#bad news... after i spent several hours typing this i feel very accomplished with myself and no longer have the urge to make it a fic | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

aperrywilliams · 4 years ago

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Letters to me (Spencer Reid x Fem!Reader)

(Not my gif!)

Masterlist

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Summary: What happens when Reader received some love letters?

Word Count: 7436

Rating: All Audiences. I would say “Fluff” enough.

Warnings: Some curses, that’s all.

A/N: Anderson deserved better :)

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If I said my life is boring working at the BAU I would be outright lying. What more exciting than chasing serial killers across the country? For real, I’ve seen many horrendous things thanks to this work, but good overcomes the bad one and at the end of the day you realize something good you are doing in this world and it gives a different taste in life.

Even though much of the time is about work, there are things even more important in this place: my friends whom are my family too. When I joined the team 5 years ago I couldn't be more grateful to the people who received me with open arms. In those years Hotch was the unit’s chief. With his always appropriate posture he was warm enough to make you feel welcome immediately. As well as JJ, García, Morgan, Rossi and the good Dr. Reid. All of them had known each other for many years, so I was the “new” one and, therefore, the team's reason for concern from then on. Despite my 27 years old they felt urge to take care of me like a little girl. It didn't bother me much, I knew it was genuine concern, but sometimes it was frustrating. I must admit it. Perhaps the only one who understood how I felt was Spencer. Sure, for many years he was the BAU's baby. Until I arrived, in fact. When we talked about it, he told me several times I was destined to be the protégé until someone new and younger arrived, he even joked about felt somewhat displaced since I came to the team.

Thanks to hours we spent working late, traveling on the jet and the hallway conversations I came to love them all as if they were my own family. I cried a lot when Hotch left the BAU, as well as when Morgan made the decision to leave as well. Of course we all understood. But feeling that nothing is forever began to provoke anxiety. It made me wonder where I really wanted to lead my life. I never doubted about my job, of course not, but I did doubt about my personal life. I needed more things in my life and I felt like I suspended this needs because I believed the BAU was everything for me.

One day in lunch time, I told Spencer about my fears. I wasn't expecting to be very exhaustive and I wasn't expecting very elaborate advice, maybe some statistics on how people change as they get older, but just that.

“It is very common for people turned 30 to feel doubts about the decisions they make in life. There are studies that point out people who have stressful jobs delay these questions for a couple of years due to daily pressure, but it happens anyway. Even so, this type of situation is much more common in women than in men, given their state of reproductive maturity…”. This was the analysis Spencer shared with me after telling her how I felt.

"Spencer, my problem is not my reproductive maturity, if it's what you are suggesting...". I said laughing and trying to relieve the atmosphere I had caused with my questions.

"No. I didn't say that. I only said the 30-year crisis could be more acute in women given their hormonal status… ” he replied very seriously.

"So is it true I'm in the 30-year crisis?... Hell, it wasn't what I wanted to hear, but you may be right. Did this happen to you when you turned 30?" I asked to him.

"Ehhh, yeah. I think so. Back then my conflict was about the things I had accomplished at time. It is true, I had many doubts too, so I think the theory of 30s crisis is correct” he confessed.

I like talking to Spencer. Over the years we managed to establish a very close friendship. Perhaps because we are the closest in age within the team. I don't know. And even though sometimes his impulse to have data for everything despair me, his genuine concern for those around him make Spencer adorable and an impossible not to love. What I like the most is over time he also trusted me enough to speak open about himself. Sure, it doesn't something he do spontaneously, but whenever I asked him how he is or how he feel, he answers with complete sincerity. Spencer even listen to my advices and take it seriously, which I don't even do with myself, I must confess.

"And what is exactly disturbs you? What your doubts are about?" Spencer asked me. The truth I didn’t expect to development more this subject, so his question took me by surprise.

"Ehh... well, what I was saying. I don't know if I'm doing things right... or if I should make changes in my life...". Sure, but I had already said that and it was nothing specific. He knew it.

"Ok, but… what do you think you need to change (Y/N)? What do you think is missing in your life?" he asked without losing sight of my gaze. I knew the answer. But at that point I felt a little vulnerable and I didn't know if I was willing to be more detailed on the subject. And of course, it's not I didn't trust him, it's just this topic was more uncomfortable to talk about during lunch time. But… it was Spencer, my friend. Why not trust him?

"Ok. Truthfully?... Although it sounds strange, I feel I lack emotion. I mean, it's exciting to go after serial killers and all that stuff. But it’s my job. In other aspects, I feel my life is quite 'simple'…”. Spencer studied my body language closely and tried to assimilate my words. I tried to help him by digging deeper into my thoughts. “For example, my love life. It is quite simple. I've had some relationships, but I can't say I've ever fallen in love and felt reciprocated in a special way. In other hand, I know men are simple, no offence, but I’d like to find someone who is really interested in me. I don't know, having romance, something exciting, something different from the relationships I've had before…”. Spencer looked at me weirdly.

"Like… in the movies…? I didn’t think you are the type of women who like romantics fantasies..." he told me with curious eyes even after my explanation.

"No, it's not I like romantics fantasies per se... but... I don't know. It's just sometimes I don't feel wanted, do you get it? And I don't speak about sexual side. I'm talking about love, feelings, whatever that means after all…”. Spencer nodded as if he understood what I was talking about. Frankly, I don't know if he understood, but I was already feeling uncomfortable talking about this, so I didn't want to continue my explanation. I decided the topic ended there and started talking about something else for the rest of the lunch.

The weeks passed and due to the amount of cases we had, I suspended my questions and doubts for a while. We just returned from Alabama. It's was already night and I just wanted to go to my place and sleep. I was exhausted. We got to the 6th floor to collect our things. At that time there was no one left in the BAU. Just dragging my feet I managed to get to my desk site.

When I looked over my desk I saw something different: there was an envelope with my name in handwritten. I took it and opened it. Inside was a piece of paper, also handwritten, with meticulous calligraphy. That is the first thing surprised me, because I never was able to write like this. I didn't be able to do it even in school.

"Dear (Y/N). After all these years, I finally gathered the courage to send you this letter. I must first apologize myself for this boldness of mine. I do not mean to bother you but I can’t just not express how I feel about you. It’s impossible for me not to put into words what my heart is feeling at the moment. The first time I saw you, I felt like I was out of breath. Your natural beauty stunned me from the first day. Look at you walking by hallways of the FBI makes my heart pounds faster and I think every day I fall more in love with you. Yours. Anon"

My first thought was this was a joke. I gazed everywhere and only saw my colleagues with whom I had just arrived from Alabama . No one was looking at me. I felt my cheeks redden and there was nothing I could do about it. A secret admirer in the FBI?... a secret lover? I scrutinized the envelope again for any indication of the sender. Nothing. I had been working here for 5 years and something like this had never happened to me. I was speechless and didn't know what to think either. I wanted to stick with the idea it was a prank. But who would want to do me something like that? Spencer noticed my shock and asked me what was going on. I was not able to tell him what I had just seen and read. I just said "Nothing, I'm fine. Just a bad joke. Good night Spencer”. I took my belongings and left the BAU towards my apartment. That night I fell asleep thinking it must be a joke and I would have to find out who is ruthless enough to do something like this.

When I got to work the next day I immediately glanced my desk. Everything was as I left the night before. I tried to relax and even dismissed my initial idea of chasing after the person responsible for the prank of day before. I went to take my usual morning coffee and started working. It was not until after we returned from lunch when I looking over my desk and saw another envelope with my name written on it. My heart stopped and I think I stopped breathing too. Emily and JJ noticed my stupor because they immediately asked me if I was okay. I just nodded and took the envelope opening it and taking out its contents: again, a piece of paper written with perfect calligraphy.

"Dear (Y/N). I dare to send you a new letter. You should know every day passes I fall more in love with you. It's only fair I declare this because my heart would explode if I couldn't. Oddly enough, looking into your eyes I feel as I can see your soul, your beautiful soul. The one that deserves to be loved utterly, the one that deserves to be treated with all the veneration and grace in the world . If I had the courage to approach you and if you let me love you, believe me I would never could let you down. Yours. Anon"

"What the fuck ...?". It was the only thing I could say as Emily took the piece of paper in my hand and began to read it. Then she passed it to JJ to do the same. Both of them didn’t know whether to laugh or not, but when they saw my daze they chose to debrief me.

"Since when do you have a secret lover in the FBI?" J.J. asked.

"Not just any secret lover, is a lover who ‘can see her soul through her eyes’" Prentiss teased looking at J.J.

"It must be someone's prank...". I tried to reason with them.

"Why a joke? It is perfectly possible you have captivated the heart of an agent on these sides..." argued J.J.

“But in these 5 years , nothing like this has ever happened to me!” I said with stupor.

"There is always a first time..." Emily said with a shrug.

"It must be someone new..." J.J. reflected

"I don't think so, the first letter makes me think it has been here for a while...". I said as I took the first letter out of my purse and handed it to them to read.

"Years... eh?... this is new. I think someone is burning inside of love for you (Y/N)”. Emily said laughing.

For the rest of afternoon I couldn't focus on any of my tasks. All the time I was thinking about the possible men who could have written these letters. Maybe letters was not too sophisticated but to think someone from the bureau was in love with me, and for so long, did nothing but widen my heart... and my ego, by the way. I was pondering on that when Spencer peeked around my desk.

“You cannot tell me nothing is wrong with you, because you have hardly worked today (Y/N). You've been contemplating the nothingness for hours”. Again Spencer took me by surprise.

"It's just... I’m... I don't know how to say it… I’m surprised?". And without saying anything else, I handed him the two letters I received. He quickly read them and frowned.

"What really mean this about ‘looking into your eyes I feel as I can see your soul'? That is physically impossible..." he stated in a seriously tone.

"Spencer, it's a metaphor. You are a genius, I think you know what a metaphor is…”. I said with a bit of annoyance. Of course, Spencer wasn't seeing the same as I in the letters.

"Ok. Metaphor or not... it doesn't seem very sophisticated to me". Yes, he had a point. These aren't great love letters, but for me the effort could balance the lack poetry talent of my secret lover.

"Ok. Maybe he isn’t a poet after all, but I think I like it..." I said a little embarrassed to admit I was flattered. Spencer smiled.

"Maybe you really have more action in your life after all..." he told me, giving me the letters before he returned to his desk.

Two days later I got another letter. This time I saw it over the desk just arriving to the office in the morning. After grabbing my morning coffee I proceeded to read it.

"Dear (Y/N). When I saw you yesterday I felt like talking to you, but I didn't dare. I have to admit that I am too shy to approach you. I always have been, but when I fall in love is when my shyness plays against me the most. Maybe I shouldn't tell you these things, but I also want you to know me more, even if it's through these letters. In the depths of my heart I have the hope that perhaps one day we could be together, and one day I could kiss those beautiful lips. Did I say to kiss?. And what is a kiss, specifically? A pledge properly sealed, a promise seasoned to taste, a vow stamped with the immediacy of a lip, a rosy circle drawn around the verb 'to love.' A kiss is a message too intimate for the ear, infinity captured in the bee's brief visit to a flower, secular communication with an aftertaste of heaven, the pulse rising from the heart to utter its name on a lover's lip: 'Forever'. Yours. Anon".

Dammit! The bastard just quoted one of my favorite plays? Shit!. Maybe he isn’t illiterate after all. Another thing I noticed: in this letter he dared to reveal a little more about himself. Something I could not see in the previous two. Would this be more than platonic?. Throughout the day, as I walked through the corridors of the FBI, I couldn't stop looking at all the men I came across. Some of them didn't even look at me while others looked at me and some even smiled at me. I hadn't realized how many people I passed through the corridors of the FBI on a daily basis. "You work doing profiles, how can you not make a profile of your secret lover?". I told myself. Well, this was already an intellectual challenge, but I needed help. That afternoon, as we were in the jet on the way to a case in Houston, I approached Emily and J.J. showing them the third letter and asking them to help me discover who it was. They were more fascinated with the challenge than I was.

With the little evidence we had, all we could say he is an agent, who works for the FBI since at least a few years, probably suffered more than one love sorrows, and this is the first time he dared to do anything like write a love letter. And of course, he knew one of my favorite plays was Cyrano of Bergerac, or at least he suspected it. So it had to be someone I talked to more than once or knew something about my life and my past. It couldn't be someone I only crossed in the hallways. His calligraphy indicated dedication, organization and emotions contained.

