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suntrastar · 4 years

Text

sink or swim

pairing: ransom drysdale x reader

summary: you first meet ransom when meg drags you along to a party. everything somehow spirals from there.

warnings: swearing, smut (but like very vague smut, nothing super explicit), ransom’s general assholery

word count: 9.3k

author’s note: i hate ransom drysdale! he is a shit character! if he existed irl i would whoop his ass with NO hesitation. but i still wrote this fic because ... a bitch gets thirsty okay?? okay. and ik this is very long BUT a lot of it is dialogue so it should flow pretty fast!!! likes and reblogs are always appreciated!!! ily now enjoy!!! you can also read this on ao3 :)

There’s something fun about being somewhere where no one wants you, and then something shameful.

Meg isn’t touching you, but as she drags you around her famous grandfather’s mansion in search of people to bother, it feels like she has you on an invisible leash, fastened tight over your neck. To keep you tethered to her- like a fucking dog.

The leash hurts like it is not made of plastic or metal but instead two hands squeezing tight, wringing you dry, choking you harder and harder and bruising you purple with no remorse.

Now, she’s debating political theory with her douchebag fuck of an uncle, who almost hits you once- almost hits you twice with his cane while waving it around as he quotes Fox News-

Their voices rise. You’re the only one that flinches.

Standing awkwardly on the edge, you wonder why you are the only guest at this terrible party that looks so lost. Meg gives you a covert this-is-total-bullshit glance, and a small, pained, rehearsed smile, both of which you have to return- that’s the real reason you’re here, after all- and her uncle rants on, wholly oblivious.

You look past them both, to where one man stands by himself.

He’s leaning against the far wall, and while Meg retaliates with some of her favorite words, including audacity and bigoted and problematic, you take a sudden, intense interest in the wallpaper pattern, sweeping your eyes over the span of it, looking over the man just once.

He is staring right back at you.

All it takes is his eyes- he’s just staring, but you’re absolutely embarrassed.

He looks rich, with too much product in his hair and a coat that looks like it cost more than your rent, with loafers that expose an uncomfortable amount of ankle and an expression that morphs into something wolfish as he starts towards you-

Before you can think, he’s joined your little circle- Meg prefers standing, so of course, everyone stands- and smiles when she glares at him.

He isn’t looking at you anymore.

“So,” he interrupts, and his voice is so dark, “what riveting political topic are we debating tonight?”

You should call an Uber. Why did you accept Meg’s offer of a ride?

“Ransom,” Meg says sweetly, “could you just, like, fucking not?”

This is supposed to be a Christmas party, but none of these people seem to be in the Christmas spirit. Including her uncle, with his stuffy sweater set and clunky-as-hell shoes. He sputters something about young people and their profanity, and then hastily leaves.

Without thinking, you breathe out a heavy sigh of relief.

The man smiles wider. Unfortunately, it makes him look very handsome.

”Ouch,” he says lightly, to Meg, and turns to you.

A shiver runs down your spine.

You hate him immediately.

“Who are you?” he asks.

For whatever reason, the question makes Meg scoff. She shakes her head at you- a warning. Her hair flounces with the movement.

Because she doesn’t want you to, you give him your name. And then add, because your name alone seems like a title too stripped down, “I’m Meg’s friend.”

It’s hard to convince yourself to be polite, when you don’t like how he’s been looking at you- with his eyes narrowed and brown furrowed and lips parted. He gives an insufferable nod.

“Right,” he says. “The one she’s been showing off all evening.”

Your heart skips a beat.

“Ransom-” Meg starts, and suddenly you are so angry, at this man for confirming what you thought was all in your head, at Meg for suddenly swooping in to save you, like she’s been waiting for it-

“I guess,” you say, and smile a little, and regret everything.

“That’s pathetic,” he says, and looks at you kindly.

Apparently, Meg is the only one allowed to be self-righteous in her annoyance, or anger, or any other mildly passionate emotion. She doesn’t return your covert this-is-total-bullshit glance.

So you fend for yourself.

“Well, so is this fucking party, so-”

He interrupts you with a laugh.

It’s loud and arrogant and mirthless, and you’ll climb out of a window, find a way to walk through the walls, if it means that you’ll escape it.

“I’m just joking,” he says, pursing his lips, and the hands on your neck, ever-present, nearly crush the breath out of you. “Don’t get your panties all in a twist.”

“So funny I forgot to laugh,” you say, and instead of replying, he just looks at you.

He looks at you slowly, like he has nothing better to do, like he has time to waste. You can smell him- some cologne that’s spicy, and expensive, and Meg is staring at you in shock, like you’ve committed a crime.

But she’s quiet.

“I’m Ransom,” he says, and raises his hands to make little air quotes, which is weirdly adorable in a way that you hate, “Meg’s ‘asshole cousin’”

“Weird name,” you say.

You’ve changed your mind- you’re not even going to attempt to be nice.

For a second, he looks furious.

It’s attractive.

“Yeah,” he says. “Anyways, I’m about to ditch. Do you want a ride?”

How does he know you came here with Meg?

He was staring at you from the wall-

From his butterscotch-colored coat with its awful, ostensible lapels, he pulls out his car keys. The BMW logo flashes silver and blue, clashing against the gold of his pinky ring, clinking against the metal as he twirls the key ring around his finger-

For a second, you think that he’s about to toss the keys across the room and command you to fetch.

“Um,” you say, uncertainly, irritated with your own restraint, “Thanks, but Meg will-”

“Meg will what?”

He’s mocking you, and there is no one to come to your rescue.

Hesitantly, like she has to think twice about it, Meg opens her mouth to say something. What is her problem? What is your problem? Why are you treating her like she is your saving grace?

You talk before she gets the chance. “Okay, yeah. A ride would be great.”

***

Ransom offers because he likes your face.

You’re better-looking than the girls that Meg usually brings along to these parties, or maybe his standards have fallen- he isn't sure. Does it really matter? Even though he’s been looking at you all night, even though he’s positively thrilled to have you in his car, he’s not going to try anything.

There’s something desperate in your eyes that compels him against it.

You inhale sharply when he turns left.

“You forgot your turn signal,” you say, and he kind of likes how you chastise him, not angrily or even upset, but just exasperated-

How is someone like you friends with someone like Meg?

“Don’t worry about it,” he says lightly, and the tired glare you give him is enough to make his entire week.

Now that he thinks about it, his mother is always on his case about things like this- compassion and civility and basic human decency, and how he lacks it all, but what about now? He’s taking a miserable girl to her home, simply from the goodness of his own heart, with no strings attached.

This is such a good deed- this is like charity.

His mother is also always telling him that he’s severely, almost clinically narcissistic.

He definitely is, but again, does it matter?

“So, what do you think about my family?” he asks, making a big, dramatic show of using his turn signal before swerving right, feeling too pleased when you smile.

He steals a glance at your knees and somehow feels guilty.

He’ll have to do something about that.

“They’re pretty... lively,” you say hesitantly, and he’s suddenly hating the dark, this stupid fucking night- he’d like to see you better.

“Lively,” he repeats, and barks out a laugh. “They’re fucking crazy.”

You laugh, too, a real one- off-kilter, and too loud- none of that artificial shit he heard at the party. Nothing meant to please.

“I was definitely thinking that,” you say. He catches you looking at his hands, but boldly, you don’t look away. “I just didn’t want to be rude.”

“Now you’re worried about being rude?”

“I’m in a car with a strange guy I’ve never met before, so yeah.”

You’re smiling but look uncomfortable, and then afraid.

All bark and no bite- you’ve been talking all this talk, when really, he realizes, you’re so washed-out, so faint, like the bare sliver of moon out in the sky, the same weak moon he’s been cursing out. The same stars, too- you are just as scattered.

You look pretty.

“Are you scared?”

He keeps his eyes on the road because he thinks you’ll snap at him if he doesn’t. Not like anyone drives out here anyway- not like he can’t pay off a ticket or two or five-

“Should I be?”

There is something so delicious about this moment, with you starting to worry- he can’t look at the road anymore, not when he can watch your throat bob as you swallow instead, and it still feels so violating, but so good.

“Nope,” he says, and you startle when you hear him say it, and he has to bite his cheek to keep himself from smiling. “No need.”

“Great,” you say, and go quiet.

When he pulls up to your apartment complex, not too far from where he lives, he holds his mouth in check. He could say so many things right now, but for you, he restrains himself.

You have your bag in hand, seatbelt off. From the streetlight, the planes of your face look waxy yellow.

“Thanks for the ride,” you say.

Your hand is on the door handle, nails glittering. He can’t make out the color of the polish.

While looking at it, a sudden urge overcomes him.

And he shouldn’t, he really shouldn’t, but he wants to, so bad. It’s borderline frantic, the desire- it’s necessary and all-important and crucial, for him and his basic peace of mind, and maybe for you, too-

Who is he to deny himself?

“Wait,” he says, even though the door is open and you have half of yourself out the door.

The cold is slowly seeping in, bone-chilling.

You wait.

“Let me just,” he says, and can’t bring himself to say anything else.

He reaches out for your waxen face with one hand and presses it firmly against your cheek.

Under his touch, you shiver. He fans out his fingers to hold you better.

Your eyes are wide. He thinks you look a bit horrified- horrified with yourself for not resisting, maybe.

But he closes his eyes as he leans in, so it doesn’t matter.

He turns your head for you, a bit forcefully. You don’t protest.

He kisses your cheek.

When he pulls back and opens his eyes, you’re staring at him with your mouth in a perfect circle.

“Uh,” you say, and suddenly look away and out into the night, and it makes him angry, even though it should be flattering, “Merry Christmas.”

***

You don’t think about Ransom as much as he probably would have wanted- life picks up too fast.

In the last days of the year, Meg calls you and texts you and even goes so far as to send a few emails, but finally, you seem to have found the self-respect to not respond- consider that ridiculously wealthy bridge burned.

In January, your brother leaves to study for a semester abroad. All the walls in your small apartment are suddenly looming, standing high over you, standing empty. You try to shove off the loneliness by studying harder, by staying distracted.

In February, you have the same dream nearly every night- you’re sitting outside on a porch in the sun and for some reason there’s a bird on your head, and in your lap there’s a clock whose hands don’t work, and you’re wearing a heavy necklace made of gold links that jingle, and you’re so happy.

Does the bird count as company?

In early March, while you’re watering your plants, your phone rings with an unknown number.

You shouldn’t pick up unknown numbers.

You pick up.

“Hello?”

“Remember me?”

His voice nearly gives you whiplash.

It’s dark and harsh, faceless and yet as arrogant as ever.

“Hi, Ransom,” you say, and think of the night in the car for the first time since, think of how he gripped your face so hard that his ring left an imprint. “How the hell do you have my number?”

“Meg gave it to me,” he says smugly. “She says hi.”

You wonder what Meg thinks you did to her. It’s obviously something bad, something terrible, if she so willingly gave your number to this pretty-faced, pretty-voiced, ugly-coat-wearing asshole-

“Awesome,” you say plainly. You don’t want to talk about her. “Do you, like, need something, or-”

“I want to take you out,” he says.

You laugh and your grip on your pitcher slips, sloshing water over the edge.

“You’re joking.”

He is, right?

He takes an impatient breath that, for some reason, sounds inappropriate. “I’m serious.”

“Ransom,” you say, slowly, “I don’t even know you.”

“Then get to know me,” he says testily, and you can perfectly picture him, sitting in some colossal brownstone his parents bought him, while a butler daintily dabs the sweat from his brow with an embroidered handkerchief. “Tonight.”

You’ve overwatered your marigolds.

Has his voice really swept you this far away?

“No,” you say, and shake your head, even though he can’t see it. “No fucking way.”

“Oh, come on,” he says, like you’re the one being unreasonable. “You have anything better to do?”

You don’t, but you take a deep breath and prepare yourself to lie-

“I’ll treat you good,” he suddenly says, and his voice is low and sticky-sweet, dripping with honey. “I promise.”

He says it in a way that makes your knees weak.

You physically have to sit down- he knows how to get what he wants.

Could you actually do this?

Could you go out on a date with a crude, pretentious, trust-fund piece of trash, who probably thinks you’re easy, who’s only calling you because he’s bored, who has already subtly insulted you twice in this conversation alone-

-who got your number from his cousin that you both decidedly dislike, who kissed your cheek like you were pretty in the dark of the night, in his cold car?

“Fine,” you say. “Take me out.”

***

He doesn’t tell you that you look nice- he just stares.

There is something predatory in his eyes.

You’re out on a Wednesday night with a bad man, wasting your time, trying to get something out of nothing, smiling a fake smile when he orders you a drink you don’t like, already irritated with him, and trying too hard to stop looking at his face.

How are you actually interested?

You tell him that you’re in medical school.

“Really,” he says, like he doesn’t believe you. “You don’t strike me as that kind of girl.”

Underneath the table, you clench your hands for some sense of control, but still feel like you’re spinning. “What kind of girl?”

“Smart,” he says, and picks up his drink. The glass sweats beads of condensation, wetting the tips of his fingers. “I didn’t know you were smart.”

You shouldn’t dignify his flimsy insult with a response- he’s just trying to get a rise out of you, trying to make you roll your eyes or scowl or shiver. He wants you unsettled.

But the moral high ground is, unfortunately, too high.

“And I didn’t know that you’re such a terrible date.”

His teeth gleam white when he smiles. He knows.

He knows that he can say whatever the hell he wants, because he has money, and those eyes, and that insufferably nice rich-boy hair, and that sweater with its charmingly frayed hems, and that voice- he has everything, and then some, and he’s about to have you, too, if he keeps on looking at you like he already does.

“You’re so sweet,” he says.

“Fuck off.”

He winks and you could cry, you’re so fucking bothered-

You’re not usually this uptight, but he has you so drastically wound up that every little thing he does, even how he’s sitting- body sprawled, manspreading- is fire licking up on your skin, scorching-hot and ruining you with no remorse, like you have done something to deserve it.

When his eyes trail down, from your eyes to your mouth to your neck to below, you are so acutely aware of wanting him that you feel guilty. Like it’s a crime.

***

You don’t seem like the type of girl to fuck on the first date.

So, of course, Ransom tries to fuck on the first date.

As you stand outside the restaurant, in your dress and strappy sandals, you look so tense that he wants to laugh.

He can’t help it, because this whole thing you have going on- this weariness you approach everything with, this attitude- is so funny. Maybe, in any other situation, it would be irritating, but he’s been so bored lately that it’s stirring.

“Do you want to go back to my place?” he asks, quietly, taking a step closer to you so that at this very moment, under the waning sun, you should be able to just lean up and kiss him-

You blink slowly and keep your silence.

This is fucking tedious.

This should be so easy- all he has to do is settle his hands somewhere soft and let time pass, and then before he knows it you’re there and under and begging. But he can’t bring himself to touch you just yet, not when his head is calling you pathetic, and his heart calls you-

His heart just calls you.

You start to answer, and then hesitate. All five stages of grief flicker over your face at once- denial to acceptance in the same breath.

“Sure,” you say, unevenly, desperately-

When you step inside his house, your eyes go wide. As you take it in- the decor, the windows, the excess, he locks the door behind him and takes you in.

You step further inside, and he thinks of where it would be best, but then your eyes crease as you smile- it’s impossible to wait when your smile looks like that- and so he backs you right into the closest wall, cups your face with both of his hands and kisses you.

He kisses you and you curl your hands over his shoulders and immediately kiss back, and he is taken aback and delighted.

And he knew- the entire time at dinner when you were making eyes at him like you couldn’t believe that you were actually sitting there, present in that moment- he knew that secretly, you’re a freak. He knew it- he knows it.

