#as they process and grieve their loss

[randomfoggytiger]

In memorium of dear, departed Brick.

May his little doggie soul rest in peace.

[samxcamargo]

Book: The Pain of Healing by Samantha Camargo on amazon 💛

[bl00dfroma-fairy]

[daylighteclipsed]

Posting my last tag rant because y’all had some great responses to it and I wanna continue this conversation.

Yes! I think it’s safe to say Vanitas has become his own person and has a heart of his own now, maybe. But that initial wanting to rejoin with Ventus is a good example of darkness wanting its light back — and I think this is something the novels touch on, the pain and confusion Vanitas feels when he’s first created/separated from Ventus.

It must be so… strange for the space you once made up in the universe to be filled by someone else. Vanitas can’t return to Ventus. Not only because Vanitas has become his own person but because Sora’s darkness became the new dark half to Ventus’ light half. Vanitas can’t return to his light. At least, not the way he used to. How… distressing. Painful. He has no choice but to develop his own light.

I think you can even compare this to Riku in KH1, his pain and distress at, in his eyes, being replaced by Sora’s new friends and lashing out at Sora when Riku really wants nothing more than to be with Sora again. Riku initially bases his identity heavily on his relationships to Sora and Kairi, and he has to readjust and redefine who he is as things (relationships, roles, people, desires) change.

Yeah, that reminds me of how all the humanoid bodies without hearts — the Nobodies — immediately sought a replacement after their heart was separated from their body. The body needs the heart. It’s incomplete without a heart. It’s the same as light and darkness.

You’re right, I don’t think they ever explain what happens to someone’s light when they become a heartless. I think light and darkness are like energy in that they can’t actually be created or destroyed. If I had to guess… maybe the light goes to the hearts of people the heartless is/was connected to.

Kind of like how when darkness overcomes the world’s light, the light persists in the hearts of children. And also like how Kairi’s heart of light camps out in Sora’s heart when it’s threatened by darkness. And also like how tracing the hearts of the guardians leads Sora to the pieces of Kairi’s heart of light. And also like how Riku’s light, represented by the Keyblade, goes to Sora when darkness is consuming Riku’s heart. Our light lives on in the people who love us.

Sora and Terra are the only examples of heartless getting their lights back, I think, and it seems to be because their lights are hanging out in the hearts of the people who love them. People who miss them as much as their light misses its darkness. So yeah, the light that a heartless once had retreats to the still complete hearts that heartless is connected to. If there are no connections, the light returns to the universe/enters the newest or nearest heart — which is maybe how you explain Ventus’ light connecting with Sora’s newborn heart? Final answer lol.

Sora’s heartless in Coded saying “Hearts to sate my hunger” literally haunts me wtf 😐 fucked up rage form Sora hungering for light, and thus hungering for hearts, because his own light is no longer enough. But the light from these other hearts is always fleeting. He can only hold onto the darkness in every heart he consumes. And losing the light just as soon as he starts to feel it, taste it, only carves a deeper, darker pit inside of him. Makes the hunger worse, the pain that much more unbearable. So he just keeps attacking and consuming, chasing this light he can’t have as his darkness grows stronger 😐

Anti/rage Sora consuming hearts like heartless do, like his own heartless tries to do in Coded, is such a cool concept. But it would wreck Sora. Even if the hearts he consumes are ultimately saved — which in a canon situation, they would absolutely have to be — the second he registers what he’s doing or has done… 😬. The image he has of himself would shatter. It would just go so against who he is expected to be and has tried to be and who he wanted to believe he was.

But it would be really, really cool.

[maddymoreau]

I'm enjoying Fallout 3 a little more but there’s one thing that’s extremely bothering me.

How come, in the dialogue options, I can NEVER can mention, I was FORCED to leave the vault?

I didn’t have a choice but to leave. Jonas Palmer was beaten to death in attempts to get info about my father James. The Overseer was going to have the same done to me if not WORSE.

The Lone Wanderer: "So they killed Jonas, and I'm next, is that it?"

Amata: "Yeah. It's lucky I got here ahead of them. But we can't stand here talking! You're got to get out of here!"

I understand my father didn't know this would happen. That he simply thought I wouldn't be able to leave the vault after he escaped.

But the fact I can never explain what happened when reunited with him is just so ODD!?!?!!?

I COULDN’T STAY!!!!!!!

I FEEL LIKE THIS IS IMPORTANT INFORMATION YOU SHOULD WANT TO KNOW DAD!!!!!

WHY ARE THESE MY ONLY OPTIONS?!?!?!?!!!!!

