#apparently yoga is just the kind of exercise I need right now

[dragonatthedinnertable]

My mental health is still being a rollercoaster.

But! I've been walking without my cane for days and I mostly feel fine!

[gabessquishytum]

My favorite slutty, slutty boys!

Dream knows he's a slim guy, and especially after he's been on a writing binge that he needs to get some exercise. Usually he just does some yoga - the benefits of being bendy is legion.

But since he's just off one of his longer writing jags, his sister signed him up for a yoga-in-the-park class so he gets some sunshine along with his exercise. After only a small amount whinging, Dream pops on some yoga shorts and goes to the class.

Hob likes teaching his high schoolers, but they don't pay teachers much anywhere, so he side hustles by teaching extension courses for adults. This season he's teaching his usual yoga in the park class. Mostly the class are (now) full of wine moms and ladies who lunch -- when Hob started teaching the class a few years ago, it was full of retirees, but the word got out the a "hot guy" was teaching the class and all the spots got taken up by sexed up ladies.

Listen, in the beginning, Hob might have indulged, it was flattering that all these women where throwing themselves at him (and f*cking in the public park restroom was a bucket list thing). But he doesn't do that anymore.

And then, 'Please call me Dream' walked into his class - all lithe strength and advanced flexibility - Hob is totally breaking is hands off rule; Dream is extremely happy that Hob is willing to "help" his students correct their form by laying hands (after asking permission). Dream wonders what else Hob might touch with permission.

HNNNG yeah

All I can think of is how Hob would literally be able to bend flexible!Dream like a pretzel. Maybe Dream is lying on his back, legs over Hob’s shoulders and his arse in midair as he's fucked almost to the point of being upside-down. All his blood rushes to his head but he doesn't fucking care because it feels so good.

And yeah, in yoga... Dream may be a slim guy but he's got a lean, perfect musculature that is very visible through his leggings. When he bends to touch his toes his arse just looks so good, and his thighs make Hob absolutely drool. His poses are always just a tiny bit imperfect, so Hob always has the opportunity to gently move his limbs or even put his arms around him.

All of this pays off wonderfully when Hob gives up his "I don't do that kind of thing any more" attitude and allows himself to be pulled off towards the public toilets in the park by Dream’s slim, strong hand. Dream holds himself against the wall with apparent ease as Hob fucks him there, and he makes all kinds of lovely and complimentary noises about Hob’s core strength. Hob follows up by balancing Dream on the closed lid of the toilet and eating the cum right out of him.

Dream shows up the next class with a smug grin. He's even more determined to stay bendy now.

[her-reawakening]

Hi, bitches.

*Gossip Girl intro voice*

Her Reawakening is inspired by my very own frontal lobe developing. Let's give it up for her! (applause emojis)

I've found myself in a life long rut. For some reason, I'd thought my life would magically take a u-turn and everything would work out in my favor without my having to work for it. I don't know what kind of delulu I was in but to my shock life doesn't work that way, and it's much harder without a plan.

So let me hold myself accountable here. My future self will definitely read this, and then I'll feel embarrassed about not having done a gotdam fuck thing.

It might have to do with the poison of Social Media which I am apparently very susceptible to, but I have this immense pressure and anxiety to be HER. I want to tear my skin off and put a new one on overnight and reawaken as Her, She. It's so frustrating not being able to do that. You know? Hehe...

I know I can become that version. And you can thinkpiece as much as you want on the dangers of women's toxic and impossible beauty standards on social media but I don't care. *laughs evilly* This is the world we live in and I'd rather enjoy the benefits of being an Angel on Earth. I've only just accepted that I'm starting at a certain point to reach my ideal version, so we're off to a good start. Hopefully whoever reads this will be able to learn from my experiences.

And this is not just the embodiment of beauty, but physical excellence, mental wellbeing, mindfulness, spirituality, social experiences, academic achievement, financial stability etc etc. <3

I want to sleep like a baby knowing I am doing my best to create the life I ENJOY living. I want to be the cuntiest, most solid version of myself. Every breath I take will be proud of me just because I am so excellent.

I have a few goals in mind at the moment.

Eat whole foods 95% of the time.

I am a particularly sensitive person, inside and out. My organs won't accept heavily processed food without making me feel sick, especially with gluten and dairy included. In my experience I have to eat as close to Whole as I can so I will actually feel like a real and functional person. To put this in perspective, eating this way for me is like putting the most expensive oil made for your car and also deep cleaning and detailing inside and out and getting brand new tires and a new paint job. It is a truly incredible feeling and I highly recommend anyone tries it out.

Also, cut out caffeine. I don't want to shock my poor body by going cold turkey so I'm going to slowly cut down my dosages everyday, take it early in the morning (but after two hours of being awake) and drink a lot water with it as well.

Green juices are amazing and my go to for breakfast. They help me feel so revitalized and give me a serious buzz.

I will grocery shop on Wednesday and Prep on Thursdays to avoid feeling overwhelmed of doing it all in one day.

2. Exercise regularly

Workout out 4/wk and Yoga 3/wk

I'm starting out with running since I'm not familiar with the proper forms you need for weight training. I add progression to my workouts of course, one minute longer, .5 miles longer, etc. I also do stair masters, and some leg machines that don't scare me. The glow I get from combining exercise and eating well is insane. It does take a week of 100% commitment for me to get to this 'candlelit within look' but I've done it before so I know I can do it again! I'm going to work out Mon/Tue and Fri/Sat and do an hour of yoga Wed/Thur/Sun! :)

3. Gua Sha/Face massage

I hold all of my tension in my face and traps, so I plan on getting masseter botox for a softer face and TMJ, which is a huge pain for my jaw! In the meantime I will face massage deeply every other day, at 8PM. I eventually want forehead botox as well to help with my frown lines. As an alternative I stick with forehead stickies and it makes a difference.

This is all I want to incorporate right now. They are my most bother some insecurities so I'll do myself the favor and create habits that support them :) I don't want to overwhelm myself and give up completely by too many goals.

Cheers to an update by next Monday!

Xoxo

[angelfairyqueenheart]

3:18am (BST) 14th december 2023

i met my ex for coffee today. the nice one, not the ones from school. it was good to see him. we were never really meant to be - but we work great as friends. he's kind. he sees with eyes and a mind that no one else i know does. he understands so deeply - and yearns to if he doesn't. he has piercing blue eyes and curly ginger hair that never really knows what it's doing. turns out we've been in the same city at uni for over a year now. his ears are pierced now. he has a cool green paisley sort of silk scarf. with that and his coat off he looks just the same as i knew him before though.

we broke up because my grandfather died. i didn't know how to deal with it. i already had bad mental health issues. it broke me a bit. a lot. once i went to this christian youth festival with my youth group and this kid a year younger than me said that i would undergo transformation, specifically like the art of kintsugi. you know, that japanese thing where they fix broken pots and stuff with liquid gold? my cracks and breaks would be sewn together with gold, they said. they didn't lie - i don't think.

i think the first evidence of that was when my grandad died. through my cracks and grief, a burning passion leaked through and made me stand up for myself for the first time. i realised the relationship wasn't right for me - it just immediately felt wrong, like a skin i had to shed or i'd have to live in it forever. mind you, i didn't deal with it right, i didn't have the wisdom or courage that i do now. not that i'm wise, or courageous. i changed my clothes too. my birthday rolled around and my now-partner gave me an amazon gift card so i bought the cheapest makeup i could find. i went thrifting and bought clothes that make me feel like a human being (and maybe a little bit cool).

that didn't help my mental health though - it didn't make it worse - but it didn't like, improve things. i was still a mess. i still drank at school for the next year and a half. i didn't trust anyone. i still don't trust anyone. i'd like to. my ex didn't see me much at all after we broke up. we met up for coffee after 5ish months... and then i ghosted him (again) (having just told him i'd be up for being friends). yeah not a great move morally. still keeps me up at night sometimes.

my partner didn't mind us meeting for coffee today (boyfriends sometimes do apparently). he didn't really show any opinion. he doesn't often, without me begging for it a bit. i ask the question 3 times for a response, you stare vacantly at me, fake an answer, i ask if you're sure. repeat. so yeah - i did miss my ex. i missed connection and a friend and things to talk about. he was always good to talk to. empathy levels off the charts. don't worry, i'm not gonna try and go back to him - i don't want to. i just need friends, and he's a good one. and my relationship isn't as bad as i make it sound lol but my boyfriend does know i'm not happy in it right now.

i did other things today too. i went pottery painting with the art society. one of the things i painted is for my sister. i hope she likes it. no idea if she will though. i got a sports bra from a charity shop (it's really comfy). i got a turtleneck from another charity shop (i've been really wanting one to wear under dresses [summer dresses can be for winter too]). and i got some uniqlo sports leggings from another reallllyyyy good charity shop. very good price (£6!!!!!! in 2023??? crazytown). i've been wanting to try and exercise a bit. for my brain more than for my body.

i should go to bed now. woke up at 10am this morning but now it's 3am. oh i did yoga too!! just felt like it. i have a creaky unused lil conker of a skeleton. she needed stretching wayyyy more than i realised. it was supposed to be relaxing meditation yoga but it make me a bit more stressed bc i couldn't stretch ffs. was fun anyway. it was for me. today was for me. it was taylor swifts birthday too today the swift society had a birthday party lol. it was fun. i made a terrible friendship bracelet with my own name on it. i won a prize. i was first on the kahoot for a bit. i'm not even that much of a swiftie. i think a girl flirted with me a tiny bit there? idk she probably didn't but i hope i'm right. i hope. i have hope right now. today was for me. night night.

[peachesnabsinthe]

Almost Two Weeks of Unemployment

** Tw/cw: This post contains discussions on chronic physical and mental illness. Things that may be discussed include personal medical diagnoses, treatment, and disability. Please be mindful before reading!**

So it has been almost 2 weeks of unemployment for me. It's been so difficult. I didn't think that I would take it so rough.

