#and anyone who tries is shouted down and/or commits career suicide

[clouds-of-wings]

Sometimes I'm happy that every time something horrific comes out about a metal band, it's never one of my faves.

Then I remember that most of my faves have like 5 fans including the singer's grandma, and that I probably wouldn't know if they were terrible people because no one would write about it and for the most part I don't know them personally.

[dorkylittleweirdo]

Kutner's Suicide

Kutner was done with this pain. He'd had enough of this life, of feeling unwanted and broken.All his life he'd held his emotions inside, yet it never seemed to fix anything. 

He had never gotten over his parents' death like everyone thought. The bloody scene constantly played through his head on repeat, the gunshots echoing loudly in his mind. Though he had only been six at the time, that day would be forever ingrained in his mind. He'd never forget the act of violence he'd witnessed that day, the day he realized that the world was an awful, hateful place. That people could commit such disgusting acts against each other.

Kutner shook his head, clearing the thought from his mind. He pulled his gun out of hiding, tracing a finger along the cool metal. He chuckled darkly. It was almost poetic, in some twisted way, to go out the same way his parents had.

He'd always been somewhat of a strange child growing up with his adoptive parents. He liked science and blood, things his classmates turned their noses up to. Kutner had grown up not only terrified, but full of rage. He was sure he'd be bullied for being different, so he made sure that never happened. So he became a bully. It wasn't what he wanted at all, if anything he wanted friends, maybe people who could understand. But he wouldn't let himself be hurt, not again. Besides, it was something he could take his anger out on. Until he figured out he could take it out on himself, fight the pain with more pain.

He turned the gun over in his hands. His heartbeat quickened; was he really going to do this?

When he was fighting for a spot on House's team, he did things he regretted. They all did, but he felt guilty. He'd been fired, yet he came back. He secured an official spot on the team, but he'd done it unfairly. By House's standards, he tried to reason, but it only made him feel worse. He ruined people's lives, destroyed their careers, and for what? Some shitty job? Had he just left after he was fired, Amber would've got his spot. She was just as dedicated, if not, more. She deserved this position, not him.

Kutner began loading his gun, keeping a poker face. He was going to do this, one way or another. And he was going to do it today.

Kutner walked home from work almost everyday. It was a few long miles, but he needed the fresh air and exercise, even if it never improved his mental state. He knew he was depressed, he could admit it. He could also admit that he had added trauma, that he needed help. He tried for a while, seeing a therapist. He stopped going after only a few sessions, after his therapist suggested seeing a psychiatrist to get a prescription for antidepressants. Kutner had scoffed, and told his therapist he wouldn't need to see her anymore. He didn't want to be on medication, he didn't want to rely on them to function everyday. He didn't want his senses dulled, he wanted to know he was happy on his own and not because of a stupid pill.

He walked over and sat on the edge of his bed, staring intently at the gun in his hand. This was it, it was time.

During his walk to and from work, Kutner passed by dozens of people, maybe hundreds every single day. Yet he'd never get to know any of them. To all of those people, he was just a nobody. He'd never help them, never change them, never laugh with them, never anything. He witnessed so much hate on those busy sidewalks, heard so many horrible things shouted. He desperately wanted to say something, anything, to make it stop, to make a difference. But everyday was the same story, he stayed quiet, bit his tongue. After all, what could he do? What could he possibly change? He was just a nobody. Even to himself.

Kutner's hand began to tremble as he slowly raised his gun up, pressing the muzzle against his right temple. His breathing grew shallow, his heart racing. He was really going to go through with this. Nothing could stop him now.

His mind quickly flashed to his coworkers. Would they miss him? Would they even care that he wouldn't come in at all today? He remembered all the times they'd laughed together, the memories they'd shared, the bonds they'd formed. He wanted that, he craved it. Laughing and smiling with others, people enjoying his presence and him enjoying theirs. Maybe they would care if he was gone? Taub had said they were friends, after all, maybe there was a chance. Kutner thought about it for a moment, letting out a soft growl of frustration.

No, they wouldn't care at all. They weren't friends. He wasn't friends with House, nor Thirteen and Foreman, not even Taub. They liked the person they thought he was, not who he really was. He wished he could be the person they wanted him to be, the happy-go-lucky, always smiling, joke-cracking, slightly sarcastic Kutner they thought they knew. He knew this persona of his wasn't real, and he also knew he couldn't keep it up any longer.

Tears bean cascading down his cheeks. He didn't know if it was out of fear or relief. His shoulders shook violently as sobs wracked his body. This wasn't fair, why did he have to be in so much pain? Why couldn't anyone see he was hurting?