"I think this profile outlines 50% of the bureau officers, except for the calligraphy and the play (Y/N) likes..." Prentiss said huffing.

"Ok. And in this 50%, how many of them have spoken with (Y/N) in these years enough to know things about her? Assuming he is not someone who takes risks…” added JJ. I just shrugged and started making a list of agents I remembered having spoken more than one word in these years and who were still on the bureau. I was surprised myself how friendly am I. The list was not short.

I kept receiving letters from my secret lover. In all of them he let a little piece of his heart escape, not only screaming his love for me, but his doubts about himself. That broke my heart. Was he so afraid to talk to me? Days later I received the last letter.

"Dear (Y/N). You may have noticed my early letters were more fearful. I was afraid you would be intimidated by my boldness. Now I feel a little more confident about you at least read my letters and motivates me to write more. I never thought I was going to confess my love to a woman in this way. And it's not I have fallen in love many times before in my life. To be honest, I think very few times indeed, and to be honest, never with someone like you. You’re a very special woman (Y/N). When you started at the BAU you immediately radiated all your energy to those around you. Always gentle, with a smile on your lips. Willing to help and do your job in the best way possible. You are so understanding, you care about the rest and this quality makes any man can fall madly in love with you, like me now. Always yours. Anon"

Wait… what?!, have I known this man for 5 years? I mean, he was here when I started working in the BAU. This fact shortened my initial list a lot. I told Emily and J.J. about my new findings.

"So... who is on this short list?" Emily asked.

"Well... according to my evaluation this leaves us: Stevens, Rogers, Martinez and Anderson". I said, going through my list. And I wasn't considering just the singles mans.

"I don't think be Stevens, he's a narcissist. He's not the type to send letters. He would just come up to you and to invite you out…”. Emily said, dismissing the first suspect.

"Rogers is a shy guy. But I think hopefully he read an entire book in his life. He is more RPGs type and that kind of nerdy stuff. The writing style doesn't reveal that kind of man…” said J.J. , rejecting the second suspect.

“Martinez is recently married. I know it doesn't mean anything, but according to they said around here, he was dating his girlfriend for four years until she said yes to the question, so it would be premature to think he is thinking in another woman…”. With this statement Emily dismissed the third suspect.

"And Anderson... well, Anderson got divorced a year ago. We never knew very well what happened. I once heard Morgan to say he married her because she was his high school girlfriend, but he was never very in love with her…”. J.J. explained.

“He is a very sweet man, without a doubt. Is shy. I always see him with books walking for the hallways, it seems he likes to read… it could be someone who can write letters…”. Emily indicated.

"Maybe love letters... yes... it is possible" added J.J. Both looked at each other as if they had discovered the Holy Grail. "It's Anderson!" they exclaimed at the same time.

"Fuck..." was the only thing I could say, also noticing and reviewing all my interactions with Anderson in the past years.

It’s true what Emily and J.J. said, Anderson is a very sweet man. Always considerate, giving you a smile. Very shy, no doubt, but sweetly shy. Of course he wasn't my type. I had never seen Anderson with different eyes. And to be honest, I had rarely seen other agents with different eyes. Of course, my job is more important. I tried to go over things I've talked to him in the past, and of course, except for some social meetings in Rossi’s house, our interactions had been quite limited. But it was a fact we saw each other regularly on the BAU. And surely he had found out things about me. It had to be him.

I didn't know much what to do with this information. Well, if it was him, what I’m going to do now? Confront the poor man? I wouldn't dare. Besides, what I could to tell him? I couldn't be in love with him, however to much romantic his letters were. My heart has already an owner even if I wanted to deny it to myself. And although many times I shouted to the four winds I was looking for the love of my life, the truth is I had already found it. The problem is this love would never be corresponded. Of course, the good Dr. Reid was just my friend and I chose this before doing a stupidity and showing other feelings towards him and ruining our friendship. I was pondering about this while we were on our way to the jet for another case out of town. The same voice Spencer pulled me from my thoughts.

"Still thinking about your secret lover?" he asked sarcastically. I didn't like his tone, especially after what I was reflecting.

"Yeah. And so what if it were?". I replied abruptly.

"Nothing. It's okay. You don't have to be mad at me” he said, noticing my defensive tone.

“You men are incredible. To be honest. How a man can be so blind, so clumsy, so shy when he shouldn't and so bold when nobody asks to. A real disaster!”. I exclaimed with my arms up.

"Hey, I didn't do anything to you...". Spencer protested. I just shook my head and kept walking towards the jet.

"Well, at least now I know who is he". I mumbled dryly before boarding the jet without waiting for any response, not even hoping Spencer had heard what I said.

*******************************************

Was it true what she said before boarding the jet? Did she know who was sending her the letters? Is the reason why she was mad at me? But how can I be so stupid?, how I didn’t think she might find out at the end? Sure, I could defend myself, saying it was a joke. But it was it? I mean, at first, when the idea appeared to me it was just because I wanted to cheer her up a bit. (Y/N) looked so confused and sad. I never liked seeing her like that. Of course, my genius neurons sometimes doesn’t work in the way I would like. I thought writing her a letter and making her think she had a secret lover could get (Y/N) out of the lethargy in which she was sinking with her doubts and anxieties.

Apparently it had worked. After first letter, it was evident her mind began to wander and that cheered her up a bit. I didn't think it was a bad thing, but of course, she thought it was some kind of prank. Of course, she didn’t think someone in the FBI could fall in love with her. Why not? How about a second letter to make it clear to her? A little more bold than first one. And surprisingly to me, it seemed it was easier for me to put words on paper for her than I had thought myself. The goal was accomplished: she no longer believed it was a joke, but I had forgotten how obtuse and obsessive (Y/N) could be at times.

When I savored the pleasure of just write about my feelings for her, I started to do it with more enthusiasm. In several letters I let myself go enough to show how truly I see her. And yes, even if I had been tortured, I would have denied it to death. I wasn't going to admit I was hopelessly in love with (Y/N). Why should I? We are friends. Very good friends. She trusts me and I trust her. Why ruin our friendship for something I knew was never going to happen?. It wasn't even worth the try. After 5 years everyone assumed, and so did I, that we were meant to be friends forever, and just that, friends.

And now, after a series of letters I wrote to her, this friendship was about to break. I’m a real idiot. But before taking my responsibility in this disaster, I needed to find out more about what (Y/N) knew, because maybe only she assumed things. No one says she actually knew who was sending her these letters.

Cautiously I sat in one of the seats of the jet and began to scrutinize how (Y/N) was speaking with Emily and J.J. , all over the trip. (Y/N) looked annoyed. Damn it! Precisely that was not my idea! Just the opposite. She almost never made eye contact with me. And the time she did, her eyes revealed more annoyance. So apparently my suspicions were accurate. At moment I saw (Y/N) get up with Prentiss and go to talk to Tara and Luke. I had to find out what was going on, so I went to sit in front of J.J. to try to dig a bit about it.

"What's it Spence?" J.J. asked me once I sat and looked at her with my hands crossed on the table in front of us.

"I wanted to ask you about (Y/N)... is something wrong with her?". I asked in the most innocent way I could. She, however, raised an eyebrow and looked at me curiously.

"Why do you say something is wrong with (Y/N)?" She asked.

"Ehh, well... when we were boarding the jet she looked annoyed and she didn't want to tell me what was happening... then ...". I said trying not to stutter.

"You are worried" she interrupted. I nodded immediately.

"Is it all because of her secret lover?". I dared to ask.

"Do you know about that?" J.J. asked me. She not quite sure what I knew or didn't know.

" Yes, well... she showed me the letters...". I lied, of course.

"Well, I think we found out who he is...". I felt like I was having a hard time swallowing and some air was missing from my lungs.

"Ahhh, yeah?... wow... that's... interesting...". She nodded. "And... who is it?". I asked with fear of the answer.

"Anderson" she said confidently.

"What?, Anderson?... no way!...". I couldn't help but say it out loud. J.J. looked at me with 'shut up, they'll listen to you' eyes. (Y/N) believed Anderson sent the letters to her. I didn't know whether to feel relieved or defeated. "And how does she know it's him?"

“We discarded all the suspects from our list and we got to him. It has to be Anderson” she concluded. I swallowed harder than before and I could see she was analyzing my reaction. I tried to stay calm so as not to create suspicions.

"And... what is she going to do about it?" I asked, trying to keep my composure.

“That is what confuses her. I guess she is pondering what to do about this. So don't bother her, Spence. The poor girl is a mess of nerves” suggested JJ. I just nodded, got up from the seat and went where I was previously.

My head started to spin. (Y/N) thinks Anderson is her secret lover, and they have hardly spoken in all these years! Was I even on her list? Despite being partially relieved, my heart broke a little more. But it’s ok, it was confirmation of I already knew: 'ours' could never be a reality. Maybe it was better she thinks it was him.

*******************************************

The case was being quite demanding to get me out of my thoughts. But I still felt upset. Not with poor Anderson, not even Spencer anymore. With me. This matter was killing more of my neurons and nerves than it should. And, what would I do? Nothing, there was nothing I could do. I would just let time pass and if he didn't get close to me, I wouldn't. That would stopping letters at some point. I decided passivity would be the best strategy and I would let everything cool down.

And so I ceased thinking about it too. It was our third day in Texas and we had managed to locate our unsub. With part of the team we went to make the arrest: Luke, Emily, Spencer and me. When we arrived at the place, we noticed something strange was happening. There was no electricity in the house where our unsub was supposed to be. We had to get in, so we made pairs to cover two entrances. Prentiss and Spencer took the front door and Luke and I the back door . We got in with our lamps and scanned the place, there were no traces of our target. I noticed there was a door leading to some kind of basement, I motioned for Luke to come down with me. I was up front and he covered my back. What didn’t expecting was when I was in the middle of the stairs a hand took my foot making me fall down. Obviously I dropped my gun and the flashlight I was holding. Luke started down and before he got to where I was, I felt a strong blow to the head. After that I don't remember anything else.

*******************************************

With Prentiss we heard (Y/N) yelled from the back of the house, as well as Luke's voice shouting at someone to stop. We both ran to a door that led to a basement, we heard Luke fighting a man under the stairs. Emily immediately went downstairs to help Luke reduce the unsub, who was already badly hit so it wasn't difficult. I looked with my flashlight where it was (Y/N). Suddenly I saw her lying on the floor, unconscious. Luke yelled at me "call for an ambulance, this motherfucker hit her in the head". I froze for a second. I ran outside to alert paramedics who came to the aid of (Y/N) who was still on the floor and was not reacting. I panicked. They took her to the ambulance. In the already lit street I could see how her head was bleeding profusely. They put her in the ambulance and without thinking I got in with them. I wasn't going to leave her alone now. I held her hand. There was no reaction yet. Arriving at the hospital, I could only come with her to the emergency room entrance. From there she disappeared along with a whole medical team monitoring her vital signs. She was alive, but no one knew the severity of her injuries.

Sitting on one of the benches in the waiting room, panic didn’t leave me. True be told, it was not the first time (Y/N) had been injured during a case. But this was the first time I felt real fear for her health condition. More knowing we were not on good terms and she was possibly mad with me. I hated that feeling. I hated the feeling of knowing after all this mess my emotions were finally coming out stronger than before and maybe I wasn't even going to have a chance to open up to her about it.

I was deep in thought when Emily arrived with the entire team. They looked at me asking if there was any news. I just shook my head. Nothing was known about her yet. We all remained silent, waiting.

After what seemed like an eternity, a doctor came to talk to us.

"Family of (Y/N) (Y/L/N)?". We all stand up and approached to him. Emily spoke first seeing his visible confusion.

"We are her coworkers. How is she?" Prentiss asked.

“The hit to the head was quite strong. Fortunately, there is no major damage, except for an ugly bruise. But with painkillers and rest, she should get better with the days”. I felt my chest release from the tension. I was really relieved. We all were, really.

"Can we see her?" J.J. asked

"Yeah right. She is wake up. Follow me if you want” doctor said to JJ, but she didn’t move and on the contrary, looked directly at me.