I did have my doctors appointment on Monday, and I was diagnosed with hEDS and POTS ( I have a whole list of other diagnoses as well, being disabled is SO FUN hahaHagfljsdga). It has been a very, very LONG and tedious process and I'm beyond exhausted. I've honestly been struggling with pretty severe suicidal ideation as well (don't worry, I'm fine, and any fellow folks struggling with this as well, I see you, and I feel you, and you're gonna be fine too believe it or not). I had been afraid of losing my job and my life drastically changing due to my physical health for many years, and now that it's happening, I've been struggling with such overwhelming grief.

However, I KNOW that this is the best decision I made, BECAUSE of the lifestyle changes that I'm going to have to make in order to get back to living more comfortably (and of course to just function in a more healthy/sustainable way). I already have an XRAY appointment set up to look at my neck/shoulder, hips, and hands. I am also going to start the Dallas-Levine Exercise Protocol soon, though I really need to do some research on whether or not I even have access to a Physical Therapist or someone/something to assist me (I'm honestly nervous to do it on my own, I sometimes injure myself just doing basic, low-impact 10 minute yoga videos).

I'm also incredibly lucky and incredibly grateful that my partner, friends and family have been so supportive and kind about everything going on. The majority of them don't know how to handle this, which is understandable because it's a lot and I don't know how to handle it either! I don't need anyone to give me tips or any advice, just them listening and holding space for me is so helpful. I am able to stop working and have the ability and privilege now to JUST focus on my health, and not many people get to do this. My new health insurance situation appears to be good, and I have a new PCP that actually gives a shit about me. And in this godforsaken country and state (howdy Okies), that's a damn good thing! Don't EVEN get me started on a healthcare discussion, I'm apparently not supposed to get too agitated or else my POTS flares up lmfaaaoo so I won't go there.

But yea. It's been rough. This week so far has been pretty intense. It's so hard trying to deprogram myself. All my life I have been told that I'm too sensitive, I'm a baby, you're just weak, it's not that bad, people have it worse than you, etc. and FUCK. ALL. THAT. NONSENSE. Zoë was a sick child, and is still a sick adult, and that's fine! Now I get to do what I need to do to heal myself, and it fucking sucks and seems miserable right now, but I'm alive and I have to keep going. Because there's still things to experience, even if I have to experience them in a way that is different from everyone else. My body and brain will never be like other people's, and that's okay! I get to deprogram and learn how to live my life in a way that will be best for me.

All that to say, if you are also struggling with mental and/or physical illness, you're not alone. and I see you.

[abishekmuses]

240 Day Challenge - Super-Brain Yoga, Writing and Core Workouts

In my previous post, I'd spoken about how I'm a big believer in the daily streak - doing something every day, without fail - building a chain - forming a habit - and then using that momentum to drive lasting change. This is something that I picked up from the hugely popular book, Atomic Habits, by James Clear. I decided to take up this whole idea of doing something for a seemingly trivial amount of time - but every single day - mostly because, I was a recovering addict and overall lazy, waste-man kind of guy who simply lacked the perseverance or mental focus to do anything intense to see results over a short period of time.

The lazy prick that I was, I found the idea that I could get ripped by just showing up at the gym every day and staying there for 5 minutes every day, extremely compelling.

Funnily enough, I started with exercising when I first decided to experiment with the streak thing - however, close to three years since I first started experimenting with microhabits, I still haven't really had a major streak with working out.

I've had a few minor ones - but nothing that lasted more than couple of months. In November I decided to do a 6 month streak of Angamardana but skipped some 3 or 4 days in between in the 3rd month. Then, I injured my back playing badminton and had to skip the better part of 2 weeks. I'm back on Angamardana though and intend to keep it up for 6 more months to make good on the promise. Anyway, like i said earlier, I've been having a difficult time stitching together a nice streak when it comes to exercise - something that I've really intended to work into my life in a big way; My fitness is not something I'm proud of and I've been intent on setting it right for quite a number of years now, albeit unsuccessfully.

Two days ago, almost on a whim, I decided to write a couple of posts on the internet. That gave me an idea - why not write everyday? - use the streak hack to get good at writing. After all, the same principle should hold true right? If I do it everyday and keep doing it no matter what, I should be much better at it after a while - no matter how unlikely it seems. So, I decided to do it! But I was feeling so pumped that day that just writing wasn't enough - I needed to add more stuff.

I pulled out an A4 sheet and made rows and columns. The idea was to colour the boxes green for everyday that I kept the streak alive. The conditions for success that I set up in my manic state were - 1. 1 cycle of Angamardana 2. At least 21 Thoppukaranams (Super Brain Yoga) - for those who don't know, this is a hindu exercise, often performed to the deity Ganesha as a sort of gesture of repentance or apology- i find it funny that it's called super brain yoga actually - apparently, it boosts brain power and increases communication between the brain hemispheres. Here's what it looks like

3. Write at least 750 words of my own or 500 words for work - 4. Work out my core by doing a 1 min plank or a 15 min core workout. These were the conditions I had to fulfill to colour my box in green. Once I was done creating the chart, I did an approximate count of the boxes and it was around 240 - so 240 it was! The idea is to keep up these daily activities for 240 days no matter what. I'm on day 3 and with this post, I've finished all my assigned tasks for the day. I'm going to colour my box green now. This is what my chart looks like by the way.

[zephiesjournal]

wednesday, september 28th, 2022

pretty lazy morning as i’m in the habit of having. sitting down to write my journal every fiber of my being wants to swipe across the screen and look at cats instead. i impulsively went out to buy ice cream and coffee but i stopped myself and just bought lunch. i’ve just kind of been doing things today? wish it was more consistent instead of one day feeling normalbrained and the next feeling unable to even get out of bed. practicing turning my brain off and just starting a task without thinking about being balls deep in the process of it which makes me want to lie down instead.

didn’t know i was able to freeze my gym membership which is nice, froze it for 2 months so i hope a physio gets back to me soon. still need to exercise a lot though apparently, with my fingers after learning how physically incapable they are when starting guitar. i wasn’t expecting the universal first steps in learning to be “do finger yoga for a few weeks and develop calluses”. i couldn’t do most of the stuff i saw early on, it mentions needing to develop “muscle memory” but i don’t know if that term applies to my fingers just not being able to stretch that far. i practiced getting a D chord down for a while until it hurt too much and right now i don’t understand how you can reliably not hit the wrong strings, but i’m determined. i Will destroy my fingers, for the music,

got a little live2d model coloring done, got increasingly anxious that i was doing it fundamentally wrong so i bought a live2d sub just to test out the head i’ve got so far. was late by the time i had the program set up and i looked at the ui and said i will do this tomorrow and not today. but now i have a sub going for this thing i’m not 100% sure there isn’t an easy crack for so i have an extra push to keep working on the model. i will become the funny cartoon owl by the end of the year this is my goal. i have no idea if it’s generally expected to take months to finish or it’ll be considerably easier with my simpler design but i am ready to learn.

[karalovesallthegirls]

time travel + I didn’t mean to turn you on

hello my love thank you for your request I wrote a bunch solely because I'm in love with you

--

Life is nothing if not consistent for Lena Luthor. She wakes at the same hour every single day, does an hour of stretches and exercise, eats the same egg white omelet. She’s the first to the office and the last to leave. Every moment is structured and accounted for, allowing Lena maximum control and regulation. Just the way she likes it.

And then, one day as she was stretching deep into a downward dog, her new life path came crashing down through her crystal glass coffee table. 

One moment she’s thinking about the meeting she has in an hour and the next she’s flinching away from a spray of glass raining down overhead. She curls in on herself with a yelp, terrified and frozen at the sudden explosion beside her. After the clattering of glass had stopped, she’s left in dead silence. With a deep breath for confidence, she finally works up the nerve to look.

Collapsed over the metal frame of what had been her table lay some woman she had never seen before in her life, knocked out and bleeding all over her Persian rug. 

Lena feels herself clicking into survival mode at the sight of her. She’s always been good at that – surviving. No one can keep a clearer head in a crisis than Lena. The initial fear now replaced with adrenaline and clarity, Lena jumps into action. Years of Pilates and daily weight-lifting aides her as she pulls the bloody woman off the twisted frame, dragging her over to her yoga mat. The woman is out cold.

She’s got glass stuck in all kinds of places, the worst of which seems to be a long, jagged piece stuck in her thigh. Lena knows better than to try and pull that one out, so she instead focuses on tying her sweatshirt around the woman’s thigh to try and stave the bleeding. It looks like it might be in a dangerous spot, possibly close to an artery, and the last thing Lena needs is some home invader dying on her living room floor. The press would have a field day with that.

While working to stabilize the rush of bleeding from her thigh, Lena shouted out, “HOPE, call emergency services.” HOPE, her omnipresent homemade helper, replied back from the speaker located just above. “Yes, Miss Luthor. Police, fire, or EMT?” 

“EMT and pol-” she’s cut off by two hands on her at once: one covering her mouth forcefully and the other pressing a large glass chunk to her throat right at the jugular vein. She freezes. 

Apparently, the unconscious intruder was more conscious than she thought. “Tell her to cancel it,” the woman says with a hoarse, pained voice. Lena watches her with a calculating eye, weighing her option. If she didn’t respond to HOPE in the next few moments, she knew her virtual assistant would call the police automatically. “It’ll take them, what, 5 minutes to get here? Maybe 10 with traffic. You’ll bleed out in seconds and I’ll be long gone before they even get close,” the woman says, “Nobody has to die today, okay? Cancel it.”

Her mind reels for alternatives, but the woman presses the glass harder against her throat, hard enough to cut, and her mind is made up. She nods, and hesitantly the other woman removes her hand from her mouth.  “Cancel request, HOPE,” Lena says, voice surprisingly steady for someone in such a situation. “Request successfully cancelled,” HOPE chirped happily before shutting off.

The other woman sighs, the glass held to Lena’s neck slacking just a bit as she leans backwards. Lena can feel the way it pulls at her skin, how blood starts to trickle. She keeps her hands where they’ve been this entire time – pressing hard around the glass in the woman’s thigh. She’s bleeding a lot, even with the pressure Lena’s applying.  “That was foolish,” Lena says, pulling away from the woman. “The EMT was for you. You’re bleeding too much too quickly, I think you nicked your femoral artery.” The woman laughs, laid back eyes closed like she’s not invading her house and threatening her life. “That’s right, you had medical training. I forgot about that,” the other woman says, pulling herself up into a half-sit and looking down at her injuries with a curious eye. “In my defense, they barely mention that in the history books.” “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” The woman just shakes her head. 

