s cut to the meat of the thing. From Outlast (the good one), to Arkham Asylum, to Silence of the Lambs, Session 9, Halloween, to House on Haunted Hill (the bad but enjoyable one), to that story some kid in grade school and/or your older sister wouldn’t shut the fuck up about that had an escaped mental patient who apparently the staff had deemed wise to give a pirate hook for a hand, the common consensus is: mental hospitals are fucking scary. More specifically, crazy people are fucking scary.

In recent years, as we’ve all grown a little more compassionate and people give the mentally ill at least a few months or years before they decide your shit is too much for them to deal with and throw you out like a leper, there’s been very strong pushback against this. Particularly on places like tumblr and other random blogs and op eds around the internet. It’s easy to see why. Dehumanizing the mentally ill is not only offensive to people who CAN actually generally understand and remember what you say about us, thank you very much, it’s just lazy. People like Michael Myers (no not that one the scary one) and Joker, who would NEVER see the inside of a hospital due to their clear intelligence and control over their actions, are thrown in an asylum as a cheap plot device, and classifying a character as crazy lets you ignore pesky little things like “character motivation” and “consistent characterization in general, fuckwit”. People may even praise your character for lacking those things if they’re cuh-RAZY enough. Again, Michael Myers (still not that one) and Joker.

I’m a huge fan of the pushback against the escaped mental patient with a hook trope. Having been a mental patient myself, I can assure you that almost all ANYONE wants to break out of that shit hole to do is get some good fucking food, sleep in a real bed, and pork their significant other. Mr. Pirate Hook, in a realistic version of that story, may have jumped the teen lovers for their car just to drive it to the liquor store and then his girlfriend’s house.

The problem is, and this is the main point of this giant fucking essay, that there is now also considerable related pushback against asylums being scary places. Ironically enough, this is coming not mainly from certifiable and dangerous-to-themselves-or-others type people. This pushback is coming from very well-meaning young adults with anxiety disorders and/or depressive episodes who are very sweet and god bless them I just know for a fact have never EVER seen the inside of one of these fucking places. It is coming from people who don’t want asylums to be seen as scary places because they want the mentally ill to want to go to them. To help them, ostensibly, but a tiny little cynical “fuck everyone” part of me thinks it’s more like to sweep their mess into someone else’s room so they don’t have to fucking handle it.

Now, before I continue, let me stress that the place I was in was a bit renowned for being a terrible shit hole. I’m sure my experience would have been a lot nicer at a suburban 50k a day mansion rehab for celebrities in the hills of Los Angeles. You don’t condemn all hotels in the world because of one particularly traumatic stay at the bumblefuck nowhere clown motel next to the old graveyard (yes that is a real thing), right? And unlike hotels, there’s no such thing as an asylum critic. A lot of people do NEED to be hospitalized for safety, and a lot of people DO, through one method or another, find themselves better off by the end of their stay. And I’m sure the go-to solution for any and all of life’s problems isn’t “tranq them in the ass and throw them in an isolation room” in EVERY hospital. But I get a sneaking suspicion it’s most of them. With that disclaimer out of the way, let’s continue.

Mental hospitals are the most terrifying fucking places in the world. Every time one of my well-meaning friends who’s never been committed says they think a brief hospital stint would do me good, I want to throw a blender at their fucking head. Every one of your relatively well-adjusted but probably on an anti-depressant or anxiety meds guidance counselor and social workers friends will list their good qualities until they’re blue in the face and tell you it’s not at all like the movies and there’s nothing to be scared of. It’s not like the movies, most of the time. Not exactly. But that resort and bond with people who have been through the same thing as you and time to work on yourself and group therapy and art class pitch they sell you on? Yeah, it’s bullshit.

Let’s continue with my story. When I was brought in from the main hospital, they first sent me to acute. I’ve been to county jail, and I’ve been to the acute treatment (read: high risk/high security) wing in an asylum, and I would pick county. Every fucking time. Bless her heart, my patient and long-suffering girlfriend at the time, who had been by my side for the whole process, was sitting next to me and holding my hand as they did the intake survey. They were at least compassionate enough or smart enough to know I would be a lot more placid and manageable with her around to let her stay for the intake process. Outside, the hallway was dark, one guy was on a prison-style wall-mounted phone, some dudes were playing cards, a woman was wandering up and down the hallway....and up and down and up and down and up and down the hallway. And from somewhere, someone was screaming. Not words. Just...screaming. Nobody seemed to do anything about it, see what she was screaming about. I don’t know if it was agony, misery, or fury. Maybe some combination of the three. On and on and on, with breaks seemingly only to get her breath back. I was in the acceptance stage at this point, and was busy shutting down emotional channels one by one and going into survival mode, steeling myself for my stay, but my girlfriend at the time...she looked terrified and broken-hearted. The thought of her leaving a loved one in this windowless pit (this wing, you see, was underground) destroyed her. I could tell. It would me, if I were in her situation. It is a traumatizing situation to be in. There’s no way out, nobody believes anything you say unless you tell them the worst, you can see that woman out in the hall passing back and forth and back in forth in the door window, and someone is screaming like she’s in Hell. Maybe she was.

The screaming was when I first realized an ugly truth and my morals were shaken into a grey zone: people who are mentally ill can be pretty fucking scary. Even if they’re harmless. I never saw that woman or found out why she was screaming. But in that moment, I desperately feared her and hoped I would never find out. It’s easy now for me to look back on her with compassion and pity and feel ashamed for my reaction, wish I could have helped her, but then...I was already in a fragile place. She scared me. And this leads to the next conclusion, even worse. You scare other people, and maybe it’s understandable that they’re scared. 

I deeply repress my anger. I have never in my life been violent or had the urge to be, and I don’t plan on changing that. But my anger is repressed. It can take a lot of battering before it shows itself...but when it comes out, it’s in a sudden, explosive, deep-throat scream worthy of a jump scare in a horror movie showing a protagonist is losing his mind and can’t be trusted any more. I usually only get about half a sentence out in this way before I scare myself, my eyes go wide with horror, I clap my hands over my mouth and run out of the room crying. But by then it’s too late. I got so drunk so often I forgot huge chunks of my past and have no idea what I said or did. I emotionally wounded people. I acted unpredictably. I asked to borrow a friend’s cigarette while she was DRIVING, and casually, with no warning, ground it out on my arm. My girlfriend often found me passed out through booze or asphyxiation or covered in blood. Crazy is undeniably scarier to live with than it is to witness, and I often get frustrated when it feels like people don’t remember or fully understand that. But...that doesn’t mean witnessing it isn’t fucking horrible. People were being perfectly rational to be afraid around me. Never afraid OF me, everyone who knows me knows of my physically gentle nature (with others) and desperate desire to be a good person. But they were afraid: afraid of my behavior when I wasn’t in control, of what reckless and insane shit I might do to self-destruct and/or inadvertently hurt people around me.

Thankfully, my intake survey and a nurse who noticed my relatively normal behavior both indicated I should be in the (above-ground!) high-functioning wing, so I was quickly moved there. I never figured out who that scream belonged to. But even in high-functioning...it wasn’t much reprieve. A woman shit the bed, a man fresh out of acute regaled us with stories of getting tranqed and thrown in isolation because he had barricaded himself in his room with all his furniture and berated the orderlies as they tried to force their way in about “you should really bolt the furniture down it’s a safety risk I could be killing myself in here” because he was bored. My only friend in the wing, who I really did like quite a lot and still do even though we fell out of touch, had a roommate who was always acting like she was just on the edge of doing something fucking stupid. Once, her husband smuggled her a shaving razor, which she whipped out in front of my friend, waving it around and threatening to kill herself. When my friend alerted the orderlies, this woman put it (IN ITS CASE I always feel I should clarify) up her pussy to hide it and feigned ignorance, resulting in my friend going to isolation. No tranq though. This was the high-functioning unit, after all.

Your one-on-ones with the psychiatrist were roughly 3-5 minutes in length and consisted of medication questions and asking if you were literally going to beat your head against a wall until you died in the next 15 minutes, otherwise talk about it in group. The more you insisted to this man that you were fine and shouldn’t be here and inquired about the legal status of your incarceration and when you could be released, the worse he thought you were. 

There were times to gather and talk about feelings. There was art. Some people were very good at it. Visiting hours. But most of the time was just...sitting. Sitting, bored out of your god damned skull, so bored you might just barricade your room with all of its furniture and laugh and laugh and laugh as the orderlies try to force their way in. The patient man doesn’t need to inflict physical torture to break someone. Isolation and boredom do things to the human mind, maybe sooner, maybe later, but...up there, I said hospitals make a lot of people better. They also make a lot of people worse. Then they have to stay for longer. When they’re finally released, they don’t remember how to live in the normal world and soon end up back inside. 

Just like prison. Make no mistake, the asylum is a prison. A prison where nobody believes a god damned word that comes out of your mouth. A prison for people nobody wants to deal with. A prison where they stick you with people whose crazy does NOT fuck with your crazy and you start to think maybe people are right for not wanting to deal with you after all. That’s the worst part of negative emotional reactions to symptoms of mental illness. How god damned much they remind you of yourself. The trauma I mentioned off-hand up there was that my ex from High School may or may not have abused me it’s complicated and fuzzy i don’t remember it’s not important. What is important is a new girl came in once who casually admitted to abusing her boyfriend. I backed away slowly and retreated into a private room, where my one friend had to comfort me. Later, the class clown, Mr. Barricade Tranq-in-the-Ass, made a rape joke in front of her. A rape survivor.

Everyone’s mind breaks in very similar ways, but for very different reasons and with just different enough symptoms and fears and psychotic hatreds that there WILL be people in your unit you fucking hate, whose crazy and yours grind on each other’s gears. There will be people you are afraid of, people you’re stupidly attached to for no reason other than they’re there and nice to you.

Throwing all these people in a hole and throwing away the key does not create an environment conducive to anyone’s mental health. Then, of course, there’s the treatment. Yes, like I said, if you’re willing to petition like 5 people about it and constantly remind them, you may get some good one-on-one time. You may get some good nuggets out of group therapy. You might make nice art. Mostly, though, they cut you off from the outside world and take you away from everything you love and put you with a bunch of potentially terrifying strangers and just fucking leave ya there. To rot. 

The problem with mental hospitals is the problem they’ve always had. No, obviously nobody’s head is in a cage and they don’t electrocute and lobotomize you, but the theory is the same. They want you to stop being crazy. But first, and foremost, they want to keep you there and keep you under control. That is the primary goal. Not treatment. Keeping you there and controlled. I suppose if you consider the history of asylums it’s quite humane, but I wasn’t joking up there about the tranqs in the ass.Everything from death threats to trying to pork another patient to getting too lippy with a nurse is treated with the tried and true ass-tranq isolation room. How long will you be in there? Who knows!! Until they remember they put you in there and/or the shit that you’ve smeared on the walls starts to smell. 

And all of this leads to the most horrible conclusion of all, the kind that makes people truly lose their minds if they think about it too long in that Lovecraftian/Poe kind of way where your hair turns white: maybe there is no right way to handle mentally ill people, and if there is, we sure as fuck haven’t found it yet.

The mentally ill are oppressed and deserve compassion. Love. Support. But we can also be terrifying to the mentally well, to each other, to ourselves...and forcing all of these people into a cage they don’t want to be in with strangers who they’re irritated with and scared of who are irritated and scared right back at them and leaving them in this weird, artificially constructed, regimented society until you deem them fit to leave is....ha. Well, it’s crazy!. And it is scary. And it can and often does make people worse. 