He was so tired, so exhausted of pretending he was fine when he wasn't. He thought back to all of the times he held it together at work, only to break down sobbing the second he got home. He wished he could confide in someone, anyone. But he couldn't. He was afraid to let anyone else in, so he suffered alone, in silence. And now he would die in silence because of silence.

He took a few deep breaths, allowing his heart to slow it's pace and his hand steady. Tears continued to stream down his face as he clenched his teeth, squeezing his eyes shut tight. His finger rested on the trigger. Taking one final breath, he opened his eyes, the usual gentle pools of brown filled with hatred and pain. He cursed himself for not having it together, for not being able to laugh everything off the way he yearned to do. Kutner adjusted the muzzle, then pulled the trigger.

[your-dietician]

Britney Spears’s Conservatorship Nightmare | The New Yorker

New Post has been published on https://depression-md.com/britney-spearss-conservatorship-nightmare-the-new-yorker/

Britney Spears’s Conservatorship Nightmare | The New Yorker

On June 22nd, Britney Spears’s management team started getting nervous. Spears, who is thirty-nine, has spent the past thirteen years living under a conservatorship, a legal structure in which a person’s personal, economic, and legal decision-making power is ceded to others. Called a guardianship in most states, the arrangement is intended for people who cannot take care of themselves. Since the establishment of Spears’s conservatorship, she has released four albums, headlined a global tour that grossed a hundred and thirty-one million dollars, and performed for four years in a hit Las Vegas residency. Yet her conservators, who include her father, Jamie Spears, have controlled her spending, communications, and personal decisions.

In April, Spears had requested a hearing, in open court, to discuss the terms of the arrangement. It was scheduled for June 23rd. Members of Spears’s team, most of whom have had little or no direct contact with her for years, didn’t expect drastic changes to result. Two years earlier, in the midst of health struggles and pressure from Spears, Jamie had stepped down from his duties overseeing her personal life, and now the team thought that perhaps she wanted to remove him as the conservator of her financial affairs. Some of the team told reporters that they believed Spears liked the conservatorship arrangement, as long as her father wasn’t involved.

Running the business of Britney had become routine: every Thursday at noon, about ten people responsible for managing Spears’s legal and business affairs, public relations, and social media met to discuss merchandise deals, song-license requests, and Spears’s posts to Instagram and Twitter. (“This is how it works without her,” one member of the team said.) Spears, according to her management, typically writes the posts and submits them to CrowdSurf, a company employed to handle her social media, which then uploads them. In rare cases, posts that raise legal questions have been deemed too sensitive to upload. “She’s not supposed to discuss the conservatorship,” the team member said.

On the eve of the hearing, according both to a person close to Spears and to law enforcement in Ventura County, California, where she lives, Spears called 911 to report herself as a victim of conservatorship abuse. (Emergency calls in California are generally accessible to the public, but the county, citing an ongoing investigation, sealed the records of Spears’s call.) Members of Spears’s team began texting one another frantically. They were worried about what Spears might say the next day, and they discussed how to prepare in the event that she went rogue. In court on the 23rd, an attorney for the conservatorship urged the judge to clear the courtroom and seal the transcript of Spears’s testimony. Spears, calling into the hearing, objected. “Somebody’s done a good job at exploiting my life,” she said, adding, “I feel like it should be an open-court hearing—they should listen and hear what I have to say.” Then, for the first time in years, Spears spoke for herself, sounding lucid and furious, talking so fast that the judge interjected repeatedly to tell her to slow down, to allow for accurate transcription. “The people who did this to me should not get away,” Spears said. Addressing the judge directly, she added, “Ma’am, my dad, and anyone involved in this conservatorship, and my management, who played a huge role in punishing me when I said no—Ma’am, they should be in jail.”

For the next twenty minutes, Spears described how she had been isolated, medicated, financially exploited, and emotionally abused. She assigned harsh blame to the California legal system, which she said let it all happen. She added that she had tried to complain to the court before but had been ignored, which made her “feel like I was dead,” she said—“like I didn’t matter.” She wanted to share her story publicly, she said, “instead of it being a hush-hush secret to benefit all of them.” She added, “It concerns me I’ve been told I’m not allowed to expose the people who did this to me.” At one point, she told the court, “All I want is to own my money, for this to end, and for my boyfriend to drive me in his fucking car.”