“What day is it?” she asks. Lena is tired of this already. She’s supposed to be showering right now and preparing to leave for work, not negotiating with a half-dead possible hostage-taker. “Tuesday. March 13th.”

“What year?” “Is that a joke?” “Yeah,” the woman smiled, a hint of blood on her teeth. “Humor me.” “2018.”

The smile fades fast, replaced with a sudden alarm. As if the year were somehow worse than the giant piece of glass sticking from her thigh. “That’s way too early,” she says, hints of panic in her voice. “They dropped me way too far back. Crap.”

Her face looks pale and grows paler by the minute. Lena looks down to see the cloth she’d tied around her thigh fully saturated, the puddle beneath her growing. She’s losing too much blood. “Put the glass down and give me your hands,” Lena says, but the woman doesn’t move. Frustrated, Lena grabs her hands with her bloody ones and presses them just above the glass.  “Hold here,” she says, and then gets up to leave. 

Lena races to her bathroom, ignoring the woman’s shout of “Wait! Come back here!” and rifles around until she finds what she’s looking for. She comes back with a field medic kit and lays it on the ground. The other woman watches her wearily, hands still pressed to the wound. “You’re bleeding too fast,” Lena says, “and at this point you’ll be dead before the ambulance can arrive. We have to stop the bleeding.”

The woman doesn’t resist. At this point she might not have the strength to. Lena uses shears to cut up the seam of the the the woman’s pants, up and past the deep gash of the glass shard.  “This is bad,” she says, and the woman doesn’t even look. “It’s too early,” the woman is saying, sounding weak, and Lena pulls supplies from her kit. She ties a tight tourniquet, earning a shocked groan of pain. “This is temporary, it can only be temporary. It should buy you a little time but it’s going to hurt like hell and if it’s on too long you could lose the leg.” “Fine, it’s fine,” the other woman says, almost delirious, and she grabs Lena’s shirt to pull her attention. “Listen to me,” she says, eyes wide and bloodshot, “Your brother is going to destroy the world, and you’re going to help him. But you don’t have to. You don’t have to help him, okay?” She’s practically incoherent. The blood has stopped but it’s still everywhere and Lena is covered in it. “They’re calling me,” the woman continues, shaking her head, “I’ll come back, or they’ll send someone else, but you have to stop him, Lena Luthor. Non Nocere-”

And then she vanishes.

One minute, Lena is wrapped around a delirious, halfway bled-out home invader, and the next she’s alone in her living room surrounded by glass and blood.

- She’s much more prepared the next time the stranger comes. To her credit, she’s had a few years by then to obsess and analyze and research. She’s watched the security footage of that day so many times and in such excruciating detail that she could tell you how many pieces of glass were shattered, how many gasps the intruder let out in pain. She could recite the entire five-minute experience from start to finish with perfect accuracy. Yet she could never explain it.

She can infer the basic gist of it, of course: at some point, time travel becomes a possibility, and the best possible use of that unbelievable advancement is to come back and stop her, because something she does – or rather, something she helps Lex do – is so catastrophically horrible it’s world ending.

She’s tried to find this woman, though of course if she’s a time traveler she may not even exist yet. There’s no way to know. Lena’s spent months studying the footage she has of her, noting the militaristic jumpsuit she wore, the strange patches for organizations that don’t seem to exist adorning the sleeve. She’s made note of the scars she can see – the long one that dances down her face, the smaller ones made visible when her pant leg was cut. The woman had clearly endured hell in life, and that hell had led her to Lena’s penthouse. She felt a sick nervousness just thinking about how they might link.

All of that to say, Lena is much more prepared when the woman returned, at least on an intellectual level. She’s not so prepared for the woman to show up as she’s sitting post-shower on her bed in nothing but a silk robe.

One minute she’s sitting alone, the next a woman is crashing on top of her. Their heads bonk together hard at the force of it, Lena reeling back against her pillow with a groan. At least she’s a softer landing than glass and metal.

“Ah crap,” the woman says, and there’s an instant spark of excitement in Lena at just the sound of her voice. She’d listened to that tape so many times it’s burned into her psyche but hearing it now in person after so long – absolutely thrilling. 

“Thank you for not breaking any furniture this time,” Lena says, and her voice is a bit breathy from the rush of it. The other woman pulls up from where she’d collapsed against her and seems to finally realize where she is and just how little Lena actually has on. She practically flings herself off of her and on to the floor with a shout.

“Oh wow,” the woman says, mouth agape and face beet red. “I- I’m so sorry, there’s no way to know what you’ll be doing when I get here and I just, I didn’t realize you weren’t done getting dressed or… that wasn’t… I’ll just-”

“Wait in the hallway?” Lena asks, amused. This version of the stranger is such a funny leap from the way she was all those years before, yet exactly the same. It’s like she hadn’t aged much at all. “I was finishing my bedtime routine and I sleep naked. This is as dressed as I’ll be the rest of the night.”

Somehow, the woman’s face gets even redder. It reminds Lena of the blood from that day, how dark and covering it had been on her. That takes a bit of wind out of her sails.

“How’s the leg?” she asks, sitting back. She can feel her robe fall open slightly but left it be. It's amusing to see how nervously the other woman’s eyes dart around looking everywhere but her.

“Still sore,” the woman finally says, pulling herself up to sit on the end of Lena’s bed. She glances at her and then looks away. “It’s only been a few weeks for me, so it’s not close to healed yet, but I didn’t lose the leg or my life, thanks to you.” “Glad to hear it.” “Are you?”

“Mmhm. If you’d died that day, I wouldn’t have this chance now to ask you what the hell is going on.” The woman is watching her in a strange sort of way, and it seems to take her a moment to clear her throat and mind.

“Right, yes, that makes sense. I just-” she rubs her eyes, laughing in an embarrassed sort of way. “I’m sorry, you’re just a little distracting.” Her eyes stray along the line of Lena’s robe before jerking away. She stands up and moves away, hands ringing nervously. Lena notices the slight limp to her walk. “Crap, I’m sorry. Okay, focus, Kara, focus,” she coaches herself, and Lena latches on to that morsel of information with a fierce excitement. “Yes, Kara,” she drawls, and the woman’s eyes cut sharply to her. “Focus. Tell me who you are and what I can do to help.” Kara gulps noticeably at her tone, shifting on her legs, before saying, “I’m from the future. 40 years in the future, to be exact, and I was sent back in time to stop you and your brother from destroying the world.” Lena nods along. It’s not so unbelievable, the idea that Lex could destroy the world. That he could use her desperate yearning for connection to make her a willing accomplish. “Non Nocere,” she says, and the woman jolts in surprise. “What? That’s – have you already invented it?” “No, but you said that last time we met.”

Kara visibly deflates, sinking into a sigh as she leaned back against the wall.

“Thank Rao, okay. Yes. It shouldn’t exist yet, not for another year.”

“What is it?”

“It’s the tool your brother uses to destroy the world. You build it for him.”

Kara looks heartbroken as she says it, and Lena feels just the same hearing it. All she’s ever wanted to do is be a force for good despite her family, despite the life they’d set up for her, but here is this scarred, scared stranger come back to tell her how horribly she fails. How she destroys everything.

“Okay,” Lena says. “So how do we stop it?”

And that, at least, earns her a smile.

[soullikethesea]

Somehow things inside are still not okay.

I've felt irrationally angry with T these last few days. I'm not even sure why? I think it might be leftover anger from the situation with my previous T. I'm not even sure if my anger in that situation was truly warranted, or if I mostly just felt scared and hurt. I still think I mostly feel scared and hurt.

Maybe it's because I'm scared of the big changes. If I get a job, maybe therapy will be much less frequent AND I likely won't have much energy for it anymore. It will be challenging and scary in many ways. Can I deal with working a lot? That's a big question and worry.

And I get many thoughts about how I'm "cured" anyway, that it doesn't matter - something had to push me out of the nest anyway. Or thoughts about how this T and I got too close anyway, makes sense that the end is in sight now.

So yeah, mostly excuses to push away the emotional stuff.

I don't feel like I have DID anymore anyway. Stabilization is complete. Stuff keeps happening and I just continue to be fine. Sure, I am apparently an adult that still plays with kids' toys. And yeah, I am not willing and/or capable to have a romantic relationship. I doubt that I'll be fine at work, but maybe. I can hope for the best, right?

I saw some of my old journals today and I just wanted to throw them OUT. I NEVER want to remember any of that. It makes me feel so ashamed. I felt a tug inside that told me to just keep them, who knows if I end up wanting to look through them 20 years from now. But that's kind of the thing, I don't want it to matter anymore by then. Just like I don't want it to matter at all NOW.

I think I had a good day, so I don't know why I feel so bad now. Could also be because I'm going to family tomorrow. Not looking forward to travelling through the heat. Maybe I need a PRN or something, but my whole body is soooo stiff that I have a hunch some yoga would be better. So many joints ache. I hate that it happens the second I don't exercise regularly, everything becomes so achy. :( And of course I also don't like the heat. It makes me so hungry, like back then. It was so outrageous that my parents made us starve like that. My dad and stepmum, I mean. I can't forgive them for that.

[simlicious]

personal update

hey everyone :) A long personal post ahead, mainly about my current goals and what I am working on personally (nonsims-related). Something I want to get off my chest first: I’m not very political on this blog, mainly because I am the type of person who takes bad news very close to heart. I do not always have the energy to face all the bad in the world and mostly need this blog to be a happy bubble for me. But I do of course have opinions and I care about the environment and about equal rights for all people, no matter which race, sexual orientation, or nationality. I am against oppression of any kind and I am also anti-war. Everything bad that is happening right now really makes me sad, angry and anxious. I try to avoid media and news, but of course I get enough news simply by being online. I try to focus on little things I can do to help (signing petitions, mainly).