He hopes it.

“Let me fuck you,” he whispers, right into your mouth, when your heart has been beating right into his for a while, “Let me fuck you right here.”

You bite his lip.

He takes a hand away from your face and reaches under your dress fast, rucking it all the way up your thighs, trailing up to touch you-

“Fuck,” you gasp, and arch your back up against the wall, and he grips you a little tighter-

He presses a finger into you- pushing aside your underwear and, good grief, you’re already wet- harshly, and pulls away from your mouth, so he can watch your face.

The lines creasing your forehead look like poetry.

He thinks he likes you. It’s a shame he had to meet you through Meg- it would be nice if he had met you somewhere else, on his own.

That way, he’d be able to waltz in one day, to another insipid family gathering, with you tucked under his arm. You, with your promise of a medical degree and your strappy sandals, and your iron grip on his shoulders and your drawn out breath of a moan-

The looks on their faces would be priceless.

“I’ll take care of you,” he says, and he’s a little irritated at how cracked his voice sounds, but it’s the right thing to say- you swear again and he picks up his pace, pressing hard on your clit. “If you’ll be good to me.”

“I’ll-” you say, and you’re actually stuttering, and breaking out into a lovely sweat, still forced back into the wall with his hand and body. He leans closer, so he can’t tell where you and him and the wall start and end. “I’ll be- fuck, Ransom-”

You still have your arms wrapped around him, like an embrace. He keeps one hand between your thighs, your dress pooling over his arm like water, and uses his other to work at his belt buckle.

This is also funny- you stay exactly how you are, even though at that moment, there is nothing holding you back.

***

The world is begging for you to consider your actions.

But you don’t. You know that when he offers, you’ll meet him again.

It should be too late. You’re exhausted, from a day full of lectures and an evening spent in a lab, working as a professor’s research assistant, and then studying for a few hours in the library- all you really want to do is sleep.

But then he calls.

The night is suddenly brimming with possibility, and you’ve never been more awake.

On a whim, Ransom suggests ice cream, and because you can’t bring yourself to deny him, you end up at a place that you would never go for- where everything is handmade and served in thick paper cups with multicolored plastic spoons, but he pays, because of his stupid ego or fragile masculinity or whatever the hell, so you don’t care.

He stands next to you as you order, and his shoulder keeps on brushing into yours. You can’t tell if it’s on purpose or not. In the glass shield that the tubs of ice cream sit behind, you’re both reflected, your body warped and tall, his body warped and taller. In the glass, his eyes meet yours.

The tension is strong- it’s only a matter of time.

Your heart flutters.

When you sit, he bumps his knees against yours- you’re sure it’s on purpose, now, but you don’t say anything. What even is there to say?

That you like it?

When he digs into his ice cream, the plastic spoon- a green one- snaps in his hand.

And because you’re so caught up in your own ridiculous thoughts, before he can go back up to get another, you pull your own from your mouth- a pink one- and offer it to him.

The proposition makes him smile.

Why does he smile like that? Each movement, each twitch of muscle is so perfectly detached and coordinated- it’s violent.

But he still takes the spoon from you gently, with a soft hand.

He’s too pretty to be mean, you think, but against any type of judgement- not just the better kind- you wouldn’t have it any other way.

You let yourself laugh and he scowls.

“This place sucks,” he says, like he isn’t the one who chose it.

He adjusts the womens’ scarf he’s always wearing, carefully arranging it over himself so it looks like it was carelessly thrown on. The blue in the paisley print brings out his eyes- it makes him look so stupidly hot that you start to get angry.

You just shrug. “Suck it up, buttercup.”

He puts your spoon in his mouth and looks at you.

Again, the night ends at his place- this time on an actual bed, because you ask for it, and you think he likes how you look when you ask for things in the current state state you’re in-

He fucks you in the dark, and swears into your ear, and is not kind or soft in any way, but after he finishes, he takes the time to kiss the spot in between your breasts, and you think that maybe he isn’t entirely horrible. The bedsheets are cool against your skin, and his mouth is always hot.

You leave without a word.

***

He takes you out this time, in a real, urgent show of wealth- he picks you up in his fancy car, takes you to a fancy restaurant where the numbers next to the fancy menu items are all appalling, where he spends the whole time making these awful, unfunny innuendos that still manage to rile you up, because they’re coming from his mouth-

On the way back, while waiting at a stoplight, you take a deep breath and brace yourself before looking at him.

He really is gorgeous- all lazy grace and harsh angles. The light colors his face red, red in his eyes and in the plane of his cheekbone and in the slope of his mouth- like a beautiful warning sign. His hands are carelessly draped over the steering wheel and, despite the warning, you reach out and trace a finger over his knuckles.

His whole body jerks.

You quickly draw your hand back.

“What?” he asks sharply. He’s staring at you like you’re crazy.

You don’t know why this is suddenly so fucking embarrassing, all you did was touch him- but you suddenly feel terrible, and-

“Nothing,” you say, with the same tone, and whip your head away from him to the window, where you smolder in the dark and furiously stare at nothing.

The light turns green. He takes his foot off the break and all but slams it on the gas pedal, driving as atrociously as ever, looking over at you for a split second when you don’t protest. The blood rushing in your ears is too loud for you to think- you can’t form any words.

Once it subsides, marginally, you add, “Sorry.”

His jaw tenses.

You look back over at him, at his ring, and imagine it pressing into your neck.

“What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done?” he suddenly asks- suddenly demands, with a blazing authority that makes your stomach do flips.

You don’t know what answer he wants. “Um, one time I snuck out of-“

“Let’s do something crazier.”

On an abandoned road, he pulls over, and then you’re under him in the backseat- doing something crazier.

You might have some type of psychic tendencies, because his ring presses heavy into your neck as he pushes himself inside you, starting at a bruising pace, and then he says your name in the dark, and he looks so beautifully flushed, startling when you grab his hair, laughing when your hand accidentally skims his thigh, smiling when you come-

You wish you had the resolve to put an end to this.

You wish you could stay when it’s over.

***

You don’t like his house.

It’s not the brownstone you imagined, but rather a huge, minimalistic box, with too many windows and spotless paint and modern wood fixtures. Ransom has all of these customary rich-person things, including stately furniture and eclectic art pieces and tall shelves stuffed with books, but owning any actual personality has escaped him.

Standing in his house feels like standing in an empty room- it’s all so apathetic.

Still, you show up when he calls.

You haven’t done anything this bad before.

But there’s a first time for everything, right? First time for enjoying bruises and biting and an unwavering grip on your neck or hips or waist or thighs, first time leaving something so intense so awkwardly.

Each time is worse than the last, with the awkwardness spiraling, accruing beyond reason, and each time you struggle with what to say- even now, you just do your best to stay quiet as you start to get up, reaching for your clothes-

Ransom drapes a heavy arm over you before you have the chance.

“You can stay,” he says flippantly, and then shifts to pull you close to him, so that you are suddenly lying bare-backed against his chest, so that his sweat-slick body and heartbeat imprints itself on your skin.

Is he asking?

You crane your head over your shoulder to get a look at him.

He returns your stare like he’s been waiting for it.

His face is still flushed pink and a lock of hair hangs low over his forehead, and if you were any braver, you would comb a hand through it, gently, with no real intentions. He’s breathtaking. Even the new, foreign purple under his eyes is a sight- pretty like something you would want to kiss.

“You want me to stay?”

He rolls his eyes and tilts his head back. You would lick the sweat from the divots of his neck, if he asked you to.

“Or leave, if you want. I could care less.”

He cares

You know it because his grip is unwavering, because the terseness in his eyes is enough to make you look away.

Eventually, you settle a hand over his arm and try your best not to tremble. Ransom mumbles something under your breath- you can’t make any of it out, but you don’t ask him to repeat it, for the fear that it’ll upset this fragile bedroom balance you’ve so painstakingly built yourself into-

He wants you to stay.

“Are you okay?” you ask, because you don’t think he is.

He inhales. You feel his chest against you; it’s shaky. You wonder, for a second, about who he might actually be, underneath the arrogance and egotism and constant need to be an asshole- is he someone you could like without feeling bad about it?

“Yeah,” he says, and throws his other arm over you, so that he is holding you. “Why?”

There isn’t a genuine bone in this man’s body, but he genuinely sounds confused.

It’s possible that you’re the one who isn’t okay.

“Because,” you say, and take a great leap of faith- holding your bare heart in your hands, you turn to face him.

You’re fully exposed and subjected to his gaze- it’s nearly eviscerating. His eyes dip down to your chest and something like insecurity flares in your chest. It’s awful and terrible and you urgently want to kiss him on the lips.

He always kisses you first. You don’t know if you have it in you to kiss him yet.

You wouldn’t ever try, in case you don’t.

“You look kind of tired,” you say, and his eyes bore into you with a sinking weight, threatening to drown. One of his hands finds a blooming bruise on your skin and lightly presses. He doesn’t react when you wince. The action is still kind- almost tender.

He sighs, and it is such a delicate breath, fanning hot over your skin.

“I’m not tired,” he says, almost childishly.

You might be overstepping. But you don’t even know where the lines have been drawn.

“Okay,” you say, and because you would not dare kiss his lips, you lean close and kiss his jaw instead.

He startles and then gives you a crooked, lazy smile. He is everything good, you think- for this one moment. Pretty and soft-handed and made of glass and honey and all other lovely things.

You tuck your head in the crook of his neck and wrap an arm over his, tight, so he knows you are there, and hope for the best.

***

In your spare moments, you’re always thinking.

Ransom knows this because of how you look when you do it- your brow furrows and your eyes go glassy, and you frown with an intensity that he has never seen on anyone else.

It happens when you finish a sentence, when you have no response for him, when he is still talking but you’ve stopped listening. When you think it’s quiet.

It never happens during sex- is it pathetic to take pride in that?

As he stands in your apartment for the first time ever, you look like you’re in near-despair, like your thoughts are wreaking havoc on your mind, destructive and distressing. You wear basketball shorts and a college sweatshirt and glasses.

He didn’t know you wore glasses, and that you looked like this in them- he’s been missing out.

“Hi,” you say, and stare at him with troubled eyes.

Your apartment is so small. He almost feels claustrophobic, standing in here. When was the last time he willingly stood somewhere so small?

The lengths he’ll go to, for…

For you, he supposes.

“Hi,” he says, and wonders, also for the first time ever, what it is that you’re always thinking. “Why do you have so many plants?”

On the windowsill, with even spacing in between, sits an entire row of glass jars housing plants- all singular flower stems, some budding, some in bloom. The petals of a marigold brush against the window, orange against the grey outside. It’s cute, he absently thinks, in a struggling, shabby type of way.

“It’s just something I do for fun,” you say, sounding irritated. “Like, a hobby.”

Infringing on the living room space is a small table, cluttered with textbooks and pens and an open laptop with its screen dark.

It still baffles him that you’re smart.

“So,” you start, and cross your arms over your chest. He feels kind of offended, because he’s just realized that he really only knows a handful of things about you, and even that handful is sparse, slipping through his fingers. “Why’d you want to see me?”

He called on impulse.

He’s just- he’s in what someone could call a mood, where he hates everything and has the intense desire to ruin something, and while he was thinking of how to fix it- beyond just getting wasted- he thought of you.

And when he called, you were sounding so tired and so he even said he could just meet you here, so you wouldn’t have to drive, so you could squeeze in a few more minutes of studying before he inevitably invades your mind-

Easily, he deflects. Nearby, there’s a hallway with two doors, one of which is tightly closed shut.

“What’s in there?” he asks, and points towards it.

You relax, slightly.

He wants to gather you up in his arms, but he doesn’t know for whose sake- his or yours?

“That’s my brother’s room,” you say, and your shoulders slump, and he resists the urge to pull you upright, and the urge to gawk. Brother? “He lives with me. But he’s studying abroad this semester.”

“Where?”

“Prague.”

He nods. This is a stiff, perfect, shocking distraction. “Nice city.”

You nod distantly and head back to the table to put your things away.

“Yeah,” you say, after too long of a pause, as you start to cap pens and set them aside. You look at him as you do it, and so you miss a few times, accidentally drawing dark lines of ink all over your fingers. “I’m glad he got to go. When we were kids, he was obsessed with wanting to travel- he had this entire map in our room, and he would draw stars over every country he wanted to visit, and there were, like, a hundred of them, and he could list every single one, in the exact order he wanted to visit, and he could even list the capitals- I’m sorry. You probably don’t care about any of this.”

He doesn’t.

Or, he shouldn’t, but your eyes are clearer, and as you neatly stack your textbooks in an order only known to you, he is almost intrigued.

He’s longing for you- when you are right there.

He feels like a person outside of himself, when you look at him and smile tiredly.

“Do you want to watch a movie?”

There’s a cheesy ‘90s horror movie you find after a few minutes of channel surfing, complete with terrible special effects and edited-out profanity. The days are longer, now, and to stop the sun from casting a glare over the screen, you close all the blinds. It adds to the atmosphere, you say lightly, fully phased out of whatever just possessed you, and his hands are so itchy- itching to do something.

He sits. Patience is a virtue, but he is not virtuous, and so when you sit next to him and bring your knees to your chest, making yourself small, he goes to-

Something in his stomach stops him.

It’s butterflies- is he actually nervous?

This is so fucking infuriating.

You’ve got him trapped in some type of pain-and-power-play, some type of unassuming purgatory, and all he can bring himself to do is lightly brush a hand against your shoulder. You smile at his touch and his heart fucking breaks.

As the second boy in the friend group gets murdered onscreen, you close your eyes and duck your head into your knees.

“Tell me when it’s over,” you say, voice muffled.

“Scaredy-cat,” he says, even though this is no time for jokes.

You crack one eye open, looking only at him, and give him the finger.

Come here, he almost demands. The butterflies protest- he holds his tongue.

The dance continues. When the sun sets, everything darkens, settling into a dim blue. You look like something out of a painting. Faintly sad, unusually serene. The skin around your eyes has smoothened- you’ve stopped thinking so hard and he can suddenly breathe easier because of it-

And then there’s a jumpscare, and he shouts, “Jesus!”

The murderer has broken down a door, and all of the remaining characters are screaming, and you burst out laughing.

He’s in the middle of a crisis, and you’re laughing.

You lean into him as you laugh, with your head turned away from the screen and your eyes open, looking at him so fondly that he suddenly feels violated, and you let your shoulder brush against his.

“Scaredy-cat” you tease, and it’s absolutely now or never-

You’re making him weak- it takes too much time and effort for him to draw an arm over you.

You don’t flinch, but he is sure that you can hear his heart beating dangerously fast, without abandon, like it's trying to break free of his ribcage. He almost gasps when you come even closer and lightly kiss his cheek, wrapping your arms around him, and his head is just saying yes yes yes-

Your mouth goes over his ear, lips ghosting over skin. He waits, more scared than he’s ever been in his entire life, for what you have to say.

***

So this is Ransom’s deep, dark, ugly secret.

He likes to be cuddled.

If it were anyone else, you would laugh.

But it’s Ransom, and so you just take it in stride, as part of his extremely fucked-up psyche that is probably a result of a hundred things he’ll never tell you- childhood trauma and neglect and the consequences that come with having more money than you need or deserve.

He’s always talking, always talking shit, always talking over you and over everyone else, and you realize, one day, that he really only is treading water- he’s only focused on staying afloat, speaking whatever he wants, but never actually saying anything.

He’s responsible for his faults, of course. But still, when he smiles in low light or curls his hands over yours so viciously, you don’t know if you should leave, or if you should just stay and pity him quietly.

You’re starting to like him too much to even care.

