#and the water just wasn't healthy at that point. so i'm really kind of beating myself up for it because by the time i realized it

[kingwaino]

i don't talk about him a lot on here but a couple years ago i got a beta fish which i so sweetly named sebass-tian hamil-fin. i'd never had a fish before but at the time, since i wasn't in my apartment a lot, a fish was really the only thing i could care for. unfortunately, he passed away today.

i didn't think i'd be this upset by it because i could kind of tell over the past week or two that he wasn't doing too well. i tried my best to make him feel better but unfortunately, it wasn't enough.

i plan to go and get another fish tomorrow but i just...don't really know how to feel about it right now. he was my first fish and certainly won't be my last.

[autumnbrambleagain]

Yhelm p7 - readmore for full

"… can we talk about how last night was fucked up?" Madrigal asked.

Rain was coming scattered and gray on the rooftops of the out-city. Rivulets ran down the walls and left puddles that Yhelm was happily stomping through. "Huh?"

"… last night? With Corbis? You won't catch me saying it wasn't hot, sure, but it wasn't… healthy?"

Yhelm stopped under a wavy roof. A hundred little waterfalls fell in unison onto the cold stones below. And on Yhelm's face. She liked the rain. It wasn't a coincidence she'd reassigned umbrellas from 'keep rain off' to 'this is a weapon.' She had no problem getting wet. She felt like that was a metaphor, and then felt like that was the kind of thing college-Yhelm would have said trying to sound smart. College-Yhelm was supposed to be dead, which meant maybe something was actually wrong.

"Yeah. I don't know," she said. She caught some of the roof water in her mouth as she talked. It tasted like bitter metals. An acadamage had to see the world in metaphors and had to experience everything through literary theory because that was literally how magic worked. It was literally how reality worked. Reality was literature and magic was commentary. She'd chosen to think of that metaphor for a reason. Not point lying to yourself, right? "Yeah. Yeah I guess I'm not feeling great?"

"So, you know I'm not jealous," Madrigal started.

"You are unreasonably laid-back for a weasel," Yhelm agreed.

"This isn't a jealousy issue when I say this. It's not like, I don't want to come across as--"

"Yeah you think I probably shouldn't goad Corbis into uneven, usually angry sex anymore. Yeah."

Madrigal sighed. They didn't like rain like Yhelm did. Kog, Yhelm even looked good with splatters of Wet rolling down her long fur. Maddie just looked sad. Because of the rain. Which was another convenient metaphor. Because reality was created as a work of literature by 9 deer that existed before time on some level it was still a written work. She had gotten so good at not thinking like an acadamage. She wondered if it was trying to distance herself from herself. That seemed right. If she viewed reality like a story she didn't have to accept her place deep in the middle of it. It wasn't her life she was ruining. It was just some character.

Maddie took a few false starts and then asked, "How many times have you and him…"

Yhelm took off her glasses and wiped down a streak of Wet across her fluff. "This is like the third time we've actually, fucked? Ugh. Flyhh what an ugly word."

"Why did you start?"

"I mean he's always Apatted at me he's like that. You remember the time I jerked him off outta spite."

"Yeah. That was actually pretty funny, but."

"Yeah," Yhelm agreed. "Yeah but. I don't know." That was a lie. "So Trackless Gait built a web of little pathways into reality when the world was made."

Madrigal stared at her with their big ferrety eyes. "Aha. Is this, are you doing a thing?"

"Yeah hush. So birmads teleport by slipping into these little hidden roads. But there are other ways to teleport. They're usually, higher level spells? Because Magic is a separate base element from Travel, it's not accessible in all the same ways, so it's usually done in a more round-about approach."

"Right. Okay. I'm following beat so far."

"Right," Yhelm nodded. Right. "Right. So there was one I learned in the Cazirizahd--I don't remember it anymore, and I'd have to actually get it on order to remember it because it was really specific--like I can remember the gist but for magic just remembering the--"

Madrigal interrupted. "Sweetheart, it's great to see you excited about magic," which meant something, because usually Yhelm resented her involuntary education, "but this is kind of a serious conversation that we're having out here in the middle of one of Drizzle's visits."

"I know, I know, I'm deflecting because I don't want to deal with my own emotions," Yhelm said. "Anyway the spell teleported you by codifying this feeling of being without a personal anchor, and just, fucking. This sense of, just, letting go. Just. Throwing yourself out the window because hey there it is."

Madrigal tilted their head. It was kind of adorable. "I've lost the beat?"