Spears’s remarks were incendiary but, for people familiar with the creation and the functioning of her conservatorship, not surprising. Andrew Gallery, a photographer who worked for Spears in 2008, attended the hearing, watching the lawyers’ faces on a monitor. “As she spoke, I wanted to scream, and gasp, and shout ‘What the fuck is going on?’ ” he said. “But the lawyers had no reaction. They just sat there.”

The conservatorship was instituted by Spears’s family—in part out of real concerns about her mental health, people close to the family said. But the family was divided by money and fame, and Spears, in an underregulated part of the legal system, was stripped of her rights. She has fought for years to get them back.

As a pop star, Spears sustained a multinational industry of managers, agents, producers, lawyers, publicists, and assorted hangers-on. As the subject of the conservatorship, she has provided for the livelihood of even more lawyers and other court-appointed professionals. Jacqueline Butcher, a former friend of the Spears family who was present in court for the conservatorship’s creation, said she regrets the testimony that she offered to help secure it. “At the time, I thought we were helping,” she said. “And I wasn’t, and I helped a corrupt family seize all this control.”

Jamie Spears, who is sixty-eight, has graying hair and a hangdog demeanor. When he was thirteen, he endured an unimaginable tragedy: his mother committed suicide on the grave of one of her sons, who had died eight years earlier, at just three days old. In high school, Jamie was a basketball and football star; later, he worked as a welder and a cook. Lynne Spears, Britney’s mother, grew up with Jamie, in the small town of Kentwood, Louisiana. Sixty-six years old, she has a smile like Britney’s and thick dark hair with bangs. She used to run her own day-care center. Friends describe her as traditional and nonconfrontational. In a conversation in June, she was fastidiously polite as she declined to answer detailed questions about the case. She spoke in a whisper and apologized that she might have to hang up abruptly if other family members walked in and discovered her speaking to a reporter. “I got mixed feelings about everything,” she said. “I don’t know what to think. . . . It’s a lot of pain, a lot of worry.” She added, a little wryly, “I’m good. I’m good at deflecting.” Jamie and Lynne eloped when she was twenty-one, and the marriage was troubled from the start: in divorce papers filed, then withdrawn, in 1980, less than two years before Britney’s birth, Lynne accused Jamie of cheating on her on Christmas Day. Jamie wrestled with alcoholism, going on benders so egregious that Lynne once shelled his cooler with a shotgun.

But Jamie and Lynne worked together to make Britney, their second child, happy and a success. She was a born performer, a scene-stealer at dance recitals starting at age three. Her parents drove her to small dance competitions in Lafayette, then to larger ones in New Orleans. They borrowed money from friends to pay for gas to get her to auditions. Spears snagged an understudy role on Broadway and then a stint in the nineties version of “The Mickey Mouse Club.” When she was sixteen, she signed a six-album deal with Jive Records, thanks to an enterprising entertainment lawyer named Larry Rudolph, who became her manager. A precise and commanding dancer with an unmistakable vocal tone of sugary coyness, Spears emerged as a teen-pop singularity. In 1998, the music video for her début single, “. . . Baby One More Time,” featuring a sixteen-year-old Spears in a Catholic-schoolgirl outfit, exploded across American pop culture like fireworks on the Fourth of July. The pleated skirt and bare midriff were her idea—a fact that’s sometimes cited as evidence of her self-determination but might also suggest an intuition, common among teen-age girls, of the compromised power of sex appeal.

Because Jamie and Lynne had two other children to look after, a family friend chaperoned Spears for much of her early career. But Spears remained close to her mother, and, in 2000, she built a four-and-a-half-million-dollar estate for Lynne in Kentwood. That year, according to “Through the Storm,” a memoir that Lynne published in 2008, Spears urged her mother to divorce her father, knowing that “years and years of verbal abuse, abandonment, erratic behavior, and his simply not being there for me had taken their toll,” Lynne writes. She and Jamie divorced in May, 2002, and Spears told People that it was “the best thing that’s ever happened to my family.”

Spears had just broken up with Justin Timberlake, a fellow teen-pop icon, whom she had met when she was eleven, when they were both cast as Mouseketeers. The breakup destabilized her, people close to her remember; her status as half of a golden couple had become an integral part of her identity, and after the split her sex life became a regular topic in the news. She began going out more and hanging out with Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton, forming a holy trinity for tabloid culture at its early-two-thousands peak. “The paparazzi were out of control,” Hilton recalled, of one night with Spears at the Beverly Hills Hotel. “Fighting over getting the shot, pushing each other against my car, scratching it with their cameras. It was overwhelming and frightening.” The hairdresser Kim Vo, Spears’s longtime colorist, remembers how, one day, as Spears was getting her hair done, a paparazzo scaled a wall and broke a salon window with his fist.