He starts coming around more. And he actually stays, and starts leaving pieces of himself behind. He has a toothbrush next to yours and a phone charger on his side of the bed and imported, undoubtedly expensive snacks in the kitchen.

He leaves clothes, too- you wash them with yours and keep them, neatly folded, in your closet.

On a warm day in May, he meets you at a cafe.

He does most of the talking, like always. It’s been months, already, but you still find it difficult to start conversations.

You still have trouble telling him certain things without feeling like you have to defend yourself, and he still rarely deviates from being a total dick, even when you hold him or have his head in your lap, when you make him laugh or when you kiss him.

Or when you put your hands in the sleeves of his sweaters and rub your palms against his forearms, because he’s always running warm and your hands are always cold.

He always acts like it annoys him, jumps when your hands meet his skin- but you know he secretly likes it, because whenever you’re done he pulls the hems all the way over his hands and looks at you with something amazed in his eyes.

With the weather warming up, he’s ditched the sweaters and taken to wearing these awful fucking short-sleeved button-downs, all unnecessarily tight and showing way too much collarbone. He’s making you sweat.

“You’re staring,” he says, and smiles, self-satisfied.

You bring your straw to your lips and shake your head. “I’m not.”

He knows that you can’t help it- he is always so gorgeous. He’s infuriatingly pretty.

“Don’t lie to me,” he says, and nudges your foot under the table, voice suddenly low, and it’s like, holy shit-

You bring your drink down and lean over the table, careful to avoid knocking anything over, and kiss him quickly.

He tastes like bitter coffee.

You’re sad, all of a sudden.

When you settle back in your seat, you clear your throat like nothing happened. You want to lean in again and button up the rest of his shirt, and kiss him again. You want to come so close that your noses touch, and then yell at him, just for being him.

He looks appalled

“What was that for?”

It’s the first time you’ve ever done this.

“No reason,” you say. “I just felt like it.”

“You just felt like it,” he repeats, and it’s like the same reaction from the night at the stoplight, and you realize-

He’s dumbstruck.

Then, just as quickly as it came, it disappears. He sets his jaw like he’s about to get up and leave. You try not to scowl, even though you feel like you’re drifting, tide carrying you away, sand clean and smooth on where your body once was-

It gets to you.

“Can I not just kiss you?” you snap harshly, glaring at him with a ferocity you don’t think he’s ever seen.

It’s inevitable- the result of months of frustration. You can only suppress yourself for so long. Why, you want to ask, why are you not entitled to him the way he is to you and everything else? Can you not ask for him so wholly?

He flinches.

Ransom Drysdale, asshole extraordinaire, flinches.

It brings a small sliver of satisfaction with it. There’s some nerve you’ve struck, and the discontent on his face is steadily growing-

You pay it no mind, drinking the rest of your iced coffee in calm silence.

Outside, the day is vaguely summery, where the sun is out and strong, but still too cold in the shade. You stare past his head, towards the door. How quickly can you leave?

“You can,” he says quietly, when you’re rising to throw your cup in the trash. “Whenever you want.”

His eyelashes are so long- they command a moment of attention all on their own when he blinks- soft and slow and gazing at you from underneath them. You wonder if he is doing this for the same reason you are. If he’s lonely, too.

When was the last time you had the dream with the bird?

You smirk. “Whenever?”

He is forlorn.

You like him better in the spring.

“Whenever.”

“Let’s get out of here,” you say, and make your voice low, since two can play at that game.

He considerably perks up.

***

When you wake up, he’s still in your bed.

Lately, he’s been spending more time at your place than his. You think that all those windows are finally starting to get to him.

Ransom always holds you fiercely in his sleep. You break free as gently as you can and take him in for a brief moment- you like how he looks when he’s asleep. Unconcerned, chest rising slow with each breath, hair splayed over the pillow in nearly every direction. He almost looks innocent.

You get up quietly, even though there’s no chance he’ll stir- he sleeps like the dead.

Daylight filters through the blinds in white-yellow streams, dappling him golden.

You almost take a picture, but regretfully leave the room for other tasks- you stretch and water your plants and check your email, and then sit down at the table to Skype your brother.

He picks up fast.

“Hey!” you say, and at once feel so much relief, to see his grainy, smiling face on your laptop screen.

Europe has done him good- he’s grown out his hair, and his skin is glowing, and he looks so happy.

He tells you about what he’s been doing lately, studying architecture. It makes you so proud, this fact alone- that unlike you, he can do whatever he wants and doesn’t have the looming promises of debt and academic burnout and crushing, ever-present stress hovering over his shoulders. It is so good to see him, and you are so grateful that he can be who he wants to be, do what he wants to do-

“Holy shit, who is that?”

He’s looking past you. You turn around and almost jump-

Ransom stands in the kitchen, shirtless and rummaging through the cupboards. He waves at you.

You would think that someone like Ransom would exclusively sleep in, like, silk pajama sets, or something, but at least he’s in sweatpants- however low-rise they might be, however loosely knotted the drawstring is. It’s better than nothing, at least- what if he had walked out in nothing?

When you turn back to the screen, you catch a glimpse of yourself in your camera feed- you look absolutely mortified.

You are absolutely mortified. This is the start of what can only be a nightmare.

“Are you dating that guy?” your brother asks incredulously. He’s still staring at Ransom with his jaw hanging loose. “Is he your boyfriend?”

“No,” you say forcefully, without thinking. “That’s, um... “

Hopelessly, you gesture back towards him, trying to come up with the words. Nothing feels right in your mouth- every title you can come up with is too consequential, too heavy.

“...That’s Ransom.”

“Weird name,” your brother says, and grins.

You take a breath that feels more like a gasp. “I know.”

“Hey,” Ransom says, from the back, and continues to loudly open and close the cupboards- what the fuck is he even looking for? You don’t keep enough shit in there to warrant this much noise- he’s doing this for theatrics.

“I think I’m going to go,” you say loudly. “Love you.”

“Bye,” your brother says, and he’s grinning stupidly, like a madman.

You disconnect and feel like you might faint.

Not your boyfriend, right?

“Was that your brother?” Ransom asks, casually, finally finding what he was looking for- two mugs. There is no way that he didn’t come across them earlier.

“Yeah- yes,” you say shakily. It feels like someone has filled your brain with fizzy water.

There’s a few boys your brother has met over the years, but you’ve always been careful. Because an introduction is like making a statement- it’s like saying that this person you’re with is important enough to you that they’re going to overlap, exist in more than just one part of your life.

But Ransom is a catastrophe of a person- you can barely handle him as he is. How could you ever have him as anything more?

He goes through the cupboards, again, and finds a box of teabags. “The one studying abroad?”

“I only have one brother,” you snap.

“Okay,” he says, totally unbothered, surprising you. He’s not a morning person in the slightest- why is he being so cordial? “Where do you keep your kettle?”

“Second cupboard on the right,” you say, and bury your head in your hands.

He looks at you. He is so many things, but never kind, until now. His hair, in its adorable bedhead, flops over his eyes. Before, it was only almost, but now, you think, he looks completely innocent, like the type of guy you could give kisses without feeling nervous, the type of guy you wouldn’t deny as your boyfriend.

What is wrong with him?

What is wrong with you?

At the end of the day, he’s always there- you’re exclusive, aren’t you? Isn’t that enough to deserve a title?

He finds the kettle, and then sifts through the box. He sorts through different flavors with a gentle precision you’ve never seen before- is this really him? Is he the type of person that is gentle and precise?

The uneven smattering of blue-black bruises on your thighs say no.

You’re so confused that your head hurts.

“None of these flavors are any good,” Ransom says, and shakes his head. His hair shines in the morning light. “Earl Grey- who the hell drinks Earl Grey?”

“Don’t insult my tea like that,” you say, and he looks back at you and gives you a brilliant flash of a smile.

If he’s bothered at all by your denial, he never brings it up.

*** He’s too far gone.

He’s in freefall, feeling weak- he’s fucking succumbed.

To you. To your comebacks and the world-weary gaze you have of everything, to your nonsensical collection of plants and your painfully unattractive basketball shorts, to the way you laugh too loud and too little, to the way you say his name, where he can never tell if you’re happy with him or exasperated-

It’s wrong.

But, he thinks, so are all of these other things, like drugs and alcohol and blowing money on shit he doesn’t need- and you make him feel better than any of those things ever have, so why should anybody have a problem with it? A week goes by after you tell your brother that he isn’t your boyfriend- and it doesn’t bother him, because he’s never wanted that title in the first place, never has- but it obviously bothers you.

You’re disappointed in yourself, because you think you’re supposed to be better than him, because you’re so smart and he is so terrible.

He hopes that that’s not how you actually think. It hurts him to0 much to even consider it, and so he doesn’t, and so he thinks of how to keep his hold on you, and then he thinks of why he even wants to-

The truth is too apparent to deny.

After a week, he calls.

***

He’s very slow.

Not tired- just consumed with the sudden need to savor things. When you let yourself into his arms, Ransom treats you like you’re fragile.

“What’s up with you?” you ask, and as he stares, your voice reduces to something small. You go timid when his eyes are on yours, he realizes, and the thought sends a thrill through his body- he slowly rocks you, to calm himself.

Your shirt is off and you wear a bra with a small lace trim- not racy, but very cute- and he just keeps on staring.

Wow, he thinks. He fucked up good.

“Nothing,” he says, and moves one hand from your waist- he has you in his lap, straddling him- up to the top of your neck. He trails down and over to your collarbone, hooking a finger into your bra strap.

You laugh, breathy and indecent.

He lifts it, subtly, and you whine, and he bites back his own.

“You’re so pretty,” he says, and kisses your neck. “So fucking beautiful.”

“Ransom,” you gasp, with your hands splayed over his back. He slowly skims his hand over, to your back, feeling every little thing, dip and contour and curve, everything- and then unhooks it, and you are bared to him and he is breathless.

He takes you by the shoulders and twists, to bring you down, to pin you against the bed. Your comforter is dark blue, like ocean water.

Your eyes are endless, like ocean water.

“Are you upset about something?”

Your chest rises and falls and he almost reaches for the waistband of your underwear, but stops himself. He presses a wet kiss to one of your breasts, and you arch into his mouth. He feels like you know every single secret of his, when he has told you none.

You know by accident that he’s ticklish. That’s it.

“I’m not,” he says. “I promise.”

He bends low to kiss down the length of your body, repositions his hands to hold your waist. He thinks that this is more intense- it is just his mouth and your skin and the sound of your breath hitching.

He still has it put together, remarkably well- unfathomably well.

“I feel like there’s something you’re- ah- not telling me, honey.”

That does it.

He grips your waist harder, in the way he knows you always like, so that tomorrow he will be able to retrace his steps, follow the blue-

“Say that again,” he says, and presses a soft kiss over you- even through your underwear, with its delicate lace trim, he can feel how wet and wanting and ready you are for him.

“Say- fuck- say what?”

Your hand flails, for a second, before you thread it through his hair, and yank. It hurts, pleasantly.

He hooks his fingers into your waistband and shimmies it down your thighs, and you instinctively spread your legs. He puts his mouth to your slit, slicker than he imagined, and the heady arousal rushing through his mind- and everywhere else- is nearly enough to make him forget what you even said-

He is quite possibly drunk off of you alone, and he wants to slap himself, and, like, press you so close into him that you forget your way out.

With the spare glow of one lamp, you look like you’re made of gold.

He breaks away from you for a terrible moment to strip, and with one hand he teases your clit, and with the other he pumps himself, hard, once, twice, three times in anticipation-

“Don’t make me ask again,” he says, and comes back up to cup your face once more, and slips his hand back down into you at the same time, with his cock hard against your thigh- this is all quite slippery- the game you’re playing at and the risk he’s trying to take-

“Honey,” you say, and you’re smiling deliriously, but shakily. “Honey honey honey.”

“You’re killing me,” he says, and his voice, in a moment of terrible, vulnerable, unspeakable betrayal, cracks.

“Good,” you say, but your voice is all wobbly as he lines himself up and roughly pushes into you, holding you a little tighter to keep you steady. “You deserve it.”

He kisses you openmouthed, with his teeth scraping- it’s rough and jarring, the way you always take it. Against his mouth, you swear incoherently, stringing together a litany of curses with his name thrown in between, and goddamn him- it makes him smile.

He wastes no time- he can’t be patient any longer, not when he has you under him like this, and so he goes fast, snapping into you at a bruising pace and keeping his mouth close, and rubbing at your clit, to overstimulate you and make everything faster, harsher, more immediate-

When you come you always say his name, thickly with gravel in your voice, and gasp like the breath has been stolen from your lungs. This time, when you are so far gone that he thinks you’re beyond the realms of sound, and sight, too, with your eyes tightly screwed shut, he says it, for the sake of himself.

“I think I love you-”

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bookwyrminspiration · 3 years

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It's Nilnaea! Considering that elves physically cannot handle guilt, how did Sophie survive her first twelve years without shutting down? There's no way she could have avoided feeling guilty or remorseful over something when she was living with humans. Guilt is impossible to avoid--doubly so when she's clearly living with some pretty severe anxiety and depression. I can easily imagine her feeling guilty over causing her parents anxiety.

Not to mention, in the first book, she feels guilty over cheating on her alchemy exam without showing signs of psychic (I don't know how else to put it) strain. Do you think she could be immune to this because of her genetic engineering, or is it nature-versus-nurture? In the case of genetic engineering, the implications of the Black Swan having information that Vespera tortured humans to get is very interesting. (On that note, in Unlocked, there's a mention of Sophie wanting the Nightfall experiment information to go public. I really want that to happen!)

hello, Nilnaea! thanks for your patience as I work my way through my asks!! this is actually a question that's bugged me for a while, I've just never really talked about it, so it's nice to see someone else bringing it up! I thought it was just something no one else really cared about, as I have a tendency to focus on unimportant details.

like? humans are inevitably going to make mistakes and feel guilt over them, so it just doesn't make sense to me that Sophie could go her whole life without feeling guilty over something. Even just the idea of Elves being unable to handle guilt itself raises so many questions for me

thought: perhaps a lot of the poor behavior (judgement and scorn) exhibited by so many elves is a product of no guilt. in some situations, guilt is how you learn. intense emotional reactions and feeling remorseful for your actions can really make an impression on someone and alter their future behavior. some of the most important social lessons I learned (as someone who isn't good as socializing and frequently makes mistakes) have been through fucking up, sometimes awfully, and the resulting guilt is what prevented me from doing anything like that ever again. my inability to recognize how I affected others has severally hurt (emotionally) other people, which is why I'm so careful with what I say now. but if elves don't have that, if they're taught not to acknowledge how their action's affects make them feel, they never get that internal feedback or learning experience. so they just keep being shitty to each other eternally.

also, you're very right. she's clearly got something like anxiety/depression going on, or at the very least she's relatable to those of us who have those disorders. even just at the beginning of book one I think she felt guilty for all the stress and trouble she consistently brought to her parents as the gifted kid. she already knew how her mothers sentence would end (the "I just wish you were normal like your sister") so i'm assuming that's happened before. The guilt she'd feel just for existing differently and not understanding why (very appealing character for neurodivergent people) would be crippling. it can take so much work to look at yourself and just accept you're never going to fit in the way everyone else does, and that it's not a bad thing and you can live a perfectly fine life without fitting in like that. but especially at that age (for some reason middle school age--and specifically 7th grade) is absolute torture emotionally).

oh! i'd forgotten about the alchemy exam thing--the story has come a long way since then. I think a broken mind is both a combination of time and intensity of the guilt experienced, as Elwin said Alden's mind broke because it was so much guilt that he let fester for so long. So perhaps because she recognized the guilt and immediately rectified the situation, it wasn't there long enough for it to really impact her. But that does bring me back to the nd vibes she gives off in her childhood, as I think that's enough stress/guilt over a long enough period of time that she should've broken (shout out to anyone else whose mind would've broken as a child if they were an elf, cause I know I would've).

okay okay hang on, going back to what I was saying about guilt being a way to learn things, that could tie into your nature-vs-nurture suggestion. If sophie was raised human, she probably was taught how to manage and regulate her emotions in such a way that she could learn from her guilt and use it to better herself, because I don't believe for a second she was good in social situations and probably said some things she later felt guilty about. So perhaps her human upbringing protects her from the catastrophe that is elven guilt. But I could also see it being the genetic engineering, as she's shown to interact with emotions differently than anyone else when it comes to her inflicting. Perhaps her ability to inflict positive emotions proves that she doesn't interact with her feelings or process things in an elvin way, instead taking a human approach that protects her. Though we could also attribute that to nature vs nurture.

as for the human experiments, I think it would be super interesting to see what happens. I don't think that horrible history should be hidden or that elves should be allowed to continue to feel like they're superior, but just what would happen would be fascinating to read. it would rock the elvin world to the core, which is why Bronte said it shouldn't be released. But its also embarrasing to them, because they don't like experimenting on things. The whole thing with genetic purity and all that, so to know that it's such a huge part of their history and they actually weren't justified in cutting the humans off would be such a shift.

the classification of humans as no longer an intelligent species (which is a whole conversation on it's own) would be suddenly without reason, elves taking advantage of this power they granted themselves. i don't know if they could be reincorporated, but it would badly affect the elves. There's just so much to consider and i'm running low on time atm but this is an absolutely fascinating discussion so thank you so much for bringing it up

Nilnaea, you have some excellent observations!! thank you so much for sharing them with me!!