So please, don’t...don’t say mental hospitals shouldn’t be seen as scary or shouldn’t be used in horror. By all means, do it. But do it well. Look to Outlast. See, in Outlast, the set-up is very trite. Big asylum, patients escaped and massacred the staff. But you’re there on a tip that human rights abuses and clandestine experiments were being performed. Most of the inmates are doing vaguely unnerving shit but are harmless, just like a real hospital. Some are just fucking watching TV. And the game is never satisfied with “this guy’s crazy.” Walker, the ‘UGE FUCKIN GOI who everyone’s terrified of has awful PTSD and if you listen to his idle dialogue, is always muttering about containment protocol and stopping the spread of something. And by the end of the game, you realize he might not be as crazy as he seemed, and that the patients massacring the hospital staff was completely understandable and maaaybe even a little bit their own fucking fault. One guy, in an absolutely heart-wrenching and my absolute favorite part of the game, is just sitting broken in a burning kitchen talking about how this place took everything from them because nobody cares about a few abused or dead lunatics, so he’s gonna burn the whole fucking thing down.

You know what it basically comes down to? Most of the crazy people aren’t dangerous. Some are, but the ones that are have clear motivations. Crazy ones, but motivations. Almost like........ooohhh the point emerges REAL FUCKING PEOPLE! Make villains crazy. Well, all right to be honest, it wouldn’t hurt to slow down a bit on that, but I don’t want it to stop entirely. Depict asylums as the Hellish shit holes they are. But for God’s sake, just write mentally ill people like human beings. A human being you can’t understand isn’t the same thing as a non-human. Nobody does things for NO reason at all. If you’re writing a crazy villain, don’t make him evil because he’s crazy and the symptoms of his crazy are being evil; if you’re setting something in an asylum, make sure the horror doesn’t start and end with guys in straightjackets frothing at the mouth and screaming about how they want to fuck whoever’s walking past them in the aorta. 

I don’t want the truth about us, our condition, our capacity for harming those around us, or how fucked up it is how society treats us because it has no idea what the fuck it’s doing sanitized because it’s difficult to deal with and there are no clear good guys.

[yourstateofdreaming]

The Favor [Gwilym Lee x Reader] Part VI

Masterlist | Gwilym Lee Masterlist

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Pairing: Gwilym Lee x Reader

Warnings: this one gets angsty.

A/N: I am sorry, I had to write this.

Gwil held the bouquet of flowers with both hands, he and Joe were not sure of how to approach the situation but they did the best they could on this rare day off.

It had all started a few weeks back, (Name) had invited Gwil to her father’s exhibition and the two seemed to get along more than just fine; had it not been that the actor was busy with the project, he would have asked her out but he knew he had to remain focused on his work. She, for once, was content with the friendliness of their relationship. Having ended things with Rufus in an odd place made her feel like working and nothing else, Roger made it easy for her, he was having meetings left and right and soon with the movie going to post-production and premiering he would need her more than ever.

Of course things never worked out how one wanted, and (Name) could not attend to her job properly after her father returned to South Africa; he got ill again, this time for the worst. A couple years back he had been diagnosed with skin cancer, which was taken care of as it was detected early; but this time the cancer was in a different more difficult place to treat. It was in his brain. Everyone thought the same thing, and Roger did not even doubt giving her the time off so she could go and see her father. The journey left her tired and the following weeks tested her like nothing else ever had. Her father’s conditioned worsened with each passing day and although the prognosis was bad, (Name) remained hopeful that she would at least get a few more weeks with her before the inevitable happened. It was a Sunday morning when all hopes she had finally shattered, Peter Y/L/N passed away during the night. At least during his sleep, peacefully in his own bed, surrounded by flowers from his friends all over the world, in the place he loved most and with his only daughter cuddled next to him.

Roger hated to pick up the phone that afternoon, seeing the number and knowing it was from Peter’s home in Johannesburg he thought it would be his assistant with an update on her father’s health, she never told them just how bad it was so the news came without even a warning only the soft voice of this young woman holding back her tears as she spoke on the phone.

“I’m bringing him back to London,” she croaked, a runny nose evident to her boss on the other end of the line, “he wants...wanted to be buried next to his parents. It will take a couple of day, I hope you don’t mind...”

“Of cours not, Kitten,” Roger felt a sting in his eyes, (Name) was an upbeat song with a catchy tune, listening to her like this made him worry. “Do you need anything? Any help?”

Sarina and Lola came into the living room to find Roger talking on the phone, they understood poorly but caught on once they could see the drummer’s expression. Tigs would be fuming when she realized she had been late to the news.

“Thank you,” she sniffed on the other end of the line, he punched by the small gesture, “Dad’s manager is taking care of most of it. Thank you, Roger.”

They could not see each other but they both smiled into th phone at that moment. Silence fell for a second before the old drummer assured (Name) that he and his family were there for her, in case she needed anything.

She traveled back home with a casket, bothered by the media. Paparazzi following her out of the airport and to her old home where she would be staying until the funeral.

And so now, here were Joe and Gwilym standing outside her door, unable to say a word that could console their friend.

“Maybe we should just...” Joe paused, “be here.”

“Yeah...” Gwil nodded in agreement.

The tallest one rang the bell and the two waited in silence until the door was opened by (Name) herself. She looked nothing like they remembered.

She seemed to be paler than ever, her hair usually so carefully styled was now tied back into a dull ponytail. Dark circles surrounded her reddened eyelids and the E/C irises they remembered looked almost dead. Her black sweater matched her black pants.

She stepped to the side to let them in. Gwilym felt stupid giving her the flowers, but still did so in silence. The house was quiet and big enough for a family of six, it only made her loneliness echo and bounce on each wall. The only company she had had since coming back had been Peter’s manager and lawyer; she refused to have the Taylors see her right now even though she knew she needed company. This was a surprise, but she opened the door and held the flowers.

Her eyes fell on the bright blue petals of the fluffy asters.

“From the cast and crew,” Gwil explained in a soft tone.

“Thank you.” She mumbled with a raspy voice, unable to form a smile or look up at her friends.

Joe bent his knees and tilted his body back, pursing his lips before opening his arms and offering (Name) his most sincerest condolences. She gave him a cold hug and did not bother to look at his face at all.

“I appreciate it, Joe.” She recited like a child would in a school play. “Would you like some tea?”

Gwil accepted the offer and started following her through the narrow hall into a large living room, a piano sat closed in the corner and past the double doors they walked into the dining room.

“I’ll take some coffee,” Joe let out, making her stop and look over her shoulder with a frown.

Did she even have coffee in the house? Her father’s manager and his wife had been the ones who brought in the groceries so she would have to find out.

Gwilym turned to Joe, shaking his head. He opened his eyes as wide as they could go and tilted his head to the side with a stern look, to which Joe then added:

“Actually, yes! Tea sounds wonderful, (Name), thanks!”

She kept on walking and they were brought into a large spacious white kitchen.

(Name) pulled one of the tall chairs out and told the men to sit by the kitchen island while she poured some water into a bright yellow kettle that already rested atop the stove empty.

“So how are you holding up?” Joe asked in a discreet manner, leaning forward on the cold marble top of the island.

(Name) reached up and opened one fo the cupboards, finding a package of biscuits she then put on a plate and brought to the guys.

She stared at the sink in front of her and scratched a spot over her left brow. How was she holding up? Was she even holding up? She had been unable to go to her own apartment, the press was already waiting for her there. And the news everywhere spoke of her father, telling tales of his wonderful career, talent, failed marriage and surviving daughter.

She could not sleep, waking up in cold sweats from the nightmares. Consumed by guilt, (Name) was guilty for staying in England while her father followed his heart to another continent, doing what most wouldn’t do. She had been an awful daughter, barely taking the time off from work or school to visit her dad. She owed him the world, the man had raised her on his own, battled through everything to cope with her difficult teenage years and later supported her in whatever she wanted to do when she was off to university. And she could not do much more than stand by when he died.

“Papa...” she started, her lip quivered, “papa is gone.”

She could say it over and over but it did not feel real. It had been so sudden and so painful waking up to his cold hand between hers. All (Name) could think of was that it was a horrible prank, a bad dream.

“Yes.” Joe agreed, trying to show her patience and care, he reached out and put his hand on hers. “But you are still here, how are you?”

Joe’s accent had switched back to American and she examined his hand as she thought of his words.

“I don’t know,” she admitted, “I have lived alone for years, it’s just now...it’s like... there is nobody in the world who I can call.” She explained in a whisper, reasoning out loud. “I think I’m scared.”

Her eyes watered and she hated it, blinking a few times she turned her back on them and brought the cups out, she left them on the counter and wiped her nose with the back of her hand.

“How’s shooting going?”

Gwilym answered and gave her a little explanation as to why Rami and Ben were not there.

“I think you should let more people in.” Gwilym gave her a delicate look, keeping his expression soft and warm as she sat the cup of tea in front of him. “Thanks.”

She sighed and wrapped her arms around her body. She nodded, knowing it to be true. Anyone who had seen her since the passing of her father advised the same thing.

“I know you need time.” Joe did not date even touch the hot cup of tea as he spoke to his fragile friend, “but maybe you could find a distraction.”

Joe pointed behind his back with his thumb, referring to the piano in her fabulous living room.

“I don’t play anymore.” She refused, and shook her head no.

“Well, it’s better than turning the tv on.” Gwilym eyed Joe and the two nodded.

The two actors took sips of their tea, she sat across from them with a blank expression while her tea got cold.

Joe has been able to joke around with (Name) before, she was around the set for the first few days of shooting when Roger and Brian were there; and even when they were not, she got along with Ben right away and laughed at him when he first came out of the makeup trailer in costume. Like himself, (Name) had never met John and only knew little of him from what Roger and Brian had told her. Still, (Name) tried to pay equal attention to Joe as she did to Ben, retelling him stories Roger had told her at some point about Deacon. Much like Roger, the young brunette enjoyed having fun with her job.

He and Gwilym looked up in great surprise when out of the blue she started laughing. The two made an effort to look away and hide their concern but she held on to the edge of the kitchen island as the hysteric fits of laughter washed over her entire body. A memory of her father made her laugh this much.

It had been on her sixteenth birthday that he decided his daughter needed a car! He had money now and he could afford it, the only problem was that when he showed her the beautiful and classic blue Mini Cooper she did not jump in excitement or hugged him. (Name) scratched the back of her head and frowned up at her father.

“I can’t drive.” She reminded him in confusion.

She had, in all honesty, never seen her dad get so flustered and confused at the same time. His expression changed from excitement to concern and to embarrassment. Of course, what was he thinking? But (Name) did not take it personally, she took the keys from his hand and grabbed his arm, pulling him toward the car.

“I guess you’ll have to teach me!”

Her father laughed, oblivious as to how scary teaching his daughter how to drive could be.

(Name)’s eyes watered with tears, she could not tell if they were from the laughter or if they were more grieve induced tears. She did not care, as she found out soon enough with the shakes that crept up her spine, the whimpers and sobs she was too weak to keep inside. Papa is gone, she remembered, and her heart struggled to beat as usual.

Gwilym reacted first, rushing to leave his seat and come to her while she covered her face with her hands. Joe felt almost dizzy and uncomfortable, wondering how anything he said would make her feel better. None of it mattered, (Name) was coming undone and needed to be held together. Gwil wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close to his chest, shushing her wish soft whispers and promising it would all be okay.

She leaned into him and cried away, accepting at last that she hated being alone, especially in the big house where her father had raised her.

(Name) asked Gwilym to call Roger once she calmed down enough to wipe her face and look up at him. He and Joe stayed with her while the drummer arrived with his wife and daughters Tigs and Lola. They had to go attend other duties as it was their day off, but Joe and Gwil were certain that their friend would be alright once they saw her running up to Roger, who wrapped her in a tight paternal embrace while Sarina and his daughters rubbed the girls’ back. (Name) was not alone, she still had a family.

Next One Soon

Tags: @tv-saved-the-teenage-girl @naturalswifty89 @itsametaphorbriansblog @i-want-to-break-free-39 @stomp-stomp-clap @70srogertaylor @mr-stank-i-dont-feel-so-dank

[letterfromtrenwith]

Prescription Passion - Ch. 4

Carolight Hospital AU

Ch 4: Nobody has a good day, and Caroline hears some hospital gossip.