I also need to help myself to become stronger, and this is what I am working on right now. I am in the process of establishing new daily routines that give me more energy and motivation for the day. I use two apps which help me with that, Finch and Fabulous. More detailed info about the apps at the bottom of the post! I will see how they will benefit me in the long run, so far they help a lot though. I stuggle with structuring my day and routinely doing chores, and an unstructured day means that I am reluctant to set personal goals, because I often do not achieve them. I fail at continually working towards them. Little energy and anxiety often get in the way of goals too and makes stuff even harder.  I really need that structure so that I can do a lot of household tasks routinely and can focus more on achieving the bigger goals. I am starting with a morning routine, which mainly includes exercise (that word alone can make me shudder!). The app Fabulous has really helped with that one though. I hate to force myself to do anything. I have a very rebellious side in me that does not want to suffer! So I have to get very creative sometimes to convince myself that things are actually fun and not exhausting. This is where dancing comes in. I really love to dance, but I rarely had the opportunity to do so. I tried a dance class once and it was a disaster (apparently I am not good at coordinating stuff and my partner, a college friend I had at the time, was also very self-conscious about showing our progress in front of the class. So when it came to it, he simply refused to dance with me in front of the class and I was mortified (I thought he did not want to show off because I was so bad!) Needless to say, I was done with dance classes after that. But back to the present. The Fabulous app required me to pick an exercise, something easy and fun, just for 5-15 minutes. I thought it was not fun and easy for me to get out my yoga mat every day and attempt to revive my rusty yoga knowledge, and running was out of the question, since I have to leave the house for that, so... dancing? Dancing! And I started to do a little dance every day, just me feeling the moment and getting into the groove. And I did not realize how much freaking fun I have while dancing! I do not care that I basically do squats and exhaust myself and start to sweat (I kinda hate sweating), but while I am dancing, I don’t care! I am so happy that I found an exercise that works for me. At some point, I want to do exercises which actually build up the muscles in a controlled way, but for now, I’ll just dance. It is definitely better than doing nothing and does give me an energy and motivation boost at the start of the day. I also want to create structure in my day so I can find a way to make my commissions/donating patterns for all-system work. I actually lost myself in the details, got way ahead of myself and I have to boil everything down to the basics again first. This will take time for me and the last thing I want to do is stress myself out because of this. It should be a fun project, so when it stops being fun I have to take a step back. I hope you all can understand. I am sorry that I got so carried away in the spur of the moment. That happens when I want to be more spontaneous, but I notice that it does not always work out, since I am not a “just wing it”- person. I am still very proud that I managed to do just this with my Advent calendar, but it seems I can’t just completely change the way I work projects suddenly. And it turned to out to be that elephant of a project that I never anticipated to get this big. I have to really break it down into smaller steps. I also have this fear that nobody is actually is interested in the system I am putting so much work in, so that’s something I have to think about too, if this all worth it. I started to design a survey to ask about this and when I get around to finishing that, I am looking forward to your input on this matter! As always, I appreciate your support and thank you for reading my marathon posts! 💜

Detailed App Infos:

Finch is a daily goal planning app that allows you to set goals for the day and reflect on them. By completing goals, you give energy to your pet bird. If it has enough energy, it will go on an adventure. After returning, it will have learned something and will ask your input. By giving advice to it, you can shape its personality. The bird will grow over time too and age up, according to your completed goals. There are no negative consequences if you do not complete your goals! The app is not pressuring you in any way and adapts to whatever pace you need and allows you to track personal goals and show you statistics based on word tags. I also love the breathing exercises that can help calm me down whenever I feel stressed. This is one of the most well-designed apps I have come across. I am thoroughly impressed with this one! It is so flexible and customizable, but also gives you a good foundation of things to do to get started. If you want to check out Finch, you can use my invite code HLGMBSCR1V to get some extra rainbow stones which you can use to buy outfits for your little bird. I will get some bonus stones too! I do not get paid for saying all this, but I just have to rave about this one. Fabulous is more rigid in that it has predefined programs you go through that gradually add steps and really encourages and motivates you along the way. It is good if you want more guidance. You pick the main goal you want to achieve and let the app guide you towards it. It does not allow to set personal goals the way finch does and it is not daily planner, but an app to develop healthy habits every day. It provides you with background information and guides you to personalize your goals and make them feel tailored to you.

[schnoogles]

rage

@jonsadungeonsanddrabbles ​ new year event!

Day 1: Resolutions

Read on Ao3

He’s not usually a self-conscious person. He’s not. But right now, Jon’s feeling a bit silly about what he’s going to do. He had to though, he promised his friends he’d stick to his New Year’s resolution and do something about keeping his stress levels down. Especially after weeks of nagging from them.

“Jon, you can’t keep overworking yourself!” Sam lectured, “You heard what the doctors said, you’re supposed to stay relatively calm and relaxed, remember?”

Oh he remembered. Almost dying wasn’t something Jon was likely to forget. But it’s not like he was overdoing anything! Of course that didn’t matter though. Sam was so worried that he started lecturing Jon almost every day and trying to tell him what to eat, how much sleep to get, how much exercise he should be doing. It was fine, until Sam started getting their other friends to be overly concerned with Jon’s well-being too.

Which was how he ended up here. Mat in hand, standing in front of a yoga studio. 

He’s not entirely sure how it was supposed to help him relax, but Tormund’s cousin -Jon’s ex- swears by it. Apparently, when Ygritte heard Jon needed some stress-relieving, she immediately gave her cousin the business card for this place and told him that the best sessions were Tuesday and Thursday nights. When Jon found out Ygritte goes to the Tuesday night sessions, he signed up for Thursday. Despite the amicable break up, he’d rather not be in a room with his ex girlfriend and attempt to do things like the Plough pose. And, if he were honest, she usually makes his stress levels and blood pressure rise. 

With a deep breath, Jon opened the door and walked in. 

--

“Okay everyone,” the instructor said from the front of the room, “I know there are a few new faces today, but I think we’ve all gotten to know each other by now, yeah? Let’s get to it!”

Jon wasn’t sure what kind of yoga this was, but it certainly didn’t feel like traditional yoga. At least not compared to the one time he got dragged into doing it with Rhaenys. Everything was just so… high energy? He was no expert in yoga, but Jon could have sworn that the class his older sister took him to had a different ambience than this. Maybe he overthinking it and just felt embarrassed for standing there awkwardly. Clearly most of the people here knew each other. Or maybe it was just the instructor’s vivacious personality? The pretty redhead had walked around and spoke with a lot of the people here before taking her spot in front of the room. 

After they were all in the low plank position, the instructor had them breathing in deeply for a few moments. They were supposed to clear their minds or something like that. 

“Come on, Sansa. Are we done with the breathing exercises yet? It’s been a long week and I really need to let off some steam,” someone in the room said. 

Jon looked upon and saw another man looking pointedly at the instructor. What an asshole, he thought. Instead of berating him though, Sansa only chuckled. And if that didn’t confuse Jon, the few chuckles joining her definitely did. Is it funny to be rude now?

“Alright, alright,” Sansa said with a smile, “Right arm out. Deep breaths now. Inhale.”

Jon took a long, deep breath.

“And… exhale.”

Before Jon knew it, everyone was screaming.

“Oh my GODS, the files will be done in just. a. moment!”

“Can you just do the GODDAMN dishes?!”

“Close the fucking door on your way out!”

“No, you can’t have ice cream for dinner!”

Jon dropped his arm and looked wildly about. What the fuck just happened? He was gaping as everyone around him seemed to be yelling at… no one in particular? His bewilderment must have been incredibly noticeable because when he turned back to look upfront, Sansa was staring right back at him. Eyes twinkling and a smile on her face.

“Everyone,” she said in a loud, commanding voice, eyes still on Jon, “What’s the first rule of Rage Yoga?”

“NEVER HOLD BACK!” chorused everyone enthusiastically. 

Jon gaped at Sansa for another moment before laughing. Of course. Of fucking course, the type of yoga class Ygritte goes to is fucking rage yoga. Jon looked at the screaming people around him. Some weren’t even saying anything, they just yelled loudly. 

“Okay!” Eyes still on Jon, Sansa commanded, “Right arm down, left arm up. Inhale!” She raised a brow at him. A challenge. “Exhale!”

“Can I have two minutes to myself, please?!”

“It was in the EMAIL, Karen!”

“No, the customer is not always right!”

“Stop telling me when to eat and sleep! Stop telling me how to relax! I’m a grownass adult and I can take care of myself just fine!”

Jon was still breathing heavily when he looked up at Sansa. This time, both eyebrows were raised as she smiled at him. She looked impressed. And Jon couldn’t stop from smiling back. This was exhilarating. And she was pretty. 

--

Apparently, after rage yoga sessions, there was alcohol. Jon was chuckling to himself as he sipped on his ale. Screaming out his frustrations and drinking alcohol? All the while he could sneak looks at his pretty yoga teacher? Yeah, Jon was feeling mighty stress-free at the moment.

“First time?”

He looked up from his glass and smiled. “What gave it away?”

“The look of shock and fear when everyone started yelling.” Sansa smirked. “That and I’ve never seen you in my classes before. I’d remember a face like yours.” 

Something about the way she said that made Jon blush. He really shouldn’t be having a crush on his yoga instructor, but here he is.

“Yeah,” he said sheepishly, “I didn’t actually know this was a rage yoga class. Didn’t even know it was a thing.”

“What are you doing after class, Jon?”

“Oh, um, probably head home?”

“Interested in joining me for a bite?” she asked, “I can tell you all about rage yoga. Or regular yoga, if you’d rather join my normal classes.”

“Yeah, yeah! That sounds great!” He hoped he didn’t sound too eager.

Half an hour later, she locked up her studio and they made their way down the block to a small diner. Jon made a mental note to thank his friends for pushing him to do this. Best resolution ever.

[cynicalrecoverysociety]

Summer Strong Daily Check In

Day 19 (8/6/21): reflect on this challenge. What did you learn from completing your habit every day?