"Spence, you should go first". I looked at her confused. She approached me and whispered in my ear: "I think it would be good if you saw her first, so you can explain to her about the letters...". I froze. How…?. I stared at her in a stun, trying for the millionth time to pretend I didn't know what she was talking about. “Don't ask me how, but I know. It's you. Don't torment her anymore, or torture yourself more with this” she said to me and went to sit where the rest was. In silence, I followed the doctor to the room where was (Y/N).

*******************************************

I love painkillers. They give you a feeling of relief and you think everything is fine, even though you know you are hurt and eventually you’ll feel as if a truck has hit you. But I didn’t care in that moment. Now I just enjoyed not feeling pain in my body. When I woke up in the hospital, I had a hard time remembering what had happened. With an intense white light blinding my eyes, I could only feel the beep of the machines and an intense pain dissipating as medicines were injected to me. There I realized what had happened. The entrance to the basement, the fall down the stairs, the knock to the head. ‘Damn bastard’ was all I thought.

In my medicinal lethargy, I had my eyes closed. My senses were lost in a parallel dimension where I could hear things around me, but without the need to be alert. That situation suddenly changed when I felt someone took my hand. I opened my eyes and saw Spencer looking at me very closely. You could tell he was inspecting my wounds. Hell, I bet I looked horrible.

"Hey ..." said Spencer when he saw I opened my eyes and was looking at him. I couldn't say anything, I just returned a smile. The truth is I was glad to see him. Plus his concerned face made him look more adorable than usual. "How do you feel?" he asked.

“At the moment… I don't feel any pain. But I know it’s going to hurt tomorrow". I said with a grimace.

"We were worried ... I was worried ..." he said muttering but in a level I could hear.

"I’m sorry it was not my intention…". I said.

"It's okay. It's not your fault. It is good to know that… you are ok”. His words were cautious. Apparently I did give them a hard time, I could guess. I also felt bad. I was aware I had treated Spencer harshly throughout these days. I had barely spoken to him, and that was unusual for us. I know he felt it too.

"Spencer... I’m sorry, ok?". He looked at me curiously.

"Why do you say that?"

"It’s I have treated you awful these days. Even before we got on the jet. Sorry, I didn't want to be mad at you"

"I’m the one who should apologize... I’ve been insensitive to you in this whole letters issue. I haven’t behaved like you needed"

"Hey, don't be so hard on yourself. I don't want to talk much about it, really. But it's not your fault…"

"Yes, it is…" he said with his usual stubbornness.

"Are we really going to argue over this?... no, stop it. Look. Furthermore, the matter is resolved. I know it’s Anderson who sends me the letters. And while I find it adorable, there's nothing I could do about it. I feel sorry for him, but it's not enough to… ”

"Falling in love with him...?" Spencer interrupted me.

"I was going to say it was not enough to tell him about this... but yes, I suppose there is implicitly the fact I’ll not fall in love with him". I said laughing. But my words didn't find any resonance in Spencer. On the contrary, he just stared at the floor. That was odd.

"But did you like the letters...?”. He asked in an almost inaudible voice.

“Yes, I liked them, they were very flattering, indeed. Yes, my ego went up. Yes, I found it exciting. But that’s it. I don't know if I can say much more about it. Is something wrong with you?". I saw how his hands trembled. What was wrong with him? I had never seen him like this before, at least in front of me.

"And... what if I told you... isn’t Anderson who sent you those letters?..." he said, again in an almost imperceptible tone.

"But I know it was him... with Emily and J.J. we realized it after analyzing...". I was not able to finish the sentence, because I could see how Spencer's glassed eyes looked at me even more cautiously. He exhaled and began to speak again.

"And what is a kiss, specifically? A pledge properly sealed, a promise seasoned to taste, a vow stamped with the immediacy of a lip, a rosy circle drawn around the verb 'to love.' A kiss is a message too intimate for the ear, infinity captured in the bee's brief visit to a flower, secular communication with an aftertaste of heaven, the pulse rising from the heart to utter its name on a lover's lip: 'Forever'…” he recited almost without blinking or breathing. I recognized those words immediately. And no, it wasn't from any of the letters I showed him at the beginning, so he couldn't have memorized it... unless... fuck!

"It was you... it was you all this time...". I wasn't asking but I needed confirmation. He said nothing, just nodded. "But ... but why? What kind of prank was that Spencer?". The bastard had mocked me all this time!

"No! It was not for that. Wasn't a joke" he hastened to reply.

"No?... come on!... You wanted me to believe I had a secret lover on the FBI! It's not fair what you did. You played with my feelings and that's not fair…”

"It’s true you have a secret lover in the FBI!" he interrupted me, raising his broken voice.

"What?... now what are you going to fabricate this time...?". I said tiredly. I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

"Me. I'm your secret lover. I’m the one who loves you (Y/N). I love you. All the things I wrote, I wrote them thinking of you…” he said with a sigh of relief, as if a weight had been lifted from him. Sure, a weight that now fell on me.

"You what ...?". My head started to spin. Was Spencer Reid declaring his love for me in a hospital room?

"Yes, I must to recognize letters started because of the conversation we had one day where you told me you felt your life lacked emotion. I wanted to cheer you up a little, get you out of the routine. But... it finally became an excuse to me for tell you how I feel about you. Those I have felt for so long and I have never dared to say. And it's ok. I don't expect you to feel the same way about me. And if this means losing you as a friend, I'd rather never have. I can't bear to see you mad at me. I couldn't bear you to get away from me because of my stupidity… it doesn't make sense for me… I'm so sorry…” . By now I was sitting on the hospital bed, struggling if I got up to go to the bathroom or run out of there. It was a lot to process in that minute. Was I angry?. Was I excited?. Was I confused?. I think everything at once. I felt a knot in my stomach that made me nauseous. My eyes began to accumulate tears. My jaw began to hurt from clenching it too much.

"So... what is written on these letters... is it true?... is it what you feel?" I dared to ask, since I wasn't sure if I was understanding everything correctly. He nodded.

"Yes. I think the only thing I doubt so far was if I really can see your soul through your eyes… but that was the only metaphor that came to my mind the first time…” he said with a shy smile. I just laughed. He is an adorable dork. A dork I love with all my heart. If this is the chance, then... ok. I needed to take it. From the edge of the bed where I was sitting covered in my hospital gown, I reached out my hand to reach his. Spencer trembled a little when he felt my touch, but he relaxed when I managed to held his hand. I gently pulled him closer to me.

"I think we are both lousy profilers when it comes to ourselves, don't you think?". I said with a smile. Spencer snorted.

"Hey... precisely speaking you were the one who failed...". I shook my head.

"You still don't understand it? Do you? ... You also failed. Miserably. I can't believe you still don't realize I'm crazy about you. For so long that I can't even remember it”. I said as I kept stroking his hand. Spencer opened his eyes in real amazement, validating my theory of how bad we were by applying our profiler skills to each other.

"(Y/N)... so... are you...?". I nodded as I pulled him closer to me. I raised my head to find those beautiful eyes that ruined to me since the first time I saw them.

"I’m… lost, stupidly, grandiosely, incredibly… in love with you”. I said wrapping his torso with my arms. He returned my embrace pressing me against his chest.

"Though this confirms your theory, I am thrilled..." he proclaimed. We both laugh. Breaking the embrace, he stared at me and with his hands cupped my face, leaning enough to get us face-to-face. I just closed my eyes. It wasn't more a second until I felt his lips on mine. A long soft kiss. A kiss I had waited for so long. I’d have paid to stay like this forever, despite the discomfort of the hospital room. It was better than I even imagined. And although it happened as a result of our own missteps, it felt so good. As if fate really existed and was good for both of us. When we broke the kiss, we both smiled to each other like fools.

"Spencer ...?" I asked. He looked at me with the 'What?' implicit in his eyes. "Can I request you two things?" He nodded. "First one, could continue writing me letters like those occasionally?... Of course, now you must signed them properly". Spencer couldn't help but laugh.

"Ok. I think I can do that time to time. ¿And the second?". Spencer asked as he gently stroked my face with both of his hands.

"The second one: please don't let Anderson find out about this..."

———————

#spencer reid #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid x reader #criminal minds #letters to me #dr. spencer reid

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benkouji726 · 4 years ago

Text

Five times Alex surprised Forrest and one time he didn’t

Chapter 2! It’s even longer than chapter 1, I must have lost my mind.

A little warning: this Chapter is Guerin heavy, and not exactly Guerin friendly. Sorry in advance.

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They didn’t talk about Guerin.

To be fair, it was not like Alex purposely had avoided talking about him, just, there had been no good chance to. When they were together, out on a date or stayed in, they had so much to talk about: their shared passion for emotional artistic outlets, either music or poetry, their combat days, and how they both didn’t agree with the concept of war but had no choice but to fight, their different PTSD-symptoms, their true selves, just to name a few. They also had silly and meaningless conversations, like who their favorite slayer was, or how they cried over the new episode of Queer Eye. There was never a dull moment in their three months long relationship, and at no point would Forrest willingly talk about Alex’s ex. He didn’t even know if Guerin WAS Alex’s ex or not, from what he’d gathered from Alex’s friends, they’d not been dating to begin with.

Which brought him to the second scenario where Guerin might have been a topic between them, if he had ever shown to the friend group thingy (still didn’t how to call it) whenever he was around. He knew Guerin would be there, as long as Forrest couldn’t make it. And when they accidentally bumped in each other, whether with or without Alex’s presence, Guerin would always politely nod, mumble something like “howdy”, and turned away. He steered away from open mic nights completely.

So it was not like Forrest could abruptly turn to Alex, when they were in the middle of discussing what they would do after Friday’s dinner date, and said casually, “hey you know Michael Guerin? The one you apparently have been in love with for at least a decade, who, judged by the looks he throws your way when he thinks you are not looking, is also in love with you. Who you wrote an epic love song for and SANG it in front of your family, your colleagues, the whole town, and ME? How is the love between you two doing? Still going strong?”

No, that was not going to happen. Besides, he was kind of afraid what the answer would be. So he asked an easier question.

“Why don’t we just go back to your house, so we can netflix and chill?”

Alex smiled fondly, “We ‘netflix and chill’ed the last Friday. Don’t you want to do something more fun?”

“How dare you to assume any time we spend together is anything but fun, you wounded me, Manes.”

“Oh my God”, Alex laughed, “I thought you were done with the cheeky lines.”

Forrest smirked. “For you? Never.”

Alex shook his head, but he also turned a little pink in his ears, which gave Forrest enough courage to say the next bit.

“And after we ‘chilled’”, he winked, Alex rolled his eyes, “I thought maybe I could spend the night?”

And there it was, the “I don’t think this is a good idea but let me think of a way to let you down gently” face. It came out every time Forrest brought up the sleepover thing.

Honestly, Forrest was a little tired. They were dating three months now, they texted each other almost every single day, they spent time together regularly, they had three or four dates each week, and they ended having sex after ALL of their dates. It was frankly a little ridiculous that they always had to leave after sex to go to their own houses, even when they were bone deep tired and they had tangled in each other in warmth.

So he interrupted whatever Alex was trying to say, and turned on his most charming smile, even though his voice was a little shaky, because hope mixed with fear for rejection was always scary as fuck.

“I make a killer pancake, if I do say so myself. I’d hate for you to miss out on that.”

Alex blinked. Searched his face for a minute. Looked down. And when he looked up again, the let-down face was gone, and he said, softly but determined, “Well, if you put it that way, I’d hate for me to miss out on that too.”

——————————

Dinner was great. The ‘chill’ part was mind blowing as usual, though they didn’t do much of the netflix part, because, and Forrest could not stress this enough, the chill part was REALLY good and they kinda had a hard time to keep their hands to themselves even after the “chilling”. So they just made out for God know how long, lazily and contently, between laughs and little convos, until they fell asleep in each other’s arms.

That was, until Forrest was startled awake by some loud knocking. Next thing he knew, Alex was already out of bed and headed to his front door.

“Wait, what? Who?” In his defense, he was not fully awake.

Alex threw him an apologizing smile over his shoulder, and gave him a name he least want to hear.

“It’s probably Guerin, and it’s probably nothing. Go back to sleep.” With that, he was gone.

Like hell he was going back to sleep after THAT.

Sitting up in Alex’s bed, Forrest realized Guerin never spoke while knocking on the door, and Alex was so sure it was him before he even got out of bed. Which did not just suggest their complex relationship, but also indicated it was not a one time occurrence.