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3

~

There are a number of studies that have found that people living with a range of potentially visible skin conditions can experience social anxiety, usually accompanied by lowered quality of life as a consequence of avoidant coping.

Caroline sighed – she’d read that sentence four times now. She let the issue of the British Journal of Dermatology fall shut on her desk and put her head in her hands. Today had really drained her; she’d been up late with Uncle Ray after he’d suffered a hypoglycaemic episode, and had been reluctant to leave him this morning, although he’d insisted he was all right. He probably was – he usually kept his diabetes under very good control – but she couldn’t help worrying.

Even if Uncle Ray had wanted her to stay, she probably wouldn’t have been able to – her appointment schedule that morning had been absolutely jam-packed, with both private and NHS patients, and she’d barely had five minutes to herself. When she was supposed to be having lunch, she’d been called in alongside her boss, Dr Bodrugan, to see a woman who had suffered severe burns in a house fire. She’d been transferred from the Royal Cornwall to see Dr Bodrugan specifically, as he was an expert in treating such injuries.  Those kinds of cases were always difficult – the patient would require numerous surgeries and months if not years of treatment.

On top of all that, while she’d been trying to catch up on her paperwork this afternoon she’d got a call from the oncology department asking her to pass on her files on a patient – his skin cancer had metastasised to his bones. He was only in his 20s and the type of cancer he had progressing in that way was extremely rare. That had thrown her completely off – she’d tried catching up on her reading as a bit of a distraction, but it was certainly no help, especially as that same issue contained an article on the treatment of melanoma.

No, this was no good; she needed a break. A trip down to the coffee shop for something creamy and fattening should do the trick; it was probably not the best idea to have a Starbucks in the lobby of a hospital, but Caroline was eternally grateful for it. As she waited at the end of the counter for her venti caramel macchiato she heard a familiar voice order a chai latte, and turned to see Dwight Enys standing at the till, arms folded, looking about as worn down as she felt. His hair was beginning to flop over his forehead in a really quite charming way. He wore his dark blue scrubs, and she might have admired how well the colour suited him if she hadn’t noticed the splatter of what looked like blood up the left sleeve. Caroline had done her time in A & E as a student and she didn’t envy those who had made it their specialty. The cases she’d dealt with today were nothing compared to what Dwight saw on a much more regular basis.

“Oh, hello.” Dwight spotted her as he headed down to wait, too. She hadn’t seen him for a few days, since they’d observed the OOKP together and had that funny little talk about Horace afterwards. Caroline had wondered what on Earth she’d been thinking, inviting him to come and watch an unusual eye surgery like it was a date or something. As fascinating as the procedure had been, she’d paid far too much attention to him sitting next to her, his knee touching hers, the warm, masculine scent of him.

“Hi. How are you?” She paused, glancing at the blood on his sleeve. “Or should I not ask?”

“What – Oh, God.” He rubbed ineffectually at the already dried stain. He lowered his voice. “Stabbing.”

“Jesus. How are they?” He shook his head, glancing down at the floor, and she fought the urge to put her hand on his arm – she didn’t know if he would appreciate it. “I’m sorry.”

“It happens.” He didn’t sound as casual as his words suggested. Most doctors developed a thick skin about death and suffering. It was necessary to keep from breaking down on a regular basis, but only the truly callous could remain completely unaffected.

“Do you – do you want to talk about it?” Their drinks had arrived, and Caroline inclined her head toward a table.

“No.” The abrupt refusal prickled at her, until Dwight shook his head. “Sorry, I don’t mean to sound rude – I’d just rather not talk about…that. Anything else, though.”

They sat at the table, gripping their cups. Neither seemed willing to speak at first, until they both tried to at the same time. They laughed, and this broke the tension.

“You first.” Caroline said, taking a sip of her drink. The sickly sweetness absolutely hit the spot.

“Bad day for you, too?”

“How can you tell?”

“Well, please don’t take this the wrong way, but you don’t look like you drink those on a regular basis.” Caroline chuckled.

“Well diagnosed, Dr Enys.” Dwight smiled. Even still a little sad, he had a lovely smile. She told him about her cancer patient and her burns patient. He was an excellent listener, his face kind and sympathetic –she was sure he would be calming presence to patients in A & E, reassuring them at what was probably the most frightening time of their lives. When she’d finished, there was a short silence and she realised she’d been talking for quite a long time. She almost began to apologise, but he began to speak quietly.

“He was 20. Some sort of fight in a pub.” Caroline realised he meant the stabbing victim he’d been treating.

“In the middle of the day?” Truro wasn’t a crime-free utopia, but someone getting stabbed in a pub in broad daylight wasn’t exactly in the usual course of things.

“Yeah. Not the sort of thing I expected to see very much of back in the UK.” He looked down at his now nearly empty cup. What sort of things had he seen while working with MSF? Caroline lifted her hand, intending to place it over one of his but pulled back suddenly when he abruptly stood.

“I’d, er, I’d better get back. My shift’s over, but I still need to finish up some paperwork. Thanks for the, um, the talk.”

“I think I did most of the talking.” He smiled again, gently.

“Yes, that’s what I meant.” He paused.  “I think Verity and the others are going out again on Friday, see you then, maybe?”

“Yes, see you.” He turned and headed out, stopping to drain the paper cup and dump it in the bin at the entrance. Maybe it was just Caroline’s imagination but, as he was about to go through the swing doors into the main part of the hospital, she was sure he stopped to glance back at her. 

~

“Hey.” Elizabeth looked up, startled, smiling when she saw Caroline.

“Oh, hello. Sorry. Miles away there.”

“You okay?” Fancying a change, Caroline had gone out to a local sandwich shop to fetch something for lunch, and found Elizabeth sitting on one of the benches in the grounds, looking lost in thought. She was wearing her dark pink scrubs, glasses shoved up on top of her head.

“Yes. No. It’s just – one of my patients went into premature labour this morning. 25 weeks.”

“Oh, my…” Caroline rubbed her friend’s back gently.  

“I’ve dealt with premature babies before, but it never gets any easier. She’s just so small, and we hook them up to all these machines, and the parents…”

“But chances of survival are quite good at 25 weeks, aren’t they?”

“Fairly.” Elizabeth sighed. “But that’s not much comfort to her parents. If I tell them there’s a 70% chance of their baby surviving, all they can hear is the 30% chance she won’t. It’s mostly out of my hands now, really, she’s in the NICU, but…”

“They remind you of Valentine, don’t they?” Elizabeth’s son had been premature – nothing like as early as that, but he’d had to spend a couple of weeks in hospital being monitored. Caroline hadn’t known Elizabeth then, but she’d seen the sadness in both her and George’s eyes on the rare occasions they spoke about it. Valentine was a happy, healthy boy now, but it would have been truly distressing at the time, especially for two doctors; watching their baby suffer but being unable to do anything for him.

“Yes and no.” Elizabeth glanced down and Caroline was suddenly reminded of talking to Dwight the other day, the sadness on his handsome face. She shook herself, she shouldn’t be thinking of some guy while she was comforting her friend.

“Have you seen George?”

“He’s in a long surgery. I’ll talk to him later.” Elizabeth shook her head. “Anyway, how are you? How’s Ray? I haven’t seen him in a while.”

“He’s good. He had a hyper a few days ago, but everything’s back to normal now.”

“Oh good, I’m glad.” Caroline’s Uncle Ray was an old friend of Elizabeth’s late father – it was how the two women had met. When Caroline had come to St Neot’s to take up her registrar position, Ray had invited Elizabeth and George to dinner to introduce them. Caroline had initially been embarrassed by this – her Uncle helping her to make friends like she was a child – but she’d liked them both immensely and they’d quickly become close. She was even joint godmother to little Ursula, who Elizabeth had fallen pregnant with not long after they’d met. “Don’t let me keep you. I should be getting back, anyway, I’ve got a patient being induced this afternoon.”

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I will be. Thank you, Caroline.” Elizabeth reached over to embrace her, and Caroline hugged her friend back tightly, but hissed as she pulled back, pain darting between her shoulder blades. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, yes. Just spent all morning bending over the treatment table.”

“Why don’t you go down and see Morwenna? I know she’s free this afternoon, a couple of her sports patients had to rearrange because their match schedule was changed last minute.”

“Do you think she’d mind me just dropping in?” Morwenna Chynoweth was Elizabeth’s cousin, and a recently qualified physiotherapist. A very skilled one at that.

“Not at all. I’ll send her a text. See you later.” With a squeeze of her hand, Elizabeth was gone. Caroline shifted on the seat, and groaned again at the ache in her back. Perhaps a visit to Morwenna wasn’t a bad idea, after all.

“Come in!” Just after getting back to her office, Caroline had received a text from Morwenna saying she could drop by any time after 3. So, after finishing up her own early afternoon schedule, each appointment making the niggling pain across her shoulders steadily worse, here she was. At Morwenna’s invitation, she pushed open the door of the treatment room, but found that the physio was not alone.

“Oh, sorry!”

“No, it’s okay, Rosina was just off.” Rosina was a pretty young blonde in a nurse’s scrubs. Clearly, Caroline wasn’t the only staff member who’d taken advantage of Morwenna’s free afternoon. Like the dermatology department, the allied health clinic was partially private but, as a small perk, hospital staff could receive treatments for free or at a reduced rate.

“Thanks, Morwenna, it really does feel better.” Rosina stood and headed out, giving Caroline a friendly smile.

“Consider getting it checked out though, will you?”

“I will!” The young nurse slipped out the door, heading along the corridor. Caroline knew better than to ask what they were talking about. Morwenna would keep her patients’ business as private as any physician.

“So, Caroline, what can I do for you?” Morwenna smiled as Caroline closed the door. Her resemblance to Elizabeth really was striking, even down to their short haircuts, although Elizabeth’s bob was softer. Caroline explained about her sore back as Morwenna directed her to sit on one of those exercise ball things, nodding encouragingly when Caroline hesitated doubtfully.

“Trust me.” When Caroline sat, Morwenna gently placed her hands on her shoulders and adjusted her posture into what Caroline realised was actually a very comfortable position. They chatted as Morwenna worked, gently manipulating Caroline’s arms, and massaging her shoulders and upper back. Like her cousin, Morwenna had a naturally soothing manner with people, making her easy to talk to. “So, what’s this new doctor like? Enys?”

“Dwight?” Caroline was immediately alert at the mention of him. She hadn’t been expecting Morwenna to ask about him, but she supposed it made sense – she knew Verity just as well as the others, so she was bound to have heard about him. “He’s..he seems nice. I haven’t, er, haven’t spoken to him much.”

“Oh yes, he definitely sounds ‘nice’.” Morwenna chuckled. “Rosina won’t shut up about him.”

“Rosina? The nurse?”

“Oh, yes. She works in A & E, and she’s done a few shifts with him. He’s the absolute bees’ knees, according to her.”

“Hmm, really?” Caroline did her best to sound disinterested. Suddenly, Morwenna did something to her between the shoulder blades and she did forget all about Dwight for a moment. “Ohhhh my God, what did you just do? That was amazing.”

“A magician never reveals her secrets.” Morwenna laughed. “Although there’s no trick to it, to be honest. You doctors all spend too much time bending over. Just try to take more breaks, whenever you can, and make sure your desk chair is adjusted properly.”

“Wow. I feel like a new woman, really.” Her stiffness was almost completely gone. She stretched, marvelling, but then remembered what they’d been talking about before. “So, um, Rosina’s impressed with Dwight’s work, then?”

“Oh, yeah, his ‘work’.” Morwenna laughed, sitting down behind her desk. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m sure he’s an excellent doctor, but I’m also fairly sure it’s not his skills in the A & E that Rosina’s really interested in.”

“Oh.” Caroline suddenly felt a lot less energised.