Why give me that entire section where I had to escape the vault to avoid MURDER!!?? If they were going to back me in a corner (dialogue wise) that I would've gone after my father no matter what.

It would've made the dialogue option, "Why would you throw away the life we had?" WAY MORE INTENSE AND INTERESTING IF I COULD TELL HIM HIS ACTIONS UNINTENTIONALLY AFFECTED ME!!!

It could've been followed by a cute bonding moment where he apologizes and says while this life was never what he wanted for me he'll now help me adjust however he can.

[hurremsultanns]

This just gets to me

[unforth]

The last couple hundred years have seen society, especially wealthy, western societies, increasingly distancing themselves from the visceral, immediate experience of death. Death is to be hidden and shunned, grief to be pushed aside and made brief. This has been made possibly by improvements in health care, but also by the ever-growing emphasis on the nuclear family and the greater space between people and the sources of their food.

On a smaller scale, as we've had more space to store belongings - as homes have grown and the number of people living within them have decreased - it has been easier for people to acquire and retain belongings over long periods of time. This has led to phenomenon where people buy things they absolutely adore...and then do not use them, as they have the space to store them and they've grown afraid of the damage that will be done to their things if they use them.

Though the second is of course on a smaller scale, the lose of a beloved object still involves a grieving process, and therefore is a less severe analogy for the loss of a loved one.

I posit that the two phenomena are in fact that same phenomenon: that a fear of loss of all kinds, the limiting of space for experiencing loss in our lives, and a dissipation of the skills that enable one to grieve loss in a healthy way, have resulted in our current culture where it is safer to ignore death, and safer to preserve our favorite objects unused, than it is to risk loss.

In this essay, I will...

[quiveey]

i want to smile again, without feeling guilty. i want to miss you, without coming undone. i want to celebrate your life, without my heart breaking.

if there’s a good side of grief, i’ve yet to reach it. it’s not getting any easier. time isn’t helping. some days i feel as if the pain deepens. the roads ahead seem longer without you walking them beside me. it’s like I’m resistant to joy. pushing back against my own happiness. im afraid that healing means forgetting, and I’m not ready to leave. let me sit here for a little while longer. there are things i needed to tell you that i never got the chance to. things you deserved to hear....i’m sorry. i’m sorry for not doing more. if it was possible to bear your pain, i would have.

even when distant, my world was better because you were in it. i was always proud of you. my love for you is constant, unconditional, eternal. there are pieces of you I’m discovering in me. little gifts you unknowingly left behind.

even your absence is filled with moments worth revisiting. maybe instead of learning how to live without you, I’ll just bring the best of you with me. maybe we're not meant to move on, we're meant to move with.

"Best Of You" J RAY

From The Kindred Project: Vol. II

[trkstrnd]

te quiero siempre, papa.

[nebulouscoffee]

Me, attending the latest in a ridiculous number of funerals this year in the place of a childhood friend who couldn't be there, watching the lifeless body of an old lady who used to make me snacks in the kitchen when I was a kid be carted away forever while my friend's mother cries and tells me she's grateful I could be there because it felt like having the support of her own daughter, hugging her and talking reassuringly and not processing a single one of these emotions: ... I am going to write soooo much fanfiction about this

[samxcamargo]

Book: The Pain of Healing by Samantha Camargo on amazon 💛

[bl00dfroma-fairy]

The ‘Mourning Cloak’, L. Hugh Newman likened the butterfly's pattern to a girl who, disliking having to be in mourning, defiantly let a few inches of a bright dress show below her mourning dress.

[crmsnmth]

See You Later

He didn't wake up expecting the end of his life Nobody ever does Because death is a surprise party with black balloons a five second celebration and it's all over A lifetime gone in a few hitched breaths and clenched hands release

He didn't get into the car preparing for the accident These things happen Death doesn't want an invitation because death likes to crash the party And as quickly as it comes, it's gone again leaving memories and mirrors for those left behind

He lay in that hospital, without the option to speak as we all came to surround his bed We said our words and gave our hugs (see you later, pop) And left the sterility of the hospital and back out into the dirty snow covered world And he was ready And we would never be ready Rested eyes, tireless sleep

And like that, he was gone a last cigarette outside of the hospice and like that, he was gone

And he left us each with memories of a life a life so full, because that's just how we are What good is this, if not for experience? His voice is fading, as each day comes to an end And I wear his ashes around my neck pictures on the wall, from one wedding, a divorce, and some from the elope in Vegas Monuments to someone barely anyone knew but I'll revisit them for the rest of my life

[werepires]

.