Spears distracted herself with work—a relentless grind of dance rehearsals, studio sessions, photo shoots, stadium performances, long nights on the tour bus, and hotel check-ins before dawn. “The schedule was crazier and crazier,” Julianne Kaye, a makeup artist who worked with Spears in the early years, said. “She would have little breakdowns. She was always crying, saying, ‘I want to be normal.’ ” Spears blew off steam by partying: she smoked weed, used cocaine, took Molly with her dancers and jumped into the Mediterranean Sea. But the machinery around her only grew. When she toured, the crew took at least a dozen buses and filled entire hotel floors.

In the spring of 2004, Spears met a dancer named Kevin Federline at a night club, and they were married within six months. Spears initially did not secure a prenuptial agreement, which prompted panic in her family. A considerable fortune was at stake. “Lynne lost her mind,” Butcher, the family friend, recalled. “They weren’t gonna allow the wedding to be made legal.” The marriage contract wasn’t signed until the month after the ceremony, when Federline legally agreed to limit his stake in Spears’s estate. But Spears seemed thrilled, and commissioned a photo shoot in which she dressed up as a French maid and served drinks to Federline, who wore a trucker hat, cargo shorts, and flip-flops. Spears wanted a family. “I’ve had a career since I was 16, have traveled around the world & back and even kissed Madonna!” she wrote on her Web site, two months after getting married. “The only thing I haven’t done so far is experience the closest thing to God and that’s having a baby. I can’t wait!”

Spears’s first son, Sean Preston, was born ten months after the wedding. “Our life was running at 150,000 miles an hour,” Federline later told Us Weekly. “I’d walk into a club and get a table worth $15,000 a night with unlimited free drinking. . . . But everything got so crazy.” Spears had been so sheltered that Paris Hilton had to show her how to use Google, according to a person who was there. She negotiated the hormonal and logistical turbulence of early motherhood while paparazzi, eager to monetize her mistakes, chased her down, pointing flashbulbs and shouting provocations any time she left the house. After she was photographed driving with an infant Preston on her lap, she explained that she had been trying to get away from paparazzi—and besides, she added, she had grown up riding on her dad’s lap on country roads. A few months later, visibly pregnant and holding Preston, she stumbled while surrounded by photographers; the paparazzi kept shooting as she retreated to a café, cradled her baby, and cried.

Spears had her second child, Jayden James, in September, 2006. Three weeks later, Federline took a private jet to Vegas to party with his friends. Spears filed for divorce in November, reportedly notifying Federline by text message. At a night club, he scrawled on a bathroom wall “Today I’m a free man—f**k a wife, give me my kids bitch!” He requested full custody. While the divorce was being adjudicated, he and Spears divided parental duties. Preston was a little more than a year old, and Spears was still nursing Jayden; she wanted to be with them all the time, and hated being at home without them. “I did not know what to do with myself,” she said later, in an MTV documentary. Spears and Federline both went out on their free nights, but Spears was the one who became the target of tabloid blood sport. (“MOMMY’S CRYING,” Us Weekly blared, over a full-page photo of Preston.) In February, 2007, she shaved off her hair, at a salon in Tarzana; five days later, she attacked a paparazzo’s car with an umbrella. The two incidents cemented her image as “crazy.” Both were precipitated by her driving to Federline’s house, trailed by photographers, and being refused access to her kids.

Many people who were close to Spears during her early career suspect that she was dealing with postpartum depression, but none of them remembers anyone bringing it up with her. Some of the same people said that Spears was also struggling with drugs and alcohol. Her mother and Federline insisted that, if Spears wanted to spend more time with her children, she needed to go to rehab. In early 2007, she checked into a treatment center in Antigua, then checked out after just one day. The judge in the custody hearing, who had cited Spears’s “habitual, frequent uses of controlled substances and alcohol,” gave primary custody of the children to Federline, granting Spears four days of visitation per week, under the eye of a court-ordered monitor named Robin Johnson.