Yhelm made this annoyed, miserable dog yawn sound. "Maybe it's Bad Boy's blood. I just. Spicy food. Got it. That's it. It's spicy food. This is me eating something too spicy. Sometimes you crave that. Sometimes you just want, uh, you want--"

"To be hurt?" Madrigal offered.

"Like we're doing all right. We have an apartment. We have steady work. It's, it's sometimes weird and difficult work because we're Guild, but it's work. We got each-other. This is where I want to be, right? Either it's some… adversary instinct to try to upset what I have, or… maybe I feel like I deserve to be doing worse? I don't know. And, I mean, come on. Yeah. Corbis is a jerk sometimes but it's usually when I've actually messed up. And you get a cute guy yelling at you enough times but also he's hitting on you you're just like, okay. I could do with something spicy. Maybe my lips burn. Get a few heat sores, can't taste the next day. I don't know. I'm an adversary, Maddie. I think a part of me is just, obliged to do shit like this. I mean I threw away my acadamage career so I could go be criminals with you."

Madrigal had this look on their face like they weren't sure what kind of look they should have on their face. "But… you didn't come back to be with me just to be self-destructive, though?"

"No, I mean, no. Flyhh's sake no."

"So is what you're doing with Corbis just to be self-destructive?"

It was terrible when Maddie was correct. Because they were always correct exactly when Yhelm felt like she'd come at the solution, had it right in her hand, and then they'd come up and point out she was holding a wad of dirt, and the real answer was like, over there, and she'd been digging in the wrong spot and it wasn't even buried but up on a thing she had to climb to.

Damn if this one wasn't really high up though? She wasn't sure she could reach? "I mean, I wouldn't date him. I don't think either of us could stand the other for long enough."

"Mmhmm."

"Like maybe I got some shape of feelings for him but they aren't enough to. Fuck. I dunno, Maddie. Does it really matter. He's our boss we're his underlings. It's. It's fine. It's how things are going between us and that's just, how it is."

There was that face, where Madrigal gave up but gave up with determination, where you knew they were going to come back to it eventually. "All right. Let's get out of the rain? We're just, sitting here, getting soaked."

"Yeah well we're spending all day in Dockrow in the rain getting honked at by waterfaces. At least here it's just you and me."

Madrigal looked around at the closed windows surrounding them. "And whoever lives here, listening in…"

"Fuck. Right. Okay. Let's go. Hey if anyone's listening to our fucked up life sorry hope you're entertained sorry you won't get to hear the conclusion to it--"

"Yhelm, please!"

"--small payment of 10-want sign up to our relationship newsletter--"

"Pleaaasseeee!"

"--adults only illustrated scenes every tenthday!"

[returntosaturn271995]

Sunday, September 3rd: Fruits of our Labor

Day 3 of Sober September (plus the sober days going in but for simplicity, we'll keep it at 3), started off with me going on another run. A basic, easy-paced, 2 miles...that I did not stretch or eat before.

It's like I learned nothing from Matty McConeguey's chapter on the importance of preparation before improvisation. Or maybe Gus convinced me at the party yesterday that 2 miles really is nothing. Or I ignored the 2-mile sequence (and the shin splints scene) in "Brittany Runs a Marathon".

I was hungry, non-caffeinated, and tight: so about a mile and a half in I had to pause to get my breathing back in a less close-to-vomit-place. The feeling was embarrassment, but also some self-compassion. The point isn't to win, it's to finish. So I pressed resume and ran another quarter mile. Then had to pause. Less of a pause though. Then I pressed play and ran until I had about 100 meters left. Then drank some water at a public fountain (next to an equally thirsty dog). Let's just fucking finish. So I did.

I ran two miles and took 3 small breaks in that last half of a mile. Still ran 2 miles. Still counts.

Who's going to beat me up for not doing it continuously? The running police? Because I'm not going to fucking beat myself up. I got up and tried today.

I finished and went to the under-the-pier spot I always do to stretch and meditate. I wobbled less and flexed my thighs washing the sand off of my feet before walking home. I leaned down to pet an English bulldog puppy and met some friendly children on the way.

One kid was 11, he had blonde hair and tan skin and was confident in a way I'm sure he'll be his entire life unless puberty is especially cruel. His adult teeth were huge for his childlike face and there was chocolate milk around his mouth from the shake he was drinking. He looked so happy and had the kind of energy where you could tell he ran everywhere and couldn't keep any information down because the world was still so cool.

"My mom is moving furniture around today, and my job is to watch Marshmellow!"