Suddenly, Forrest thought of the many times Alex rejected his request to spend the night together and wondered if that was the real reason behind it.

It was insecure and unhealthy as fuck, he knew. And he also knew Alex was never this type of man. But the fact Alex left him in the middle of the night (clock said 2 am, Jesus), and didn’t even hesitate to come to Guerin, was enough to make his blood boil.

So he decided, then and there, fuck it, I’m gonna be petty because I sure as hell feel petty.

They were on Alex’s couch in his living room, sitting respectfully far enough. Guerin’s face was buried in his hands, and Alex was saying something, quiet and soft.

Forrest went out, barefoot, bare chest, came directly in front of Alex, dropped a kiss on his forehead, and said in a sleepy voice:

“What’s wrong, honey? Why aren’t you in bed?”

Only then he pretended to notice Guerin, and acted innocently surprised.

“Alien Guy! What are you doing here, at this hour?”

Through all his antics, both Alex and Guerin seemed frozen on spot. Good. Dramatic effect accomplished.

Then Alex turned to him, gave him his “I know what you are doing but I don’t approve” captain glance, which was unfairly hot, at the same time Guerin blurted out,

“Wait, he is sleeping here now?!” He seemed WAY more upset about this than whatever had been bothering him before he came.

Alex turned his glance to Guerin, added a warning “Michael”, and Guerin deflated like a punctured ballon. He curled in around himself, defeated, and threw some puppy eyes towards Alex. And Alex visibly softened.

They looked in each other’s eyes, seemingly having a silent conversation, and Forrest suddenly felt cold without his shirt and shoes.

He was prepared to be told again that he should go back to bed when Alex spoke, steel in his voice.

“Forrest is my boyfriend, we’ve been dating for three months now. It’s natural that we spend the night together at this point, don’t you think?”

Guerin looked like he was punched in his gut.

Alex stood up, went next to Forrest, and continued.

“You know you can come to me anytime you need me, Michael. And I’m willing to do whatever I can to help you. You’re my family, that’s never gonna change. But your issues with Max, I can’t help you with. It’s something you need to talk to him. Hell, you both should see a therapist together at this point. But you’re never gonna have answers and solutions by coming to me and crying on my shoulders.”

“So what, I can’t talk to my family about my problems, just because they can’t solve it?” Guerin stood up too, anger and hurt all over his face.

“You can, just not after midnight, when my boyfriend is here. So right now, you need to go.”

Guerin looked down, “You don’t have to say the B word again, I heard it first time.”

He turned around and left, without looking at Forrest even once.

After he slammed the door shut, Alex took several deep breaths, eyes teary, and asked in a small voice.

“I know we need to talk about this”, he leaned in to Forrest, head rest on his shoulder, “but can we talk in the morning? I’m exhausted and just wanna sleep now.”

So they slept.

——————————

Next morning, Forrest was making pancakes and working out some plausible excuses as why he behaved like a goddamn high schooler and preparing for the hurtful but inevitable “look I’m sorry but I still love Michael” speech, when Alex appeared in the kitchen, freshly showered and looking like all of Forrest’s wet dreams rolled into one. It’s so unfair, the high schooler in Forrest whined.

What Alex said though, took him totally by surprise.

“I kinda liked it, you know.”

“...My pancakes? You’ve not had them yet.” He said, knowing perfectly that was not Alex was talking about.

Alex smiled, shyly. “No, I mean, when you came out and claimed your stake on me.”

Forrest blushed. He’d NEVER blushed. “You mean when I made a fool of myself being petty and immature like fuck?”

“Come to think of it, it WAS indeed very irrational and somewhat a dick move, so not adult-like”, Alex teased, but his eyes were warm and fond, “But I liked the fact that you would become this emotion-driven for me. And also the fact you’re willing to fight dirty for me, for us.”

Forrest felt so giddy he could combust. “Be careful there, Manes. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you are enabling my bad behavior.”

Alex laughed. “Oh God no. For future reference, I’d prefer we solve our insecurities and problems by communicating, not through some childish possessive bullshit”, he paused, considered for a minute, and said in a quieter voice, “but I get it. I didn’t exactly give you a chance to talk about Guerin and our history, and I didn’t handle the situation very well when he showed up. I should have talked to you before I went to him, I’m sorry.”

Forrest didn’t want to push, he really didn’t. But when it came to Alex, he was seriously lacking impulse control, so he went and asked, “Why didn’t you then?”

Alex seemed to be lost for a moment. But then he began to talk, slowly but surely.

“Michael and I, we had this instant connection and we have loved each other for a long time. But we also shared painful history and a ton of issues. We decided, over and over again, that we didn’t work, but we were always drawn back together like we were being pulled by some invisible strings.”

He inhaled, exhaled. And continued.

“When I sang that song, I didn’t know he was gonna be there. But when he showed up, I thought, well, maybe it was a sign, that I should fight for him one last time, so I looked into his eyes, and bared my heart and soul for him.”

“Then he walked out in the middle of the song.”

He seemed so heartbroken Forrest couldn’t help but went to him and held his hand.

Alex held on tight.

“I decided then and there, I wanna move on, like, truly move on. Free myself and see if I can find someone who makes me happy and for me to make him happy. And I’m so glad that I found you.”

He looked into Forrest eyes then, raw and open.

“I don’t think I’ll ever able to fully stop loving him, it’s like in my blood. He knows this, and he’s under the impression that he is currently not good enough for me, and he’s improving himself, so that when our timing is right, he’d come back and we’ll live happily ever after.”

Forrest felt his heart sank. He wasn’t sure he was able to pick it up again.

“But heart doesn’t work that way. I can’t just order it to wait and not to fall for anyone else. When I’m with someone, I’m all in. I don’t treat them like they’re just a stepping stone for somebody else, that’s not how I’m built. And when I’m all in, I see all of you. And it’s really easy to fall for you, because you are the best thing that happened to me in a very long time.”

Forrest opened his mouth, but no word would come. He felt his emotions were on a roller coaster today, he didn’t even know where to begin to untangle his messy feelings.

Alex took his silence as hesitation and started to pull away.

“I get it if you don’t want to throw yourself in my mess. But I really want to try to work it out. Because you’re worth fighting for. WE are worth fighting for.”

At that, Forrest had no choice but to wipe his tears, hold him and kiss him.

They would fight together.

#forlex #forrest long #alex manes #forlex fic #my fic #5+1 things #chapter 2

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romanticatheart-posts · 6 years ago

Text

King Sized Revelations - 2

In this chapter, we will meet Liam’s mother by way of a letter she wrote many years ago. You are interrupted by a phone call from Liam and have a little family time with Regina and Constantine.

NSFW! Pixelberry owns all characters but I do love writing about them! Enjoy!

You are in your office holding the letter Constantine gave you just minutes ago. It is a letter from Liam’s mother, written to the woman he chose to be his bride.

You slowly unfold it as your heart begins to thump wildly in your chest. Taking a deep breath… you begin to read…

My dearest daughter,

Let me start by saying it is not my wish to introduce myself to you in this manner and yet somehow, there is a feeling within me that I won’t be there the day my sweet Liam marries the love of his life. As dismal as this all may seem to you, I still want to be a part of your life. Even if only in memory. I’m sure you’ve been told many things about me by now, but I want you to know me as a woman and not just as a queen, wife, and mother. I suspect you and I share many similarities in our thoughts and overall character. I’ve tried to imagine the kind of person my son would fall in love with and ultimately marry and I must believe that even though he is bound by the expectations of being royalty, Liam will never let the court decide that direction of his life. Only his beautiful heart will control that outcome.

Since you are the woman he has chosen to spend the rest of his life with, I wish to give you my most heartfelt blessing. And if I know my darling son, he was most likely in love with you long before he would even admit it to himself. I have often observed how he will sit for hours carefully planning an activity. It amazes me how he considers every possibility before making any type of decision. When he realized his feelings for you, he quite possibly considered more of the impact his life would impose upon you than the attachment he felt. I am certain he left no stone unturned and when he finally confessed his love for you, there were no questions left to answer. His decision was unequivocal.

Liam has a kind and generous heart and he genuinely loves those closest to him, but I believe that falling in love means more than a casual emotion, and his vision of love is deep and abiding. Several months ago, he and his circle of friends were play acting, as most children do at this age. But, when it came time for him to choose a ‘wife’, he would not participate. He just walked away and as he approached me, I could see that he was troubled. When I asked him why he didn’t want to play with the others, he simply said, “Mother, they want me to choose a wife.” I explained that all children play this game in one form or another, but he was not going to be one of them. He said, “Being in love should not be a game and I won’t pretend to be married to someone I do not love.” I couldn’t argue with that. Even at this youthful age, he knows love and marriage are to be revered…

You sit back for a moment… thinking how Constantine had expected him to do that very thing. You ache inside at how close it was to becoming a reality and how miserable his life would have been. Thank God fate had stepped in and saved you both from a dismal existence. Turning back to the letter, you continue reading…

I was very proud of him at that moment and I couldn’t help but smile. He dashed up to his room and I followed. Right before entering I overheard him talking to his favorite stuffed animal, so I stopped to listen. “When I’m ready to choose a wife, she won’t be like any of these girls at court. She will be smart, beautiful and kind and she won’t care that I’m a prince. She’ll love me for who I am and not because of a dumb title.” Those words penetrated to the very depths of my soul from the moment I heard them spurt from his mouth. Instead of going in, I slowly backed away to give him this moment of privacy. He has such a beautiful heart and I’m sure that is just one of the many reasons you fell in love with him, to begin with.

Liam does have a beautiful heart and she is right, it is only one of the many reasons you fell in love with him. You marvel at how perceptive she was and is about him.

I must assume that you are not a noblewoman by birth, as I know my son and he has never taken an interest in the lifestyle to which he was born. He wants so desperately to just be a 'normal’ person and I can’t imagine that will ever change. Also, I have read that most men will marry a woman with qualities like their mother and women will marry similarly to their fathers. If this is true, then I will believe you are a commoner like myself and possibly quite tenacious and down-to-earth. Which brings me to the next point of this letter… I was determined to create a life of my own and the only way to do that was to move away from my home and family. They were not direct descendants of nobility, so I had no aspirations of ever becoming Queen of Cordonia. Upon arriving at the capital, I immediately secured employment as an assistant to one of the local florist’s. I became quite skilled at arranging and assembling the flowers, much to my own surprise.

There was to be a ball at the palace within the week and the royal florist had closed its doors for mourning, due to a death in the family. With over one hundred matching centerpieces needing to be created, our little shop was hired to complete this seemingly impossible task. We worked night and day for three days straight, only sleeping in shifts on a cot in the back room. As embarrassing as it might sound, I’m not sure I ever went that long without a full bath, or proper nutrition, but when we finished on time, the accomplishment far outweighed any inconvenience.

Two days after the ball, and our recovery from sleep deprivation and mal-nourishment, we were visited by the King of Cordonia. He wanted to thank us for accepting the job on such short notice and to offer an official request to become the new royal florist! Of course, the owner accepted, and I could see that Constantine wasn’t as interested in that as he was with me. I already knew that his first marriage had ended in an annulment after she abandoned him and their young son. My heart went out to him and how hard it must have been trying to raise his child alone… It wasn’t long after, that he began to frequent the shop, usually, around the time we would close for lunch. For weeks, we spent that time getting to know each other and one day, in front of the store owner and his own guards, he asked if I would be interested in spending some time with him away from the shop and I eagerly accepted. By then, I had fallen in love with him and I was convinced that he felt the same.

After ten months of proper courtship, we announced our engagement… much to the dismay of the nobles at court… They only saw me as a simple commoner who would most likely be the reason for the fall of the monarchy… To my surprise, Constantine didn’t let that deter him from making me his queen. It was hard, but in those few short months before the wedding, I had gained the support of most everyone in the court, not to mention the people. Now, I can’t take all the credit but what mattered the most to me was that I would be with the man I loved… nobles and their arrogance be damned! I know Constantine can be quite commanding in his duties as the king but in private… he is the most loving and romantic man any woman could hope for. It’s why I fell in love with him, to begin with.