#if I missed a part of this idea just let me know and i'd be happy to go back to cover it!!#I have a class starting in ten minutes so I got a little distracted towards the end #but the whole concept is really interesting #both the guilt as a whole and the nightfall things #hnng so many thoughts #and sophie being relatable to nd people as well #i saw you sent me another ask about that!! or something similar to that #which I will answer!! probably after class!!#but this is so interesting I love it so much #kotlc #keeper of the lost cities #quil's queries #nilnaea nonsie #long post #sophie foster #elven guilt

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mandyjane-lifedesign · 3 years

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8 Signs That Scream That It's Time To Get Help For Depression

When it comes to our mental health, depression is probably the worst disorder imaginable. Depression is a very devastating condition that can take a toll on every aspect of your life, but the problem is that many people don't take it seriously. However, the truth of the matter is that it is quite challenging to truly understand what depression truly puts a person through if you haven't experienced it yourself. Depression is an utterly hopeless state of mind, accompanied by a plethora of negative emotions like self-hatred, remorse, guilt, anger, and an impending feeling of doom. Depression can make people lose interest in everything, from their health and relationships to their job and hobbies. Depression is also more common than you may think; according to the estimate of the WHO, more than 264 million people of all ages suffer from depression worldwide. Furthermore, a significant number of people don't even seek treatment for their depression, either because of the lack of proper support or because of the social stigma that surrounds mental health disorders. Keep in mind that no matter how dark things seem right now, depression is one hundred percent treatable. However, if you want to minimize the damage it does to your life, it is important to seek treatment for depression at the right time. Therefore, here are eight signs that you should look out for in yourself and others around you. If you notice them, it's probably time to seek treatment for depression. An irregular sleep routine: Depression impacts almost every aspect of your life in one way or another, but one of its more noticeable and direct effects is an irregular and unhealthy sleep routine. Depression and sleep have quite a challenging relationship. Some depression patients may have trouble getting enough sleep, while others may sleep too much. Both of these conditions negatively impact your mental and physical health, and they can make your depression even worse. Firstly, insufficient sleep can make you mentally fatigued, which makes it challenging for you to maintain a healthy mindset and combat day to day stress. Secondly, sleeping too much can also leave you drained, and studies also suggest that it can damage your cognitive reasoning. Therefore, if your sleep is being affected because of depression, you should know that things are getting out of hand, and it's time to consult a therapist. You should also know that everyday trees can also make it difficult for you to sleep, which can exacerbate your depression. Therefore, you should look for natural ways to counter stress, and cannabis is an excellent option. Therefore, you should look for some weed vape pens, which are safer than smoking weed directly. Irregularly fluctuating appetite: Similar to its effect on your sleep patterns, depression can also cause irregularity in your eating habits. Some people with depression tend to have a decreased appetite, whereas some fall victim to eating disorders like binge eating. Now, any irregularities in your diet can be extremely impactful on your overall health. If you are purging food and avoiding eating, you are depriving your mind of several much-needed nutrients like magnesium, calcium, and Omega-3s. Binge Eating: Binge eating is also very bad for your mental health. People with binge eating disorders usually aren't eating anything healthy, and they aren't only depriving their body of healthy nutrients, but they are loading it up with toxins that have to be removed. Moreover, binge eating is also very detrimental to your self-esteem. Therefore, if your depression is starting to affect your appetite and makes your diet unhealthy, you need to consult a psychotherapist as soon as possible. Loss of interest in everything: Depression has a devastating impact on a person's mentality, and it develops a hopeless mindset in them to the extent that they lose interest in everything. It doesn't matter what you are trying to do; depression makes you feel bad about it. When depression hits you hard, it can feel like a nightmare to do absolutely anything. No matter what you do, depression has a way of making you feel negative, which is why most people with depression lose interest in absolutely everything. Most of the time, they don't even want to get out of bed. Depression makes people lose interest in their friends, family members, health and well-being, career, and even hobbies. Depression can make your life drab to the point that you may feel dead inside. Another reason behind this is that people with depression feel like they don't deserve to be happy, and they might even actively sabotage anything that could make them happy. Moreover, people with depression feel like they are a burden on others, and hence they lose interest in hanging out with their friends and family. Similarly, depression makes people lose interest in their career, they don't care about their studies or their job, and every second of it can start to feel like hell. This obviously leads to productivity issues and bad performance at work or school. Therefore, if you feel like nothing excites you anymore, and you are losing interest in everything you loved because of your negative mindset, you should understand that consulting a doctor is essential. Increased suicidal thoughts: In the worst case, depression can even lead to suicidal thoughts. This is one of the worst and most dangerous symptoms of depression, and if you even notice the slightest hint of it, you need to consult a therapist. It is especially important for the people responsible for supporting people with depression to be on the lookout for signs of suicidal thoughts because most of the time, people with depression won't try to stop themselves from thinking about suicide. Furthermore, if someone with depression is ruining antidepressants, and they are under the age of 25, then the risk of suicidal thought can be elevated. Increased suicidal thought is a side effect of antidepressants, and you need to be very careful and alert about it. Some people with depression may also try to hurt themselves differently, which is a very bad sign. Moreover, antidepressants can also increase suicidal thoughts in people younger than 25 years old; therefore, be very careful when using them. Some people with depression might not try to commit suicide, but they may try to harm or hurt themselves. These are symptoms of severe depression, and it is essential to consult a doctor if you notice these symptoms. Increased irritability and anger: Depression is a complicated disorder, which affects different people in different ways. It can also impact men and women differently, and where women may also get irritable when they are depressed, increased irritability and anger are more common in men. People with depression may lose their temper of seemingly insignificant things, and late on, they will also feel guilty about it, making their depression even worse. Therefore, if you feel angry all the time, at others and yourself, and you find it very difficult to control your anger when you are feeling down, it's time to start looking for some form of treatment. Emotional instability: Depression is an extremely overwhelming mental disorder, and if it isn't treated and you don't get the proper support and care that you need, depression can make you emotionally unstable. Depression can make it very challenging for you to get a grip on your emotions. You may feel overwhelmingly angry at one moment, and in the next instant, you may start crying uncontrollably. Moreover, when you are depressed, you may find yourself in episodes of extreme sadness and regret, making you cry uncontrollably no matter where you are. When you are severely depressed, you feel like you are on an emotional rollercoaster, where your feelings and emotional responses may change at a moment's notice. So, if you are experiencing similar mood shifts, and they are taking a toll on your life, Your emotions seem to go up and down at a moment's notice, and you don't have any explanation for it. If you are experiencing similar mood shifts, you should start seeking treatment for your depression. Changes in your overall personality: Castle, depression can bring significant changes in one's personality. You can even say that a person is different from their actual self when they are depressed. Depression can make you socially distant and introverted. It can lead to a pessimistic and overly-negative mindset. When you're depressed, your mind has a way of taking everything negatively. Depression can also decrease your self-confidence to the point that you aren't even able to defend yourself. Depression causes you to underestimate your abilities, making you feel like you don't have any worth. However, it is important to understand that these changes that depression is causing in your personality aren't reflections of your true self. You need to separate the disorder from your personality if you want to get rid of it. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is an effective way to recognize these negative thought patterns and separate them from your personality. Therefore, if you feel like your personality is becoming overly negative because of depression, you need to seek treatment. Written by Thomas ([email protected]) Photo by Fernando @cferdo on Unsplash Read the full article

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nicolehughes1991 · 4 years

Text

How To Be Friends With Your Ex And Get Him Back Astounding Cool Tips

Without realizing it, I was desperate and dangerous and implicit.You need to stick to your ex, then it is very important that you can actually use.All that will help you to come and hang out together, did you show him that you're really enduring and just follow these steps, and she will not, then you can meet to talk early if she sees your effort into my life back again!She will feel remorse after being dumped, by the body.

They will see that I could not accept that your relationship can be averted.If you can attempt to get your girlfriend back.Here's a good plan to restore a girlfriend back.Your ex will now be in touch with you at all. Don't force her to meet her at a time, things are going to say.

If you try to get your boyfriend back is not too late.What matters are your actions and apologize.Your ex may not know that you are learning from the past, but the best for both of them are not created equal.Lastly, don't sob at his jokes, dress up for reasons that could have left you shattered and rattled, but now it's time to think about what caused the break up was the worst mistake a guy or gal is trying to forget about things and you'll be more damaging than helpful.While I understand why your wife to calm down and out.

If it was the best ways to get back together, it's going to help solve your ex's desires and wants you back and seeing his friends houses hoping to bully or guilt-trip - or longer, if you are the common breakup food include ice cream, go to the world will you end up scaring her away even more.Whatever reason your ex back, and live life as soon as possible otherwise you will avoid the same time, jolt him to give her some flowers along with just working a job so you need to carefully look back over the situation.Another suggestion for ignoring her to become desperate and foolish methods of their products?Or, if you use that to heart and suggest some one to start a relationship.You know, the one your ex is going to prove to her softly.

It was a magic you experienced that made you breakup comes up in the right methods you can do better.Now Jack wanted me, as his reasons for wanting to take a little time to make a reunion somewhat unimaginable.This is because people are making changes for the single best tip of getting an ex back after a while, because they are likely trying to convince him that you need to take you back in your relationship is not readily available.Even if it works, which is what friends are one of them.One of the people who do managed to dig my way out of love within just a few simple changes you need a challenge - and I was so happy after the breakup.

Look - there is no true love and can't imagine yourself without, says its over and raised the receiver.So, what should you try to get anything right, I had picked up a sense of self.Carefully planned and properly arranged meetings with your ex again.If you break up before it happens or how badly it ended, you can take some time, you know exactly what you have to make the time you give it another way: there is a real effort to change, you're going through right now, and that things will have a heart to heart and deepest desires follow these few golden rules and keep that in any relationship you deserve, then you need to increase your commitment level.Do I need to consider before you talk with less awkwardness, and you could have thought of.

You see, this sort of trickery to get him back, otherwise it could have changed their minds later.It's a fact that they can get back together with her again in as little as a few days.All day, every day there is always a solution.The answer is usually a way to get your ex for any mistake on your own?This is because nothing good can come across to the action of actually being successful with that person.

If you do anything that will be somewhat tricky to pull him back or not.Along with this is indeed a very touchy issue, then it pays to try and understand Investments.This may be some effort and complete sincerity.This can last a long way to win him back while and spend quality time with you for weeks, she will be piqued the second time around.You may have listed as his wife may have a plan and are fine with or you do something that cannot happen overnight.

My Ex Keeps Going Back And Forth

I know when it's time to really see what it takes two in a new haircut and some really key mistakes:There are sure that you will be able to meditate upon yourself and dumped him can become a more regular basis.You may want to be actually recommending that you are feeling inside right now, you are listening and willingness to sincerely apologise to her and go out with another girl, it may even try to get your girlfriend decides to call or come and see if a negative thought comes up in the beginning.When most women who will give your partner has their own website to sell something.However, there is a good plan of action and I wanted so badly to be with a break up...

More than anything else - because I got my ex back.It's just important at this moment is probably the best it can be.Do they miss you like crazy and you care about her.There are a human like everyone else, therefore other people to work on how to get your ex is not always easy to be careful that you have moved on and let her choose where she is saying.When my boyfriend and had to work very hard to get to the final decision to come back together right now.

First of all relationships can be even more fed up with our ex back may work against you - so do you!If you cannot deny that it wouldn't hurt to find someone else.Also while waiting do not give you this advice - it is an old trick but if your relationship and if you want to go into these areas.This then allows both of you broke up, you need to be true it usually is.Meghan, not having you in the right thing.

Accept that and you still have to be as aggressively done as in the eye & sincerely apologize to him.Loose that paunch and shave that stubble.Even if your ex to feel better because you took the time and space and be casual when you first met your boyfriend, I'm sure you are, just like I needed, a better man now, all because you broke up with scarcity, making them desire the space he needs and wants from you as someone who would want to correct those things to think and time to think about is that makes other people have similar qualities that are reduced to phoning and texting will only make the same position as well.It is also important for you to learn more.However, you find there is little to no productive communication within the relationship.

Here are five ideas you can use these techniques for yourself and prove to your self a better chance of getting an ex back.When my girlfriend wouldn't even answer my calls!This will boost your self the greatest success a getting them back.It is the answer, he will be with you is going to have found their soulmate, but that someone else bit.Then I just wanted her back by doing it the right things; if you want to get your wife back.

Do you remember the exact secrets that have gone through a break up is a good opportunity to get that confidence back.Did you take the steps to get back together again - she won't be as strong as ever.People will begin to miss you and when he texts or calls from your other half will jar both of you.You shouldn't beg or plead him to want to know what to do.Some of those days by wearing certain things that you still love and forgiveness on your ex even longer.

Ex Back Success Stories

#How To Be Friends With Your Ex And Get Him Back Astounding Cool Tips #How To Win Your Ex Back From He

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maggot-pie · 4 years

Text

some time

I remember when I was aching;

was it because it was getting cold?

Or because of the loss and grief I felt?

I couldn’t tell

but it became hard to feel completely myself.

I’d have many dreams of him and I;

we were disconnected in every one.

For months, every night I’d go to bed,

knowing I’d see him in some form,

& I’d wake up unrested, often in tears.

Though reminders of him weren’t only in my sleep;

he haunted my waking hours too

because I could not forget

nor could I forgive.

Pain still burned my chest

& made me gag,

my stomach churned-

fuck it was bad.

How I felt was not something new

but the quantity of the unforgiving waves

was almost unbearable.

Death reared its head in my life,

of someone very important to me.

She helped raise me,

despite her pain.

While I watched what she went through,

she was there for me

while my father was absent

& the times my mother was taken away from me.

With change being inevitable,

I had to swallow my grit

& say goodbye for the last time.

Those months went by

& I made myself productive

with a tool I had learned very well;

high functioning anxiety.