Around this time, Spears met Sam Lutfi, a Hollywood operator with a knack for insinuating himself into the lives of turbulent female stars. Spears had recently parted ways with Larry Rudolph, her longtime manager, and she began to entrust her professional and private affairs to Lutfi. Now forty-six, Lutfi cuts a nondescript figure: average height, occasionally goateed, favoring baseball caps and black T-shirts. Over coffee at a Los Angeles restaurant this spring, he said that Spears took to him in part because he told her that she didn’t have to work nearly as hard as she was. “She’d always believed there were massive consequences if she didn’t work, that she’d lose so much, and it blew her mind that she could just call the shots,” he said. “You want to cancel that meeting? Cancel it. You’re gonna lose five grand? Lose it. She’d walk into a car dealership, say she wanted something. I’d say, ‘Buy it.’ Her parents would say, ‘Why would you let her do that?’ But it’s an eighty-thousand-dollar car, not a yacht, and she just got fifteen million from Estée Lauder. Anyway, she’s an adult. I’m not gonna tell her that she can’t buy a fucking yacht.” (Lutfi later assumed a similar role in the life of Courtney Love, who called him a “street hustler,” and he said that he advised Amanda Bynes’s family as they placed her in a conservatorship. He is currently subject to a five-year restraining order filed against him, in 2019, by a conservatorship lawyer, on Spears’s behalf.)

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[kyuiuiuiu]

The Second Sun

I want to thank to every person that’s reading my fanfic. ; ^ ; ♡   

I don’t know too much about tumblr, since I don’t use it very often... so, I can’t respond to every comment you give about the history :( But you need to know that I’m REALLY happy reading all your comments, tags, seeing the likes in the different post of the fanfic (and fanarts too!). 

Yooran is my OTP, and I’m very happy to give these little things to the fandom ♡ ♡ 

And again, thank you so much! ♡ ♡ ♡

And now... I’m still working on the fanart, so here’s the chapter 4! 

Chapter list:

Chapter 1 - The Distrust.

Chapter 2 - The Reflection.

Chapter 3 - The Fear.

Chapter 4 - The Lie.

Some time passed and the boys spoke more naturally than before. Yoosung could pull off any subject without feeling so nervous, and Saeran would sometimes look at his eyes as they spoke. This was the only thing that could make him nervous, since the first time he saw directly into his eyes he could feel the intensity of his gaze. A gaze that tried to hide many things, but at the same time it showed the anger that he felt against the world. However, that fear was obscured by the happiness he felt at the thought that they had finally been able to get to that point where they spoke as they looked into each other's eyes. This proved that, after many months, Saeran finally trusted him. He felt that all the way there was worth it, because he was already becoming part of his family, even if it was onesided. Also, it was most likely that when the turn of the other RFA members came, they would require his help.

To tell the truth, Yoosung had no problem helping them —even knowing that it was a difficult job—, but he didn’t understand why they didn’t want to insist on approaching. He supposed it was because they had busy lives with their jobs and all that... Instead, he was an ordinary person. He always felt that way.

The conversations with Saeran had become more interesting since he began to respond with short but concise sentences. When he answered only with a word or two Yoosung found it hard to keep talking, since he didn’t know if Saeran was angry or not. Now it was different.

Everything was going great.

Saeran felt that he had finally managed to establish a bond —in addition to his brother—, no matter how small it was. Although in the background, I knew it wasn’t a small bond. The idea of it began to spin in his head since Yoosung returned after several weeks without visiting him for his exams. He had become an important part of his everyday life, even if he tried to deny it. He had already analyzed the pattern of his visits, and from time to time he could hear his brother talk on the phone with the blonde arranging them.

Unintentionally, he had begun to feel things he had never felt before. He already knew excitement and anxiety, but this was a completely different feeling. The only problem was that he didn’t know how to define it, and that made him moody from time to time.

Like every week, Yoosung was once again visiting. He was talking about one of his teachers at the university whom they all esteemed for her advanced age. He said it was like having a grandmother there, since she cared a lot for some of her students. Sometimes she would scold him for being late or half asleep in class, since he knew his vice for some video game. Also, he told him that she was a person with a lot of experience in her field and that he aspired to know as much as her —and even more— someday.

It was in the midst of this conversation that Saeran realized that he had never wondered why Yoosung had chosen that career. He thought that this would be a good time. They were on the subject, after all.

Yoosung couldn’t help but feel nervous when Saeran became interested in his reasons for studying veterinary medicine. He just wasn’t expecting it. He hesitated a little, but finally managed to clear his throat and began to explain.

Saeran was interested to know, indeed he was, but after hearing the name Rika so often in the story — even if he asked for it— he felt a little dejected. Then he remembered what Saeyoung had said about Yoosung's adoration for his cousin. That he saw her as a role model, that she was someone important to him and others. Saeran had already realized this on his own during the many months he had been hearing what he had to say, but he never imagined that Yoosung’s admiration for her was... so great. Besides, it made him uncomfortable to hear about her after all the damage she did to him and his brother.