I smiled and held the puppy in my arms.

"That's a really cool job".

"I know! I got to name him because I like smores".

Marshmellow started to lick the sweat from my sports bra around my armpit. Time to go. I jogged the rest of the way home.

11. Sometimes I forget that I was only 9.

That it's not a failure of maturity that it's taken me this long to get healthy. It wasn't a sadness I felt, but a certain kind of understanding. A peaceful one. I hope that kid stays a kid for another couple of summers.

My tan lines are forming hilarious stripes across my torso from my changing workout gear. It's like the carving of a mountain range with layers of different stones. My shoulders and stomach are darker and warmer, and above my abs is a shelf of a lighter tan from where my sports bra sometimes covers my skin and sometimes doesn't, and then my moon-white breasts are cut into a crescent shape by tan cleavage. Layers of summer skin sunlight built over the past couple of months, the stripes look less sexy than funny, but I understand them and like what they represent when I'm naked and getting ready for my post-workout shower.

I threw on a blue floral dress and went to Trader Joe's to pick up groceries for the Half-Baked Harvest recipes I intend to complete this week. No alcohol or social plans today. Just rest, reading, cooking, and a couple of episodes of Community.

[chvndlr]

Chandler knew, as soon as he made the hole metaphor, that Beck was going to talk about someone being able to help lift him out. But he was so deep and Beck's energy would be better used doing literally anything else besides trying to pull him out. He wanted to scoff at Beck comparing all of this to a breakup, but he stopped himself. That was way too rude, even for him, and to Beck that had been a really dark time. So instead, he listened. Besides, not being able to get off the couch for a week sounded serious. At his lowest, right after moving to Merrock, he certainly was sleeping a lot. But that was when he took in Jenna and so his waking hours were filled with a (surprisingly) healthy distraction. He couldn't imagine spending a whole week in bed or on a couch. And he hadn't initially thought about the idea that they saw each other every single day for fourteen years and then she was gone. He had no concept to even begin to understand that perspective. "You were gonna propose?" Chandler asked quietly, surprised. Not because it seemed out of character for the optimistic boy in front of him, but because he was only hearing about it now for the first time.

And then Beck finally got to the point. He was saying ignoring the problem wasn't the best way to handle that situation. Or Chandler's. But he didn't understand that once Chandler acknowledged his current struggles, and put the words I'm an alcoholic out into the universe, that would be the end. As a teenager, when he tried to imagine his life at thirty....well, he couldn't. He didn't see a future. No career, no idea of where he'd be living or who would be in his life. But the worst case scenario had always been this. Between his dad and Madison, and some of his old friends, all of them had gone down this path and none of them were sober or clean now. Even if he managed to beat those odds, it was how he coped with self harm and the idea of relapsing into that was far more terrifying than the idea of staring down a drink every night.

Since he couldn't give Beck what the blond wanted from this interaction, maybe he could redirect him by sticking with the topic of heartbreak. "I've never been through that kind of breakup. I guess the closest was when I was with Cody. But I'd only known him for a couple years and he was right to break up with me. Still really sucked for both of us though." He shrugged. It didn't help that when Cody ended things, Chandler shut down and became cold to him in order to protect himself from further pain. It had probably only made things worse for everyone involved. "Madison was the one who...that's a whole can of worms, and I do wanna talk about it. Shosh knows some of the details, and she told me about Frank. But I'm not in the right headspace to revisit that relationship tonight."

He laughed slightly at the idea of surf lessons. "I learned to swim, and now my feet are staying on dry land. But you could totally take Jenna out on the water when it warms up again. The person who had her before me must have taken her to the beach a lot because holy shit does she always want to swim." He laughed again, more this time, at the sarcastic comment about how he never argued. "I know. Would you believe I even swore at a few of my teachers?" He smiled a little at the memory. "I didn't correct them, no. I just....learned not to trust adults at a young age, and so I didn't do well in situations where people demand respect without earning it."

Chandler had twice now asked Beck if he wanted to drink, and both times his friend had turned down the offer so he didn't ask again before drinking some of his own. "Define go-to. Cause I'd say I drink more water and electrolytes than alcohol." He was pretty good about staying hydrated both during binge drinking and the next day. The amount of sports drinks in his fridge was evidence of that. "But when I'm drinking? I like screwdrivers. They're very simple, and they're fruity and cheap to make. My orange juice was past its expiration date though, so I decided it was safer to pitch it and do something different tonight."