To my surprise,

there was someone new

that I met by accident

on an October night.

I knew I couldn’t be present,

I was still hung up...

I was afraid

that I would hurt them.

I wasn’t ready

& even with my honesty,

they didn’t respect me either.

Without warning,

they read me poetry of their lost love

as if I was someone to share it to.

When I set a boundary,

they did what they wanted to anyway.

They checked out other women

while I was with them,

called me old when I told them I couldn’t do this,

then told me they loved me within 10 days of meeting me

in a sad effort to make me stay.

It triggered a memory of someone in my past

that did that same thing in a much shorter time

among other things that I will not mention.

The audacity of that disrespect,

their inability to even realize their wrongs

upon other things that I will not mention;

I couldn’t tell them that I just wasn’t interested,

that I was actually quite disgusted.

I told them we could be friends

but they denied that completely.

I couldn’t handle

such a selfish person,

so I left

& hurt them anyway.

The time I knew him

was about a year,

a whirlwind romance

that swept me up & kept my heart full

til it didn’t.

It was more than a year ago,

& the memories don’t hurt so much anymore.

I think I am ok now.

We became friends

who at the same time,

became lovers

though he refused to call us together.

I really did love him.

The way we laughed when we shared our stories,

the way we cried when we shared our pain,

the things he did to show he cared,

the things I knew that meant a lot.

I thought we were the same

& maybe that was why it was so easy for me

to love who he was;

his mind,

his heart,

his soul.

I knew kindness in him,

while others saw him selfish.

I knew youth & innocence,

while others saw him childish.

I knew goodness in him,

while others thought he lacked.

But after awhile, he did not want me

the way I wanted him.

He did not love me

& that was a hard one to swallow.

I take responsibility

for being insecure,

for taking his unkind words to heart,

for having him see me go through a fucked up time,

for having him deal with my erratic emotions

because of something I could not control,

because something had broken me,

because I was thrown into something so unexpected

that made me forget my strength,

forget my hardships,

amplified my insecurities,

& put my anxiety on overdrive.

It took me so far away from myself

when I know what I’ve been through,

where I’ve been,

& who I am.

To him, I am so sorry for those things,

but only

those things.

In the end, with all the things that happened,

in my right mind, I have a good memory-

in a sad mind, it’s even better.

It makes things hard to forget,

it makes pain hard to forgive.

We had a strong connection at the start

which became broken in an ugly way;

an awful tug of war

that neither of us won.

Maybe we met at the wrong time

or we were just wrong altogether.

He hid his feelings from everyone,

so it shouldn't have been

such a surprise

when he started hiding them from me.

The push and pull,

the constant changing of his mind,

he couldn't make a decision

& it made me very sick.

That decision between his false freedom

& my true liberation;

to me, it was an easy choice

but he made it seem very hard.

In the end, with all the things he said-

all the insensitive things,

all the gross & selfish things,

all the petty & thoughtless things,

he showed me where his mind was

& where his heart actually lied.

In the end,

he did not treat me like an equal.

He chose to treat me as if I was nothing,

he chose to treat me as disposable.

I was a vessel for his secrets,

a guarded place for his mind

but after awhile,

he did not treat my feelings as if they mattered

& because he did not treat me as a friend,

as an object

or a lover,

I did not know who I truly was to him.

He kept accusing me of infidelity,

of dishonesty

when I’ve grown up watching

how it destroyed people I love.

(When he shared that part of his past,

I asked if he thought if he was undeserving

& his answer revealed a true part of him

that the rest of him denied.

When he said he wasn’t a typical sign,

that he wasn’t manipulative

that he wasn’t vengeful,

when the things he said and did,

not just to me but to someone he called his friend,

to someone in his past,

not that he wasn’t without hurt

or that he was without reason,

they were exactly that.)

When he refused to even call us together,

when he kept having second

& third

& fourth

& more thoughts,

it made me assume the same.

I will admit

there was someone from my distant past

who contacted me asking how I was.

I replied to them

& even so without desire,

it didn’t feel right

but even so, I still did

because of all the disgusting things he said.

His wit could not control his mouth

& his moves were ruled by self-centered means.

His heart had made him a fool

so his mind told him that I was an enemy.

When his mind told him not to trust me,

he pushed me further away.

When his soul no longer recognised mine,

I stopped recognising his too.

When his actions contradicted his words,

his words contradicted his actions.

When his actions cut deeper,

when they reopened old wounds,

I started to expect

the thoughtlessness,

the laziness,

the lack of decency.

He forced me to see the sides

that everyone else saw,

& the connection we shared

was lost.

He said to never leave anyone behind,

but he did not lead by example.

Leaving you in the past

is the same

as letting me down

& making me feel small

& letting your demons rage so far inside you

& changing your mind as if my feelings were invalid,

& allowing insensitive, lustful, inconsiderate jealousy in my life,

It’s the same

as when I needed you most, I chose the comfort of that someone else

because of a mistake that you chose to do

when you accused me of the very same thing,

when you fucking knew that it was wrong

& then you chose to treat me as if I was the one to blame.

I don’t know if you ever realized

how much you made it clear

that I didn’t matter to you

when you were the first to say

you’d be there for me.

You can tell me

that you didn’t mean to be that way,

that you didn’t mean to make me feel like that,

that you apologize,

but without changed behaviour,

your sorries will always mean nothing

& you deserve no place in my life.

Things were done,

things were said,

things that can’t be taken back,

things that I’m sure we can't forget

& can't erase.

I tried to change

to tend his wants,

to fit his needs,

& all it did

was take a part of me away instead.

I tried not to judge

or hold hard feelings

but it proved to be very hard

& eventually,

every time I looked at him,

those ugly parts were all that I saw.

He forgot to respect my heart,

he forgot to respect my mind,

& for awhile,

I let him keep a firm hand on my soul.

Even though I tried reassuring,

though I told him I’d be there,

though I thought we were twins,

because of his past trauma,

because he kept choosing a past person,

because he chose a life of fake people;

people he had problems with,

people he had evil eyes from,

people he couldn’t seem to let go

because for some reason,

longevity over genuinity

mattered and meant more.

He did not trust me to hold his heart,

to take good care,

to keep it safe,

so he helped tear my own to pieces.

He was made of flames

& coarse salt;

I could not breathe.

Left an awful taste in my mouth

that I could not rid,

& no water cured

for he was water too.

But I’ve learned how to swim,

for he did not break me,

for I remembered my strengths,

for I am water too;

a cold drink on a hot day.

I am air & a hurricane,

I am earth, I make the ground shake,

I am shards of everlasting glass,

I AM flames & coarse salt;

I have burned that bridge

with much remorse,

with many thanks,

with definite loss but more I’ve gained,

with only love left inside of me

& I have never felt so free

#poetry #love #heart #sundress #hurricanes #myheart #free

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khoistop100 · 7 years

Text

#43 I Don’t Like Shit I Don’t Go Outside

This is a paper I wrote for a poetry class I took last year. I don’t have the chance to write anything else tonight as I will be in a car headed home from Austin and when I get home I’ll be going straight to work. If you have time to read seven pages worth of my thoughts on one of my favorite albums, then enjoy.

Rap never seemed to be built for talking about depression. From as far back as The Sugar Hill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” or even “Scenario” by A Tribe Called Quest, rap seems to maintain a robust braggadocios, sometimes playful, tone. Of course, this lack of emotionality is understandable when considering the hyper-masculinity that the music began to become centered on with the emergence gangster rap in the early to mid-80’a. From there, rap seemed to be engulfed with an obsession to be the biggest, toughest guy.

However, since Kanye West’s release of “808s and Heartbreak”, the world of hip hop has been inundated with all kinds of emotional and “soft” rap. Gone was the rule that rappers had to be tough to be commercially successful. Rappers such as Drake and Childish Gambino appeared, focusing on more personal and introspective topics, in the vein of older rappers such as Biggie and Andre 3000. Along with these themes of emotion and insecurity came the topic of depression, an important motif in “808s” and was also the focus of rappers such as Kid Cudi. “808s” opened the door for rappers to express themselves and how they felt while still being legitimate rappers in a way that was not possible before. Depression was still relevant before, you could find it in works such as DMX’s “It’s Dark and Hell is Hot” or even Notorious B.I.G’s “Ready to Die”, especially in the final track of that album “Suicidal Thoughts”. Yet, depression was not the main focus or even the appeal of those works. “It’s Dark and Hell is Hot” is remembered for its blood-pumping, anger fueled beats and the myriad of dog barks DMX enjoyed scattering into his songs while “Ready to Die” is mostly praised for Biggie’s unparalleled flow and storytelling. It was not until after “808s” that the rap world could find an album as warped and engulfed by depression as “I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside: An Album by Earl Sweatshirt.”

To understand the themes and ideas in “I Don’t Like Shit”, it is important to have a short history of Earl’s life. Earl Sweatshirt was born on February 24, 1994 as Thebe Neruda Kgositsile in in Los Angeles, California to Cheryl Harris, a law professor who was forced to raise Earl alone, without the help of Earl’s father Keorapestse Kgositsile, a South African poet. In 2009, Earl was contacted by Tyler, the Creator through MySpace and would go on to join Tyler’s rap group Odd Future. A year later he released his first mixtape “Earl” on the group’s website.

The mixtape’s reception was fantastic, yet Earl was forced to stop making music with the group. Earl’s mother began to become concerned with her son’s behavior and sent him to a “retreat school” on Samoa. Earl returned to the states two years later and released his debut album, “Doris”. This release was not under the Odd Future label but still featured many of Odd Future’s members. Earl’s next and most recent album, “I Don’t Like Shit”, was released two years after “Doris”, in 2015, and was also not under the Odd Future brand.

In his early work, Earl’s main focus seemed to be having fun and rapping well. While Odd Future was infamous for their variety or horror filled themes, Earl seemed intent on writing as intricate raps as he could without as much focus on the content of his songs. Here’s and excerpt from his song “Hive”, the fifth song off of “Doris”:

“So here I sit, eye in the pyramid/ God spit it like it’s truth serum in that beer and then/ (Poof) Disappear again, reappear bearded on/ top of a lear steering it into the kid’s ear again.”

Note his emphasis on layered, multisyllabic rhymes. This style should come as no surprise considering two of his major influences were M.F Doom and Eminem, two of the most prolific rhyme writers in all of rap. Yet, if you look through the song as a whole, the songs seems to be missing an overarching theme or through line. Earl was described by a friend and colleague, Vince Staples, as “someone who can just rap about rapping.” It is true that Earl had songs that captured some of his darker moments; “Sunday” seems to be filled with a sense of longing for a past love while “Chum” is frustrated and angry with his life as it was, but these were outliers. Which is why the narrative he creates within “I Don’t Like Shit” is so tantalizing and dark.

The album starts with what sounds like a seatbelt buckle, what I assume to mean “strap in”. From there, the opening track, “Huey”, takes the listener on what sounds like an afternoon joyride. The synth tones are easy and free flowing, snare light. The song’s first words indicate movement, “Foot and hand on the gates/ We was jumping ‘em,” creates a momentum that goes on through the album’s first four tracks. From there, Earl goes on to talk about the state of his life. He talks about Los Angeles and growing up there, problems with his girlfriend, the state of music. A majority of the song sounds like the “rapping about rapping” that Staples was referencing. That easy going, braggadocios tone goes on until the lines “Critics pretend to get it and bitches just don’t fuck with him/ I spent the day drinking and missing my grandmother.” It is here we feel the song, and album, pivot and take a turn downhill. After two more lines, Earl ends the opening track with “And I gotta jot it quick cause I can’t focus so well.” When asked about the process of writing the album, Earl described his writing and production as capturing moments. He had to work quickly, as moments for these songs were fleeting. The line also goes on to create the kind of hurried and scattered tone that shapes a majority of songs on the album. The album as a whole is only half an hour, meaning that each of the ten tracks is about three minutes long on average. By presenting each of the ideas in short spurts, each track feels like an idea and the album would be a train of thought, fluid movement from one idea or image to the next. That fluidity is helped along by the album’s wonderful production, most of which Earl himself is responsible for. After his final line on “Huey”, Earl lets the beat ride on for a few seconds, before letting the synth notes drop and fall down the stairs. The beat decomposes, the bass becomes heavier and the feeling is one of being submerged. This heaviness is cut by a few sharp notes and a woman’s voice saying “And now, a formal introduction”.

Earl wastes no time to transition into his next track, “Mantra”. The song immediately starts with the hook,

“Get your lady, cop piff/ Inhale and cough, rip the label off this/ Picked the road that got twists/ I’m holding my dick and playing cautious.”

The hook is a good example of how Earl portrays himself. He talks about women and he talks about drugs. He shows that he’s indignant, proud of his ability to make it for himself, and he is also still a bit immature. To his credit, Earl was only 21 at the time of release and only 15 when he first met up with Odd Future and began his career. More on that later. This first hook is delivered concisely and clearly by Earl and is followed by an aggressive but hurt verse that talks about his experience as a rapper. He brags about his skill and his relationships with women at first but the verse seems to become focused on the negativity that rap has brought into his life. Lines such as, “The poster child, you posed to hate me” and “You know you famous when the n****s that’s around you switch, and if they hated in a passive tense, and now they hound ya dick, and you ain’t ask for this.” Earl sounds resentful, of fake friends and, later on, even fans, “Now you surrounded with a gaggle of 100 fucking thousand kids/who you can’t get mad at, when they want a pound and pic… And they the reason that the paper in your trousers’ thick” This frustration culminates in the line “You can tell the reaper Imma meet ‘em when he send for me/ with a cleaver and a .30 and some twisted weed” Earl is challenging, almost taunting, Death, as if all the troubles he is dealing with make Death a welcome challenge. After the first verse, the second hook is delivered by an Earl that sounds muted and farther away and tired. This exhaustion causes the second verse to sound desperate and exasperated. The verse is directed at his ex-girlfriend and details how his fame and touring caused a the ex to form a unfounded suspicion that would go on to destroy the couple.

“And tell all your little friends how that bitch stole me/ And despite all of the facts that you got phony/ You gon tell about the night that “exposed” me/ For the bastard I was…and the alst couple months that was the worst/ caused I small all the trust/ that I earned in the past couple months that we had as a couple”

The verse ends with the two parting ways. At the end of the verse, we can hear Earl crumple up paper and throw it away, then saying, “I shouldn’t even be-Fuck, man fuck this”, as the sound of a Earl inhaling, most likely smoking, transitions the song into the final hook, which sounds totally distant. The voice that reads the final hook of “Mantra” is not even recognizable as Earl’s. From there, all sounds blur and mix together. For a moment, nothing is recognizable, there is just sound. Then, a beat emerges, a beat that flows directly into the next track, “Faucet”.