For the first time, he decided to stop listening to what Yoosung was telling him. He didn’t want to know about Rika... but then, another name caught his attention in the middle of the story.

Yoosung had started talking about V.

“... I used to be very bad with V, really. I rejected him, blamed him for anything bad that happened, even for Rika's issue! I always knew they were hiding something from me, and it turned out to be true... When I heard the truth I felt furious, but it comforted me a little to know that the others didn’t know anything about it either. I didn’t feel so alone... Although the most shocking thing was when they told me that with everything that happened V ended up committing suicide —“Su... Suicide?” Saeran thought as he heard that—. I felt horrible... I judged him a lot without knowing all the details. I never imagined that the weight he carried was so big that it reached that point. I felt like a horrible person, really —he sighed—. The worst thing is that I could only apologize to him when he was already dead...”

When he finished saying this, his voice cracked a little. He lowered his head, trying to conceal his guilty shame, while Saeran continued to stare at him in confusion.

“Did V commit suicide?” He asked once the blond boy calmed down.

“You did not know?! —He exclaimed surprised. Saeran gestured at Yoosung not to be so scandalous, as he knew there was something strange there, and much to his dismay, his brother must be involved. He couldn’t let Saeyoung know before he decided to ask him directly—. Agh... I ruined it all again, right? I'm sure Saeyoung told me not to tell you about V or Rika, because it's a delicate subject for you... God, how stupid! How could I forget something like that?”

Saeran sighed.

"Calm down, it’s okay. I just didn't know that," he said, trying to calm him down.

Yoosung gave him a slight smile, accompanied by a look of gratitude.

“I guess they didn’t want to tell you anything about... You know... Before, you were not you okay? God, I keep saying trash. Just kill me,” he asked in embarrassment, covering his face with both hands. It was for this very reason that the expression of pain of the younger twin went unnoticed for him.

“Kill you...” he whispered to himself.

No, he didn’t want to remember, but now it was almost impossible. The rage was present in his being, but he did his best to keep it under control. He couldn’t afford such a reaction in front of Yoosung, especially since he didn’t know the truth.

He inhaled and exhaled slowly, until he calmed down. This wasn’t the time...

After Yoosung told him that V "had committed suicide", he went on with the main theme, which was the reason for his motivation to study that career. Of course, Rika's name had its appearance there, but less often, since the boy had remembered Saeyoung's warnings.

They stopped talking, and after checking the hour, Yoousung decided that it was better to go home or it would be too late. Besides, the weather was changing and the afternoons were getting colder.

Saeran waited for Yoosung to leave, and as soon as he heard the door close, it was like a switch clicked on his head. He went from being calm to furious in just a couple of seconds, and with this anger he went to his brother's room, who was at his computer doing some errands.

He opened the door and rushed in, pushing his brother from the chair and throwing him to the floor.

“Saeran...?” He asked in a whisper.

“How the fuck can you keep on lying?! You really cannot live without lying to anyone?! —he started yelling at him— You cannot even tell the truth to your best friend?! A good person!! A good one, for fuck’s sake!!

With each scream his voice torn a little more, and thanks to his last words, Saeyoung could understand what his brother meant. Unfortunately, he continued to shout his guilt.

“Did you tell him that V committed suicide?! What kind of shit is that?! Saeyoung, I killed him!!”

“Ah… that,” He murmured, with a dark gaze.

Saeran stepped back and leaned against the wall, catching his breath. His throat ached for screaming. He hadn’t done it for a long time, less for something that bothered him at that level. It was a matter of seconds for his head to start to hurt too.

“That boy approached me without knowing the truth —He began to say—. He has no idea what happened, he doesn’t know what I did, and you... You allowed him to continue to come in spite of it… Aren’t you ashamed? Have you thought about what will happen when he finds out the truth?”

“That's not supposed to happen.”

“It will happen,” he sighed.

Saeyoung looked at him in the eyes, frightened.

“Saeran, don’t even think about it...”

The younger twin giggled nervously at that. He bit his lip, holding back the cry that threatened to burst out.

“Do you think I could do that? I...”

“Saeran…” he murmured.

“I'm terrified, Saeyoung.”

It was one of the few times he accepted to be afraid in front of his brother after their reunion. He hated feeling that way; Weak, and consequently, it made him remember all that his weakness had brought him for so many years.

His brother didn’t want to add anything else, because he knew he could make things worse. Besides, it was unlikely that Saeran would calmly listen to him, much less after learning that the only person he had considered good since his return could be nothing more than a mere fantasy. Because yes, he felt that way. Yoosung had approached him believing that he had been a victim in all this, and he was, but this happened only thanks to his lack of will and bravery. He had killed a man, and not just any man... Yoosung didn’t know that.