After we were married, one of my primary duties as queen was looking after Leo. He is quite boisterous but is always polite and kind to me. I never tried to take his own mother’s place, but I never objected to him calling me mother either. It was very rewarding caring for Leo, but what I wanted more than anything was a child of my own. I’ll never forget the day I learned that my dream would soon become a reality. After the arrival of this precious gift, my life was complete. Having the title of the queen has its advantages, but there is nothing more rewarding than being a mother. Once you’ve experienced it for yourself, you will know exactly what I mean… Motherhood is bliss!

Just then, your phone rings. As you pick it up, you see it’s Liam and smile.

“Hello, sweetheart!” “It’s so good to hear your voice, my love.” “I miss you already.” “I missed you the moment I left this morning.” “Aww, Liam…you are so sweet.” “Only to you. So how has your day been My Queen?” “Okay I guess, but I did have an interesting conversation with your father this morning.” “Oh? What about?” “He mentioned your coronation and…” “Why would he bring that up again?” “I think he wanted some closure and maybe he just really feels bad about what he did.” “Only because you unveiled his scheme. He wouldn’t have given it a second thought otherwise.” “I don’t know Liam… I’m not so sure he didn’t want it to be revealed. He said he’d lost sight of the things that were important, and that he’d let power control his better judgment.” “That’s an understatement.” “He was very sincere Liam and asked for our forgiveness.” “Oh. And how did you respond?” “Well, speaking for myself I told him I already had.” “Things between us have been less tense but I’m not so sure I’m ready to just forget that it ever happened.” “I don’t think he expects you to forget it, but I think he would like the opportunity to apologize. If you could have seen him this morning… he was in tears remembering how devastated you were when you saw those pictures of me and Tariq. I think he truly regrets the whole thing.” “Catherine, I never doubted your integrity, not even for a moment, but it was hard for me to see you in the arms of another man…” “I can only imagine what was going through your mind at the time.” “I’ve thought the same about you… At that moment though, I was so conflicted… my happiness or your safety. In retrospect, there are many things I would have done differently… I have my own share of regrets from that horrible night Catherine.” “I know… and I understand all of it but what truly matters is that we’re together…. I wish I were in your arms right now Liam.” “So do I.”

There is a slight pause in conversation as you begin to imagine him holding you close, his breath gently caressing your skin… you sigh.

“Catherine, is something wrong?” “No, no. I was just… thinking about you actually…” “Oh? And what were you thinking exactly?” “I was thinking… how much I want you right now…” “Catherine…"

Another pause… and when he speaks you can almost hear the smile in his voice.

"Tell the staff to add an extra place setting. I will be arriving in a couple of hours.” “But, what about the summit? Shouldn’t you stay and finish?” “I can leave early in the morning and make it back in time before the next one starts. They won’t even miss me.” “You’re serious, aren’t you?” “Of course I’m serious. You can’t expect me to neglect my queen in her time of need. And besides, I have a few of my own…” “Mmmm… what should I be expecting?” “Whatever Her Majesty desires…” “And what does His Majesty desire?” “Before or after we undress?” “After… of course.” “Hmm… let’s just say I won’t stop until you’re completely and utterly satisfied…”

His breath becomes shallow.

“… whatever it takes…” “Mmmm… I can’t wait for you to get here…” “I promise to make it worth the wait. I’ll see you soon my love.”

You hang up, your face flushed, and a smile slowly reaches your lips. Liam will be home in a few hours, and you have a few things to prepare. You take the letter and place it in the desk drawer and head down to the kitchen to inform staff that their king will be home for dinner tonight. Then you find Constantine and Regina in the sitting room.

“Liam has decided to join us for dinner tonight.” “Has the summit concluded already?” “My, that was prompt.” “No, not yet. He wanted to have dinner with us tonight and plans to leave first thing in the morning.” “I hope this won’t become his usual practice for heaven’s sake. The cost of jet fuel is astronomical.” “Now Constantine, surely you wouldn’t begrudge these two over a little jet fuel. After all, they are still newlyweds.”

You blush as Regina smiles and Constantine suddenly grasps her meaning.

“Oh! Well… I wouldn’t want a couple of thousand gallons of fuel coming between young love. I look forward to seeing him. Are we still on for six?” “Yes. And I need to finish a few things before he gets here, so I’ll see you two then.” “Certainly dear.”

You make your way upstairs to your bedroom suite and immediately start rummaging through your wardrobe. Finally, you find the perfect dress. It’s a low cut, wrap around that emphasizes your curves and allows easy access…

“Perfect!”

You hurry to the bathroom and turn on the water for a quick bath. Afterward, you get dressed and head to your office with the intent to busy yourself until Liam arrives. Upon entering, the familiar pile of documents still sits on the table, awaiting your attention and signature. Before beginning, you search the playlist of tunes on your phone and after placing the earbuds in each ear, you start. With the diversion of singing aloud and swaying to the music, time goes by quickly… and before you know it, you’ve reached the end of the stack. Just then your favorite song starts playing so you stand and reach for the stapler on your desk. Holding it as if it were a microphone, you close your eyes and start singing along while the beat of the music finds you dancing in perfect rhythm… as you are about to hit the high notes you to look up to see Liam standing in the doorway observing you with a smile. Startled, you immediately drop the stapler onto the desk and your earbuds right next to it… then you smile at him.

“Liam…” “Don’t stop on my account.”

He steps in and closes the door as you run toward him jumping into his arms. He immediately catches you and your lips meet in a sweltering kiss, sending currents of heat throughout your body.

“How long were you standing there?” “Long enough… I was quite enjoying your performance.”

You kiss him fervently as he carries you to the edge of the desk, quickly clearing a spot… his lips never part from yours. You reach to pull off his jacket and begin unbuttoning his shirt as he continues to bathe you in heated kisses.

“What about dinner?” “I have more important things to tend to at the moment…”

You remove his shirt, caressing his chest and arms and then down to his belt. He steps back for a moment and hurriedly pulls it off. You continue to remove his pants and underwear as they fall around his ankles and he steps out of them, kicking them to the side. He quickly loosens the first tie of your dress… sliding it over your shoulders and off…

“Mmmm…”

His hand grasping the curve, he kisses from your neck to your breast… drawing sensual circles with his tongue and nibbling at the tip. With your head tilted back, and your eyes closed, you relish every moment of his touch on your skin.

“Oh, Liam…”

His kisses trail up to your neck and then find your lips again. You reach down slowly, taking him in your hand, stroking his erection with fervor as his breathing becomes rapid and in a raspy voice he speaks your name…

“Oh, Catherine…”

As he removes the dress from the rest of your body, he lets out a deep groan when he discovers you are completely bare. His hand delves down, gently caressing your sweet spot and with tender strokes, he penetrates you with his fingers. You respond with a lively moan, moving against him until you are drenched and on the verge of spasm. With one hand gripping your thigh to pull you closer, he grasps your hair with the other and brings your face to his, thirst in his eyes. With your legs wrapped around him, you can feel the heat of his erection leaning near your wet folds, almost begging to penetrate… He kisses you, nipping at your lower lip then kisses a line to your ear and whispers softly…

“I love you…” “Prove it…”

Without hesitation, he plunges into you with such force that you yelp in surprise, grasping his muscled forearms… but soon pleasure overtakes you, and you release a soft moan as his hips rock steadily against yours… your body responding with equal rhythm.

“Oh, how I need you… Catherine… always…” "I love you, Liam, …so much…” “I love you…”

His kisses are deep and hot as he begins to drive harder, faster… his hands clutching your thighs until he feels you quiver in ecstasy and with one last powerful push, he releases inside you as a wave of warmth flows through your body.

“Liam…Ohhh, Liam…” “Catherine…you are so beautiful…”

You collapse into each other’s arms until the trembling subsides…When you both catch your breath, Liam lifts you off the desk and smiles. “Have you noticed how each time we’re together, it’s always better than the last?” You start gathering your clothes. “I have. What do you think it means?” “I’m not sure…it could be that our love is so strong that it allows us to connect on a much deeper level… as if you know what I need before I do and vice versa.” “Liam, I knew we were soulmates, from day one.” He kisses you and then smiles as you both get dressed and head to your bedroom.

After cleaning up you each put on fresh clothes, then make your way to the dining room where Constantine and Regina are waiting.

“Liam, good to see you son.” “Father, Regina, it’s good to be home tonight.” “We were just about to begin without you two. I wasn’t sure if you had decided not to join us after all.”

She smiles almost as if she knows what just happened in your office. Liam holds out your chair and once seated, he takes the one next to you. Servers bring out the spread and each of you begin helping yourself.

“We are only a few minutes late, but we appreciate your patience.” “Were you able to discuss the platform yet?” “Not yet. I will be presented immediately following lunch tomorrow.” “Oh, that might work to our advantage. Everyone will be more relaxed after a good meal. Keep me informed along the way. I’m anxious to see how Cordonia is received.” “Certainly father.” “I’m actually glad you came back tonight. I have a bit of news I would like to share.” “I’m listening.” “I saw my doctor this morning…” “And?” “And, you know I was placed on a new treatment plan recently and… well, the report came in today.” “What were the results?” “It seems there is a bit of improvement.” “How much of an improvement?” “Enough that my cancer has slowed in progression and with continued treatment, it’s quite possible to achieve remission.” “That is wonderful news father! And I just noticed that you’re not in your wheelchair. This is new.” “I would prefer if you didn’t refer to it as my wheelchair… that thing is such a nuisance. I decided to put it away and try walking more… to build up my strength. ” “So how’s that going?” “Very well actually. And as for my other issues, the lightheadedness is all but gone and the nausea is being well controlled with medicine.” “I am relieved to hear that father. It’s good to know that there is finally some hope.” “Enough about that. I have other news as well. Catherine mentioned the Apple Festival this morning and I had neglected to mention that your brother might be in attendance with his family.” “I don’t know if I can stand any more good news. It will be good to see him and meet his family after all this time.” “It will be wonderful having the entire family in attendance for a change. I have missed many opportunities with regard to that and I hope you won’t make that same mistake Liam.”

Liam looks at you with a smile, taking your hand and kissing it gently.

“Father, nothing is more important to me than family and spending time with the ones I love… And one in particular.” “I’ll make sure he doesn’t forget.” “Catherine, since this will be your first time organizing the festival, will you be needing any assistance with preparations?” “Actually, I was going to ask you about that. I’m not sure about the decorations and I want to keep it as close to tradition as possible. Would you mind giving me a few pointers?” “Of course not. To be perfectly honest, I have missed certain duties of being queen and it would be a pleasure to help any way I can.” “And, I can learn from one of the best in the process.”

Regina laughs appreciatively.

“Oh dear, I don’t know about that, but I’ll be at your disposal. And don’t underestimate yourself. You have done quite well without my help so far.” “I do my best but I’m sure there is a lot more to learn.” “You have mastered many tasks my love and I am very proud to have you as my queen.” “Well thank you, Liam. You’re not so bad yourself.”

Liam laughs, as does Constantine and Regina. Once everyone is finished eating, you all sit back and relax for a moment.

“That was a very satisfying meal, as is the company.” “I’ll second that father.” “Would you just look at us… I think you might say we’re behaving somewhat like a family.” “Yes…it’s quite refreshing isn’t it?”

Everyone smiles pleasantly at each other but no one responds to Regina’s question. Obviously, it is agreed. Liam breaks the silence.

“Father, do you need my assistance before Catherine and I retire?” “No, I still have my nurse you know. No need to make a fuss. And besides, you have an early day tomorrow, so you should get some rest.” “Very well. Regina, do you need help getting him upstairs?” “Actually, he’s walking quite well but thank you. We’ll manage.” “If you are sure then, we shall bid you both goodnight.” “Good night my children.” “Sleep well you two.” “And you as well dear.”

Liam stands, looking at you expectantly and you rise from the table, taking his outstretched hand with a smile. As you exit the dining room, you walk hand-in-hand toward the stairs.

“Hey, Liam?” “Yes, love.” “Would you mind if we took a stroll through the gardens?” “I think I can manage for a moment or two.”

You continue walking until you’re outside and in the palace gardens. The breeze of the summer air caresses your skin and gives you a peaceful sensation.

“So, why the gardens My Queen?” “I just thought we could both use some fresh air.” “Good idea. It is a beautiful night, but would you mind if we sat on the bench?” “Not at all.”

As you both sit, Liam drapes his arm around you and you lean against him laying your head on his shoulder. A wave of serenity falls over you and you sigh.