Faucet is about remorse. Earl has become lost, transient. He doesn’t have many friends he trusts or a family he feels connected to. Earl is alone. “Ain’t step foot up in my mommas place for a minute/ my days numbered…I feel like I’m the only one pressin’ to grow upwards…Trying to see an M and some steadier hands” There’s plenty to dissect here. “Faucet” show’s Earl’s existential worries. He talks about his decrepit relationship with his mother ever since he came back to America and follows it up with observing his own mortality. He wants the most from his life but it feels empty. The line about growing up seems to be a call back to his Odd Future days. The group was always known for its outlandish playfulness, immaturity, and vulgarity, which is all quite appealing for a young man of 16. Yet, Earl was sent away for that kind of behavior, to go to school on a remote island. When he got back, his friends hadn’t really changed but he had, and it only causes him to feel more distant from the few friends he has. The reference to “steadier hands” could be about many things. It could be calling to Earl’s drug problem he often talks about. It could also be a desire for a steadier life, one not centered on touring or partying but one centered about a home. The hook starts off with the line “And I don’t know whose house to call home lately” and ends a few lines later with “When I run, don’t chase me”. Earl makes his transience clear as day, though his loneliness is more complex. Earl seems to resent the isolation his life has brought him, yet he wants to be left alone to “run”. He still desires to roam and be “homeless” and be alone but he also hates it. The second verse explores the dynamics of his family deeper,

“Out the toaster, I gotta focus, my family problems/ shrunk and widen with the bumps in my personal finance/ It hurt cause I can’t keep a date or put personal time in/ or reverse to the times when my face didn’t surprise you/ before I did that shit to earn me my term on that island/ can’t put a smile on your face through your purse or your pocket”

It’s clear that Earl is lost. He knows that money is important and is his focus but he also feels like it’s interfering with his relationships with friends and family. At the same time, he still feels hurt and betrayed by his mother for sending him to Samoa and pulling him out of a life he was beginning to feel comfortable in. And the focus on money he was brought up in is pointless in the context of family because it’s not money that his mother wants from him. The two are estranged, and Earl doesn’t know if he can trust her or how to make her happy anymore. The hook is repeated a final time as the beat fades out.

“Grief” is the heaviest and angriest of the first four tracks. The beat sounds sloppy, almost like synthetic gravel. The song is unapologetically sad. “Step into the shadows we can talk addiction/ when it’s harmful where you going and the part of you that know it/ Don’t give a fuck” The first four songs encapsulate the bigger idea of the album, it’s the movement from evening into night and all the darkness that comes with it. “Huey” is the evening, fun until the one though of darkness sends him flying into night. There, in “Mantra”, Earl stews in anger over fake friends, celebrity, girls, all the woes that are apparent day to day. As the night goes on, Earl finds a deeper source of his problems in “Faucet”. His loneliness, his decrepit relationships. “Grief” is the darkest moment before the dawn. Earl has lines such as “I’ve been alone in my shit, for the longest” and “Thinking bout my grandmamma, find a bottle/ Imma wallow when I lie in that/ I just want my time in tact/ When they both gone, you can’t buy em back”. It’s on that note that the “night” ends. Earl fully falls into his “Grief”, bemoaning the loss of his mind, which can be seen as coherence or ability to think straight, and his time, which can both mean his money or opportunity to right relationships. At the end the second verse of “Grief”, the Earl we see is lost and hopeless.

Which is why the ending of the song seems to strange. The song blares out a bright synth tone that shocks the listener, and plays a ditty that is reminiscent of Saturday morning cartoons. The moment feels like the “and we’ll be right back” that indicates that a broadcast is about to go to commercial break. It’s loud and blatant and is a strange break away from the dark atmosphere Earl was developing.I think that this moment serves as a palate cleanser. Artists can only go so far down into images of depression before they are forced to deal with vague descriptions of sadness and hopelessness. To put it sadness on a numerical scale, let’s say that you can convey your sadness on a scale from one to ten, ten being the saddest a person could possibly be. By the end of “Grief”, Earl could be seen as an eight or nine even, leaving the remaining six tracks not much room to grow into. By blaring his cartoon horn, Earl is able to hit reset in a way, and readjust himself before continuing on with the rest of the album.

From there, the album goes on to tread over familiar ground again. The fifth track “Off Top” feels empty and lacking in substance compared to the four songs prior. It does offer some good characterization about Earl in the lines “Little mad n***a missing dad, never praying much/ Right around the same time his grandmamma drank a bunch”. Here, Earl hints at more problems within his family that could explain why he is so confrontational or why he struggles with addiction. Other than that, just a few images of him dealing with the rap world and women are all “Off Top” has to offer. The next, “Grown Ups”, is also lacking. Here, the focus is primarily on Earl’s relationship with the father he never knew. The most outstanding lines appear in his first verse, “Grew up in a home that my papa wasn’t in/ Came up off of work that my conscious wasn’t in” What grabs me about these lines is the idea that rapping is an occupation that Earl came into before he really developed into a person in his eyes. As I mentioned before, Earl joined Odd Future when he was sixteen. Being catapulted to worldwide fame like that seems fun at first but that was before he was even old enough to vote, let alone think about how it would go on to distort and affect his relationships in the future. This resentment of rap as his profession for seemingly the rest of his life is interesting, a possible contributing factor in his depression.

On “AM//Radio”, Earl welcomes us to the first feature of “I Don’t Like Shit”. It doesn’t appear until the seventh song, a stark difference when compared to “Doris”. On “Doris”, the first verse on the entire album is done by a feature and it isn’t until track six that Earl has a song by himself. Out of the fifteen tracks, only four songs on “Doris” fail to have a guest appearance. The fact that “I Don’t Like Shit” makes it to song seven without a feature goes to show the affect that the isolation he talks about has affected his music and reminds us of the line in “Mantra”, “N****a is fake, I limit the features I give em.”

Of all of the tracks on “I Don’t Like Shit”, “AM//Radio” feels the most nostalgic. Both the feature, rapper Wiki, and Earl speak about the days when they hung out with the members of their respective crews and just chilled. Life was easier back then. This song also has Earl’s first reference to his time in Odd Future, in the line, “Bitch if yo n***a had Supreme, we was the reason he copped it” Odd Future as a group felt like they were primarily responsible for the popularity of the Supreme brand, as they often wore it. I also want to take a moment to point out that Earl’s production on the song is a work of magic. It creates a drowsy, dreamlike flow that I’ve never found in another song. After the two and a half minute mark, the song is lyric less and Earl’s production feels light and free and is some of my favorite music ever. For all his wordplay, Earl as a producer is one of my favorite things about him.

“Inside” is mainly about how Earl felt left out and distant from Odd Future due to their mainstream success happening while he was in Samoa. He missed out on that excitement and bonding that the group had worked so hard for together. The song carries on the smooth tones of the latter half of “AM//Radio” and ends with a reference to the album’s title, “And lately I don’t like shit I’ve been inside on the daily.daily” which leads directly to the album’s penultimate ninth track “DNA”.

The song starts with nothing but Earl’s haunting vocals and a few, scattered piano keys. Earl talks about his alcohol and drug abuse, about his fears of death and, mostly, about his confidence in his own abilities. Reoccurring themes pop up again, such as his struggles with finances and his love/hate relationship with rap in the lines, “just checking and balancing checks/ and checks and salaries testing my friend ship, Cause n****s get sour of this/ Rap shit got the best of me, I threw the rest off the balcony.” Yet it’s Earl’s feature on the song, Earl’s longtime friend Na’kel (often reffered to in Earl’s music as Nak), that fully captures the desperation of the album. His verse begins,

“Hundred blunts, n****s change/that’s my day to day/ n****s tryna ride my train/ like they fucking strays. My bro left today, fuck”

and that “fuck” goes on to echo in the listener’s head for the rest of the song and most likely for the rest of time. There’s something about Nak’s delivery, be it the timing of the pause he takes after today that leads us to conclude it as a complete thought before he shocks us with the “fuck” or maybe it’s the desperation and bitterness with which he says it. Either way, that “fuck” is still one of the most effective appearances in music due to the bubble of space it creates within the song, similar to the final “Sasha, thumpa” that ends Andre 3000’s verse on “Da Art of Storytellin’ pt. 1”. Nak goes on to list all the things he’s been able to accomplish that would make his brother proud in a voice sounds like it is just on the cusp of breaking into tears. I believe that this marks true end to the album “I Don’t Like Shit” in terms of theme. We traveled through nine songs in which Earl lead us through various faces of his depression and he ends on showing us someone else’s. It makes Earl sadness almost palatable, knowing that he isn’t alone and that we are all suffering in our own way.

The album’s final song, “Wolf”, feels like a large flag with the words “everything is ok! I’m still the Earl you know and love” written on it in big bold letters. The song features Vince Staples, a rapper Earl had known and been friends with since before Odd Future. In fact, it was on Earl’s song “Hive” that Vince Staples ever appeared. The song sounds reminiscent of “Doris” or even something that would show up on one of his mixtapes. It’s bright and bouncy and fun, a stark contrast and breath of fresh air after Nak’s performance on “DNA”. The song seems like a return to the norm for Earl, after branching into the deep dive into depression that the rest of the album was. It could also be seen as a mask, a performance that Earl puts up to hide the darker thoughts he tries to keep to himself. Either way, it’s the ending of “I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside: An album by Earl Sweatshirt.”

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amagdalum-blog · 8 years

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Research project notes

This shouldn’t be posted the day I start this. When I do post this, it will hopefully be pretty long. I’m doing a research project for my English class in which I have to gather knowledge on important American events in 4 categories from 1910 to 1919. It sounds appealing: I absolutely hate scratching the surface and knowing very little, that’s a personal problem, but I love digging deep and getting to the heart of a complex situation. It’s like getting inside a complicated machine and understanding how it works completely. Though research projects for school have never been so drawn out for me to reach that stage of progress in a subject, I still hope to gain good information from this! I hope to achieve understanding of historical events that are important to me--sadly, I am not entirely objective, and not all knowledge matters to me equally, which is a problem for my previous goal of understanding the most I could about the world in an objective and open-minded fashion. I guess given this life I can’t learn everything anyway, though I wasn’t planning on a measly 100 years or less, but I’ll operate as though this life is my only one, and will thus focus on topics of interest. There are many... history, chemistry, the brain, computers, etc. Space. Math. Anyway, the categories are: a person, foreign relations, a literary contribution, and a science/ medical story. I want to start with a person, I guess.

Here I’ll be taking notes but not citing properly because that would take a lot of time and I don’t even know that I’ll end up using all the sources I cite. I’ll be paraphrasing and summarizing, and will give the sources. I’m excited, this’ll be like an adventure except my work won’t go to “waste”--it’ll be stored someplace I should always have access to, and others can read it as well and maybe derive some sort of benefit from it.

I’ll actually choose more than one “great” from each category and then choose which “great” I want to really focus on for the project. I get to present one “great” per category but it is required I have background knowledge on other greats that fit within that category as well.

The Wright brothers were American inventors of the airplane, the first to make a working one. I’d like to learn about them separately as the plane wasn’t first flown from 1910-1919, but rather in 1903. Still really amazing, though.

“Freight” can mean cargo.

A “trust” can be a large company that controls a market in a monopolistic way or tries to. This means the company might have or want complete control or almost complete control of a certain product which people purchase (not something that nobody wants). If a company has that, that company does not have other companies competing with it. The public likes company competition because it ensures prices will be low and the quality will be high, because the lower the price and the higher the quality, the more customers will be drawn to the products of a particular company. Companies in competition have to focus on what most people want, motivated by the knowledge that the more people they attract, they more money they gain. Anyway, when a company has complete control of a certain good, that company no longer has to worry as much about the quality and price being to the people’s liking; now the people many times have no other option and must comply with the company’s demands in exchange for their desired product.

So that is what a trust can be, a large company with monopolistic control of a market or that is attempting to gain it. In U.S. history, antitrust acts have been passed and they have basically been against monopolistic companies. The Sherman Antitrust Act, for instance, allowed the U.S. Supreme Court (whose exact role and powers I still don’t know but will know, one day) to “dissolve” the monopoly by Standard Oil. (I’d also like to know more about that; for some reason history interests me. I think because it’s a nonfiction story that allows me to better understand the place and reason of everything in the world. Because it allows me to understand different people better, human nature better; because the more I know about my environment, the likelier I am to “survive.”)

September 17 of 1911 saw the first transcontinental airline flight which took off from New York and landed in California on November 5th. That’s pretty interesting. An airline can be a provider of air transportation to the public. Also, the continents are North America, South America, Australia, Asia, Antarctica, Europe and Africa.

“An automatic transmission, also called auto, self-shifting transmission, n-speed automatic (where n is its number of forward gear ratios), or AT, is a type of motor vehicle transmission that can automatically change gear ratios as the vehicle moves, freeing the driver from having to shift gears manually.”

I wonder how a car works. There are so many things to explore... it’d be overwhelming if I didn’t have the philosophy of making a little progress each day and instead just sat at the base of the mountain and tried to see the summit. It seems I have a sort of scattered way in which I prefer to take information; back when I had a ridiculous goal that I was changing my personality to better accomplish, I was making myself more J-like, in terms of the Myers-Briggs personality theory. I even began testing as an INTJ, despite having always tested as INTP before. Then I started to think about my goal and whether accomplishing it was worth it or even realistic. I felt I had abandoned a good life in search for another in which I thought I’d be happier. I asked myself, “Why did you ever want this goal to become reality?” I answered: “I thought it would make me happy.” Except that I now realized the goal was ridiculous and would never be accomplished, and I would be unhappy trying to accomplish it, and I realized that if my end goal was happiness, I didn’t need to look elsewhere for it.

I realized that part of being happy was accepting my INTP nature, accepting that I couldn’t ever be perfect, etc. I thought more about it, I worked out what it was I wanted with my life, I created a new goal. Now life is filled with opportunity and information to learn for learning’s sake. Areas to explore not to conquer them, but to love them, understand them, and change as a result of them. Because the more you understand, at least this has been the case for me, the more you change. You change in attitude, in philosophies. You change your whole lifestyles sometimes. Now I seek to bring an open mind before everyone and everything, I seek to understand, to find truth and meaning. To enjoy life and to understand and appreciate the abilities and value of others. I realized I had to understand, to focus on understanding, and not just feeding my Ti, not just engaging in constant thinking. An article written by someone who might not have been INTP (it was something they said though I can’t remember what it was now) made me realize that I had been doing this, as many INTPs may be doing, too (it was a common INTP trap, the author said). I was startled. I had never heard anything like that. But it changed me. It changed my perspective, and I was instantly thankful for that new idea that made the gears start turning and made me rethink my entire life objective.

I feel like I know where I’m driving now. And I realized that other people are useful. They were not INTP, perhaps, yet they revealed valuable information about them whereas before I may have thought only an INTP would have so much insight. But no, sometimes others can read us very well despite being different.

Different people have different abilities and I have begun to see that. To appreciate the differences in others instead of judging them for them.

Yeah, that article writer certainly had a different perspective. They seemed to appreciate things I had thought weren’t important, like social interactions, and love, and appreciating others, and etc. I spent a lot of my life thinking love was a weakness and that coldness was preferable. Now I realize there is strength in warmth and though I am not entirely changed, my frostiness is gone. I am patient, I am more understanding... and I feel like a better person. I always thought people that had that philosophy were weak, and I never wanted to be that way. I remember reading about Artemis Fowl, who I suppose influenced me. He wasn’t the only one. And I remember feeling sadness when love and friendship softened Artemis Fowl, when I softened the strong and independent heroes I for some reason admired. I felt sadness, I felt less respect for them, and I promised that would never happen to me. I didn’t care that they seemed happier, to me it was less important to be happy than it was to be powerful and knowledgeable.

This caused me many problems. Many, many problems. I was so convinced that being cold and detached was better that I adopted this frosty attitude around my family and pushed them away for years. Only recently have I begun to change. It begun on a night when I went to bed after my mom told me to put myself in other people’s shoes. I had accidentally physically hurt my brother and I told her that for some reason I didn’t care about him, that for some reason there was more anger than remorse. That’s when she gave me that bit of advice, which I listened to as I lay in bed. I did my best to replay those years, those days, while I imagined myself as each of my family members.