I think I learned a couple things. First, I learned that I can apparently wax poetically about anything. Srsly I think my check ins the last few weeks could be compiled as a novella detailing my personal descent into insanity. Second, I learned that the physical exercise daily is really good for me and I'll probably continue trying to have at least 10 minutes of activity every day. But that the mental exercise is a bit more nebulous and the consistency is not necessarily to my benefit.

I mean I don't think that doing a short meditation or 10 breaths every day is going to hurt me, but if it's not what I need right now then I don't think I would put pressure on myself to do them. I've decided that "mental health exercise" is probably too vague to be successful. The coping mechanisms above are mental health exercises and they are easy to count. But things like having a hard conversation with your friends or family, doing the anxiety inducing thing you put off, doing some yoga, performing rituals, working through a craving instead of binging, even just practicing positive self talk are all things that make my anxiety go down and are good for my mental health but I don't feel like I checked my mental health exercise box when I do them. So I think a better goal would be "Check in with my mental health daily and take steps to improve it if needed". In some ways that's almost more vague, but it certainly serves me more and is more representative of how I am trying to grow right now. I'm very much in the "doing hard things that suck because they make you feel better" phase of growth and taking care of myself is such a chore. I think this kind of mindfulness will help me work smarter, not harder, on my personal growth

All in all, I have thoroughly enjoyed this challenge. As intended, this was an exercise in consistentcy and it really helped me get some of my habits in order during a difficult mental health period of my life. I'm definitely continuing these habits (albeit slightly modified) for the foreseeable future. And it had the added bonus of making me not only set goals, but reevaluate them after a few weeks and see what works. That's incredibly valuable and I hope everyone takes today as an opportunity to asses your needs and whether your habits are helping you reach your goals. That kind of introspection is how you grow and I think it definitely worked for me.

Goals yesterday: crushed again. The rain didn't let me walk but I still managed to squeeze in a yoga video on my lunch break. I also had a healthy balanced meal courtesy of my SO and it was glorious, I feel so much better today.

[ashestoashesjc]

A Necromancer & His Zombie Boyfriend On A Couple's Retreat

Short Story 1/2/(3)/4/5/6/7/8/9/10

"RrRRrrrr... grrr? <Hey, uh, babe... seen my arm anywhere?>" rang Sett's voice throughout their cigar box of a house as he rummaged through closets, opened cabinets, overturned couch cushions. 

Shutting and latching the front door behind him, Ulrick began flipping through the stack of envelopes clutched in his right hand. "Huh? Oh…”

“Okay, so… don’t get mad,” Ulrick began, as meekly and guilt-tinged as one can make a shout. “But... there was this huge, I mean HUGE silverfish…” 

“GRrrr! Rrrrr. <Dude! Not cool,>” could be heard as Sett stomped his way to the foyer. 

“I know! I’m sorry! I’m weak!” moaned Ulrick. 

Sett sighed as he entered the cove and laid his single remaining hand on Ulrick’s left shoulder, the other sleeve draped flaccidly at his side. “Grrrr. <Well, yeah.>” he said. Ulrick snickered. 

“You know, having your boyfriend kill a bug for you is exceedingly normal,” Ulrick said, separating the bills from the letters that weren’t bills. There were very few that weren’t bills. “Almost conventional.” 

“Rrr. <True,>” Sett replied. “Rggrrrr. <Probably while the arm’s still attached, though.>”

“A mere quibble.” 

“Rrrrgrrr? <So, where is it now?>” Sett asked. 

“Ugh. Still getting cozy with the silverfish, I’d imagine,” Ulrick admitted, guilt creeping back into his voice. He covered his eyes with his free hand and shuddered. “In… the shower.”

Sett sucked air through his teeth in a compassion-filled cringe. 

“Yeah,” Ulrick sighed, resigned to his trauma. 

“Grrrr. <Don’t worry,>” said Sett. “Rraarr. <I got it.>” 

Ulrick slid his hand down his face with a grateful groan. “God, I love you.” Sett pulled him forward by his collar and pecked his forehead.

Continuing to sort through the mail, Ulrick came to a red envelope and, seeing it addressed to Sett, handed it over. “Looks important.”

Confusion clouded Sett’s eyes for the first few, slow moments spent undoing the envelope’s seal flap, until suddenly, a surge of realization like lightning drove him to violently tear the crimson paper away.

As he scanned the contents of the letter contained within, words failing to do his emotional state justice, Sett began to fist pump wildly, God help anyone in the flight path of his singular elbow. Ulrick looked on in entranced bewilderment.

“Was there itching powder in that envelope?” asked Ulrick.

Sett shoved the creased letter in Ulrick’s face, his manic energy not yet dissipated. Ulrick took it and held it out at arm’s length until his eyes brought the words into focus. 

“A couple’s retreat?” he wondered aloud, lowering the paper enough to peer over the top at Sett.  

“Grrgrrrr. <An all-expenses paid couple’s retreat.> Rrrrrr. <At a swanky resort.> GrrrrRr. <Complete with water skis.>”

“This is from a contest?” he asked, rotating and inspecting the sheet. “When did we enter a contest?”

“Rrggrrrr? <You know those entry slips we’re getting in the post all the time?>”

“The ones I’m always throwing away? I’m familiar.” 

“RrrRrrrrr ggrrrr. <Well, your aim could use some work, because some of them wind up in the mailbox,>” said Sett, with a shrug.

The sound that next filled the room, colored with exasperated mirth, was one Sett was used to Ulrick making, though one that never stopped bringing a flush of heat to the place where his heart used to be. 

He grabbed Ulrick by the hips and the two began to sway back and forth. “Rrrrrr. <Just imagine it,>” he purred dreamily. “GrrrRRrrrr rrrrRrrr grrr...arrrr? <Massages, rock-climbing, a luau. And… did I mention waterskiing?>”

Swaying still, Ulrick looked up with his head cocked. "I've... never heard you mention waterskiing before."

"GrrRrrrrrr. <I enjoy a lot of things I don't talk about.> Rgrrrrgrrr. <Like country music, or bad chick lit,>" Sett said before twirling and dipping Ulrick in a blur. "Rraarrrr. <I'm a multi-layered zombie.>"

Breaking clumsily away from the songless dance and squeezing the bridge of his nose, Ulrick set down the remainder of the mail on the side table by the entrance and looked his boyfriend over. “It’s totally free?”

“Grrarrr. <It’s totally free,>” confirmed Sett. 

Ulrick raised an eyebrow. “No catch?” 

“Rrr… <Well…>”

-

“And streeetch! That’s right! Streeetch!” 

At the front of Meadow Grove Resort’s famed yoga studio balanced - one foot planted on the ground, the other hooked deftly behind her neck - Chrysanthemum Smith, a remarkably limber 60-year-old instructor, urging her out-of-shape contest winning students to achieve the same feats of flexibility.   

All around Ulrick and Sett, a pretzel factory’s soon-to-be-discarded collection of heinous, gnarly undesirables had been given life in the form of sweaty middle Americans. 

That pretzels went through a less agonizing process being baked at 500 degrees was a fact Ulrick was both confident in and envious of. His legs were angled in a way he was sure he’d feel for weeks to come. 

Sett, on the other hand, had apparently been a contortionist in a past life, the way he bent himself into poses, well, a pretzel would gawk at, holding each position stoically before moving gracefully on to the next. It also helped that he couldn’t feel what would leave most tendons shredded rags.

Ulrick gave up the pursuit of dislocating his pelvis and instead went to poke Sett in the cheek. Through his mask, Sett made a chomping motion at the finger, though remained otherwise totally still. "Okay, but this kind of bites, right?" Ulrick signed. 

"A little. And not in the fun way," Sett signed back.

On a pair of blue, rubber mats to their left were two women - one in a biker's jacket and tattered, patched jeans, short red hair tied into a haphazard ponytail; the other a dark woman donning a shaved head, flower-patterned maxi dress, and combat boots - the former of whom suddenly grabbed Ulrick's attention with a nod. 

"You're telling me," she signed. 

And in an instant, they were no longer alone in the hazy, secluded sphere that made their reality.

So taken aback was he that he blurted aloud, "You sign?" 

The yoga instructor shushed him from her place at the head of the wide room, leading him to duck down sheepishly. With the forced inclusion of an overly casual air, he said more than asked, "You sign."

"Oh, yeah," the woman chuckled gruffly. "Mom's Deaf." 

Taking a sudden interest in the conversation, Sett's head swiveled to the leather jacket-clad woman. "Shit yeah!" he signed with fervor, eliciting a harsh snort from the woman. The instructor's head whipped around to glare her way, but went ignored. 

Sett's hands jumbled for a moment before he continued. "I mean, I'm sure that must have been very difficult for your family and--"

She gave a dismissive wave of the hand. "Nah, don't worry about it. She's capital 'D' Deaf. A congenital thing. Whole family's been signing forever."

Her wife - Jen, they later learned - chimed in with, "Di does it at home, too. She's taught me half the lyrics to Boys for Pele." 

"Wow!" Ulrick said with teeth-clenching enthusiasm. "That's so great! Isn't that so great, Sett?"

The mask did nothing to conceal Sett's raised, beaming features. "That's so great!" he signed. 

"I'm sorry!" bellowed the lithe yogi, shattering all delusions of serenity. "Am I boring you?" 

Several overlapping voices came to the general consensus of "Christ, yes."

One of the husbands, portly and somewhat resembling the famously affable capybara, asked, somewhat less affably, why they were being stretched into taffy when they should be outside taking one-on-one lessons with the beach volleyball instructor. He was joined by a few surly “yeah!”s. 

They were met with an unimpressed crossing of the arms. Though it should be noted Smith’s foot was still being held comfortably behind her head. 

"I would suggest, in the future, that you more closely scrutinize contest entries," Yogi Smith advised in as calm a manner as it seemed she could now manage, though with an unmistakable edge to her voice. "In order to partake in our facility’s more... physically involved activities, you’ll first need to align and cleanse your mental, emotional, and spiritual energies.”

This provoked a studio-wide groan, with the exclusion of Jen, who seemed just eager enough to cancel out the cloud of grim impatience encircling her. 