“Something on your mind?” “No, I’m just happy you came home tonight.” “You were very persuasive.” “Yeah, I have that effect on people.” “I’d call it a gift.”

You both look up to the stars dancing around in the open sky and listen to the crickets chirping and the leaves rustling in the trees.

“Liam, do you remember the Masquerade Ball?” “Of course I remember. It was the second time I laid eyes on the most beautiful sight I had ever seen…” “Aww, you’re such a romantic…”

“I’m only telling the truth, my love.” “What were you thinking that night when you realized I had come here as one of the suitors?”

Liam smiles fondly. “I spotted you long before you made your identity known… And to be perfectly honest, I wanted it to be you. But I had to keep telling myself that it simply couldn’t be. You can only imagine my joy and surprise when I realized the woman of my dreams had traveled all this way just for me. I mean, after that night in New York, I never thought I’d see you again.“ "So you thought about me after you left New York?” “I couldn’t stop thinking about you, Catherine. The truth is, I was in love with you then… even though I wouldn’t let myself admit to it. When I got back to the hotel that night, I felt so empty. I had let the most incredible woman I’d ever met, walk out of my life for what I thought would be forever.” “You know, after I walked back to my apartment that night, I remember thinking that same thing. How could I have fallen in love with someone I’d just met? Before I knew it, I was sitting on the edge of my bed laughing at the irony of it and didn’t even realize I was crying too until a few drops fell on my arm.”

Liam pulls you closer.

“Oh Catherine, I never knew…” “Even with no promise of anything more, I couldn’t stop thinking about you and how meeting you had changed my life. I felt alive for the first time and I was never going to be the same again. We truly had a special connection and I had to come here and find out for myself if it was real, because no one would have ever measured up to you in my eyes.“ "That’s exactly how I felt Catherine… That night was no accidental meeting between two strangers, it was preordained to bring us together.” “Yeah. I’m glad we didn’t disappoint the stars.” “Can you even imagine what things would have been like for both of us had you not followed your heart?” “I’m glad we’ll never know.” “My life would have been so empty without you…”

Liam reaches under your chin, tilting your head up and kisses you softly, slowly. You pull him closer, pressing against his body, wrapping your arms around him as the kiss quickly becomes inflamed with passion. He pulls back for a moment, a hunger in his eyes…

“Shall we take this upstairs?” “You read my mind.”

You both rise from the bench and make your way back into the palace, up the stairs and finally to your bedroom. As soon as the door closes behind you, he kisses you fervently and as if by magic the clothes begin to fall, piece by piece, all around the room. He leads you to the bed where you lie down pulling him with you. He blankets you with kisses as he slides down your body and pauses looking up at you. He smiles a devious smile as his hand delves to your inner thighs and watches your reaction to his roving fingers. You open your legs to accommodate him as he slowly kisses you to your core. He groans when he tastes you and with his tongue probing deeper, you let out a gratified whimper.

“Liam…” “Mmmm… you taste so sweet…”

His hands grasping your thighs tightly as he continues his pursuit of giving you pleasure, relishing every moment himself. When he slides back up to take your lips again, you shift your body, turning him over until he is laying on his back and you are balanced above him smiling confidently.

“What’s this?” “You’ll see.”

He smiles, eagerly awaiting your next move. You bend down and kiss him hard and he moans in approval. He urgently grabs your waist but releases when you begin tracing a line of kisses down his neck, over his chest and down until you reach his length. You take him in your hand and kiss the tip ever so slightly.

“Oh, Catherine…”

Then you let your tongue roll over the top for a moment before slowly taking him in your mouth. His breathing heavy and he groans deeply as you devour him repeatedly.

“Ohhh…Catherine, don’t stop…stop…”

As he struggles to keep from exploding, he reaches for you, but you’re not quite finished yet. You flash him a smile and slide your tongue from the bottom of his length all the way up and quickly draw the tip into your mouth, tasting him as a trace suddenly escapes. He urgently pulls you up as you straddle him and without hesitation, he guides your hips and slides inside you. You hold onto the headboard for leverage as you steadily move against him, he eagerly matches your pace. With the heat intensifying, you quicken the rhythm and once he feels you tremble, a fire bursts inside you with uninhibited power.

“Liam… yes…” “Ohhh… Catherine.”

You collapse on his chest as you both lay breathless. Afterward, you roll to his side and he pulls you close… you lay your head on his chest as he strokes your arm affectionately. Both of you content and satisfied.

“You continue to amaze me, Catherine.” “So I take it you approve.” “Definitely.” “There’s more where that came from.” “I almost didn’t make it this time…”

He suddenly laughs.

“What?” “I just wonder what you would have done if I hadn’t resisted.” “You should have let me finish.” “How would I ever satisfy My Queen if I had let that happen?” “I’m sure you’d figure something out.” “I’m glad you think so.”

He smiles and leans over placing a sweet kiss on your lips. You sigh in contentment.

“Let’s get cleaned up and then try to get some sleep. I think two flights in one day has finally caught up with me.” “Not to mention other activities that might have contributed to your fatigue.” “I’ll never get enough of you Catherine, fatigued or otherwise.”

You both get up and head to the bathroom to freshen up. Once finished you climb into bed and curl up against Liam. He wraps you in the warmth of his arms and kisses your forehead, sighing in contentment.

“I’m so glad you came home. I sleep much better with you next to me.” “Me too my love.” “If only I hadn’t planned that charity brunch tomorrow I could have made the trip with you.” “We should coordinate our schedules a bit better in the future.” “At least I have you for tonight.” “I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else love.”

You lean over kissing him and then lay your head on his chest as he pulls you closer and smiles.

“Goodnight, my queen.” “Goodnight, my king.”

Soon you are both fast asleep.

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fibula-rasa · 6 years ago

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(Content Warning: anti-Latino bigotry in coded language)

Romantic Romero

by Elisabeth Badger

Excerpt from Modern Screen (August 1939)

Full article & transcription after the JUMP

ONE OF Hollywood’s most contradictory personalities is tall, dark, sinister-looking Cesar Romero. If you belong to the misguided group who take Cesar at his face value and think of him as a cross between a gangster and a parlor snake, prepare to readjust your opinions—for Cesar has the most misunderstood face in town.

Though he has never given a bad performance, Cesar hasn’t been allowed to get very far in the movies, chiefly because his physiognomy isn’t the dimpled, curvaceous type that is the mark of the glamor boy, and manna at the box-office. The planes of his face, the implications of his mysterious eyes and sometimes cruel mouth, have more significance and less sunshine than is seemly in a public idol, especially a movie hero.

But in private life, Cesar is one of the most sympathetic, amiable and universally well-liked men in pictures. You can’t find a girl or man of his acquaintance who doesn’t say, “What a sweet guy!”

In the field of romance, likewise, he’s far from what he seems. Confirmed column-readers get the impression that Cesar is a philanderer, an accomplished side-stepper of matrimony. Actually, he has more good, sound old-fashioned ideals about women and marriage than most of the dimpled delegation.

“Everyone has the idea that I go with a different girl every night,” he said reproachfully, “whereas very few of those items in the columns are true. One girl at a time is enough for me.”

Red-headed Ann Sheridan was the girl at the time. But Cesar didn’t specify how much time is allotted to each girl, so I can’t guarantee that the romance still thrives—what with Ann being elected Oomph Girl, and Cesar having to wear a beard for weeks and weeks for his role in “The Return of the Cisco Kid.” However, Ann’s case will serve to exemplify Cesar’s point of view about women.

“Why do we have to marry?” he demanded, when I asked about their intentions. “Isn’t it possible to be attracted to each other, fond of each other’s company, without being expected to end up in matrimony? I’m very fond of Ann, I love her company, and we have loads of laughs. But I don’t intend to marry her, and I know she wouldn’t want to marry me.

“I’m the last person in the world that Ann should marry. A girl like that, with a career that interests her more than anything else, should marry someone who can help her. A producer or a director. Certainly not an actor.

“Besides,” he continued, distributing his six-feet-two more comfortably on the divan, “I have a lot of ideal about what I want marriage to be. I’ll be very cautious about whom I marry because when I do, I expect it to last forever. No divorce for me! And I can tell you one thing—my wife will be a non-professional. It isn’t possible to have two careers in one marriage—not mine anyway.”

CESAR DISMISSED the idea that an actor’s leading women are a threat to marriage. Even though stars do with great regularity discard their mates in favor of the most recent leading lady, the surprising Mr. Romero has no fear of such pitfalls. He thinks it would be a poor husband who couldn’t withstand that temptation.

“What would worry me would be clash of temperament, ambition and working hours. That’s what I’ll never marry an actress. An actor’s wife has to efface herself, in a sense, and adapt herself to his way of life, and care more for his success than her own.”

I pointed out that if marriage is his ultimate object, he’s wasting a lot of valuable time these evenings, for Cesar seldom goes out with anyone but actresses.

He nodded assent. “But I don’t know anyone else,” he said simply. “I have been very much in love—once, in the East, before I came to Hollywood. She was a woman ten years older than I and she had two children, but I was completely in love with her. I never wanted to be apart from her. That, to me, is the real test of love.

“I’m afraid that has spoiled me for everything else. I’m sure if it hadn’t been for that experience. I would have thought many times since that I was in love. But because I know what it is really like, I’ve never been able to deceive myself. I’ve always known it wasn’t the real thing. That thought has probably cheated me out of a lot of fun.

“I’ve been infatuated, of course—crazy about various girls for the moment. But really being in love, to me, is being unhappy unless that person is with you every minute—the feeling that you want her with you, must have her with you, all the time. I’ve never felt that way about any other woman.”

Few men have been exposed to more high-powered blandishments. Cesar has been in Hollywood since the first “Thin Man” picture, which is quite a span of years. In that time his career has gone through various phases, but he has never really had a real break professionally. He’s become well-known principally through his extra-studio activities which included going to the most prominent parties, dancing with stars who could appreciate his professional smoothness, and beauing all the glamor girls to places well within the range of the candid camera’s eye.

It was rather a strange set-up—young man with a relatively small salary and a minimum of fame, finding himself always in the thick of the most successful and celebrated. But that role was a familiar one to Cesar. His adult life had always been that way.

ELDEST SON of a well-to-do Cuban family, he lived in comparative luxury for fourteen years in New York City, where he was born. Just as he reached an age when money begins to have some meaning, his father’s business crashed with the collapse of the sugar market. The Romeros took refuge on the New Jersey shore where they had always spent their summers, and devoted themselves to painful economy. When he wasn’t in school, Cesar worked in various lowly capacities at a big New Jersey department store.

But the social standing of the Romeros did not stop with their income, so Cesar found himself in the anomalous position of delivering packages at a lady’s door in the afternoon, and brushing shoulders with her at a fashionable dance in the evening.

He had quite a career in the department store—progressing from wrapper to stock boy to truck driver. One summer, he endured the rigors of a soldier’s life at the Plattsburg Military Training Camp because his father saw an advertisement in the paper: “Send your boy to Plattsburg and swap him for a man.” Cesar went under protest, and doesn’t think the swap quite came off. His family moved back to New York so he could have his last three years of schooling at the Collegiate School there.

“That period of my life seemed very glamorous and exciting,” he recalled. “The Collegiate boys used to take the Spence School girls out every afternoon that we could afford it. I had just enough money to walk to the girl’s house, take her in a taxi to the Ambassador tea dance, and get her back to her house in a taxi—and then walk home. It was not considered cricket (Continued on page 84)

ROMANTIC ROMERO

(Continued from page 29)

for a girl to order anything more expensive than cinnamon toast and tea, and if she did, she was never invited again.”

There must be honor among glamor girls in those matters, too, for though Cesar still takes out girls whose expensive whims are far beyond his income, figuratively speaking, they stick to the cinnamon toast and tea.

AFTER graduation, his father’s friends got him a job as a runner for a Wall Street bank. He lived alone in a little hall bedroom and continued his double life. At night he was the perfect dancing partner at innumerable debutante parties. While by day he tramped around Wall Street with a pouch full of valuables shackled to his wrist. This being handcuffed to a mail-bag, for practically nothing a week, was what got Cesar down. It was inevitable that a boy who could dance that well wasn’t going to see much of a future in Wall Street. He was ripe material for a girl friend who itched to go on the stage and urged him to become her dancing partner.