With those dark thoughts in his mind, Saeran decided to return to his room in silence. Once there, he closed the door and threw himself face down on his bed, squeezing the pillow tightly.

He wanted to keep yelling, but it wasn’t convenient. His throat was already aching and his head was even worse. He couldn’t help thinking that Yoosung had approached him only because he didn’t know the truth. He was quite sure that if he found out the truth...

“No… No!” He shouted anyway, stifling the noise on the pillow.

He had only one choice left, a very selfish one, and that was to keep Yoosung away while hiding the truth. He was going to hide what had really happened until Yoosung was far enough away from him. This way, it wouldn’t hurt when he left him forever.

It was the only method he could think of for the moment, so with much anguish he promised himself to be more hostile with whom had a radiant smile whenever he came to visit.

Next Chapter »

[princethephoenixx-blog]

Now You Hear Me, Now You Don’t

Eight months ago, I had just returned from a three year overseas working trip. My plan was to stay in Sydney for the 3 month holiday, and then return. The few months before my return were some of the hardest I had experienced in a long time. Career-wise, everything was amazing. I was teaching in one of the best schools, loved my colleagues and students, and I was earning good money. Socially, I was fine. I had some great and supportive friends. Everything, then, seemed to be perfect. While I was living this ‘perfect’ little life, I overlooked the darkness that was slowly shadowing itself into and over my everyday routine. Even though I didn’t directly acknowledge it at the time, deep down I knew what was headed my way. It was a feeling that I was all too familiar with. It was the urge to intoxicate myself, not only to block out the stress and anxiety of every day life, but also the aching triggers of past experiences. This feeling and I had a long history. If I had to describe it, I would say it is like being in a toxic, emotionally and physically draining relationship with someone. However, even though this person is killing you, very slowly, but ever so surely, you always seem to find a reason (or an excuse) to let them back into your life. Most of the time you aren’t even aware of the damage they are causing you. You grow an unbreakable bond, and eventually it gets to the point where you allow and need this pain, just so you can feel anything at all. Last year, while overseas, I experienced one of the most traumatic episodes of my life. One morning, I woke up on a normal sunny day. As soon as I opened my eyes, I started to hear the usual chatter of my neighbours from my window. It took me a couple of minutes, but I realised that they were talking about me. I just lay there and listened as carefully as I could. I was physically frozen and emotionally scared. They were talking about me and how they had heard me having sex with men, sometimes many men at the same time. They knew about the drugs I was taking and spoke of my usage, and how they couldn’t believe that I would get up to such disgusting shenanigans. After all, I was very well-respected and liked within the community. They even seemed to get a snapshot of my Grindr profile. They had heard everything, and they weren’t afraid to share it. I was absolutely mortified. My anxiety levels were through the roof. This literally was my worst nightmare unfolding before me. All of these people knew my family, even the ones in Australia. I went into my lounge room and just sat there. What was I going to do? I was too scared to leave my apartment. I felt hopeless. The voices of gossip started again. They were getting more violent and aggressive as time passed. There was a little cafe below my apartment where men spent their days gambling and chatting. They all knew me. I could hear them getting ready to come upstairs and approach me. I couldn’t leave without them seeing. I was stuck. The swearing and degrading talk was getting louder. I closed the blinds and locked my doors and windows, hoping to make them believe I wasn’t at home. Then something very unexpected happened. I heard my cousin and uncle downstairs, shouting and arguing with the people who were slandering me. The fight escalated. I could hear it all, but was paralysed. I just sat there, on the floor, crying and trembling. The sound of sirens shook me, and I realised the police were now involved. I could hear them being informed about my drug usage and ‘disgusting’ sexual activities. In a panic, I stood and tried to hide anything related to drugs that I had in my apartment. I thought the police officers would come up, but they never did. They departed the scene, saying they would be back. The yelling and arguing between the men and my relatives grew stronger, to the point where everyone was shouting over each other. Then it happened. BANG! BANG! No. This couldn’t be happening, I thought, but the screams and cries said otherwise. My uncle had been shot. The sounds of sirens and shouting overpowered my hysterical cries. I was mortified, but still couldn’t move. I just sat there, staring into blank space. I focused my attention back to the conversations. Now it wasn’t only the neighbours that hated me, but my cousins too. To them, I didn’t go downstairs, even though my uncle had died trying to protect me, purely because I didn’t care. That was their perception of the situation. The clinking of chains and guns, swearing and voices were getting closer to me. I curled up into fetal position next to the door, hysterically