“Unless, of course,” Smith said, shifting poses to something favoring the letter ‘G’, “you’d prefer to construct your own schedules. In which case, a full price admission to Meadow Grove Resort remains available.”

She sleekly extended her right leg, pointing its foot pin-straight toward the sliding studio doors. “Don’t, as the masters of yore were wont to say, let the door hit ya.” 

When no one moved and the room went quiet enough to hear an acupuncture needle drop, Smith resumed a standing position and bowed three times to each division of the studio. “Namaste. Namaste. Namaste.” 

Chrysanthemum Smith had in no way undersold how ‘aligned and cleansed’ couple’s therapy and its airings of dirty laundry and subsequent ferocious dissolutions of decades of marriage; couple’s pottery, the same thing but with clay vases; and couple’s finger-painting, a bonding exercise in shared humiliation, would make their minds, emotions, and souls through sheer gut-rending hilarity.

Ulrick almost didn’t want to stop watching people who, hours ago, seemed all confidence and bravado, now being brought to tears by an instructor’s criticism of their macaroni art lacking ‘depth.’ 

But their confinement was over and they were free to roam the grounds as they saw fit and Sett, without even feigning to look for a map of the resort, made a beeline for the largest body of water (and the largest gathering of humans) he could sniff. Ulrick was still surprised at times by how agile Sett could be on his feet when on the hunt for blood - or recreational watersports - and struggled to keep up. 

Their long-awaited waterskiing adventure began almost as soon as they arrived at the lakeside, the instructor needing a volunteer at that instant to man the skis while he lectured another guest on the controls of the boat. At nearly a head taller than anyone else present, Sett didn’t need much more than a raised hand to stand out. 

Things were going great; Sett mounted on skis as long as he was tall, the boat revving greedily for take off. At Sett’s thumbs up, the runabout hammered off in a thunderous roar. And then, all at once, things were going wrong. 

The envisioned majesty of skimming the motionless calm of the crystal river was halted abruptly with a leaden Sett stumbling mid-lake in his skis, trying and failing to correct himself, going feet-over-head, and sinking like an anchor to the agitated silt of the riverbed below. 

Ulrick, though he jumped with concern at the first hint of a misstep, expected a brief swim back, perhaps slowed a bit - but not much - by Sett's stoney limbs. He’d been the star diver of his local swimming hole as a teen and still maintained some of the underwater dexterity, though nowadays tended to lurk the floors of bodies of water like a carnivorous bottom-feeder; eating habits included.

But then a few minutes passed, and nothing. A lifeguard and two of the more experienced swimmers among the guests plunged into the river and searched for fifteen minutes, cracking the surface now and again for a gulp of air, all to no avail. The water was too cloudy with sediment to see past a certain depth, and the orange-purples of dusk were beginning to settle in. They'd need to return in the morning with a diving team.

It'd now been forty-five minutes, and three of the resort’s other guests were consoling Ulrick, one herself on the verge of waterworks. They'd just witnessed a man - someone's significant other - torn tragically from life's teat, and in front of the man he loved, no less. 

Ulrick, for his part, was positively miffed. 

"When I get my hands on him..." Ulrick started, before one of the grievers tossed him a teary-eyed questioning look. "Er, that is... would that I could only put my hands on him... again..." he corrected. 

Just as Ulrick had begun mentally reviewing the basics of the Arts of Throttling, a movement, barely noticeable, shook the surface of the lake. Then bubbles, then the full break of the water as a head rose into view. Then the screams of onlookers as, in the fading light, a ghastly lake monster began its murderous approach. Then screams of a different kind as people began to make the connection proper. Then there was weeping, fainting, more than one declaration of faith renewed. It was a miracle!

Later, after insistences for medical attention were politely but firmly refused and the religious stragglers begging for just a smell of Sett’s waterlogged clothes were shooed away, Ulrick asked why he waited so long to resurface, to which Sett said, "GrrrrRRrr. <Well, at first I was just sort of embarrassed.> RrrrrrrGrrrRrrr? <Then I thought, "How often do these people see miracles?>"

"Oh, sure," groaned Ulrick. "A man comes out of a lake after half an hour and it's a miracle. A man comes out of a grave after a few months and it's "Grab the torches and pitchforks, everyone!""

"Rrrr. <Babe.>"

Ulrick gave a pouty grumble. "I'm just saying. One's a little more miraculous, is all." 

Sett pulled Ulrick's head into his chest and stroked his hair. "GrrrRrrrRrrr. <Shh, I know, dude, I know.>" His heavy, soaked clothes and lack of body heat didn't chill Ulrick as much as they should have, and though a fine coating of sand covering him from head to toe gritted against Ulrick's cheek, it only made Ulrick rub his face in rebelliously. 

"Okay," Ulrick said, resting his fists on Sett's chest and gazing up into his eyes. "What's the next activity? I think we’re... due-au for a luau?" The moment the words left his lips, his face collapsed into disgusted regret.

“Rgrrr... <Actually…>” Sett said, wrenching off his mask and shaking the excess water from his hair, teasing a blush out of Ulrick. “GgrrrRrrrr? <Doesn’t watching the stars by the lake sound pretty relaxing?>”

Ulrick grinned and took a seat on the shoreline, running his hands through the tufts of ryegrass stretching out in waves around him. He tapped a spot to his right and Sett, half-cocked smile in tow, came lumbering over to take it. 

Hours flurried past, changing nothing about the image of the intimately silent pair but the number of stark white pinpricks in the sky they beheld. 

They threatened to sit silently basking in each other forever. 

And then Sett said, “GRrrrrgrrr, rrgrrr, graargrr. <So, Diane and Jen gave me their number, and they want to plan an outing.>” 

Unease shot through Ulrick’s veins, but he held his tongue in search of the correct words. “O-oh?” 

“Grrr? Rrgrrrrr. <Isn’t that cool? People want to spend time with us,>” said Sett, ensorcelled with the twinkle of every new star. “Rrrrr. <With me.>”

“That might be…” began Ulrick, before noticing the glimmer in Sett’s eyes and faint lift at the corners of his mouth as he stared up towards a great unknown. He sighed. “It’s going to be great.” 

Sett rested his hand on Ulrick’s, their fingers interlocking. He smiled, and the two gazed into an ever-darkening firmament, speckled with a thousand stars and a thousand futures. 

[serendipitous-magic]

Why Don’t We Read: An Impromptu Essay By Me Because I’m Mad

You know how everyone is always saying “oh, I was such a big reader when I was a kid but I just don’t read books anymore, I don’t know what happened”? And how old people are always griping about “This is called a BOOK, it has no commercials and no loading screens, hardy har har har snorf har”?

What if it’s because we just don’t have time anymore?

Think about it. More and more and more of our time on earth is eaten up at our jobs just trying to survive in an economy where “minimum wage” covers maybe 1/3 of bare minimum expenses. And not only that, but we’re expected to juggle more and more and more things every single day. Long, uninterrupted hours simply... do not exist anymore.

Every day you have to not only commute to work, and then work, and then commute back, plus all the little chores and mundanities that make up every day life, cooking food and then eating food and folding laundry and cleaning and putting gas in the car and don’t forget that dentist appointment and better call Mom and if you have a lawn you have to water it and weed it and you have to figure out if you have enough to pay rent this month and you still have to call FedEx about that missing package and now you have to cook again and now there’s more laundry and so many emails to respond to and it’s been months since you washed your sheets hasn’t it and

BUT THEN

You are expected to do and be and keep up with so many things.

You’re supposed to work out, or jog, or do yoga, and you’re supposed to meditate or do a breathing exercise daily because it’s good for you, and while you’re at it, make sure that your living space looks like a magazine or an Instagram post, you need X minutes of sunshine a day to be healthy and Y minutes of exercise and Z number of steps, and you need to be an environmentalist and make sure you’re doing your part to save the planet, and you need to be constantly self improving, you need to be learning a language on Duolingo and doing projects like crocheting or writing or antiquing, you have to be completely unproblematic and constantly monitor everything you do and say and post because one tiny little thing can have the internet jumping down your throat, you’re supposed to be a nutritionist and a fitness nut and an expert on everything you talk about because society has become so black and white that saying “I don’t know” or “I didn’t know that before” is looked on as unacceptable,  you’re supposed to know what’s in your coffee and where it came from, you’re supposed to be a son a daughter a sibling a parent a student a mentor but also you’re supposed to be an interior designer, a small business owner (if you do any kind of Etsy or commission thing), a revolutionary (you’d better care about every overwhelming, exhausting injustice in the world and you’d better take action against it - see below), a curator (if only of your own blog), a rhetor (you’d better damn well know how to argue or you’re screwed in this society), a teacher (because school districts don’t teach anyone shit), a negotiation expert because it is car salesmen and insurance agencies’ job to fuck you over as hard as they possibly can.

Oh and don’t forget, you’re supposed to simplify your life and live in the moment. That one’s very important.

All of this is most likely while you’re already working anywhere from 20-40+ hours per week.

Keep up with your friends on Facebook, spend time to see what they’ve been up to, spend time posting your own pictures, catch up with your Instagram and Twitter and Tumblr feed, and for fuck’s sake you’d better make sure you’re reblogging all the right things about current social events, and you’d better also be caught up on the news, which all happens and changes so fast now that communication is instantaneous, keep up with all the politics, know every new outrage and be outraged about it, keep up with the politicians, the scientists begging us to listen, the latest news about the celebrity outed as a bigot, the latest shooting, the latest bombing, the latest protest, you’d better keep up with all of that and know what’s happening in the world, every minute of every day, and oh don’t worry about having to seek the news out, it comes to you. Every little ping on your phone is a new piece of news.