They worked, they rehearsed, and at last they were engaged for a spot in a musical show. Cesar gave up his job, and sent word to his family that he had gone on the stage. They were staggered. So was the audience. The act lasted exactly one night. But Cesar now had his foot in the door of a theatrical career, and wouldn’t remove it. He worked hard on new routines, changed partners several times, and finally, after a long heartbreaking siege of ups and downs, became a successful ballroom dancer. He was featured at all the smartest night spots, among them the famous old Montmartre—which is where producer Brock Pemberton saw him and gave him the lead in the road company of “Strictly Dishonorable.”

That tour was Romero’s start as a legitimate actor. Shows on Broadway followed, and then M-G-M’s screen test which brought him to Hollywood and a long series of villainous roles.

Cesar’s swarthy coloring, and particularly the bony structure of his face, give it a sinister cast, but when you look closely you see that his eyes are kind; his mouth, gentle. On the day I talked to him he looked positively spiritual, because he was wearing a beard. It was grown for his role as a dirty but benevolent Mexican in “Cisco Kid,” but seen without the serape and sombrero, it made him look as if he might perform miracles.

The tragedy is that no one will cast Cesar in the kind of role his sympathetic personality deserves. Even at Fox, where he is now under contract, more often than not he gets parts that don’t do his popularity any good. But the protests are mine, not his. Cesar doesn’t feel sorry for himself at all.

“I’m grateful to be earning enough to take care of my family,” he said, “so my father has no more worries. They are all out here now—my mother and father, two sisters and a brother. They don’t live with me. Oh, no!” He shook his head with a laugh. “I’ve lived alone too long to be able to live with my family again. But they have an apartment in the same building. I’m very happy to be able to take care of them and have them with me.

THE greatest disappointment I’ve had was not getting the part of Dr. Saffi in “The Rains Came.” I wanted it terribly and I think I could do it well,. But they won’t give me a chance. Tyrone Power’s going to do it. He isn’t the right type for the part, but I’m not a great star and I’m not box-office.

That’s the sort of thing that can happen to a man when his bone structure is against him.

#pride month #pride #classic film #classic movies #cesar romero #film stars #confirmed bachelor #gay hollywood #movie stars #modern screen #film magazine #vintage #1930s #thirties #film #film history

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exxar1 · 4 years ago

Text

Chapter 15: What Is A Year?

5/21/2021

This morning, as I walked out of the gym, I was hit with a pleasantly cool spring breeze. Here in Las Vegas it’s a beautiful sixty-five degrees, the sun is shining, and the wind felt blessedly cool against my sweat-soaked skin. I couldn’t help but pause in the middle of the parking lot, lift my face to the sun and close my eyes. Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” was still blasting in my ears, and the endorphins from my workout were still raging high beneath my skin.

It’s been awhile since I’ve sat down to write a new chapter for this blog. There’s two main reasons for this: 1) I’ve been super busy with the two full time jobs, and 2) I just simply haven’t had much to say.

It’s that second reason that’s the more important one. There was a lot happening with me in the first quarter of 2021. But, in the last few weeks, my life – both within and without – has calmed down greatly. For starters, the Lord answered my prayer in which I had been requesting for awhile now to be able to go back to just one job. Here in Nevada, as more people are vaccinated, and as our COVID numbers continue to drop, our governor FINALLY rolled our state forward to stage 3 recovery. (Insert the eye-roll emoji here.) As of the last week of April, restaurants have been allowed to operate at 50% capacity, and larger venues like churches and superstores could increase the amount of people that could be inside at once. (How nice of our government to return to us basic rights and freedoms that we the people should never have given up in the first place.) And, as of this past Thursday, our almighty and gracious government FINALLY decided that everyone who’s been vaccinated is now free to go out and about without a mask. (Insert multiple eye-roll emojis here.)

As great as the fallout of the bureaucratic idiocy surrounding this “pandemic” has been, the one good thing about these recent relaxations of statewide shutdowns is that more and more businesses are either finally re-opening or getting back to normal operations. Here in Las Vegas, that means that the casinos and other related businesses on the strip are extending their hours and re-hiring most of their furloughed or laid-off employees. And that is the main reason that my primary, full time job is also starting to finally get back to normal. That means that more and more overtime is becoming available as various stores now need coverage for employees who are either going on vacation or were fired (or needing to take sudden sick day because of the vaccine) or the stores’ daily operating hours have been extended to what they were before the pandemic.

As of Friday, May 7th, I’m no longer working at Walmart. Last week I was able to pick up four OT shifts, and I clocked out the week at seventy-one hours! This week, I picked up three extra shifts. Saturday mornings are no longer the only days I get to sleep in! I have more free time now to do the activities that I used to enjoy in my pre-pandemic life, such as going to the gym. Thanks to the new CDC allowance, no one at Planet Fitness hassled me this morning when I went in maskless. I spent almost two hours there, and it was damn good! (I was disappointed, though, to see almost everyone else there in some kind of mask. I feel so sorry for them.)

This blog entry is more of a general update than a dramatic chapter in my new life as a Christian. While it’s nice – and a great relief – to settle into a new and stable routine, it also means that there’s simply not much to report. I took another look today at my new year’s resolutions, and I felt a pleasant sense of satisfaction at the fact that I’ve accomplished all of them! (Well, almost all. I still haven’t found a boyfriend, but that’s moot now. I erased that one from a list awhile back. And no, I couldn’t change the word ‘boyfriend’ to ‘girlfriend’. God hasn’t granted that particular prayer request yet.) But everything else on that list – daily Bible reading/prayer, changing my introverted and uncaring attitude towards the people that cross my path every day, being more social and outgoing, and joining a solid, Bible-believing, Baptist church - check, check, and check! I’ve succeeded at keeping to this list, with only minor slip-ups here and there. (There were some days when all the coffee in the world couldn’t change the fact that I woke up on the wrong side of the bed and was severely annoyed by everyone and everything around me.)

That last resolution, especially, has been the source of greatest joy and contentment in my new daily routine. In chapter twelve, I detailed my adventure in finding a local church where I could set up camp among fellow believers that would encourage me, accept me, and challenge me in my new walk with God. I thought I had found that in True Light Baptist Church (referred to in that entry as Church #1). But after only a month, the Holy Spirit led me to seek again, and this time I found Bible Baptist Church (referred to in that chapter as Church #2.)

Back in February, during one of my counseling sessions with Pastor Sjostrom, I was lamenting that I might not find a small, local church like the one I grew up in. All that seemed to be available in a metropolis like Las Vegas – according to Google anyway – was churches with congregations of five hundred to a thousand, or more. A couple of them did identify as Baptist, while the others seemed to be either non-denominational or one of the mainstream categories such as Lutheran, Presbyterian, Methodist, etc.

“Neal, you’re not going to find a church like Grace Baptist down there,” Mark said, and I unhappily agreed.

God, thankfully, didn’t.

Bible Baptist Church is nestled in a quiet, homely neighborhood in North Las Vegas, and it looks exactly like the type of building you would expect to find on the corner of Main and Second Avenue in some small town in the American Midwest of yesterday. Its appearance is that of a traditional church – complete with a steeple over the main doors that houses a working bell – and, inside, is an auditorium that houses a congregation of no more than about a hundred and fifty. There’s an adjacent hall that leads to classrooms and a general meeting room, and out back is a good sized courtyard that serves as a playground for the kids. Behind the auditorium is a fellowship hall and kitchen, and the parking lot beside the church is not paved. (The photo at the top of this entry was taken by me on a recent Sunday evening as I stood in the parking lot after the service.)

My first visit was Sunday evening, February 28th, and the moment I stepped in the door I was greeted by no less than six different guys, one of them being the pastor. Mitch Serviss (yes that’s really his last name) is a fellow transplant from Idaho, and he and I chatted about Boise and the BSU Broncos. After the service, there was an ice cream social in the fellowship hall, and I had the opportunity to continue getting to know the same guys that had greeted me before the service. They all talked to me as if I’d been attending their church for years, not just a few hours. I was also happy to see that the congregation was a good mix of generations – some older than me, some from my age group, and then plenty of younger ones with lots of kids running about underfoot. I pulled out of the parking lot that night feeling as if I had just sampled a taste of home – the home from my youth in Twin Falls that I had been longing for for almost two months.

It’s only gotten better in the last ten weeks. The more that I’ve attended this church, the more I’ve gotten to know several members of its congregation, the more happiness and contentment I’ve felt in my daily life. Everything – and I do mean everything! – that I remember from the Grace Baptist Church of my childhood I have found here. All the old hymns that I knew by heart - and still do – are sung here at every service. The Wednesday night service concludes with everyone putting forth prayer requests and then splitting into small groups to kneel together and pray. The preaching from the pulpit is doctrinally sound and comes straight out of the Bible, with no embellishments or radical interpretations by the pastor. The only instruments that accompany the congregational singing is the piano, organ, and a quartet of stringed instruments that certain members will sometimes play, usually on Sunday mornings. For the kids there’s the usual Sunday school and junior church, as well as something called “Master Club” on Wednesday nights which, as best I can tell, is something equivalent to the old Cubbies, Sparks and Awana programs that I used to be in.

The third week of April was a special week of revival. There were two visiting evangelists and a service every night except Saturday. A potluck was served in the fellowship hall every night an hour before the service. These week long events I remember especially well because I hated them when I was a teenager. Now, I was very heartbroken that I could only make it to two of the services because of my work schedule.

Throughout the year, on certain Monday nights, there’s a potluck at 5:30 and that’s it. Just food and socializing. No service, no agenda, just plain and simple fellowship. They call these events “Family Nights”. I was able to arrange my work schedule last week so that I could attend my first family night, and I wasn’t disappointed. (My contribution was a pot of tator tot casserole. And yes, I made it myself.) I had a great time chatting with a bunch of the guys – and a few of the ladies as well – while the kids tore around outside, creating a pleasant background hum of laughter, shouting and general merriment.

Two weeks from today I will be turning 43 and I will be baptized in this church that same weekend. My family is coming down for the occasion, and I can’t wait for them to meet these people and see this church for themselves!

Proverbs 30: 7-9 says, “Two things I request of You (deprive me not before I die): remove falsehood and lies far from me; give me neither poverty nor riches. Feed me with the food allotted to me; lest I be full and deny You, and say ‘Who is the Lord?’ Or lest I be poor and steal, and profane the name of my God.” As you know from my previous chapters, I have been working my way through the Old Testament since the beginning of the year, and, thus far, I have found the books of Job, Psalms, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes to be the most spiritually fulfilling and deeply engrossing. Those three verses from Proverbs 30 seem especially fitting for my life just now.

As my 43rd birthday draws closer, I keep thinking back to where I was just one year ago. The world had only started to go off the rails with the statewide, economic shutdowns due to the start of the “pandemic”. George Floyd wasn’t yet a household name. Major U.S. cities like Portland, Chicago and Minneapolis were still relatively quiet and peaceful. Our government was still a reasonably normal, sane, good one, and there was hope that Trump just might be able to win the election. Here in my backyard, I was bored, just returning from an unplanned, two-week vacation back home to Idaho, and I decided to put up a personals ad on Tinder. I hadn’t yet landed the second job at Walmart, I had way too much time on my hands, and I was watching way too much TV. The first glimmers of soul searching had just barely begun, and I had no clue about what my immediate future would hold.

Now, looking back, I can only shake my head in wonder, amazement, and immense humility at how God guided, protected and supplied for me this past year. While there were many that were forced out of work and had no immediate relief from unemployment, God saw to it that I was taken care of. Even when I hadn’t yet accepted Him, when I was still living in my sin and trying to pretend that everything was fine, that I could make it on my own as I always had, God was patiently waiting for that day when I was finally ready to admit my weakness and just accept Him and Him alone.

As I approach year 43, I don’t feel 43. I feel 23. I feel as if every day since September 17th, 2020 has been a fresh re-start; as if my whole life is ahead of me again, and the possibilities are endless. The crisis that brought me back into the Great Shepherd’s fold wasn’t – thankfully – a car accident, or a diagnosis of cancer, or a sudden, complete loss of income and housing. It was, instead, the old, traditional existential kind. Who am I? Why am I here? What is my purpose? What have I accomplished thus far in my life that is worth anything? What will I leave behind? And, most importantly, when the world around me goes absolutely mad, to what – or whom – will I turn for security and peace?