hyperventilating. They would be up any minute. It just kept getting worse. They were now talking about what I was doing at that particular moment, as if they could see me. Fuck. Obviously they could see and hear me. Cameras. That was the only logical explanation since I was alone. So, I sat in a dark corner, away from their view. I was up all night in that very position. There were times when the situation would ease, then escalate again. The sun arose once more. By now, word had spread around the neighbourhood, and to almost everyone I knew. My colleagues, students, friends and neighbours were all outside on the street. They were saying the most awful things about me. I wanted to do something, but could barely breathe. If I opened the door, they would kill me, just like they did to my uncle. It didn’t stop, so I said ‘Fuck it. Let them kill me.’ I opened my door and just sat waiting for someone to come up. Maybe if they beat the shit out of me, it’ll all be over, I thought. The old lady who lived across from me called out my name. “Anyone there? Why is the door open? Hello?” she said, sounding slightly concerned. Clearly she hadn’t heard the news. I got up and shut the door. As I continued to stay situated, I felt everything getting worse and worse, darker and more sinister. It was almost as if everyone got more violent the longer they had to plan. All this coming from people who were close to me. I cracked. Completely broke down. It was finally all too unbearable for me. I stumbled to my bathroom, barely catching a breath, found and smashed a razor, and cut both of my wrists. It still didn’t hurt more than pain I was suffering in my mind and soul. Once I saw the blood trickling down my hands, I had a sudden mental jolt, and a voice told me to call my psychologist. I told her everything, and that I needed help before they killed me. She listened, then calmly asked me to just look outside my window. It took her 15 minutes to convince me to do this. I finally gained enough courage, and cautiously peeked out the window. Nobody was there. The street was empty. But there was one problem. The voices still were. Even though I was literally face to face with the fact that this was all literally happening in my head, I still had something in me telling me it was real. Now, not only was I terrified of everything I was hearing, but I was also thinking that I had lost my mind. It was a battle between reality and a very dark imagination, and both were doing their best to sway me to their direction. My psychologist called my best friend and she was at my place within half an hour. She told me to pack a bag and that we’d be going to her place. I refused to leave. I still believed that there was a mob waiting for me downstairs. She assured me that the taxi was right outside and that no one would even see me leave, majorly because nobody was there. Half an hour later, I put a hoodie over my head and charged hurriedly towards the taxi. During that 15 minute trip, I was constantly checking around me, to see if I was being followed. Once we arrived at her place, she poured me a whiskey, and we sat and talked while I calmed down a little. I still somehow believed that everything I heard actually physically occurred, even though she pointed out evidence which proved otherwise. For example, one of the voices I heard was of a friend who wasn’t even in the same city at the time. Yet I still wasn’t convinced. My friend had to go and check on her beauty salon, and I was feeling a little better by this time. I told her I would be OK while she was absent. She left, and I had a couple more whiskeys and a sleeping pill. Even though the time span of these events felt like much less, I realised that I had locked myself in my flat for almost 5 days. That’s 5 days with no sleep, food or water. Naturally, my body was exhausted. I lay down. The next thing I remember is opening my eyes in hospital, surrounded by family and friends. Based on what I was told, my friend returned from work and couldn’t wake me. My body must have been too tired to respond. She thought I had committed suicide and called an ambulance, along with my relatives. For 2 months after this, before returning to Sydney, I was not allowed to live alone anymore, so I stayed with close relatives. I was in and out of hospital and had countless appointments with doctors, psychologists and psychiatrists during this period. Also during these already overwhelming couple of months, I was diagnosed with Bipolar disorder, severe clinical depression and manic-depressive behaviour. Still, to this day, I simply cannot understand how my brain manipulated me into believing that these horrific events actually physically occurred. It doesn’t make sense to me. It was like watching a film where you are the main star. The film takes very twisted and dark turns and plays on your biggest fears, and there is absolutely no way out until the film runs its course. It took months to shake the horrific, terrifying and threatening feeling off of me. It has now been around one year, and I still live in fear. The fear that maybe something that I’m hearing or seeing, may not actually be there. I live in fear, not only because of other traumatic experiences that I have actually lived through in the past, but also of things that only I can hear or see. Things that are only in my head. This psychosis, this mental break, psychotic episode or whatever else you’d like to call it, will forever haunt me. Even though it hasn’t happened again since then, I will never know if it will creep up on me again. Until next time… Prince x