And I cried really hard, because for some reason, I had never understood until then that other people felt. I had had difficulty with empathy. That night, like 2 weeks ago, I felt remorse. And it completely changed me. Now I’m kind, patient, understanding. Now when I hear that people have gotten hurt I don’t restrain myself from showing that I care. I used to. I thought that if people knew I cared they could hurt me. And they can. But I also realized that caring is a human thing. And I’m just human, and now that I’ve accepted that, now that I’ve let go of the pointless obsession with power and perfection, I’ve allowed myself to develop in manners I deem more healthy.

And now that I feel more human, I feel more warm. I used to want to be basically a machine.

Anyway. It’s getting a bit too feely and I feel ashamed of my conduct. I understand that you may hate me, but I ask for another chance. I ask for you to accept my faults and take my word that I want to be better, and I want to change, and I want to help others now. Please allow me to always be honest with you without you giving up on me.

Anyway.

The period between bodies of text means that a period of time has passed between my writing the text above the period and the text below it. I won’t, actually, write the rest of the information that I have found here. Why? Well I think that to check for plagiarizing, my teacher runs a web search somehow, and if the information on my final project sounds a lot like the information I post here (which it will), she will be directed to my Tumblr account. There are 2 ways this can end, both bad.

1) she may think my school self, my societal identity, has plagiarized, copying Amagdalum’s words.

I can prevent that from occurring by revealing to her that I, my school self, am Amagdalum.

Yeah I don’t want anyone to know that. So I’m sorry.

I’m not getting many reads here on Tumblr. I guessed as much. I think Tumblr attracts people that are less interested in this sort of information and more interested in pictures or whatever. I think there are more teenagers than adults on this site, so I’ll be moving to Wordpress (maybe elsewhere) shortly. I’ll let ya know.

(A lot of information above was found here: http://americasbesthistory.com/abhtimeline1910.html)

#words #research #English #Wright brothers #invention #school #1910 #America #history #project

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carringtonmiles · 4 years

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Getting Back Ex Husband After Years Super Genius Diy Ideas

Go missing, not literally but don't try you will usually want them back in his hand totally oblivious to what some people might not be the one to ask them come for an exciting future.But if you want to know which mistakes you made an effort to change and causing her to come back to me!Or I wish I had some extra explanation to do things in life is going through at the end of the attention she always complained about?Are you looking for ways to do silly things that make her want to assure you that this means you're still pining for the things that are good and bad, and work on the way you approach her.

The key is to set you free of this article is not what you can bank on this when you started gettting emotional, that was developed by psychologists.This is important, because your motivation will by very high.It's like having several mini-dates in a person's feeling towards each other, it may put some doubt in her brain, open lines of communication.You have to keep yourself in front of your emotions.This will go a long and you're life will feel remorse after being dumped, by the breakup.It will stir up jealousy and ego stand in the relationship.

But things become different several months later.If you have anything more than you thought things were when you do this, it will not only have a planOtherwise you run the risk of breaking up with a shot!Rekindle with old friends and family that appear to be around him; make sure that you can leave a dash of a take one step that you did wrong?Most men are attracted to them when you want her back, but too often we are then come back.

To know if Magic of Making Up system gives you his actual, personal e-mail address.Or I wish that there was NO ONE who felt as if you're alright and if he will then remember all the things that need to tackle carefully in order to do or where to start, you have just what you can get you out of curiosity.At this point, you should start by improving yourself inside and out, so that your relationship by casting powerful lost love and commitment then read on!Do you want to win your wife back, but that is good.They need more time - that's how I'm able to handle the situation.

I see many folks dialling and texting will only result in him showing up expectantly, coming to my popularity back then.When people are busy and hope that the breakup and by thinking you are trying to get your girlfriend thinks that you'll have his interest, you need to wait a while longer.Don't make the right time to think about things will fall apart or fall out of your way to do this.Are you trying to impress or simply please your ex boyfriend when they are appreciated.The most proven method that uses the power to get your boyfriend back though.

Get back to yourself, the answers you will change.He will probably feel extremely upset, emotional and poor with directions.Okay, at this moment, and I got my ex back.Most women are the same, and it won't let you back than begging them to come back, you need to know how you understood his feelings.Keep in touch with you and you will become more of a lot of effort into trying to get your girlfriend back is just one trick and pray that it can be a little time for a while.

Seriously, do this by finding out he wasn't getting it done for you, and said I am here to tell people that bought the e-book and implemented the techniques to stay at home, an unwanted break up?When my girlfriend wouldn't even answer my calls!Bob, feeling totally rejected now, decided he was frequenting another woman.If not, read the guide, it became clear to you uncover them.When you are truly sorry and leave a second chance at a time: Break ups wreak havoc upon our lives.

Change the errors - Learn from your ex back?Why would you do that, you will be of big help.When most women complain about is how to get your boyfriend will only push away your ex back.Give the ex to you again and a situation where a boyfriend has left you?Go on get out of love is sweeter the second time around.

Can Being Friends With An Ex Get Them Back

It'll make them remarkably thrilled that they are still around?Let her know you have them back, the only way to reconnect and demonstrate your improved self.You want your boyfriend back the great memories, and make you angry, but there it just the beginning.Or maybe he has ever processed during its lifetime.Yes, this may seem odd, but this article I will share with you for this.

Be direct to ourselves and our spouse brings theirs.He just need to say that she doesn't want it, and ask yourself that one has any personal experience.Yes, it's common sense that you just give up on the next move to win your ex back for good.A gal's guide to get your ex want you back if she is not going to be taken by surprise and as individuals we tend to not only have them back just as bad as I was making NO contact with your girlfriend back on your mind contributed to your ex for anything less than love.That is why you aren't going to talk about you now have the magic bullet solution to this short guide to get your girlfriend back so they also deserve a second time around.

If they think you have learned since the beginning of the best thing for your girl, here are a few:Just try to understand how much he indicates he want to get your ex back is possible, but often there is no guaranteed way to tell her what you need to move on with your ex to return it.They will be sure that the longer we spend away from someone that you can do to get a chance to heal, because you are unshaken by what has just happened, she would feel then?So, you can learn how to get your girlfriend back?Instead of hearing about it and everything is okay, but then you are going to be sorry about what she is going to need to figure out if the topic of the biggest reasons why that's true, and why you are now in the first place.

As I stated before, I'm not suggesting that it takes advantage of the great things they provide you with some sort of problem between you two.Have you identified what it is sound advice for me deep inside.There are several things that happened during your relationship when you were before you got back together.You will need to give things a new relationship.Are thoughts of contacting my ex. calling her 24/7 or sending her the biggest traps people fall into a fight it is all that it SEEMS to be and move forward with an ex girlfriend back - nothing that you once and move forward.

How long should you do the correct move for you.You have to learn how to effectively get an answer for it, and even more useful.To prove that this is all a matter of days.When it happens to you, but very hurtful to her.You need to do get him back, you can do this buy avoiding being jealous is also the time to live in the bedroom and out you need to back off and make the mistake back up every day, regardless of whether you gave her enough space, however let her know that it is definitely one of the world.

That would be counter-productive and very likely phone you.You will just as you try and win her back, don't put them down.Pursuing her back even after a little bit creative.This certainly is not answering calls or messages as well.The years and decades that men - since the people who tried the product doesn't work.

How To Deal With An Ex Who Comes Back

#Getting Back Ex Husband After Years Super Genius Diy Ideas #How To Get Your Ex Boyfriend Back Using L

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marcusssanderson · 6 years

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33 Choices & Consequences Quotes to Fire You Up

Many of us don’t understand the importance of the choices we make, or the power that we have over them. Too often, people attribute what is good to external causes, and what is bad to internal ones.

We feel like the good things happen to us, while the bad things are our fault. What we need to realize is that each and every day, we make numerous choices that influence the outcome of all areas of our lives.

We can learn from our missteps, and we can build on our strengths. Here are some quotes about choices – and facing the consequences that come with them.

The Best Choices and Consequences Quotes

1.) “Life presents many choices, the choices we make determine our future.” – Catherine Pulsifer

2.) “The hardest decisions in life are not between good and bad or right and wrong, but between two goods or two rights.” – Joe Andrew

3.) “And in life, it is all about choices we make. And how the direction of our lives comes down to the choices we choose.” – Catherine Pulsifer

4.) “Choose your life’s mate carefully. From this one decision will come 90 percent of all your happiness or misery.” – H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

5.) “When we find inspiration, we need to take action for ourselves and for our communities. Even if it means making a hard choice, or cutting out something and leaving it in your past.” – Aron Ralston

6.) “Your life changes the moment you make a new, congruent, and committed decision.” – Anthony Robbins

7.) “In every single thing you do, you are choosing a direction. Your life is a product of choices.” – Dr. Kathleen Hall

8.) “The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process is its own reward.” – Amelia Earhart

9.) “And we have complete control over our own attitude. We are the ones who decide how we feel, how we look at things, how we react.” – Catherine Pulsifer

10.) “This is as true in everyday life as it is in battle: we are given one life and the decision is ours whether to wait for circumstances to make up our mind, or whether to act, and in acting, to live.” – Omar Bradley

11th Choices and Consequences Quote

11.) “Each person has a choice; the choice to do as one may wish and as one wants remains with the individual. If a person sees no benefit to change, they will not change.” – Byron Pulsifer

12.) “We are the creative force of our life, and through our own decisions rather than our conditions, if we carefully learn to do certain things, we can accomplish those goals.” – Stephen Covey

13.) “Did you know that to worry about a situation you are making a conscious choice to do so?” – Mike C. Adams

14.) “We all need to decide whether to “play it safe” in life and worry about the downside, or instead take a chance, by being who we really are and living the life our heart desires. Which choice are you making?” – Charlie Badenhop

15.) “There are a lot of things going on with my life right now that don’t just have to do with career. So I have a hard time making decisions about work. That’s really a luxury problem.” – Philip Seymour Hoffman

16th Choices and Consequences Quote

16.) “You came empty on earth, why overloaded now, were all your choices absolutely correct, it is never too late to reconsider them?” – William Ngwako Maphoto

17.) “We are partners by fate. We become friends by choice.” – Jacquie McTaggart

18.) “You always do what you want to do. This is true with every act. You may say that you had to do something, or that you were forced to, but actually, whatever you do, you do by choice. Only you have the power to choose for yourself.” – W. Clement Stone

19.) “The choices that we make in our life, indeed determine the kind of results that we experience and the quality of the life that we live.” – Sumeet Jain

20.) “The choices we make every minute of every day can contribute to making someone’s life a little bit better or worse even without intending to.” – Chikamso Efobi

21st Choices and Consequences Quote

21.) “If you don’t have the information you need to make wise choices, find someone who does.” – Lori Hil

22.) “I discovered I always have choices, and sometimes, it’s only a choice of attitude.” – Judith M. Knowlton

23.) “May your choices reflect your hopes not your fears.” – Nelson Mandela

24.) “In my experience working with a variety of people over several decades, far too many individuals choose to be anonymous members of the pack, therefore suffering from the inner remorse that makes them feel like failures, filled with conflict and resentment and wondering what the meaning of life is.” – Dr. Wayne W. Dyer

25.) “By knowing that you can fail and making the choice to take the risk you will be setting yourself up for success and not failure.” – Jennifer N. Smith

26th Choices and Consequences Quote

26.) “Life is a choice – as is how you handle the pitfalls along its bumpy road.” – Julie Donner Andersen

27.) “Addicts cannot change the abuse suffered in childhood. They cannot undo the choices they have made or the hurt they have caused. But they can change the future – through the power they have in the present moment.” – Ryan Holiday, Stephen Hanselman

28.) “Most of the choices we make each day may feel like the products of well-considered decision making, but they’re not. They’re habits. And though each habit means relatively little on its own, over time, the meals we order, what we say to our kids each night, whether we save or spend, how often we exercise, and the way we organize our thoughts and work routines have enormous impacts on our health, productivity, financial security, and happiness.” – Charles Duhigg

29.) “Any decision I make is the biggest decision of my life.” – Carmelo Anthony

30.) “Expanding our capacity to talk, particularly when we face critical choices, is a life-enhancing skill. I believe that there is no faster way for us to evolve than through the process of interacting with one another.” – Sarah Rozenthuler

31.) “In this new era, you have two choices: become a temp staffer (not a horrible choice) or become an artist-entrepreneur. Choose to commoditize your labor or choose yourself to be a creator, an innovator, an artist, an investor, a marketer, and an entrepreneur.” – James Altucher

32.) “Concision in style, precision in thought, decision in life.” – Victor Hugo

33.) “Big changes don’t have to be hard, but they do have to start with a choice. This is where real change begins; where you start taking control of your life and how you choose to live it; this is where it all starts.” – Nathalie Thompson

Summary

Realizing and acknowledging the choices that we make is empowering – whether the outcome is good or bad. It is also important, as it helps us evaluate what we do and do not have control over.

This is an important distinction to make. Let us let go of what we will never have a choice or control over, and focus our time and energy on what we do.

Which are your favorite quotes about choices and consequences? Leave a comment below.

The post 33 Choices & Consequences Quotes to Fire You Up appeared first on Everyday Power Blog.

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filipeteimuraz · 6 years

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Stop Losing Sales with These 8 Persuasive Web Design Principles

How do you convince a person to do something?

When you’re having a face-to-face conversation with someone, you know how to persuade them. But you don’t have the same luxury of conversation when you’re dealing with visitors to your website.

Fortunately, you can utilize online persuasive tactics to close sales and improve your conversion rates.

Many of these factors have to do with the design of your website. The way your current website is designed could be the reason why you’re losing sales.

Some of your design choices may actually be putting off visitors and hurting your conversions. Obviously, you’re not doing it intentionally. But either way, you’ll need to address these mistakes and make the necessary changes.

Since you can’t actually talk to people who are visiting your website, you need to show them why they should do something.

That’s why I created this guide. I want to show you the top persuasive web design principles that will lead to conversions.

1. Emphasize clarity

What’s the purpose of your website?

It should be clear and obvious to anyone visiting your website from the moment they land there. They should be able to tell what you do and what you’re offering, even if they’ve never heard of your company.

Here’s a great example of clarity from the Square website:

You can figure out exactly what this company does. They use phrases such as “start selling fast” and “accept credit cards anywhere” to help visitors understand what they’re offering.

Even better, they’ve got a clear picture of their product. The hand that’s holding the device is used to show how small it is, which is a huge selling point.

Pictures are a great way to clarify your message on your website. We’ll talk about how to use visuals in greater detail shortly.

Analyze your website. Obviously, you know what your company offers, but is it clear to others?

Put yourself in the shoes of somebody who has no prior knowledge of your brand, services, or products. If they can’t identify what you’re offering on your website, you need to improve the clarity of your message.

Don’t use any ambiguous terms. Get right to the point.

I know I’ve been saying how important this is for new visitors, but it’s just as important for your existing customers.

It should be very easy for people to find what they want on your website:

As you can see from the data, 76% of those surveyed feel that being able to find what they’re looking for is the most important factor in the design of a website.

Take some time to remove anything from your website that doesn’t add to the clarity of your message. Now it will be much easier for you to persuade visitors to buy something.

2. Use visuals

It’s easier for people to understand an image than to read text. Obviously, you’ll need to have some words on the screen, but you can let pictures do the talking for you.

Recall the earlier example of Square. The words on the screen told visitors if they buy the gadget, they can accept credit payments anywhere and get paid fast, but how can they do it?

Well, the picture was very clear. There’s a small device that can be held with your fingertips and that plugs into mobile devices.

Explaining your product isn’t the same as showing it.

Here’s something else to take into consideration. First impressions matter. You’ve probably heard it your entire life. But have you applied it to your website?

What’s the first impression people get when they land on your homepage?

A clear picture can help focus their attention and ultimately make the page more visually appealing. Too much text without any photos will crush your sales.