[naranjapetrificada]

As the "dealing with grief and other big feelings dredged up by the 🌟Gay Pirate Show🌟" thing appears to be sticking around I thought it was time for a master post about my new favorite thing:

Healing thru fanfic!

I should say up top that a) I usually prefer fic that's canon-compliant or only slightly canon-divergent, especially for healing purposes because I think it helps with immersion and b) the list is short right now but it's definitely gonna grow as time moves on. Anyway, recs beyond the cut:

Fallow Land & Bigger Sky: I've already mentioned before how reading (and sitting with and processing) Fallow Land & Bigger Sky was so incredibly healing but here I am, doing it again! And even if the emotional appeal doesn't get you to read it, you should try it for the beautiful imagery, poetic writing, and carefully and lovingly crafted (and canon-compliant) character study of one Edward Teach.

It's the kind of writing that makes contemplative manual labor, stunning vistas, a mischievous nun, a cute little black lamb, and gallons of homebrewed wine all feel as essential to the fandom experience as any other way we spend time with our blorbos. I literally cannot believe how beautiful and well-executed this story is sometimes.

Brace Yourself and Nestle into Me: I literally just read this one this morning, and it's actually what inspired me to make this post. The premise is that Ed and Stede figure out that they're into each other around episode 7, and they're deliriously happy to know that they feel the same way about each other. But Stede has some (understandable) sexual dysfunction around being queer thanks to the horrible society that he grew up in. Ed is a darling trying to help him through it all, and along the way he realizes he also has some of his own hangups he needs to work through together.

I appreciate that this one doesn't treat healing like a straight line because it never is, and emphasizes that trust can't just be implicit, you really have to talk it through as a crew, even if it's just a crew of two broken middle-aged men who are desperately in love with each other. It also gets into some of the stuff I've been talking about on here about grieving your former selves and the selves you never got to be, which was validating as hell. That sounds heavy and there are concepts that are literally part of modern therapy modalities woven into the story, but there are also warm and loving and hilarious moments too, including this gem:

“Also can you just imagine how proud little horny baby gay Stede would be know you would be to know that whatever he went through, today you’ve got your own ship and are getting completely railed by Blackbeard? I mean, just absolutely dicked down by the most famous pirate in history? He would lose his mind.”

To paraphrase the author notes, the "Healing Power of Gay Sex"  won't fix everything, but I put it to you as a reader that reading and thinking about it also helps. And sometimes it can shake something loose you didn't know you were holding onto! Which is great!

Adrift Between the Dreaming Seas: Based on my usual filtering on ao3 I probably never, ever would have come across this fic if it weren't for a recommendation someone posted on this hellsite. It's got fantasy elements, allegory, metaphors stacked on metaphors, talking animals, and so many other things that would have kept me from ever discovering it on my own. My life would be poorer for it.

Basically Stede is cursed to be a lighthouse keeper on an island that seems to move around the world. Animals show up and the ones who talk to him are members of the crew, and Ed is an actual kraken. It's all this symbolism about monstrosity and trauma and maladaptive coping and the messiness that is Stede's kindness scraping against his self loathing. I shed tears of many kinds along the way, and it made me think hard about community and recovery and the things we do to and for ourselves and others.

It's just a lovely little gem of a story that made me feel so much so deeply while also making me laugh much more than I was anticipating. I'm so glad I gave it a chance.

[that's it for now, more as I keep up my deep dive into the ao3 archives]

[likesplatterpaint]

I told my principal I was doing great this morning because I genuinely felt great then but uhh

I fucking miss Louie. I can’t be downstairs near the tank for too long, because even though I put some platies in there to avoid another crash and have SOME life in the giant 180

I

I still look for him. Without thinking. I’ll glance up, and try to see where he’s at.

Fuck this

I’ve been trying hardcore to distract myself with planning dive trips. To balance letting myself feel what I need to feel and not dwelling and making myself feel worse (like I’m doing now of course but wtf ever. )

Time will help but nights are hard. I’d watch his tank for peace.

This time last Wednesday, I’d finished his major water change. I’d calmed down because he was swimming again (frantically, though, which I should have realized). And I went to bed, thinking it was okay. He would be fine.

I have so many beautiful pictures of him to look at but it hurts.

A new baby would help. But it won’t be him. He loved me. He knew me. Two and a half years of fussing and fretting to get him to his gorgeous, healthy color and nerf football size. To develop his stunning ginko leaf tail…

Just. Gone. This isn’t fair.