[marshmalleaux-queen]

something that pisses me off

....but I'm going to put it under a read more because

a.) i'm certain no one wants a text wall full of rage all over their dash b.) i don't know a whole lot about this thing I'm pissed about so I want to save my baseless assumptions and irritation for people who actually want to involve themselves with my bullshit and spare myself the embarrassment of having it shown right off the bat c.) i don't know how long this might be because i'm just writing as i go d.) because fuck you thats why

So my mom has been denied disability benefits for what, third? fourth time? of course every single time we've said how much fucking bullshit that is but this time i asked to read the papers they sent her about why she got denied, and even though i did a small amount of skimming and didn't fully understand the terms (i would have asked mom for meanings but she is rightfully upset and doesn't even want to think about it), im still finding a lot of it.... fucking bullshit

So for the longest time, as long as I can remember really, my mom has been too sick to hold an actual job. She's got so many diagnoses I don't even know the names of right away, but I know she has (and i'll probably spell these wrong but right now i dont really care) fibromyalgia, endometryosis, some kind of disc disease (?), she's had so many surgeries (some of them were even purely exploratory i'm pretty sure,) procedures, been on so many medications, tons of which make her even MORE ill. some days she's in so much pain she can barely talk or move, and pretty much every morning it takes her hours to even get out of bed because it hurts so much, and god forbid (and please pardon if this is TMI???) her constipation has gone on for a long time because that just adds to it and makes it worse (there was actually one time where she didn't go for almost a MONTH, im not even fucking kidding), or that if she's not in pain she's instead violently ill and vomiting her brains out every half hour. Then there's the thing where if she stands up too fast, she's basically .01% away from passing the fuck out. none of that "woah small little head rush" shit, she literally fucking convulses and if it weren't for me or a well-placed object to support her she'd fall straight to the floor, hard. This isn't even going into detail about every other physical diagnosis she's had, nor is this even touching the MENTAL diagnoses (y'all think my depression/anxiety is bad, it's a fucking joke compared to hers)

And all of this stuff means that she CANNOT hold any kind of job. I know what you're thinking "but what about something mundane and doesn't require physical work" but then god forbid she can't come in because of the random EXCRUCIATING pain she's in or the incessant need to throw up, the passing out from standing up, what have you. Trust me, she is a stuborn and independent person who will stop at absolutely nothing to do what she needs to have done, and if she was physically capable of going out and doing any kind of work BELIEVE ME SHE WOULD. One of the biggest concerns and fears and things I have literally caught her CRYING ABOUT (and my mom DOES NOT CRY) is that she feels useless because she can't contribute to our family like my stepdad can, and thinks that her ailments can't be excuses for not working and such. Her ailments have affected her in basically every way and on every level i can think of.

so imagine when i ask to read the papers on why she's denied disability benefits and see all this bullshit they wrote. They said that even if she can't go out and do JOB jobs, she can still do simple tasks like cooking and cleaning and grocery shopping and leisure things like swimming, and that she can "still lift 10-20 pounds" and "remain in a standing/sitting working position longer than 8 hours" (that last one isn't verbatim but you get what i'm saying). So basically, they say she's incapacitated enough to not do a real working job, but she's not so incapacitated that she can't get up and do a house chore or pull a laundry basket up the stairs once in a while, and because of that she's not "disabled."

And in the same page (if not, the very next one), they said that her ailments might prevent her from doing hard physical labor, but that there are (and again, not VERBATIM but pretty damn close) "plenty of working opportunities in this economy that do not require physical labor that she has not taken." And i'm gonna fucking say it again, IF SHE WAS PHYSICALLY AND MENTALLY CAPABLE OF HOLDING ANY KIND OF WORKING JOB/OCCUPATION, EVEN DOING THE MOST MENIAL TASKS, SHE WOULD HAVE FUCKING DONE IT BY NOW.

In addition, they said that because she's gone to school and held jobs in the past (and it fell within a certain time period), she's not actually physically or mentally impaired. And let me tell you why that's another huge fucking crock of bullshit. The last time my mother has held a job or gone to college was when she was a single mother, living alone and taking care of two INFANT children with absolutely nobody else around to support every one of us. She was still just as ill as she is today, but she prioritized her children over anything else and would rather work TWO JOBS (oh yeah did I mention she took two part time jobs that basically equaled a full time job, because she fucking did) to care for her children rather than use her pain as an excuse to let us starve. If she was going to be a half decent mother, she had no other fucking choice than to push through to feed and clothe us and give us an education. And these fucking piles of shit are saying that because these circumstances were relatively recent, she can't be considered "disabled." What kind of baseless and uncaring bunch of absolute fucking bullshit do they think they're spouting.

And let's not forget the kinds of people who ARE on disability benefits. Sure, of course there are some people out there who genuinely need it (people who are paralyzed, SEVERELY mentally ill/incapacitated/slow, etc), but I bet you all the fucking money i have that most of the people who are recieving disability are lazy, uncaring, EXPLOITING piles of ungrateful shit who don't even have ANYTHING REMOTELY wrong with them, are fully capable of working and just CHOOSE not to, and on the off chance they do have children (because i'm certain a lot of them don't), they use them as a pathetic excuse to fall back on when they are COMPLETELY able of not only taking care of themselves but these (more often than not) PERFECTLY HEALTHY children as well. These people are given disability benefits with almost no issues, an my mother is denied four fucking times. Let that fucking soak in.

In short, these disability people are fucking disgraces to the human race and they can kiss my ass and fuck off to the deepest pits of hell.

thank you and i'll be here struggling to stop my hands from shaking if you need me

[sorrymomandcat]

Mon. September 16 2019

12:41AM Just spit balling here: Take people’s kids away right away. Give them to somebody not suffering from addiction - This is possibly ‘dangerous and problematic’ addiction specific.

I don’t know who will take the kids.

I guess that’s already sort of the system we have in place.. but like.. maybe we need to stop having kids then and take care of the ones we do have.

Sure, have that ‘perfect little DNA Tony, with Dad’s hairline and Mom’s left eyelid 👶😍’. 

Makes sense biologically AND emotionally to me - I get it - #metoo but they’re still going to grow up with the Step-Shebas, Fake Secretaries and The Alcoholic’s. We’re everywhere. Worse when you can’t see us.. but the ones you can’t see aren’t really the one’s dying - and the ones dying are the one’s I am trying to get a grip on. That’s the caliber my trauma was born in, as well as the only person I can save. 

Tip: The difference isn’t really ‘heroin’ or ‘shopping’ - but you and me. 

Example: It isn’t the substance that is dynamic. It’s me. My behaviours. 

I suffer from a disease that is the leading cause of death in all of America and when left unprotected or untreated it is contagious. It doesn’t have to be through DNA, it doesn’t have to be through long or short term environments. It can be all or any. Sometimes for a lucky, well trained or treated few.. it can be none at all! But it is contagious, and we’re all at risk. 

So Tony might have fulfilled your primal and pure instincts, but you still may be attending his funeral before he’s 25.

Let’s fix that before we keep throwing flesh and blood into the fire thinking “it wouldn’t happen to me”. 

Which, by the way, is completely ignorant thinking:

The Alcoholic is 43 years old. I’m being generous in saying she has a combination of 16 years sober/coherent. Do you think, with this information in mind, that she could make healthy and insightful choices? Do you think she had even formed what she believed those to be yet? These 16 years I’ve scrounged to her accountability include her first ones here on earth. I won’t even tell you where she came from. Do you think she had much life experience? Did you? She is beautiful beyond measure with a fierce mind, stoppable by nothing. You must know the type. A Fucking Lion. Do you think she wanted to be a; homeless, helpless, abusive, delusional, poorly aging woman aching from wounds she never learned to recognize, who’s only achievements have been long since abandoned or ruined? Either taken or freely given away? Beyond lonely carrying nothing but; shame, false pride, the story she keeps telling herself and a 2/4 of Australian? 

She has two kids. Both better copies of what many assumed was already perfection. They of course need her and they of course suffered greatly for that. I’m sure she loves them. Wouldn’t you?

Do you think she wanted this?

Do you think this sort of life is simply chosen? 

You’re not better than The Alcoholic. 

Still disagree? Would you trade her lives? Saint you are. 

I’m not saying you have to like her, or understand her. 

Understand the first sentence of this paragraph. Start there. 

1:59AM I have been diagnosed with a disease that has the leading cause of death in all of America. Without protection or proper treatment, it is contagious.

If by birth* and/or choice, you have someone close to you in your life who suffers from problematic and dangerous addiction, you need to notice and take proper care*. If not, you will be infected.

You will either become the narcissist, or you will continue along a harmful path long enough to not see yourself become the narcissist. I want to be realistic with you. When you are infected, those are your subconscious options. That's it. Option 2 does not serve the sufferer.. it’s confusing. It only seems to accomplish maximum pain, to really ensure you feel shitty about the nearly inevitable.. as if you really need to drive home the suffering. It’s almost senseless. That's true. It's also the most likely path to heal. You’re suffering because you still recognize reality, although apparently disconnected. You see there may be a problem, although you only see it as yourself. That is more hopeful than if you did not see a problem, as then you wouldn’t change. In terms of suffering though (especially with these odds, you should see em!) It is arguably more intelligent to opt for Option 1; becoming the narcissist. Too bad nobody asks you. 

Which is who’s at fault here.

Nobody.

Truly.

We are spiritual, we are intellectual, we are emotional and we are physical. 

It is contagious, and without proper protection treatment, it will kill you.

It will kill you and true to it's nature, it will make it seem like you did it yourself. 

Glossary

Birth = most effective way to infect a person. Be born into it. 

Proper care = boundaries, insight, compassion, meaning in your life, a higher power, a purpose and basic self love. You don't need all of them but if you have 2 or less, then you need to RUN from the problematic addict/narcissist. With love. But mostly for yourself. They're already fucked and your love likely can't really reach them anyways. Once you're safe, if possible or interested (not expected to be the case unless you're a recovered Whatever The Fuck) then you can encourage this person to love themselves, and let them know that forgiveness is possible. I’d suggest getting a second opinion from at least one other reasonable person* first. Do not risk your life, you need to be an example. Don't say much else unless they come to you. I am sorry for your loss. Please know that a very common and real case (regardless of- and very much in spite of- your hurt feelings) is that they are happiest continuing this way. You don’t need to understand, and you likely won’t. It is their right to live how they want to. It is NOT their right to hurt other people. Do NOT risk your life trying to save theirs. That is the last thing our spirit wants. More important - it does not pass the message. It does not inspire faith or shame; two major forces behind changed behavior. Changed behaviour is the only real long-term cure. Do not watch them suffer. Do not become infected. Know that it would be for nothing. For the sake of Tony, for the love of God.. Do not become infected.

Reasonable person* someone who seldom complains even with just cause. Someone who is able to maintain 1-2 healthy relationships, somebody who has integrity which reflects through their consistent actions.

A Convo The Other Day:

"I bet. My Mom sucks. Still doesn't know my favorite color. Yet yeah I'd definitely smoke a pipe and blow off everything tomorrow and next week too, if you put it in front of me or told me where to go how much money I need and when.

It's a disease and left untreated or to our own devices we will stay sick. Not love, not hate, not success and not hitting - living out every bottom we have - will change that. Only doing those things or whatever.. or at least there's a better chance maintaining it.. when you get those things they talk about.. in the rooms.. I guess."

2:01AM Yeah and I work at 7AM. I had 4 days sober. I didn't use a lot and I avoided dangerous or counter-productive situations, even though they lead to more drugs/money/trauma bonds and self sabotage! Good job High Priestess. You're doing good work. You're doing good work. You don't have to be winning to still be doing good work. I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you. I'm not going anywhere. I'm asking our creator to stay with us also. If we're 'in' that means 'out' still exists and if I can type I love you five times EVEN THOUGH I'm a 'stubborn-toughie-loyal-to-the-story'. then there's still a chance of getting out. Want it! Feel that shit so that you KNOW you want OUT OF THESE TRAUMA BONDS. THE ONES WITH ME.

3:10PM Goes to the washroom to use meth. Forgets to use the washroom.