And you’d better care about it all. You’d better have enough energy in your body and mind to care about all the politics and all the injustice, and be rightly outraged every single day by the state of the world and every new horror, but you’d better also care about the dying planet and the burning rainforests, the oil spill, the glacial melt, you’d better be outraged about that too and you’d better be able to act on that outrage because those are all so important, and they are, but then you also have to care about insurance companies ruining people’s lives by making it impossible to afford healthcare, and you have to care about how agricultural companies have made cruel and byzantine webs of laws to drive farms out of business and make food, a basic necessity of life, a business, and one that’s designed not to feed and nurture people but to make money. And then while we’re on the topic of money you’d better care that the top 10 richest companies in the world create 70% of the world’s pollution, and you’d better care about how billionaires could fix most of the world’s biggest problems and they simply choose not to, and how Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and everyone like them have an amount of money and resources that no single person could ever come close to earning, and how if that wealth was fairly redistributed and recirculated into the economy then maybe minimum wage would actually earn you a living and that’s not even to mention the other systems of brutality and cruelty and injustice in society, the racism, the homophobia, the ableism, the ageism, the sexism, the -ism -ism -ism on for infinity

So you’d better buy and use reusable straws and reusable coffee cups, you’d better cut down on your CO2 emissions, you’d better take shorter showers, you’d better recycle your plastics and spend time at the store thinking about how you can buy things with less plastic wrapping, while you’re also thinking about those big agriculture companies, oh and by the way your eggs? The chickens they came from live in cages, barely being allowed to move for their entire lives, and you’d better be outraged about that too. Where do you think that milk came from? What does that cow look like? How about those peas, were they picked by someone being paid $1 an hour? Every single item on the shelf has some deep horror woven into its backstory. 

You’d better sign every petition you can and you’d better reblog the right things about taking action against injustice and you’d better be vocal about it, you’d better buy your soap and your clothes from small businesses instead of supporting the big evil ones that are much easier to access and much, much cheaper (because somebody suffered, somewhere along the line, to make it that cheap), you’d better remember to save your pasta water to water your plants with instead of wasting it, you’d better make your gifts by hand (if you have the time, which you don’t), and 

And then there’s the beauty industry.

You cannot go a single day without seeing something about “lose weight fast!” or “The Skinny Girl Cookbook!” or “This Weird Thing Burns Belly Fat!”, and everyone you see on screen is twig-thin or muscled, and don’t forget that you’re supposed to take the time to love yourself and practice body positivity too, oh wait no it’s too late, now body neutrality is the right thing to say and think. Every part of your face and body has some malady and you can buy a cure! Spend this much to get rid of acne, spend this much to wax your legs, buy this for wrinkles and that for stretch marks, this cream smooths out your skin to look like an eggshell instead of human flesh, that cream “fixes” those bumps on your arms that apparently aren’t allowed to exist, a basic face of makeup is at least 5 products if not 10, there are countless tutorials on how to make yourself better, because you aren’t okay as you are and you never will be as long as somebody can sell  you something to “fix” yourself. 

Oh, and that’s more time spent, too. Take the time to shave, to moisturize, to do your 3-step skincare routine, to slather all different kinds of goops and goos on various parts of you, take the time to pluck your eyebrows and exfoliate your feet and

Everything wants your attention, every second of every day. Because attention is money. Netflix Hulu Youtube watch this ad look at this ad Twitter Disney+ Twitter again Facebook more ads look at this ad sign up for this subscription package watch this new season of this show, watch this new movie, watch this watch this watch this watch look at this this watch this watch this look at this look at this look at this watch this watch this watch this watch this watch this watch this watch this watch this watch this watch this watch this watch this watch this watch this watch this watch this watch this watch this look over here look at this look at this look over here watch this watch this watch this watch this watch this watch this watch this watch this watch this watch this look at this

And then at the end of the day you still have to reserve time for the people in your life that are important to you, and leave time for those long conversations with your sister or time to bond with your kid or time to go on dates with your S.O.

And then you’re supposed to take time for yourself. Self care. Like social media is always saying to do. Take a bath, drink some tea, relax. If you have time.

And all of that. ALL of that. Most likely happens in the small slivers of time before and after your work day, or on the weekend in the small sliver of time before or after you fold that laundry and cook dinner and attend to your personal matters and maybe hang out with a friend if you’re lucky.

And I just described a fairly privileged, not-on-the-brink-of-poverty, not-in-and-out-of-the-hospital, not-constantly-targeted-by-violence-or-oppression life. I just described a cushy life.

Is it any fucking wonder that we all feel shattered? Like our time, even on free days with absolutely nothing scheduled, is made up of tiny pieces? Is it any wonder that it seems like nobody can sit down with a book anymore?

I’m so fucking tired.

[thee-morrigan]

For the spotify game, leila/morgan nº 81? ♥

Thank you for the ask! This turned out longer than expected – hope you enjoy <3

pairing: Morgan x Leila Ghazdari (f!detective)

wc: ~1.2k

warnings: Book 3 spoilers! Otherwise, none.

#81: “Blood in the Cut,” K. Flay

All I do is pretend to be okay so my friends

Can’t see my heart in the blender…

Say a word, do it soon

It’s too quiet in this room

This is super appropriate for Leila/Morgan because Leila is hurt and also offended by Morgan’s behavior at Haley’s (particularly after such gratuitous PDA!).

--

Finally alone in her office, Leila couldn’t decide if she was more annoyed by Morgan or her own reaction. Normally she preferred silence to clangor, but right now she felt fizzy with restless energy. First the embarrassment at Haley’s, then running into Bobby, the absolute last person she’d want to see on a good day, let alone after being publicly humiliated by someone whose tongue had been in her mouth less than a minute prior.

Morgan had only said the same thing – albeit incredibly tactlessly – she’d said from the start. This was just a bit of fun. They were both single, both very clearly attracted to each other. This was a no-strings, friends-with-benefits situation. Leila had known that from the start. She’d consented to that from the start. Eyes wide open. She hadn’t asked for more. She had made the decision to sleep with her, and keep sleeping with her, knowing full well that that was all that would come of any intimacy between them. She didn’t get to feel hurt or confused by Morgan’s consistency in her interest. Right?

She shut her eyes for a minute. Deep breath in, hold for four beats, then out for four more. Visualize a square.

Deep breath in. Visualize a square.

It was too quiet in here. She couldn’t visualize anything but Morgan. Morgan, caressing the back of her neck with surprising tenderness, pulling her close across the café table. Morgan, kissing her so thoroughly, so hungrily, like she’d been underwater, and Leila was air. Like kissing Leila immediately, lingeringly, was essential, surroundings be damned.

Deep breath out. Connect the dots of a four-cornered box.

Kissing like that in the middle of Haley’s was something Leila normally wouldn’t be comfortable doing. Leila generally felt weird engaging in any kind of public displays of affection, even really casual ones. It had taken an embarrassingly long time to get in the habit of tamping down her instinct to pull back when past partners had tried to hold hands in public. She still felt a little curling pull of shame every time she thought about her first boyfriend, who’d tried to hold her hand at a movie and she’d almost upended the popcorn in her surprise.

Except with Morgan. With Morgan, she couldn’t bring herself to care. With Morgan, she felt like they were in their own private bubble. With Morgan, she wouldn’t actually mind if they were always touching.

Deep breath –  

She opened her eyes with a sigh and slumped forward, resting her elbows on her desk and steepling her hands over the bridge of her nose. Mindful breathing exercises weren’t going to work, apparently. She needed to move.

She thought of the yoga mat propped against her filing cabinet. Decided against it. If mindfulness wasn’t working, even more demanding vinyasa poses were likely to require a great deal more focus than she could muster, between her frustration and the emotional exhaustion of literally everything today.

She needed noise. She needed movement. She needed whatever the hell feelings were simmering inside her, whatever hive of waspishness was buzzing around in her brain to go, go, go.

Maybe it was best that things had been so weird in the café. Clearly, she was feeling things about Morgan that she’d told herself she wouldn’t be feeling. It would probably be best for them to just end whatever this was now. It wasn’t fair for her to be secretly expecting or hoping for something more, when she’d very openly and clearly agreed that that was not what this was.

Dammit. Dammit. She thought. What are you doing?

Leila bolted upright, desk chair rolling back into the wall behind her with the momentum.

She needed to move.

Grabbing her bike helmet off the hook by the office door, she checked to make sure her keys were in her pocket and strode out of her office. In her haste, she didn’t even notice that she’d left her phone plugged in to charge at her computer.

“I’m taking lunch,” she called to Len as she breezed past. If they were caught off-guard by her abrupt departure, they didn’t show it.

Or she was too focused on getting out of the station to notice.

Finally outside, she felt like she could almost breathe again without wanting to just scream. Ferocious and feral and tempestuous.

Never any words she’d applied to herself. Until Morgan.

She thought about The Incident at Haley’s again and groaned. She was actually going to have to find a new bakery. This was outrageous. This was unacceptable. She was going to have to go to that stupid trendy cupcake place that used too much frosting and was all style, no substance.

Maybe she could just get Tina to go to Haley’s for her. Or wear a wig.

She felt a stinging pressure on the bridge of her nose and looked up, eyes wide, refusing to blink. The turgid feeling grew, and she stalked over to where her bike was chained, detaching her water bottle and drinking deep.

You can’t cry if you’re drinking water.

It was something her elementary school guidance counselor had said to her once, when she’d been upset about…something, clearly not that important since she couldn’t bring it to mind now. Well, now with the view of an adult, she knew what she was upset about. She just couldn’t remember what triggered that particular afternoon. That had been the year after Rook died, first grade, when she’d decided she couldn’t be sad anymore because too much time had passed. Even so, she was still deeply, bewilderingly sad, like she’d been pulled apart. Ignoring those feelings only made them explode out of her at random intervals. Whatever had triggered it that afternoon, she’d been on the verge of a full-fledged meltdown, in the way only little kids had them, gulping down air, tiny body shuddering with the effort to not cry at school.

Her counselor had noticed her loitering in the hall and, upon seeing the total state she was in, had suggested they take a walk to her office, take a minute to find some space. Once safely ensconced in her office, Ms. Sandoval had filled a little paper cup with water from the cooler by the door and handed it to her.

Leila had been even more bewildered. “I’m not thirsty,” she had hiccuped.

“Try to drink a little anyway. It’s helpful if you want to calm down. It’s always okay to cry if you need to. Crying is good for you. But sometimes you don’t want to cry right then. When it doesn’t feel like a safe time for crying, I find that drinking a little water helps. You can’t cry if you’re trying to drink water at the same time.”