“I don’t believe that things have to stay permanently shit. You don’t have to get yourself out, not alone. Alone doesn’t really get you anywhere.” It was something he’d tried to teach Shosh too, every day he had to talk around her going out to her car. This was maybe a little more direct than he'd been as a teenager. "Listen, I won't pretend I know everything about this. But I do know pain, okay? Pain so deep that it feels like it can actually kill you. When Shosh left, I didn't leave my sister's couch for like a week, I dunno. To be honest, I don't remember a lot about the summer after she left. I would get up, surf to the point of literal exhaustion or I'd surf for a bit and then go smoke somewhere. I think I spent a good 60-70 percent of that summer stoned. I get that sounds like an overreaction to a breakup, it happens to lots of high schoolers after graduation, I wasn't even the only one in our graduating class. But I saw Shosh nearly every day since we were around four, and then overnight, nothing. I had a ring picked out, was gonna work that summer so I could buy it with my own money. She has always been something in my life that I am 100% sure of, so I know getting engaged at eighteen sounds crazy but it doesn't to me, never has." He was rambling on--not even sure why he was saying all of this aloud because he wasn't really sure he ever had--but he had a point somewhere. "Anyway, I didn't really talk to anybody. Kept busy, which is really easy for me in the summer, and hoped no one noticed." But people did, it was why Olives still had her reservations about how quickly the relationship had begun again. It made it easier to see Chan was doing the same kind of avoiding. "I think it would have helped...if I had talked about it instead of doing everything I could to pretend it didn't exist. Or that I wasn't in that kind of pain." It wasn't the same thing, he knew that, but he hoped it made his point without having to break out some people need people.

"All the time, one of the only ways it's worth it to me to get up that early. Maybe one day we can work our way to surf lessons," he offered, though not holding his breath on that one. Sometimes he knew the limits. "You argued? Shocking," he said, trying to catch a hint of levity in their otherwise heavy conversation. "Were you the kid who would correct the teachers when they got something wrong?" He could see it. "We'll even get her a t-shirt: Nessie Bait." It might have to be in his size though because she was way more likely to wear something she stole from him.

"It happens, it happens," he said with a bit of a laugh, "I'll have a dog one day. Just not in a place for one right now." His question didn't work to gain any sort of acknowledgement, and he didn't have any proof that his theory had been right. A lot of people drank or smoked when they were in a bad place, both people with an alcohol problem and without. "Nah, I'm alright," he replied. Being here was helping, Chan had said as much, so he tried to honor his preference to not talk about it. "Is that your go-to?" He asked, trying to keep it conversational while not fully dropping it neither.

[rotationalsymmetry]

There is a tendency among a certain type of polyamorous people to make out rules as being the worst thing ever. But it's not actually bad or wrong to talk about your expectations in a relationship and what you are and aren't OK with a partner doing. What's important is how you handle it when someone breaks a rule. There is a huge difference between "you broke the rule so I'm going to do everything in my power to make you feel like shit" (which people are perfectly capable of doing without even expressing the rules in the first place) and "huh, this goes against our rules, what's going on?" and, idk, treat it like a problem to be solved rather than a failure of obedience to be punished. What I mean is: the problem isn't rules, it's punitive justice.

(I think for people who have had some time to understand and internalize the concept, the boundaries vs rules concept is meaningful. But with people who are new at this, I think insisting that good polyamorous people don't have rules (which is itself a rule! it's a social rule!) is more likely to get people to not talk about their expectations at all and try too hard to just be easygoing about everything (the mistake I made) or else use boundary language to state things that are, functionally, rules. Which is pretty easy to do since a lot of psych professionials have definitions of boundaries that are pretty rule-like. The concept that I think is meaningful is "boundaries" are about you and stuff that's yours -- not yours like your partner, but yours like your mail.) (And even so, boundaries can get really complicated for people who can't just walk away from the relationship, for whatever reason.)

There is a tendency among a certain kind of anarchist to assume that being opposed to government, police, and prisons means being opposed to laws, which can get kinda awkward when you're trying to figure out how you feel about OSHA regulations or rules about water pollution or similar.

But laws are not the problem. Punitive justice is the problem. How society responds to people who break laws. Is this about identifying bad people who need to be punished, or is it about going "this is a problem, how do we make it better?"