[mini-zerk-her]

MANIA- SIDEMEN FANFIC PART 5

Sorry I'm leaving you guys with a cliffhanger. --------------------------------------------- My family was keen on seeing me. They wanted me there for Christmas so much that they sent Simon back to get me. He had physically dragged me with the help of a bribe. If I went I could see Harry. However they didn't say if I had to be happy once there. So I stayed in my room for most of the day except when I was carried down my Simon and asked to sit and eat dinner with everyone. "So how has London been Stephanie?" "Do you really need me to say it?" I ask while dragging my fork around the plate. "Cause you already know what happened. I know Simon told you and I know you're disappointed. I mean I already knew you were disappointed regardless but I now am positive of the disappointment." "Steph." Johnny says in a warning tone and I look up and drop my fork to the plate. "Don't Johnny. I know everyone at this table is sick of me and sick of dealing with my problems. Yet you all wanted me here? Why? So you could show off your pity case to all our neighbors and friends? Let them know how hard you have it? Well I didn't ask to come here I asked to stay at Simons." "I mean it's not like you, Johnny, said you'd take me in. Neither did you Nick. You both said no and the fact that mum and dad couldn't even let me stay here was a real smack in the face. They had to practically beg Simon to get me out of here, so don't act like I'm trying to be a problem. It's just that you have all made me out to be one since the moment I was diagnosed. Maybe you could all try and talk to me or ask me how I am. Or just be upfront and say 'have you been taking care of yourself' cause any of those would work." "And Simon I wanna go home cause this is not home anymore. Not when I've been ostracized." I stand up from the table and he places his head in his hands. "Fine I'll call someone to get me." I grab my cellphone from the table and I head upstairs where my suitcase sits unopened. I knew I wouldn't last more than a day here with them. They're lucky I even tried to put up with them. "Jide can you come get me?" "Wait where are you? Are you okay?" "I'm back at the home like my parents home and I can't take it. Like I tried so hard and Simons gonna be so upset that broke our deal but I can't do it. I just wanna drink and I can't and they're all drinking around me. Like please can you come get me? I'd ask Harry but that would make Simon even more angry because he told me if I didn't make it through Christmas with our family I couldn't go on a date with him." "Don't drink anything okay? You're strong enough I know you can do it. Now I'm gonna call Simon and I'm gonna tell him he should take you home and that I'm here and I'll watch you. We can hang out together and guess what? We'll burn the Leeds jersey of his cause why is he a Leeds fan?" He jokes and I laugh slightly while wiping my tears. "Just take a few deep breaths and lie down. Clear your mind. I'll call you back." A beep sounds and I know he has hung up. I take a seat on my bed and I try to take the advice I've been given. Just try and breathe. "You called JJ?" Simons voice whispers as a body lays down next to mine. "Well who else would I call? I would call you but you're already here. I would call Johnny or Nick but it's not the same anymore and they're also here. That only leaves a few people. It leaves the Sidemen and the rest of your friends. I couldn't call Harry because I didn't hold up my end of the deal and I wasn't gonna go back on my word. I thought JJ was the best option because I've known him for so long." "Gotcha." He and I continue to look up at the ceiling before he finally discusses the main problem. "He said you felt like you just wanted to drink because you were upset and because it was tempting." "Yeah. I mean I've been sober for like two months and that's nothing but I thought mum or dad would've been proud. Instead they drink right in front of me. After they knew I was sober and trying to fix things. I mean they might as well have put a needle on the table because for me quitting drinking is almost as hard as quitting heroin. I loved drinking. It made everything disappear for a while." "I really tried Simon. I really wanted to make them proud and to sit at the table and be normal and like you, but I couldn't. I tried so hard to make them happy but I couldn't." "I'll bring you back home. It won't be too long of a drive and JJ said he would be waiting for you." He stands up quickly and leaves the room and leaves me to get my stuff. I pick up my duffle and I start to follow him downstairs. "No that's not true. I am doing what's right for her. Did you not realize you were all drinking at the table? She can't drink and she's been working really hard to not drink and you forgot. She's trying really hard and you didn't remember a basic part of her life now. I mean all the guys remember and they aren't even her blood family. They remember to not drink when we go out to dinner for her sake, but you guys didn't. So right now if she's upset I wanna get her home because it's what's best for her. I'm sorry but you're wrong this time mum." I hear Simon argue. "No Simon she's gonna stay because it's Christmas Eve. We can put the wine away that's not a problem." "Mum she's already upset and she'll hate me for saying it but she's unstable when she's upset. I don't want her to do something dumb and if she has time to cool down that's better. Plus she proved to me that she's capable of making the best decisions for herself. I watch her make some really bad ones but this isn't one of them. She has to be able to trust herself and she can't if we are constantly saying no and that it isn't right." "Not to mention you didn't want her to stay with you. That always stings a little." "So because she can't be here you have to go home too." Nick argues and I finally have had enough. "Stop it. I'm nineteen and I turn twenty in like a month. I can make my own decisions and I'll call an uber if you really want Simon to stay, but that's funny because now you don't care if I go you only care if the golden boy stays." I laugh as I make my way downstairs. "Now I will walk outside and either Si will follow me or I will get home safely by another method. Either one I'm fine with." I explain before opening the front door and waiting for the sound of it closing to hit me. It does and when I turn around nobody is behind me. "Hey it's me. I'm home so why don't you come and pick me up. I think we can have some fun."

[ifuseethisturnback-blog]

My first blog! Lots of editing to do. But here

A letter to James Dolan Picture this: It is a Friday afternoon. You are in midtown Manhattan stuck in your miserable cubicle perfecting the spreadsheets that your 29 year old boss (You are 34) told you to complete for his presentation to the potential investor next week. He has littered the office with motivational posters about how hard work beats talent when talent fails to work hard. This is ironic, because you lack both talent and motivation. A rare breed you are. He starts off every morning meeting with a new quote that he found on google about teamwork. Now, he sits you down, and says “listen up, kid (You are 34) I have spent the last 6 months building this startup from the ground, with nothing but elbow grease and a reasonable loan from my fiancées father. We finally have a chance for a breakthrough here, and I need you to be on your A game with these spreadsheets. As he walks out of your lifeless workspace, he takes the last strawberry candy from the extremely tasteful candy bowl you so elegantly placed in the corner desk. You are on the verge of tears now. This was the last candy and you were saving it for after lunch. Why would he take the last candy? Sure, you put the bowl there for coworkers to munch on and, well, if they come take a strawberry candy they HAVE to talk to you. But this was the LAST candy. You won’t be able to restock until tomorrow when you wake up in your studio alone and walk to Duane Reade with a 50% off coupon and argue with the cashier about the expiration date. You know it’s expired, but pay full price for a bag of candy at Duane Reade? That’s just not in your nature, now is it? Internally, you are about to snap. But just as you reach your breaking point, your phone begins to ring. It’s “Mike from college” calling. Wow, he hasn’t answered your last 6 texts. Do you think he’s just seeing them all now and feels the friendly urge to tell you that he never meant to ignore your “what’s the move tonight” text that you sent 3 times? You answer the phone. Eagerly. Way too eagerly. “Mike? Mike? Is that you MIKE.” The hesitation in his voice speaks volumes. The initial silence is louder than a sonic blast. But you aren’t the type of guy who notices these things. “Hey bud…how you been? Got an extra ticket to the Knicks game tonight. They are playing the Wizards at the garden, and was curious if you wanted to come.” Your face lights up. “Holy shit Mike, I would love to! Is it just us??” “Yeah…I only have 2 tickets, and I haven’t been able to find a single person to take it.” You ignore this implication that you are Mike’s last resort. You have one talent, and that is selective hearing. And damn you are good. “Well count me IN, man! Wanna meet up for drinks before?” “Let’s just meet up at the front gate man.” This sounds great to you. You get sweaty and your lips and fingers swell when you drink. You have a medically diagnosed extremely severe case of GERD anyway, so you were never able to keep up with mike and the fellas. So you finish up your spreadsheets, hand them to your boss (He’s 29) and get ready to go home and put on your childhood Patrick Ewing jersey that still fits because you didn’t make it past 5’7”. Now, its 7:30. You and Mike take your level 200 seats and you can’t help but gawk at the view. “Mike!” you say. “These seats are UNBELIEVEABLE” Of course, you hear Mike, but you somehow don’t notice him rolls his eyes as he unenthusiastically says “Yeah man, they are ok.” You are in awe of the light show, the spectacle that this organization puts on. As they introduce the 5 starting power forwards you can’t help but notice how electric the crowd is. People of all cultures unified as one. It’s a full house in the Garden tonight, as it always is. The raucous crowd lives and dies with every single basket. You howl in agony as Julius Randle misses a wide open layup, and you shriek in ecstasy when he gets his own rebound and is able to tie the game at 20. The game ebbs and flows, and you clutch Mikes arm and beg him to stand up so you have a better chance at catching a flying T-shirt. One wizzes right over your head. “Mike, imagine if you got on my shoulders? We could have totally snagged that one!” You have never BEEN so giddy. Mike must be stressed about the game- it’s been a while since he acknowledge your requests to start a “wave” with him. You understand, it’s a heck of a close game. 4th Quarter and it’s tied at 68 a pop. Can you believe? The boys actually have a chance to win this one! You never want to leave this environment. Thousands of people all unified with you in your despair but unabashed optimism. Now there is only 20 seconds left in the game. The crowd absolutely shakes. It is unlike anything you have ever seen before. Warriors fans weren’t this loud when the team was about to win its 2nd straight title. Marcus Morris shakily dribbles the ball up court as the clock ticks down. 10,9,8. As the air tight defense of the injury riddled Wizards move up to blanket him, he manages to get the ball to the power forward that is playing shooting guard. Bobby Portis backs down his defender, and you instinctively place your hands over Mikes, desperate for emotional support. He almost didn't notice how clammy they were. Almost. 4 seconds left now. With nobody who has ever attempted a 3 in their careers on the court, Portis knows his best option is to get the ball to Mitch Robinson in the paint. He heaves the ball up in desperate hope. 3 seconds left, and as Mitch catches the ball 2 feet from the hoop, you can feel the vibrations on your feet of all the fans seizing at such an unfamiliar situation. 1 second left. Mitch dunks the ball as time expires. THAT’S IT! The Knicks win! Walt Clyde Frazier shouts. The screams reverberate throughout the entire facility. Strangers hug. The Garden is roaring. You clumsily grasp for Mike. The Kicks have won their 4th preseason game 76-75 and Mike tells you that he has plans after the game but can you venom him 120 bucks whenever you get the chance? Thanks. Mike and the narrator may not be real, but the infectious atmosphere of MSG during even a routine and pointless preseason game is. This is, of course a blessing and a curse. All the Knicks woes and misfortunes come down to one common theme. James Dolan. The Clown prince of New York. Jimmy could almost be a sympathetic figure. The only reason he isn’t is because he is a gross, cold hearted, relentlessly aggressive dictator who has imprisoned an entire cities fan base into a pit of shame and mockery. Other than that, you almost feel bad for the guy. You see, there is one commonalty between us and him. It is that the Knicks are all we have. Excluding his prodigious band “JD and the straight shots” the New York Rangers/Liberty and Madison Square Garden as whole. But you get the point perhaps. Dolan is a stubborn pillock, but knows the value of what he owns. The Knicks are a money printing MACHINE, and while their head coaches may change every 18 months, that truth will remain absolute. I won’t speak with 100 percent conviction what makes Jimmy tick. Why he acts the way he does. Why he lashes out so extravagantly and embarrasses himself on an annual basis. But I feel justified in explaining why he won’t sell the team. It is a business that he is in charge of. He has stockholders to answer to, and he is, of course stubborn as a mule. One thing that might make you feel better: He is as miserable as the rest of us. There is only one way the Knicks escape from his clutches. An offer he can’t refuse. While that perhaps not impossible, there HAS to be another way. This is where I speak to Jim directly. Please, for the love of God…just get out of the way. If you can’t give up the team, just give up the reigns. We know every decision the Knicks make go through you. The management is absolutely despicable. They remain because they are loyal to you. This is how dictatorship usually works. Here, the best man for the job won’t stay, just the guys who kisses ass. It is time to face the facts. You are not capable of running the Knicks yourself. You knew that about the Rangers. You gave up the reigns with them, and they are a pretty respectable team historically and recently. Hell, does anybody outside of New York even realize you own the Rangers? You MUST be able to see that this has gone too far. You are in a hole you cannot escape from. The world of basketball sees you as a joke, and more notably a cancer. This is the type of perspective one does not simply change or escape from. If you won’t sell, you have but one way out of this mutually painful partnership: HIDE. Just remove yourself from the spotlight. Give someone else the power. GET OUT OF THE WAY. If it works, go ahead and congratulate yourself. You still own the team. But while you are still the guy at the head of the table…nobody will take us seriously. Please Jim, set us free.