Leila had tried and found, to her relief, that Ms. Sandoval was correct. You can’t cry if you’re drinking water.

By the time she drained her water bottle, the impulse to have a total first-grade-level meltdown had subsided just enough for her to get on her bike and take off toward the forest path. The pleasant strain in her thighs as she pedaled helped quell the remains of her urge to scream at the sky.

Back at the station, where she wouldn’t see it for another hour or so, her phone lit up, vibrating urgently on her desk with a call until, unanswered, it lay silent once more. And outside the station, where she’d never know she’d been, a dark-haired woman lingered, shoving her phone back in her pocket, something like regret on her face.

[nightkitchentarot]

The Secret Of The Quiet Mind

FROM THE ATLANTIC -- JUNE 17, 2021

I Know the Secret to the Quiet Mind. I Wish I’d Never Learned It.

Of all the injuries we suffered, mine is the worst. My brain injury has shaken my confidence in my own personality, my own existence.

By Hana Schank

The worst things can happen on the most beautiful days. My family’s worst day was a perfect one in the summer of 2019. We picked my daughter up from camp and talked about where to go for lunch: the diner or the burger place. I don’t remember which we chose. What I do remember: being woken up, again and again, by doctors who insist on asking me the same questions—my name, where I am, what month it is—and telling me the same story, a story that I am sure is wrong.

“You were in a car accident,” they say. But this cannot be. We’re having lunch and then going on a hike. I had promised the think tank where I work that I’d call in to a 4 p.m. meeting.

“You are in Dartmouth-Hitchcock Hospital in New Hampshire.” Another ludicrous statement. I started the day in Vermont. Surely if I had crossed the river to New Hampshire I would know it.

“What’s your name?” they ask me, and I tell them and tell them and tell them.

“Where are you?” “New Hampshire,” I say, except for one time when I say “Vermont.” “New Hampshire,” they correct, and I want to say, “Really, we are so close to the border here, can’t you just give it to me this once?”

“You were in a car accident,” they tell me again. “Your husband broke his leg and your son broke his collarbone.” These do not seem like horrible injuries, so I am waiting for the worse news, the news that my daughter is dead. She is the youngest and the smallest. She was born with albinism, and her existence has always felt improbable, and so now it must be over.

But—thank God—it’s not. “Your daughter has fractures in her spine and damage to her lower intestine from the seat belt.” They tell me that my lower intestine was also injured, and that I’ve had surgery. I lift up my hospital gown and am surprised to see an angry red line and industrial-size staples. I remember an article I’d read about seat belts not being designed for women, and I ask the doctor if he sees more women with these injuries than men. I have yet to take in the reality of what has happened to me, to my family. Instead I am thinking about writing an exposé about the sexist seat-belt industry.

They wake me up and ask me where I am and what my name is. A doctor asks me who the president is. “I don’t want to say,” I reply. He smiles. I am at Dartmouth for three days before I am transferred to the University of Vermont, where my husband and children are. The days pass like minutes, a loop of sleep interrupted by people asking me questions and telling me terrible things.

One of the things I am told is that I have a brain bleed and a traumatic brain injury. I wonder if this is why I am slurring my words, but am told that the slurring is from the anti-seizure medication I am on. This sounds good. The slurring will stop. A doctor tells me I “got my bell rung.” This is a bad analogy. Bell clappers are meant to slam against the side of the bell. The brain is not meant to slam against the side of the skull.

Of all the injuries my family is suffering from, mine is the worst. This is my totally biased opinion. My husband’s leg will take almost a year to heal. My daughter would have died if not for the surgery to repair her flayed abdomen. She is 10, and one of her friends tells her that because of the scar she will never be able to wear a bikini. She spends many days attempting to suss out whether she cares. She doesn’t yet know if she is the bikini-wearing type.

My 13-year-old son is the only one who remembers the accident. He remembers a woman in a ponytail calling 911, the smell of gasoline and burnt metal. He remembers his father yelling “Jesus Christ.” He will have to live with the memory of his sister looking at my body and asking, “Is Mama dead?”

These are terrible injuries, and yet, the other members of my family don’t walk around thinking, Am I still me? My brain injury has shaken my confidence in my own personality, my own existence. This is the worst injury.

When we leave the hospital and move into a hotel, I frequently get lost in the hallway. The first time I roll into occupational therapy with my walker, I am grateful for the obvious signage pointing me toward the check-in desk. It’s almost as though the clinic is expecting people with brain damage.

My therapist is a smiling, 40-something woman with dirty-blond hair. She reminds me of me before the accident. She asks if I am having any thinking problems or memory problems. I tell her about an incident with Parmesan cheese.

“Can you get the Parmesan?” my husband asked.

I opened the fridge and looked. I looked and looked.

“I can’t find it,” I said with a shrug.

My son opened the fridge and pulled out a block of Parmesan.

It hadn’t occurred to me that this was a brain issue. Sometimes you just can’t find the Parmesan. Right?

A test confirms that I have trouble scanning a visual field for objects. My brain is struggling to recognize what I see, but without a pre-accident baseline to judge from, there is no way to know how much worse I am at it now. Have I always been bad at finding things? Maybe? There are limits to how well an injured brain can scrutinize an injured brain.

I have other visual-processing issues. At first I can’t watch television because my brain is unable to merge the images from my two eyes, so I see doubles of everything—two Phoebes, two Chandlers. I can watch with one eye closed, but I’m distracted, seething at my brain for failing to do such a simple task.

In one session, the therapist tells me we are going to play a game. She pulls out a deck of cards and asks me to turn cards over while saying the number or the color or the suit. The game is so difficult, I want to physically remove my brain from my skull and hurl it against a wall. I will never play this game again as long as I live.

Eventually I graduate from occupational therapy. But occupational therapy isn’t about getting people back on their feet so they can return to think tanks. It is about making sure they can run errands without getting lost. I am someone who has always taken pride in my intelligence, and now I am not so smart. I am just a functional human being, according to occupational therapy.

When we go out in public as a family, we are a walking nightmare. “Wow,” a stranger says, marveling at the device that is bolted into my husband’s femur. And then my son appears with his arm in a sling, my daughter limps over in her back brace. An injured couple is potentially funny. There is nothing funny about an injured family. “What happened to you guys?”

When we tell the story, we explain that we were in no way at fault, which feels important. We wore our seat belts and drove the speed limit and the weather wasn’t bad and yet this happened to us. Someone was driving a pickup truck in the opposite direction. He was late to a job interview or to get his kid, or maybe he was just antsy. In front of him was a motorcycle slowing him down. Maybe he’d been behind that motorcycle for miles. Maybe he liked to take risks. He pulled into our lane and passed the motorcycle while going up a hill at 70 miles per hour. I don’t know who makes this kind of decision. Did he think, I can’t believe I did something this stupid? Did he also yell “Jesus Christ”?

Because we are not at fault, accident feels like the wrong word. Not just wrong, but unfair. My husband starts calling it the incident, but an incident is a small thing, not something that scars you for life. The smashing? The destruction? Newbury, after the town where it occurred? The only thing that comes close is the devastation.

The devastated me is different. My brain used to race, making lists and plans, skipping from an article I was researching to whether my kids were in appropriate after-school programs to what vacation we should take in February. Now it does none of that. There are no plans to make.

A few days after regaining consciousness, I check my Twitter feed. I have always been a news junkie. But I have missed nothing. The news seems to be not just familiar but actually repeating itself. Something bonkers happened in the White House. People are dying in a country I’ve never been to. A company did something possibly illegal. There was a house fire in the Bronx. Are these the things I used to care about?

The most interesting piece of news is the one I am experiencing. In the hospital we are waiting to make sure my daughter can poop through her reconstructed colon. This article isn’t in The New York Times.

When we return to New York I take the subway to doctor appointments. I don’t take out my phone, I just sit. My brain is quiet, which I find suspicious, but also soothing. Before the accident I went to yoga retreats and tried meditation. I said things like “I just need to unplug.” Apparently what I needed was to get hit by a truck. Perhaps I have discovered the secret to a peaceful mind, and it is traumatic brain injury. I fantasize about opening an expensive spa where busy people pay me money to whack them on the head with a baseball bat.

The day of the accident I had been working on a project to improve how homeless people are placed into shelters. I say out loud, “I don’t care about homeless people” to see how it feels. It doesn’t ring true; I do care about homeless people. I just don’t feel like working. I have always been a regular exerciser. Now I can’t imagine wanting to do a burpee, let alone 10 of them. I always ate healthy things. But did you know that you can eat whole grains and still get hit by a truck?

I have strange cravings. I think about apple cider all the time. Apple cider is not a normal part of my diet. I have a very detailed dream about eating chocolate cake. I eat the cake. That’s the entire dream. I find myself foraging in the fridge for flavors that don’t exist.

I don’t know which symptoms are permanent and which are temporary. At first, the doctors say that after a year or two I’m likely to have a full return to my normal brain function. Or not. They don’t really know about the brain. It might be more like 95 percent. If I broke my elbow and someone told me I’d get 95 percent of my elbow function back, I’d be satisfied. But 95 percent of my brain function sounds terrifying. Which pieces will be missing?

Some days I feel like myself. Other days all I can think about is the old life that is gone. Then, halfway through my recuperation, the coronavirus comes. The stores close, the schools close, the traffic on the avenue dwindles to a sporadic whoosh. And my busy friends who were always texting me about their crazy schedules are suddenly as quiet as I am. Together we wait for normal to return. The difference is that they know what normal looks like.

In July it will be two years since the accident. The world is now coming back to life, my days slowly filling up with work and chores and exercise. Soon I will go back to in-person meetings and travel, and I wonder: Will I be up to the challenge? Or will I get lost in office buildings and airports?

For now, in this liminal space between the old life and the new one, I often catch myself staring at my children. They have never been more beautiful. I chalk this up to the magic of braces––their teeth are finally coming into alignment––but I know this is ridiculous. They are beautiful because they are alive. I look at them, and I sit with the silence. Today, it is mine. Tomorrow, it may not be.