When I was a kid, I used to have huge fights with my mom over things like practicing the piano. I remember her saying in exasperation that if I'd just done the practicing rather than putting up a fight first, we'd be done by now. Problem: kid is being disobedient, solution: double down on making the kid obey. I don't actually know what was going on with me, I do know I liked piano lessons so it wasn't that. Could have been that I had problems with transitions and needed more advanced warning that piano practice time was coming up. Could have been that I didn't understand the point of practicing. Could be that I got a metric shit ton of positive reinforcement from my piano teacher when we had lessons and much less from my mom, so I liked lessons and didn't like practice. I may never know. Because my mom thought the solution to the problem of me not wanting to do a thing was to force me to do it, so we never actually looked at what else might have been going on. And to this day I don't really have a good skillset for getting myself to do stuff without mentally beating up on myself for not doing it. And I don't think it's healthy or even that consistently effective, but it's what I've got. And when my partner doesn't do what I want him to, it's what I've got there too, and that really doesn't work well at all.

[faded-neon]

[He winced slightly at Neon's speech, looking down and away in spite of himself. He couldn't bring himself to look into his younger self's gaze at that moment, terrified of what he'd see reflecting back at him, terrified to see the reminder of how much he'd failed. He'd failed to get here sooner. He'd failed to protect Neon. Faded had no earthly idea of how long he'd spent in that terrifying void between life and death, how long it had been before he'd been more or less yanked back into the land of the living, but he knew about Brozzith. Knew what Neon had had to go through without him, in a constant struggle of desperately trying to tread water while it just kept surging around him. Because he knew exactly how it felt. It was how life had felt not long after both Donnie and Usagi had died, if he had to be honest with himself. Like trying to bail water out of a ship that was doomed to sink no matter what he did.

Maybe he could have been here sooner. Maybe he could have saved his younger self from having to hang over that terrifying precipice, where you wanted to take that final step and let yourself fall into the void so damn badly but there was always that thought in the back of your head that even dying would manage to disappoint someone in your life, so you forced yourself to stay, the great howling hole in your chest growing larger and larger all the while. But the worst part was, Faded didn't know if he could have. Didn't know if fate would have been that kind to him, if it had ever been that kind to him. God only knew that he'd never meant to get his younger self tangled up in the mess that he'd left behind, but when trying to fix it seemed to have only broken it even worse than before--

Breathe. Breathe.]

I....I'm that way because I had to be. Any kindness, any mercy, anything....good.....that kind of environment just beats it right out of you. Sure, I was a good leader. I kept us going for as long as I could. But that was because nobody else was left to step up and do it, more than anything. I didn't have time to ease into it. They just chucked me in the deep end and expected me to learn how to swim. You....you have time to figure out what kind of leader you're going to be. You don't have to be like me. I hope you don't have to be like me.

[A heavy sigh.]

You're doing so much better than I could already. You're living your life. You're getting better. All of that happened, and you....you had a support network. And ways to cope. And I can't say that more things like that won't happen, at some point, or that things will always be easy. I think you know that too. But I feel like....in terms of healthy coping skills and moving on....you're doing better than I ever could. I feel like I have to live up to you, actually. You're doing well, and I'm still....you know. Tripping over my own feet and flailing around and trying to find steady ground again.

[A pause. And then he reached out to lay a hand on Neon's shoulder, squeezing lightly.]

I.....kind of wish I'd been there too. There's probably no way that I could have gotten here sooner, but I wish I could have told you that it wasn't your fault and not just left you to figure it out. For what it's worth, though....I think you're doing a pretty decent job of it so far. You seem like you're doing....twice as well as I did. Pretty hard to not feel....jealous sometimes. Which isn't really fair to you, since we're....technically the same person. It's just. Complicated. You have all this spark and fire and hope. And I'm still.....learning how to get it back. You do all these things that I almost forgot how to and it's....inspiring. For me. To try and push myself to do better and get better.

....I just hope I can be someone you're proud of.

[Okay. Okay. He could do this. Just because the future version of his youngest brother had texted him and said that his future self wanted to talk to him, and had been concerningly vague about the reasoning for the talking, that didn't necessarily mean anything. Faded could just....want to talk to him about training. Or being a good leader. Or any number of other things. He could hear Donnie's voice in his head as he stepped through the portal and wound his way towards Faded's apartment, inhaling and exhaling as calmly as he could. You can't catastrophize off of a singular data point. It doesn't do anyone any good to think like that. Relax.

Easier said than done, when his heart felt about ready to pound its way out of his chest the closer he got to the apartment. Biting the inside of his cheek and trying to regulate his breathing, Leo simply raised one hand to knock upon the door, his voice somehow managing to come out remarkably steady in spite of his internal turmoil.]

Alright, old man, open up. Your Girl Scout cookie delivery is here.

(@faded-neon)