[isuckandotheressays]

PART 1 ; self-saboteur

How can you even start to talk about something like this without sounding so fucking cliché it makes your teeth hurt. Stuff is hard, like really hard, and it will be forever, and I know that. I am like, obscenely good at whining, I can whine about pretty much anything, the weather, the fact I have nothing to wear, the fact that I don’t get what I want. I'm internally spoiled, but I think everyone is really, any one that isn't is lying, what type of crazy person likes when they don’t get what they want? Unless you are ,like a masochist, which in some ways I probably am, or at least a self-saboteur.

Anyway, unimportant. More importantly, my life is currently in shambles. The love of my life won't talk to me because he's upset that I tried to kill myself. Now I'm sure from an outwards perspective that makes him sound unfeeling, a dick, but to be honest I'm the dick.  

Don’t get me wrong, I 100% wanted to die, I could not see my way out. I weighed out my options, I could hang myself from the loft bed he built for me, but I'm too tall and it wouldn’t have worked. I would slit my wrists, but then I would get heaps of blood on the 70's carpet and that would be just like, disrespectful to my housemates. So, my final thought was just to take as many of my sleeping meds as I could and just like, go to sleep. I wrote a note, in tears, obviously, I had fucking lost it.  

I individually popped out the pills and took them one by one, slowly getting more and more tired, getting less and less conscious. I kept thinking about random things, like how mad everyone is going to me if I survive this, how fucked it's going to be for Luke, how I've probably ruined his life. So I thought in my drug addled state, I should probably just like message saying I'm sorry to all my friends or whatever. Because I'm a dirt human.  

Suicide, is a really selfish thing, the most selfish thing you can do, but at that point in time, I couldn’t see my way out. I felt worthless, that the person I cared for the most in the world was never going to trust me again, that my best friends didn’t want to hang out with me because I'm so fun because I'm a useless sad lump that wines, can't even drink red wine because I become some heaps horrible bitchy cynical version of myself. That I would always disappoint my parents, because to this day, I don’t actually want to do what they want me to do and I really just want to be a starving artist and make art about how sad I am all the time.  

Anyway, I squeezed out some drama queen ass text to the people that meant the most to me, 'I'm sorry I love you' , which I meant but in hindsight as someone that wanted to die peacefully and alone in their house, is not a good move because people care about if you are dead or alive and well, got scared if they get that message out of the blue. So next minute, my dad, arrives in a cab, and I go to Emergency, and no one really takes what goes on particularly seriously and then in a bed and some doctor is making me drink some sludgy black coal shit to soak up all the medication in my stomach (side note it's been three days at this point and all that is coming out of me is like spirited away anime style sludge.  

So, I wake up and I'm going to the ward, this is like 8 at night, I did all this pill business at about Noon, and I'm sitting in the waiting room with my mum and dad who are literally at their whit's end with their nerves shot because their only child has an inability to cope with real life.

Side note, I am a productive member of society, I have job, that I mostly like and work hard at, I do a little bit of 'faffy' modeling for cash when I can, I get up I get coffee, I catch the train to school etc. Granted my mum pays my phone bill because I'm a 22 year old child that can't do real life human things. But yeah, back to the ward.

PART 2 ; repercussions

I'm sitting there waiting at the mental health ward and they literally come and give me some belongings I left there the time before. Like I'm some frequent flyer, I sort of laugh under my breath but try to stifle it because I love my parents  more than anything and I don't want to make this situation any more confusing and awful than what it is. I go to the tiny mini fridge and fish out a cheese sandwich because the stuff I took to OD makes you so fucking hungry.  

So I'm admitted, given the awkward PJ's, some hectic sedatives and put in the room with the vinyl mattress like the ones in jail I'm sure, except in the ward they give you milo and night and speak in hushed tones and take your blood pressure a lot and offer you adult colouring books.  

Then I'm in the room and I'm thinking things. The things I'm thinking are about the fact that I did not succeed in ending my life and now there are repercussions. I have to not only feel shit, I have to feel guilty because what I have done to the people who love me is so monumentally horrible and I'm a bad selfish person who is never going to be loved, etc. Then I think about if I had done it another way, if it had worked, then I fall asleep.

I'm woken up by a student nurse that looks about 15 rolling in a huge blood pressure machine. The soft voice ensues like fucking silk "so, uh, cay, do you feel safe? Do you feel like hurting yourself? Killing yourself? Feeling a bit better than yesterday?" And me, being a fucking idiot, says, "oh yeah I'm fine now, just tired you know". Because, from lots of practice, I'm a master at pretending I'm okay (I'm being sarcastic hopefully you get that and I don’t just sound like a prized IDIOT).  

Hours down the track in walk out in my gross green PJ's and look at who else in in the ward. Literally exactly what you would expect, some full grown woman with pink hair doing a puzzle of teddy bears, some 'methy' looking guy talking to himself in the room (until this point I thought this was a ward for woman only) that has a video of a waterfall on loop and an extremely greasy middle ages Asian woman being scolded for trying to sleep when she has to be awake because its day time. Nobody talks to each other, we are all sort of collectively embarrassed, no one really knows how to act, do we like smile at each other? Or do we have to prove our sadness to each other? I just keep my head down mainly until I get handed the sludgy meal that we have to eat with a spoon because u could mince yourself with a fork or knife. I recon if you really wanted you could use a spoon, I recon if you really wanted you could use anything like, it's pretty fucked up but I think about that all the time. I know pretty much all the things in a room that I could use to hurt myself.  

Like spoon? Easy, I would just either with all the force in my body, sorry for the gore, slam the not spoony part into my wrist and like , blood would Tarintino style go everywhere. I could also just like shove it down my throat and choke. I recon I could like, paper cut myself to death, that’s so morbid, oh my god, sorry.  

PART 3; insidious thing  

Fast track to now, I'm at my parent's house, with a shaved head, in the country, the love of my life won't talk to me. I'm almost certain that he's going to leave me, he's already moved out and he's basically sick of my shit. And to be honest, even though it fucking hurts, its fair enough.

Backtrack again, I worked at the pub, and everyone there just like, happened to do cocaine, so I tried cocaine, and of course, it was great but very expensive. If went from something fun to something I needed to get through a shift because I was so tired. Then I would spend all my money on it. Then the guy would show up at the bar and I would just swipe my card and take money out of the till. Like at the start it was spending my money, and then I started stealing the money.  

Now, I have a huge problem which honestly, I like being on drugs, plus being bipolar, oh yeah, but now that’s up for negotiation and could be a personality disorder or whatever. I didn’t tell anyone I was doing this, not even my partner or my friend who could have helped me. Especially, my partner. But again, dirt human remember.  

So, I was holding that secret in for ages, like was literally killing me. It was the most insidious thing ever. But I've always stuffed in and marred the truth to protect myself. When I was younger, like childhood till I was 16, I had a really hard time at making friends so I literally would just make shit up. But when I was first diagnosed and had my first break up, I worked out that, that probably wasn’t optimum to being like an alright human. So I stopped saying I was related to famous models and that I got kicked out of karate because I punched the teacher and started telling the  true story about the stress nose bleeds, of the white robes and I was related to a bunch of people that lived in Yass, as in many merinos (no offence to my family - you are all phenomenal).

PART 4; him

Forward, I hadn't told my parents this immense thing, and I was lying about what actually happened. So I told them. And, they really didn’t care. Not only what this an insane and complete surprise to me, it made me feel even worse that I have been an absolutely horrendous person to my partner.  

So now, I am petrified. I'm writing this with my newly shaved golf ball head, he's not talking to me and I'm this total wreck of self-hatred and total disarray. Because I want to be with him, I don’t want to hurt him. But I don’t know how to move forward. I don’t know how to make someone trust you again, and I sure as hell don’t think I deserve to have such a fucking angel in my life.

Like you know those classically handsome boys from teen movies, yeah think about that, but like Bowie dreamy. Big ass blue eyes, freckles, tall, absolutely killer smile. He supports my art, he's good with kids and animals, he's stupid crazy intelligent, goofy and gets my humor, that I barely get sometimes. Like I have no idea how human trash like me could have made this person fall in love with me. One time, he fucking flew overseas to see me on our anniversary because he missed me. He has written obscure punk songs about me. He also supports me immensely, which I owe my life to, on many occasions.  

To be honest, I will understand if he's over it, he could do so much better, he could like, date a  girl who is not legally insane, that would not self-harm and lie and do batshit stuff like some crazy murderer. But, I do want to get better for him. And I am trying, I've enrolled in this crazy program that the psych lady said would improve my honesty as well as make me be able to deal with real life grown up situations like an adult and not some mentally inept baby thing. I am trying. Shaving my hair was a thing for me. I needed a physical change to put stuff in motion. I'm in motion now. And I hope that he sees that, but I understand, I truly I am the worst.

Skip forward to two weeks later, we ended it, I broke it I really did. But that okay, because you have to have a red hot go at being by yourself. I am weirdly happy, elated even, I feel like ive got myself back. Its crazy that you don’t even notice how much you have lost yourself until your alone, the cracks in what seemed like a perfect relationship start to show. Not to throw shade, but I think that I embarrassed him sometimes and tried to hard to act cool. And to be honest, I recon I am pretty fucking cool. I bent myself to fit around him, even my aspirations, even my work even my internet presence. He never let me 'vlog' he thought it was lame, seems like such a teeny thing but I full want to vlog. I want to talk into the abyss that in Instagram, hear an echo or not.  

I guess its all a learning curb really, you got to lose what you think you want to get what you need. I could 'smiths' along and ask to 'please please, please, let me let me let me, get what I want this time' but right now, I'm still working out what that is. It's pretty flippin' great.

[wavenetinfo]

“Long Term Parking.” For fans of The Sopranos, the banal airport sign remains a haunting callback more than a decade after the episode of the same name originally aired. In the fifth season’s 12th episode, viewers witnessed the tragic end to Adriana La Cerva (Drea de Matteo) in a gripping sequence, logical yet shocking, that generated maximum suspense and heartbreak. Adriana had long stuck by her addict fiancé Christopher Moltisanti (Michael Imperioli) out of some uncertain mixture of love, loyalty, and mob life materialism. Then came “Long Term Parking” on May 23, 2004, which not only gave Adriana the series’ most tragic ending but cast the show’s anti-hero, Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini), into a darker shadow that never dissipated. For the 10-year anniversary of the show’s finale, EW spoke to Sopranos creator David Chase, star Drea de Matteo, writer Terence Winter and director Tim Van Patten reveal how that long drive into the woods really went down…

The decision to kill off Adriana was made in 2003 while season 5 was being written. Her fate was considered inevitable due to the character’s increasing cooperation with the FBI…

Creator David Chase: What she had done, in the world that we were investigating, had marked her for death. We always knew at some point, she was probably going to pay for that. We just didn’t know when.