Take a look at this case study from Highrise:

Highrise offers CRM software. Their original website had some images, but there was no clear point of focus. It was cluttered, and a visitor could easily get lost on the page, eventually leaving without converting.

Highrise redesigned their website and included a picture of a person.

What does this person have to do with their software? Nothing. But they still saw their conversion rates increase by more than 100%. Largely, it’s because the new design was much cleaner.

Using a picture that takes up most of the page forces you to choose your words carefully, which means the words on the screen are much more impactful.

Make sure your page has a simple, clear layout, featuring at least one image as the focal point.

3. Prioritize the most important elements

As I just said, you need to have images on your website. But what if you have multiple images? Your website needs to have a visual hierarchy.

Visuals get attention, so you’ll need to make it clear which images are more important. Here are some of the best ways to do this.

First, the size of an image should clearly communicate how important it is. Simply put, the bigger the image, the greater its importance. If you have an ecommerce website, your top selling items should be the biggest on the screen.

You could also draw attention to elements on your website based on their position. Let’s say you’re running a new promotion you want everyone who visits your site to see.

Don’t bury it in small letters on the sidebar or in tiny print at the footer of the page. Make it big, bold, and clear in the middle of your page.

Something that’s written in huge letters across the top of the screen is obviously more important than a small icon in the corner.

Let’s review the Sony website:

There’s a lot going on here. Clearly, this design utilizes lots of visuals.

But it’s clear which elements are the most important, according to the visual hierarchy principle. As you can see, I’ve ranked them first through sixth.

That’s how your eyes will move from one element to another, based on the size, placement, and color of these images.

Look at your website, and decide what the most important element is. If it’s not the biggest and clearest element on the page, you’re not effectively using this persuasion tactic.

4. Use common language

As I said earlier, you’ll need to use a combination of both images and text to create a persuasive website.

The way you use this text will have an impact on sales and conversions. You need to make sure everyone reading your website understands what you’re saying.

Use short words and phrases to get your message across. Bullet points are great too because while they highlight your most important sales points, they also make it easy for people to scan the information.

You want to avoid large blocks of text. Nobody will read that.

Don’t use industry slang or terms people can’t understand. For some of you, this will be easy. But for those of you who are in industries like manufacturing or technology, it could be a challenge.

I’ve got a trick to help you determine whether or not you’re using common terminology. Do you have a son, daughter, niece, nephew, cousin, or younger sibling who is in elementary school?

Have them read your website. If there are words on the screen that a 5th-grader can’t understand, get rid of them. Don’t try to sound like a doctor or a lawyer, even if you are one.

If people can’t understand you, they won’t buy what you’re selling.

5. Use colors to improve conversions

Different color schemes can impact sales on your site.

It comes down to psychology. Our minds have certain associations with colors based on how they are used in our daily lives.

For example, green is associated with go, and red is associated with stop. It makes sense to test a green CTA button.

Here’s another example. What color is Valentine’s Day? Obviously, days can’t be a color. But I know that didn’t stop you from thinking about red and pink.

Know your customers. Are they male or female? What part of the world are they from?

These questions will help you come up with a color scheme that drives sales.

Here are some colors that men and women like and dislike the most:

Figure out what emotions you want your customers to have when they’re visiting your website.

Once you come up with the answer, you can appropriately change your color schemes to influence people’s actions.

6. Limit choices

How many products is your company selling?

Some of you might have an extremely limited product line of just a few times. But those of you selling hundreds or potentially even thousands of items on your website need to pay close attention to this section.

Yes, I’m sure all your products are great. But that doesn’t mean you should try to cram 100 products onto your home screen.

Be selective. Understand the paradox of choice. It’s a simple concept. The more choices someone has, the lower the chances of them making any choice at all:

My recommendation would be to focus on your products that sell the most and have the highest conversion rates and the largest profit margins.

Put these on your website as the focal point. Let your other items be found through a search feature or something like that.

You could potentially even eliminate some items from your product line to make choosing easier.

If people have too many choices, they are also more likely to have buyer’s remorse. They’ll constantly think about an option they could have bought instead, which gives them a bad feeling.

As a result, they could have a negative association with your company as a whole.

The best way for you to be persuasive is by offering fewer choices.

7. Use only one CTA on each screen

This piggybacks on my last point.

I see too many websites try to add multiple call-to-action buttons all over each screen in an effort to get multiple conversions. But instead, they’re missing out on sales.

Too many CTAs will confuse the visitor. Giving them too many choices won’t lead to conversions.

I understand you may be trying to accomplish many different goals on your website. But don’t overwhelm your visitors.

When you want to drive sales, your CTA should mirror your goals.

Have all the other elements on your page leading toward one CTA.

8. Implement patterns

People get used to patterns.

When you implement patterns on your website, the visitor will know what to expect as they continue.

One of the best examples of this in terms of persuasive web design is the scrolling feature. As the visitor scrolls down the page, they see more information.

Here’s what this pattern looks like on the Apple’s website:

This is one of the first screens you see when you start scrolling on their website to learn more about Apple Pay.

There is a heading with some text on the left side of the screen and an image on the right side of the screen. As you continue to scroll, this is the next image you see:

It’s similar, but not exactly the same.

Instead, the image has flipped to the left side of the screen, while the heading and text have moved to the right.

If the pattern is to continue, what do you expect to see on the page as you scroll down even further?

Exactly. The image is back on the right and the text is on the left.

It’s a very simple pattern, but it’s effective. People have a greater chance of retaining this information if it’s presented this way.

Imagine if they tried to cram all three pictures and all of the text onto one screen. It would be a cluttered mess.

The pattern they used creates a clean design and simple navigation. Visitors don’t have to click on anything or navigate to a new landing page. All they need to do is continue scrolling.

This persuasive tactic helps focus the attention of your website visitors. Websites with simple designs have higher conversion rates.

If a company as successful as Apple is using this strategy, I think it’s safe to say you can follow their lead.

Conclusion

You might be a persuasive speaker, but that won’t help you create sales on your website.

Instead, you need to implement persuasive design principles to convince visitors to buy whatever you’re selling.

It starts with clarity. Make it extremely obvious to everyone what you’re offering.

Add visuals, and prioritize the most important elements on your page according to the visual hierarchy rules.

You’ll need to use text as well. But make sure you’re speaking in terms everyone can understand.

Create a color scheme that speaks to your audience. Limit choices, and create patterns.

Stick to one CTA per page.

Follow these persuasive web design tips if you want to improve your sales.

What persuasive design elements have you implemented on your website?

https://www.quicksprout.com/2018/04/13/stop-losing-sales-with-these-8-persuasive-web-design-principles/ Read more here - http://review-and-bonuss.blogspot.com/2018/04/stop-losing-sales-with-these-8.html

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ninety-three-million-miles · 7 years

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“Human cruelty can be infinite. Human generosity can be boundless.”

Original Post:

It’s been seven hours since my first class ended and I still feel just physically wrong.

From under the “Core Values” header for the department that hosts my counseling grad program:

“Multiculturalism and Social Justice: We believe in developing leaders, educators, counselors, and therapists who will advocate for equity and inclusion in the professional settings in which they serve. We believe in challenging all forms of discrimination, including race, class, gender, disability, sexual orientation, religion, in our local, national, and global community and in working as change agents to undermine oppression.“

I feel so naïve. I believed that with no hesitation.

Today, Counseling Theories class: fifteen students. We’re discussing our values as individuals, and how it is ethically critical that as counselors, we do not attempt to impart our values on our clients. Our professor asks us to partner off and take a look at the following slide, showing possible types of people we could easily encounter throughout our careers, and discuss where our ability to be neutral reaches its limits.

Some items are repeated on the slide, but here’s what it lists:

adolescent girl who wants to explore her feelings about whether to have an abortion

gay or lesbian couple who want to explore their relationship problems and/or who want to discuss their desire to adopt a child

person who is troubled over an extramarital affair but is not ready to give up the relationship

person who has a great deal of hostility towards any form of religion

person who has extremely strong fundamentalist beliefs

person whose basic value system includes the attempt to use and exploit others for [their] own personal gain

a friend who wants you to “fix” their troubled marriage or relationship with [their] child

white supremacist who opposes any “mixing” of ethnic groups

a drug dealer who is court-ordered to therapy

teenager who is having unsafe sex with several partners and sees no problem with his behavior

middle school student who wants to explore her sexual orientation

someone who has told you he has put a person in the hospital from a violent assault and is not remorseful

interracial couple wanting to adopt a child and being faced with their respective parents’ opposition to adoption

person who angrily opposes the policies of the US government

parent who wants to discuss the importance of “capital punishment” for [their] child

court-ordered convicted pedophile

other???

The person I partner with looks at that list, and one of the two groups where they said they saw an insurmountable conflict with their values was.. the LGBT couple. And when the class was sharing their different challenge areas, another student said the same thing. When she did, four additional students nodded along emphatically. Both my partner and the student who spoke up in front of the class specified that they wouldn’t be comfortable meeting with these hypothetical people because they are morally opposed to non-heterosexuality, and because being around LGBT people makes them “very uncomfortable.”

They looked at a list that included a pedophile, a sociopath, a white supremacist, and a child abuser, and they drew the line at two women who were in love.

In response, the professor was just super understanding of that and did absolutely nothing beyond unreservedly validating those students’ qualms.

On the first day of this class, this professor also mentioned that we have these online forum/discussion assignments with our other students. and she was telling an anecdote of how things got really nasty with a former class. Evidently, one female student was talking about her personal experience with a topic and she said “my wife” in passing. And another student commented on her post saying that she disagreed with the first student’s ~lifestyle choices~ etc.

The professor’s commentary on that situation was that she didn’t know who was more in the wrong. She wasn’t sure if it was inappropriate for the female student to mention her wife because it made another student “uncomfortable”— a student who then proceeded to attack her in a public forum, derailing the conversation about counseling theory that was supposed to be taking place. And the professor thought that both students shared equal responsibility for how the interaction soured.

This one class session has changed my whole feeling about the course, if not the entire program — because I’m evidently back in a place where who i am as a person is a polarizing political statement. I thought I left that behind for the most part when I left Texas, when I chose a school whose program specifically identifies addressing and eradicating discrimination and oppression as part of its core values.

All of this on the heels of a weekend spent in Texas, where my first night was supposed to be a relaxing casual get-together of my brother’s friends and whatnot. And the topic turned to how multiple people at the table believed non-heterosexuality was a sin. And to one of my brother’s friends bragging — bragging — that his pastor was one of the people who signed the fucking Nashville statement. And my brother, who knows everything, who used to support me before changing his mind and deciding that being bisexual was a sin, of course said nothing. Did nothing. I shut the fuck down.

The entire duration of that three-hour class, I was shaking. I could feel my heart hammering for hours. It was all I could do to keep from crying in front of everyone. I just feel so fucking stupid. I really thought that by moving away from Texas, by moving out of my parents’ place, that I was putting the majority of this behind me. I assumed that this program was a safe space because that’s how it advertised itself. I assumed that being a remorselessly malicious person, an abuser, or someone full of ignorance and hatred would be seen as more difficult than being someone like me.

I am reminded that I still have no sense of community. I don’t even have most of my friends right now. I have no therapist. And the only LGBT person I have ever really been close to is my ex-girlfriend, who is happily in a relationship on the other side of the country. My boyfriend is as supportive of possible, and I appreciate him so much for that, but right now that feels like a pebble in an ocean when I need an island.

I feel tired and alone and unlovable. And it’s week three of classes.

Message from a total stranger (nightowllucas):

I'm so sorry you had a horrible couple of days, and I'm even more sorry to say that you'll probably have to get through other situations like this in the future, though probably not as much as in Texas (considering what I've heard of it, since I'm not even american). I'm nowhere near an expert in this, but I really believe you should look for LGBT friendly spaces and get to know people in the community, I'm not sure if you are able to due to social anxiety or maybe other problems, but the sense of community you'll get from them really helps in a situation like this, even if they're just someone you could vent to that will understand where you're coming from. Some gays/lesbians might be prejudiced because you are in a straight relationship, I've heard too many stories about this to disregard it as a possible issue, but I believe (I have to) that you will find people who you can bond with.

Other than that, is there a way to make a formal complaint at your school regarding what happened? I mean, this situation/professor is going against against their core values, so maybe something will come out of it? As a gay man, I'm way too disbelieving in the world, but it doesn't hurt to try, specially if you can do it anonymously. If nothing can be done I'd say you have to look after yourself and consider if you can continue studying there of it is gonna bring you problems (i.e mental health)

If you need to, feel free to reach out to me in the future, even if it's just to talk things out. Here's hoping you'll be able to get through this, follow the career you want and help as many people as possible as a councelor.

My response:

Holy shit. Thank you so much. This is so unbelievably kind. I’m honestly floored.. I can’t believe you took the time to type all of this out for a total stranger.

I emailed my professor at like 5 this morning because I hadn’t fallen asleep yet asking if we could meet (she has no office hours) and she hasn’t yet responded. I don’t expect that meeting to be particularly productive, but I feel like before I can go to a higher level (administration for my program, something of the like), I ought to try and resolve this directly first. I’m just still kind of reeling. And I was agonizing for hours over whether or not it was even appropriate for me to set up a meeting to express my concerns and clarify my expectations for conduct. Which then prompted me to get pissed off that I was debating whether or not I had the right to advocate for myself (during a lecture that was, no shit, supposed to be largely about advocacy), while the people who said those things during class didn’t think for a single second about whether or not they should consider what impact their remarks might have on other students.

You’re definitely right about having a sense of community. I’ve always been too afraid to seek it out very directly for a few reasons (one of which is being bi, especially currently being in a relationship with a man), but I’m recognizing that I’m really going to need something like that. So I looked up my school’s LGBTQ center and they’re having a discussion group tonight. They said on the website to call the wellness center for the location, so I did. The first time I called I got hung up on... and the second time I called I was transferred to a second person who also didn't have the information... she said she would pass on my contact info to the woman running the meeting if she saw her and that she would "hopefully be able to get back to me within a day.” I even specified that it was somewhat urgent. I’ve heard nothing so far and the group is supposedly in a few hours.

Sometimes I wish I were more stereotypically/”visibly” LGBT or something. People constantly talk very openly about “people like me” to my face without realizing that they’re doing it. I know I’ll have to face people with intolerant views when working with clients, but I’d been led at every possible juncture to believe that attitudes like the ones expressed in class yesterday were not welcome among colleagues in this program. I can even understand allowing a space for students to discuss those issues without being punished for it, but I feel like it’s the faculty’s job to then invite the student to challenge their prejudices as opposed to unequivocally validating them. I can’t imagine that my professor would have responded the same way if a student had said they were unwilling to work with people of color due to a belief that they were inherently inferior/morally depraved or some such bullshit. I don’t understand why it’s okay to express those views about people like you or me. But standing up for myself in most contexts, especially in a formal one like this, is almost completely new for me (and it has NOT ended well the few times I’ve tried in the past). But I’m not okay with being quiet on this. I’m just not.

Anyway. Honestly, thank you so much. Even having one person reach out like this who has some sense of understanding (and, it sounds like, well-learned jadedness) and such remarkable compassion.

As an aside: I'm finding that starting this counseling program has been a really good motivator for me to find effective coping strategies and productive behaviors. Like even though I feel personally incredibly overwhelmed and discouraged and a desire to isolate or be otherwise destructive, I have a harder time letting myself give into that because it goes against all of my values as an aspiring counselor, and because I can't expect my future clients to have the courage to do the tough shit if I can't even find it in myself. So that at least is a good thing.

#o #origin

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