Star Drea de Matteo: In those days, everybody was talking about season 5 as maybe being the end of the series. I remember one time going and tentatively asking David what my fate might be. David didn’t like to be asked things. The show was so huge and such a big deal, it felt like you shouldn’t mess with anything or with him. I asked because I wanted to direct a movie. He said, “Let me think about it.” I remember being afraid that he’d whack me just because he thought I didn’t want to be there anymore or something. But my storyline was such that I was never supposed to be there in the first place and then I ended up being a series regular on the most amazing, TV-changing show. So I didn’t want to come across as ungrateful but I just wanted to know because Adriana was talking to the feds.

Writer Terence Winter: At the beginning of season 5, we realized it would happen at the end of the season. We may have talked about various scenarios, whether or not it was Christopher who did it, or possibly Tony. I don’t know how we ultimately arrived at Silvio (Steven Van Zandt) doing it.

De Matteo: David came to me and said, “I’m going to shoot this two ways: I’m going to kill you and I’m going to let you live. And nobody’s going to know until it airs.” I’m like, “Okay, I’m dying, for sure, but why shoot it two ways?” He said one reason was he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do, and the other was to keep confidentiality on set. He would go that far to divert the crew from being able to leak anything.

Winter: You don’t realize how much you start to think of these characters as real people. It was really tough to write. It was really very difficult to do for a lot of reasons, most of which had to do with the emotion of not being able to work with Drea anymore.

The episode opens with Adriana as we’ve never seen her before: At a doctor’s office wearing a paper gown being diagnosed with stress-induced ulcerative colitis. Stripped of her usual glam, she looks miserable, embarrassed and vulnerable.

Winter: You generally see Adriana as such a powerful character and so forceful and glamorous and sexy and tough. You see a much more vulnerable side of her with her colitis, or whatever it was she had. You’re almost sympathetic to her from the beginning. The walls are closing in and she’s got it coming at her from all sides.

Chase: A person in her position would be very likely to have [colitis]. It wasn’t to make her more vulnerable. It’d be hard to make that woman more vulnerable than she was. She was nothing but vulnerability.

The FBI give Adriana a choice of prison or becoming a government witness. She convinces them to let her try to convince Christopher to join her in Witness Protection. She goes home and confesses her predicament to Christopher. He flies into a rage, nearly choking her to death…

Director Tim Van Patten: [Adriana and Christopher] were both so invested in those characters, and they adored each other. They took it right to the limit.

De Matteo: That scene was as real as it gets. That scene was everything for me. Michael [Imperioli] wouldn’t hurt me, so I pushed my neck against his hands so it would look like I was being choked. That was my goodbye — not the scene where I get taken out in the woods.

Chase: Both of them just did an incredible job, as did the director. You really think she’s going to go. Sometimes in her close-ups, it looks like she might already be dead, the way she’s just staring at him. What I think is so important about it is the fact that she just stops fighting and just accepts it. She’s just staring at him as he’s choking her to death. I think that’s really important.

Winter: I remember watching that on set and actually having tears in my eyes. You just felt how torn Christopher was. He knew she was backed into a corner and they’re probably both going to die. Ultimately, he couldn’t go through with it. He loved her despite giving her up.

HBO

Christopher leaves and sees an impoverished family at a gas station…

Winter: He sees his future life flash before his eyes: “This is going to be us, we’re going to be that family living hand to mouth in a shitty car with a bunch of kids.” It gives you his mindset as a guy who’s never going to leave New Jersey. There’s nothing like a mullet to shake you into reality.

Tony calls Adriana and says Christopher has attempted suicide and that he’s sending Silvio to bring her to the hospital. For a moment we wonder what Adriana is going to do. Then the scene cuts to Adriana driving out of town, suitcase in the passenger seat, she wised up and fled. And then suddenly, the scene abruptly changes: Adriana is now in a car’s passenger seat and Silvio is driving. We witnessed a cruel fake-out daydream…

Van Patten: All you wanted for her was to escape. And when you thought she was going to succeed, you were so happy for her and so relieved. When you realize she’s going to her death, it’s absolutely devastating.

Chase: You have this feeling of exhilaration that she’s escaped. She looks like she’s going to be the one person to escape this hell in New Jersey. But, of course, she isn’t. I think there’s very good chance she could’ve [fled] done it, but she didn’t. Why didn’t she? Why didn’t she run away? What happens is people get trapped. And we make excuses for why we didn’t take an action or why we didn’t do something to better a situation.

Winter: That idea was David, all David, as far as I remember. I remember David pitching that, and we talked about whether it will work.

Chase: What I liked about [the scene] was that it didn’t explain itself. She’s riding in the car and the next thing you know, she’s going in the opposite direction in somebody else’s car. There’s no build up to that switch. So you really weren’t sure what was going on for awhile. I always liked that.

In an agonizing sequence, Silvio drives Adriana out of the city into a wooded area. Her face is a progression of heartbreak and terror as she realizes Christopher has betrayed her. Silvio maintains a chipper facade, reassuring she shouldn’t worry about her fiance, even as their surroundings more and more remote with each passing mile… 

Chase: The audience doesn’t know for sure [if Silvio plans to kill her]. In a sense, you don’t know who was ahead of who. Who knew first: Adriana or the audience? You think it’s the audience? I think you’re right.

Winter: It’s slowly dawning on her, and it’s almost like Silvio is gearing up for it. You can see him talking himself into it. I don’t know that Silvio took any glee in doing this. It was very much a workmanlike thing he had to do. You can see him almost getting into that mindset during the drive.

Chase: It was meant to agonizing, yeah. It’s really incredible. She’s a wonderful actress. She’s taking us through that.

Silvio stops the car in an isolated spot and tries to drag Ariana from the car. Adriana’s reaction is primal and disturbing. At first, she clutches the steering wheel, not wanting to leave the car, and then she scurries on the ground, so terrified that she cannot run, trying to crawl away instead.  

Winter: Obviously, you’re not going to be able to crawl away from a bullet. But there’s such a will to live, we’ll do anything to get away from somebody trying to kill us. It’s even more pathetic when you realize it’s absolutely futile.

De Matteo: Stevie [Van Zandt] was freaking out. He was like, “I don’t want to pull you out of the car, I don’t want to call you a c—.” I tried to laugh [between takes] to make it easier. We basically talked about outlaw country music the whole time.

HBO

Silvio raises the gun as Adriana crawls out of the frame. Her death isn’t actually shown. 

Winter: I’ve written some very graphic violence for the show and for some reason — and this was completely subconscious — I scripted this scene where she crawled out of camera. People asked, “Why didn’t you show it?” I realized that I didn’t want to see it myself. I completely didn’t think about it when I wrote it. But it just felt like the right thing to do, filmically and cinematically. I think it worked really great, but I guess I did not want to see Adriana/Drea get shot. It speaks more to how much we fell in love with this character and that actress.

Chase: It’s the only time in the whole history of the show in which we killed someone and we didn’t show their point of view. It seems to be worse without it; we were imagining what might’ve happened to her and how her body would’ve been destroyed. I don’t think any of us wanted to see Drea in that condition.

De Matteo: When we were on the stage that last day, they brought out a big cart of champagne and flowers. The whole wardrobe department filled my trailer up with balloons.

Van Patten: There was such a sense of reverence on set. I’ve never seen a set so quiet. It really was like a death in the family.

Later in the episode, we’re seemingly back in the same woods, expect now it’s Tony and Carmela inspecting land for a real estate investment. The message: Their fortune is built upon deaths like Adriana’s…

Winter: This is the very same place where the bodies get buried. Even something as pure and beautiful as nature gets tainted with that ugliness.

Van Patton: It was an emotional callback. Life goes on, and wittingly — or unwittingly in Carmela’s case — you are a player in this, you are culpable.

Chase: Also, it had a more mechanical purpose, in that what you see is leaves and some feet walking through, and you don’t know — are those Silvio’s feet? Are those feet going to come across her body? And what you see instead is Carmela blithely talking about real estate values and what kind of view her place has.

Some viewers even theorized Adriana wasn’t really dead.

Winter: There was some crazy speculation that she was still alive which was always absurd because we never did stories like that.

Chase: That might have had something to do with the Russian [gangster who vanished in the woods in “Pine Barrens”]. They thought the Russian was going to come back and he never did. And people were probably saying to themselves, “Well, they’re not going to do that twice.” That was something we figured into it.

Christopher ditches Adriana’s car in Liberty airport’s long-term parking, explaining the episode’s perfect title.

Winter: I don’t know who came up with that title. I came in one day and that title had been written on the board, and I went, “Oh my god, it’s perfect, that’s the absolute best title we could’ve possibly come up with.”

Chase: [The title has] a slightly sardonic humor to it. When I was growing up in New Jersey — in fact, we used this part of a storyline on the show earlier — there were a couple of guys in their 20s who murdered somebody. They shot him in the garage and they took him to Newark airport and they drove him into long-term parking and left the car there. But they began to worry and came back and got the car … and the cops got them. That’s where I first got the idea for “Long Term Parking.”

But there was also a scene you did not see — at least, not until the next season. Originally a scene of Christopher telling Tony about Adriana’s betrayal was filmed and was supposed to be inserted before Silvio comes to pick up Adriana. The scene made it clear Tony was lying to Adriana on the phone. The scene would be later included as a flashback in season 6. 

De Matteo: So as originally written, you know he’s lying to me. Her being in the car would have been a lot less dramatic. Michael and I went to David — and we would never do this normally because he was like a god to us — and I begged him to not include that scene. Her death would build so much more anticipation without it. That scene takes a lot of steam out of what we’re trying to achieve. David was like, “We won’t show the death,” and I was like, “I don’t care if you show the death! I only care that nobody knows it’s going to happen until it happens and that you drag that out.” I never got an answer about it. So when it aired and the scene was gone and I was so relieved. Now you take the journey with her rather than just watch her go to the guillotine. I even cried.

Chase, Winter, de Matteo, and Imperioli won Emmys for the season. The episode became known as one of the iconic drama’s finest hours and one of the most heartbreaking TV deaths ever filmed.

Winter: It’s amazing how impactful that episode is, people really remember it. Adriana was such a beloved character because she was not really guilty. She was guilty by association, but she certainly didn’t deserve the fate she got. So her death was more painful than any of the gangsters who live by the sword, die by the sword. That her big sin was falling in love with Christopher made it that much more painful. I would be hard-pressed to name another episode that shook people up more.

De Matteo: She told Christopher, “I told [the FBI] nothing because I know nothing.” [Tony and Christopher] never tried to find out if she was guilty of anything and just impulsively took her life. And it showed there’s no loyalty there. That’s all they talk about is “loyalty, loyalty,” but there’s no loyalty when it comes to a loved one. The characters on the show, even Tony’s kids, were operating from this place of primal manipulative existence. The only character who came from a place of love and innocence was Adriana. People say she’s a rat, she’s a whore, she’s a junkie — derogatory words from people who didn’t understand the show. I like to see [the episode] not as one of the most shocking, f—ed up deaths in TV history and all that, but as a huge risk to take. You’re taking characters and showing them in the ugliest possible way. Adriana wanted what was best for everybody; she only operated from a place of light.

12 June 2017 | 2:52 pm

James Hibberd

Source : Entertainment Weekly

>>>Click Here To View Original Press Release>>>

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[phawareglobal]

Cynthia Sandoval and Sylvia Lakalaka Transcript

Sisters Cynthia Sandova and Sylvia Lakalaka describe the difficult road that led to Sylvia’s pulmonary hypertension diagnosis. They discuss their plans to bring #phaware-ness around the world and a project they want to start in hope of making life easier for children who suffer from this rare disease.

  Cynthia: My name is Cynthia Sandova and I'm from Parlor, California.

Sylvia: My name is Sylvia Lakalaka and I'm from Exetor, California. In 2013 I was diagnosed with IPAH and it came out of nowhere, it came out of nowhere. I never had anything wrong with me, maybe flu once in my life and a gallbladder taken out in '97. Was always in perfectly good health, nothing wrong with me whatsoever. Then exercising and trying to lose weight and then for months I've been doing it and then all of the sudden, I couldn't make it across the street to my house. I was like, what's going on? Something's wrong here.

My boyfriend was concerned, took me to the emergency room and they said oh, maybe it's your heart, it's monitoring your heart. For over four days they monitored my heart and they said, you have a perfectly healthy heart. There's nothing wrong with it, maybe you have asthma. Then go to your family doctor. Go to my family doctor, I think you have asthma. Gave me an asthma pump and there I go using an asthma pump maybe 20 times a day and I said, this is not normal. Someone who has asthma, I'm sure doesn't use a pump 20 times a day because you're out of breath, you can't reach from the kitchen table to the sink.

I was like, I went back to my doctor, I don't have asthma. Well maybe allergies and asthma, let's change your medication. Changed my medication, didn't help. Went back to the doctor. I don't have asthma. Well let's send you to a pulmonologist. Sent me to a pulmonologist, he checks me, no you have asthma, but my stats were in the 80s, low 80s. I couldn't even make it from the car to the front door of the office, from the waiting room to his waiting room inside the office.

My stats were so low, but he still insisted I had asthma. I got depressed. It was five months, I was getting bloated, I couldn't breathe, I couldn't bend my legs, I couldn't move my ankles, that's how swollen I was. Nobody would listen. I knew it was something else.

Cynthia: Yeah, she ended up going to my mom's house. She was really depressed and just mad about everything. She didn't feel good and she can't sleep, she would sleep up, like sitting up because she was afraid if she laid down she couldn't breathe, she was going to end up falling asleep and not waking up. She went to my mom's and my mom kept insisting, you have to go to sleep, you have to go to sleep, you have to rest because that's why you're tired. She eventually went to go lay down and then she got up and said mom, bring me the pump, I can't breathe. When she did the pump, she started throwing up and when she started throwing up, my mom got really concerned and said, I don't care what you say, we're going to the hospital.

Sylvia: Then I go to the hospital and the ER doctor, I explained to him what I'd been going through for five months and that doctor looked at me and said, you know what? I think I know what you have. I have a friend who's a specialist and I'm going to have him come and see you tomorrow. We're going to admit you and do some testing and see if what I'm suspecting you have is what you have but he didn't tell me what it was. They started me on Lasix and boy did all that water come off and I could breathe, I could move, I could bend my legs.

I was like oh my God, I'm getting better. Whatever it is they're doing, I'm getting better. Sent me to a bigger hospital, got a right heart cath done and other tests done and sure enough, I had pulmonary hypertension. Yeah, it's devastating but I knew what I had and I knew at least they can give me something to help me feel better. Even if it's to prolong my life for two years, three years, twenty years, whatever, whatever time I have I know I have hope that at least a cure will come in my lifetime but if not mine, I can help and push for a cure for future PH patients. If that's my goal in this world, then that's what I'm going to do.

Cynthia: Yeah.                 

Sylvia: Push to my last breath.

Cynthia: I'm her older sister, so I've always cared for my sisters. I lost a younger sister to cancer and now she has PH but I stay strong for them. I get my will and my strength from my mom. When I found out she was really sick it was devastating for me, but I knew that if all she needed was the support and the love and to be there and I'm always there for her. When she was in the hospital, I stayed there two weeks from one hospital to the next.

I slept on a little tiny couch all crunched up and I wasn't leaving her side and I won't leave her side. I've learned a lot and I've seen that there's people that lived with this for a long time so it gives me hope that she's not going to ever leave me soon.

Sylvia: When I first found out I had this, I looked it up and that was scary, the wrong thing to do. Then I looked it up on Facebook, found a support group. The first person I met was my friend Linda. She had it since birth. From there, learning that someone else had it, and how long she lived even though it's different than mine, because I have IPAH and hers was due to a heart condition, but still I knew there was hope. She invited me into the support group with other people who had PH.

Just talking to each other and knowing that if you have a bad day, you can talk to them and they'll listen and they know what you're going through. That uplifted me a lot and it gave me hope. From there, all I wanted to do, just fight to bring awareness. I don't care how it is, but if I can bring awareness any way I can. Anybody asks me for help and it has something to do with it, I'm going to help because you know what? The cure will come faster if we have more people fighting.

Cynthia: It takes a village.                 

Sylvia: It takes, it does.

Cynthia: I'm part of Lion's Club in Parlor, California where I live at and part of Lion's logo, motto is we serve. We try as much, to do as much of giving to the community and helping out others and so what I'm doing is, I've gone to different counties and cities where we live at to bring awareness, to try to make the Lion's Club part of PH, because we're over a million members around the world and nationwide. We're trying to get all of Lion's Clubs to be part of PH, to bring awareness around the world.

There's a lot of the little children that are really sick and stuff and they can't go swimming so what I told the group was, I'm going to try to do a fundraiser for these children to get swimsuits, air suits so that they can swim during the summertime to be normal. They're like 300, 200, $300 so I'm going to do that and push to get these kids something so they can be a little bit normal, try to help them out. Helping them and learning a lot of what PH is, it helps me deal with my sister, it helps me to understand.

I will never know what she's going through but I'm there and I kind of understand her symptoms and the way she feels and you know, her days when she has good days and bad days. Now that she's taking this medication that they gave her, it's a little bit better. She's able to do a little bit more now. It's a lot better for us because we're able to see her more. We're able to see her do more things because I just don't like her just sitting there like she's hopeless because that's not her.

 We need to bring awareness around the world, especially for the children because they do need a cure. They do need to try to get as much of help and medication as the adults do. Part of my thing is that we're trying to bring awareness for the children also.

Sylvia: Because they need it just as much as the adults.

Cynthia: Yes.

Sylvia: They have less medications available to them and if I know what I went through, I can imagine what they're going through and it's even worse. To see that pains me like no end. If I can even help a little child get a body suit so he can feel normal as a little kid for a little while, then I'm going to do that or if it's just to do simple little things like I'm doing now, it doesn't matter as long as it brings awareness out so people are aware there are people that have this and they can get early diagnosis instead of being like me for five months almost on my deathbed or someone that had it for years and didn't know and it got worse. Just to bring awareness before the onset of it comes. We need to make everybody aware and PH Aware does that.

Cynthia: My name is Cynthia and I'm aware that my sister is rare.

Sylvia: I'm Sylvia and I am aware that I am rare.

  Listen to “I’m Aware That I’m Rare: the phaware™ podcast” at www.phaware.global/podcast. Learn more about pulmonary hypertension at www.phaware.global. #phaware #phawarepod

Check out the office phaware™ podcast site

[wannabanauthor]

Cause of depressive episode?

I don’t know why it’s happening, but I have a few ideas but it doesn’t make sense.

So last month on the 2nd, was the four year anniversary of my great-grandmother’s death.  I usually get depressed around that time, but I was distracted by my friend and her daughter’s birthdays that week.  But then about a week or two ago, I had to RSVP for my old babysitter’s retirement party, and she lives a few doors down from where my great-grandmother lived.  I’m dreading getting asked about how my family’s doing since my great-grandmother’s dead, my maternal grandpa lives two hours away, my paternal grandfather died last year, and I’ve excommunicated my mother.

Of course, they don’t need to know about that last one, but still I hate that question.  Two months ago when I visited my old coworkers they asked about my mom and her travels, and I gave them a generic answer.  Only one of them knows I’m not speaking to her, and she’s one of my mom’s closest friends.

Then there’s the issue of me not talking to my mom.  I still hate that she sent me that text telling me that she missed me because it does nothing but make me hurt and angry.  I thought about finally replying a few days ago, and even wrote a lengthy text in the Notes app, but then I realized that I was assuming she didn’t know why I stopped talking to her.  I have no idea if she knows or not, but it’s pretty obvious why.  I realized there was no use in telling her in detail why.  I’ve been looking into a lot stories and research on estrangement, and 90% of the resources are for parents who were estranged by their adult children.  Of course, most of them think they did nothing wrong to cause it even though every single article on reconciliation revolves around acknowledging the parent’s part in estrangement.

There was one resource for the adult children who initiated the estrangement, and it was pretty good and even had advice for those who wished to reconcile and it didn’t demonize those who want their parents to stay far away.  They had a list of questions for those attempting reconciliation, and I realized that I may have not given my mom a chance to explain herself or maybe I hadn’t told her why her insensitive and ignorant attitude towards my mental illnesses means that she shouldn’t talk about it.  But then I remembered that I did.  I wasn’t calm about it but I was clear about it and she understood what I meant.  That was why I drafted out a text but then I realized that it didn’t matter.  I’m not interested in reconciliation.  My mother did a great job of raising me and did sacrifice a lot including putting up with my dad’s child abusing wife, and she did what she thought was best for me.  The problem is that she assumed that only she knew what was best for me.  Even when I came out and when I was diagnosed, she tried to control how these realizations affected me.  She knows very little about the queer community and even less about mental health.  When afforded the opportunity to learn about it, she refused.  She even initially tried to talk me out of taking medication for my ADHD, but once my depression got on her nerves she was all for me getting medication.  After all of this, I’m just tired.  I don’t want to put up with her constant suggestions on how I could better my life according to her standards, and I don’t feel like having to set up boundaries when she’s already shown that she doesn’t give a damn about them.

I’ve been thinking about my future, and a part of me is still shocked that my mom’s not going to be a part of it.  If I get married, she’s not going to be there, and she’s not going to meet any of her grand-children.  Granted, this applies to my stepmom too because I’m not letting her child-abusing ass anywhere near my future sources of happiness.  But it’s still strange to think about. I’m not sure if I should go to family functions because I might see her there or deal with my family not agreeing with me ignoring her.  My dad and my friend stopped bugging me about my mom, but then there’s my mom’s friends who want me to talk to her, and I don’t know how to explain to them that I’m not just hurt and angry but tired as well.  I don’t have the energy or mental/emotional capacity to set boundaries and check her on them when she tries to cross them.  I’m too tired to put the work into something I know is not going to work because my mom can’t help but be a helicopter.  Yeah, she misses me and feels sorry now, but she has in the past about previous arguments, but down the road she still crosses the line.

Next month is Mother’s Day and my mom’s birthday and I don’t know what to do.  I’m tempted to turn my phone off those days and stay off social media so I don’t have to hear it from anybody.  I’m also sad that my mom is really going to realize that our relationship is over.  I don’t plan on contacting her at all, and I refuse to allow anyone to pressure me into doing it.  My dad might get mad at me, but I’ve already told him dozens of times that I am not reaching out to her on any level any time soon, so he can’t be shocked.  Still, I know it’s going to hurt her, and I feel bad about that, but I still don’t want anything to do with her.  She fucked up big time and miscalculated how kicking me out gave her, and everyone else who want me to talk to her, no leverage to keep me in contact with her.  Last time she kicked me out, we still worked in the same building and were dealing with the death of two of our coworkers.  And my she was on my car lease.  But the car loan is in my name now, and I live on my own.

Nobody can force me to talk to her, and they all know that which is probably why they’re trying to guilt me into talking to her, but that’s been done my whole life and now I’m immune to it.  Seriously, no one has a better argument than “she’s your mother and she kept you and raised you” and I’m like “that’s what being a parent requires” and they even agree that she shouldn’t have mistreated me but they still expect me to put in the emotional labor to renew our relationship and keep her in check.  It took her three months just to apologize, and I suspect she only did when she realized that I wasn’t responding to any of her texts or emails.  Meaning she thought she could bulldoze me into being nice to her after she kicked me out and realized that she underestimated how fucking angry I would be.  I did not go home that night and refused to live there again because it no longer felt like a home.  It was the second time she used the “you will not do this in my house” power dangling, and it’s the third time it’s happened to me period.  Parents need to stop that shit.  “this is my house so you’re going to live your life how I say or else you can find another place to live” and then cry about their kids not wanting to talk to them.  It’s almost as if being a dick to your adult children has real life consequences.

All of this had been running through my head for the past week or so, and my mental and physical health are not doing well.  I need to go back to therapy so I have someone to talk to about all of this and get some advice on how to move forward and plan for potential mother triggers.