I found the answers I sought in God’s Word and in His arms that are far bigger than me and my life. In many ways, 2021 has been an even worse year than 2020. Our nation – and the world at large – continues to go off the rails. In fact, we left the rails a long time ago and this train is now rapidly chugging across Hell’s desert landscape at full speed towards the Grand Canyon. If we are not living the prologue to chapter 1 of the book of Revelation, then we are most definitely getting close. But you know something funny? Here in my own backyard, when I lower my gaze from the world beyond the fence and look around at my simple, little life here in Las Vegas, Nevada, I can only smile and praise God as I count the numerous blessings He has bestowed on me. As those verses from Proverbs 30 state, God has given me exactly what I need – no more, no less. I have absolutely nothing to complain about. The world outside is falling apart day by day, yet I sleep at night in absolute peace and wake up each morning filled with immeasurable joy and purpose.

I don’t know yet exactly what God has planned for me. But I do know my best years are yet to come, and I am deliriously happy abiding within Him and His will. No matter what comes, I will always delight myself in the Law of the Lord, as David says in Psalm 1, and fear Him alone.

Year 43 is going to be my best one yet! Cheers!

#god #life #Spirituality #personal growth #las vegas

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jaidenervy153-blog · 5 years ago

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How Much Should You Be Spending On Pet Friendly Turf Care?

Dog-Pleasant Lawn Treatment Tips

Howdy, I’m Boomer. I actually have just the information for dog-helpful lawn care for you. I’m a 7-year-older German Shepherd, and so i really like taking part in within the backyardthat my human has provided for me. They set up the ideal dog-helpful yard in my opinion (although We have noticed them say it’s because it will likely be a great “return on investment”, whatever that means.) Maybe you want to give your pet dog a yard like my own – one where both furry close friends in addition to their proprietors could be happy jointly.

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pet friendly backyard

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Incidentally, I love to perform within the sprinkler. H2o your grass often and let me cool off.

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pet proofing your yard

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Create a play program. An obstacle study course built for dogs is a great idea. Include some something and tunnels to jump above, and that we are usually in doggie paradise. Puppy courses is able to keep us give and amused us together with the exercise we must have.

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I adore men and women. Heck, I’m a dog, and that we adore you. We especially like shelling out time together with you. Let us perform collectively and also have as exciting as we can. I enjoy play frisbee, fetch it, and return it to you. I love everyday workout and selecting hikes. Then why not we consider an speed class together? Or possibly an obedience instruction class. That might be entertaining.

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careforselfs · 7 years ago

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Tips that changed my young life

Part 1 (one)

As a kid with ADHD, sleep deprivation and a severe case of laziness, at one time in my life I had stressed myself out to the point where suicide was looking like a viable option. No young person should have to feel that way, especially if it’s because of preventable habits. Around the start of high school my time was spent being unproductive and feeling miserable. I had no motivation to get any work done, I was tired 24/7 but I hardly got any sleep, I was grumpy and depressed and unfocused, and my social life was suffering. Although these are still problems that I (and everyone on this planet) face, I’ve gotten a lot better at handling myself and I’ve stopped putting up with my own bullshit. Although not all of these tips are going to help/are practical for everyone, hopefully some tired and sickly kid like me will find this list and feel a lil more inspired to get the most out of life.

1. Self-care isn’t what you think it is:

A few years back my idea of self-care was so skewed that my habits ended up doing more harm than good. Whenever I felt bad, I’d usually curl up in a blanket, watch some netflix or scroll tumblr, wallow in self-pity, and eventually fall asleep. While admittedly that is something we can all benefit from every once in a while, when that becomes a daily ritual is when it becomes counter-productive. Self-care is supposed to make you feel good; not only in the moment but in the long run too. Blanket pity cave feels great at the time, but when you finally emerge into the light you find that you’ve wasted time, you still feel sleepy, and nothing has been achieved. But what else could self-care possibly be?!?! you may ask. Well I hate to be the one to say it, but sometimes self-care is doing the last thing that you feel like doing. If you’re feeling tired and sad, often the best remedy is to go for a quick walk around the block. If you knew me at all, you would know that walks are not something I very much enjoy. Especially when I feel like curling up into a sleep-ball, exercise is the last thing I want, but the first thing I need. And I always end up feeling better in the end. And exercise isn’t the only form of self-care! It’s getting a glass of water even when you’re too tired to get up from the bed. Its doing your god-damn homework even when you’re so fucking sick of calculus oh my god I can’t even bare to look at it. Just do it. Even for, like, 10 minutes. Then take a break. It doesn’t seem like much but you’ll feel a sense of accomplishment and therefore feel more motivated. Please, just take this from me. Two years ago I would have laughed in your face if you had suggested this to me “I can’t do homework if I don’t feel like I can do it! Are you crazy? That's not how ADHD works!” Well suck it up kid. You gotta take care of yourself. Think long term!

2. Just ask for help:

I like to be independant. I like doing things by myself, without help, because that's what smart people do right? Wrooong. Nobody is born with the innate understanding of how to do everything. It’s a waste of time if you’re trying to get stuff done but you’re stuck because you don’t understand something, and instead of asking a simple question you stubbornly sit in your chair for hours wracking your brain for the answers when you know in your heart they aren’t there. Asking for help can be embarrassing, especially when you think the question is stupid or you think you should be able to do something by yourself. But teachers/parents/chaplains/whoever are usually more than happy to answer your questions, and will rarely think badly of you. They need help sometimes too! And help isn’t only for school work. At some point in time you’ll realize that you need mental health help, or physical help, or emotional help. Those aren’t things to be ashamed of. I used to/still have a lot of trouble getting motivated to complete basic tasks. Before I’d just sit on my ass and wait for the motivation to come naturally, but it never would. Finally I realized that if I simply asked my mom to help me (set a timer, check up on me, go through things step-by-step) I could... actually accomplish stuff. And yes, asking for help, especially for simple and “easy” tasks, is anxiety inducing. Sometimes I felt like a child, incapable and useless. But if you get help straight away, then you learn how to be independant sooner rather than later, and you’ll need less and less help. There’s really no shame in it. Everyone needs help at some point in their life. Everyone.

3. Identify and treat any underlying health problems you may have:

I was diagnosed with ADHD in grade four, but it didn’t start to affect my life until high school. The second semester of grade ten I noticed my marks dropping an unusual amount, and I was struggling to stay motivated. I was tired, disoriented, grumpy, all the things I’ve listed above. Finally my mom took me to see my old psychiatrist, and she put me on medication. It took a very long time to find a combination of pills and coping strategies that worked for me, but now I find I’m able to cope a lot better. And I know that I’m not just lazy, or dumb, or useless. My brain is wired differently from the norm and I’m not able to function well in the environment that modern society has created. And now that I know that I’m able to adapt. And mental health problems aren’t the only health problems that can affect your outlook on life. For a long time after I had settled on the right meds, I was still feeling tired and hazy. I was weak and pale, had absolutely no strength or energy, and fell asleep so uncontrollably that I started to wonder whether I was narcoleptic. After a blood test to check if I could start new medication, it was discovered that my iron levels were non-existent. All my symptoms were symptoms of low iron. It was such a simple and common health problem, but it had gone undiagnosed for so long that it had started to severely affect my life. I started supplements and added iron-rich foods to my diet, and two years later I’m a completely different person. I can go for hikes. I can wake up early and not feel tired. I have the energy to do whatever I put my mind to, and even my thinking is clearer. Don’t just chalk up all your problems to “I, as a person, just suck.” Sometimes, our “quirks” or “faults” are actually symptoms.

4. Love unconditionally:

This tip doesn’t focus on you, but your perception of others. My whole life I’d been in a toxic friendship. My best friend didn’t treat me or others well, but she was all I’d known and therefore I didn’t know any better. She was extremely quick to judge others, on their clothes, hair, and personality. If someone did something she didn’t like, no matter how small, she’d cut them off completely. After a while I learned to think and act the same way, and eventually, to our surprise, we ended up with no friends but each other. I just thought that people were mean. That I was better than them. I understood how the world worked and everyone else was immature, and not worth my time. Unconsciously I ended up judging people by their flaws. I’d disregard all their good traits, their kindness, their loyalty; I’d look through all of that to see only their faults. And nobody is perfect, so I had no friends! My “friend” had even higher standards than I did, so naturally I was cast aside after 10 years of loyal friendship. I was shook, to say the least, and I started to reevaluate how I viewed people. All along I’d obviously known that everyone makes mistakes, you should love people with their flaws, blah blah blah, but I actually started to put that mindset into practice. And I discovered a world full of beautiful, beautiful people. I began to realize that if a friend did or said something I didn’t like, I could still be friends with them. We didn’t have to agree. Sometimes people say or do stupid things. Sometimes people have outbursts, take all their anger out on you. Sometimes they can be unkind or unloyal or untrustworthy. But those things don’t define them. For all their flaws, they have 100 more beautiful traits. You shouldn’t let their problems outshine who they really are. And that’s what I’d been doing! I missed out on so many wonderful friendships because I couldn’t get over the fact that sometimes people aren’t 100% awesome. They can make mistakes and it’s alright! Sometimes they even make big mistakes! And that’s alright too! You can work past them together. I find that when someone is shown unconditional love, instead of taking advantage of you like you might think they would, they tend to become more appreciative of your friendship, and become a more confidant person. But it’s important to remember that it’s also ok to cut toxic people out of your life. Sometimes, for no reason at all, you won’t get along with someone. Your personalities just don’t mesh, or some of their traits just rub you the wrong way. You’re not obligated to be friends with everybody. You don’t have to hate these people, remember they have good things inside them as well, but you also don’t have to devote any of your time to them. It’s also important to remember that some mistakes are just unforgivable. It doesn’t matter what it is, but if someone does something that affects you so much that you don’t know if you could handle keeping them in your life, it’s ok to let them go. You can’t say “it’s fine whatever” when in reality you’re going to suffer. Sometimes, people’s negative traits can outshine their positives in your life. They might not be a bad person, but they can be a bad person for you. All in all, I find that it’s easier to just accept people. I have sooo many more friends now. I’ve been exposed to different types of thinking and different ways of being, and I’ve only become a better person because of it.

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i-dont-dj-sammy-g · 7 years ago

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Plee

Hey.

You there.

Whoever is left.

I don’t know who you are, but hello, and thanks for stopping.

I’m not sure what I’m trying to accomplish with this post other than to just put it out in the air, somewhere, that I am NOT okay. These last four years of my life have been far worse than I could have ever hoped for myself. I feel like I’m drowning and whenever I try to swim to the surface for a breath of air, the ocean just gets that much deeper. Sure, life’s had its ups, but the majority of it has been downs. I am not happy. I never realized that I was ever in this position until about a week ago when I got more drunk than I ever have been before in my life. I could not move. Everything was spinning at the speed of a top and I could. not. stop. crying. I called everyone in my family, and cried and told them how scared I was and how much I miss them (since they all live far away.) I don’t know what I’m so afraid of. Maybe being alone. Maybe death. Maybe life. Honestly, I think I’m afraid of it all. This post is going to be long and riddled with rambling that won’t make any sense. I’m sorry, and if you stay through it all, thank you for your time. I wish I could give something back to you.

I don’t know where to start with this. Maybe I’ll start where all of this began...ha ha Sam, way to go.

My parents were never happy. I never realized it until it was over and the mushroom cloud of the divorce was already halfway round the world, but they weren’t. Mom, she works. She works all the time and I feel bad because I haven’t seen it really pay off for her. She sits in front of her computer from 5am to about 6pm typing medical notes. She’s been doing this for just about as long as I remember, and this has taken up a large part of my life. I remember waking up in the morning to her typing and coming home from school to her typing. I’m not sure if she actually likes the job, or if she’s been hiding from something...distracting herself.

Dad has been retired a couple of times and had to come out of retirement once to try to keep the family afloat. It was never something I saw but we were struggling. He specializes in landscaping and amateur astrophotography, though amateur may be an understatement. I don’t honestly remember much of him working because it was never anything at home and he would never bring it home with him. Other than the poison ivy. Mom didn’t like that.

I’m going to spare a lot of personal and family details that nobody but us need to know, but the years went on, we moved from Kansas to Massachusetts and I could see them growing apart. It was obvious. They would fight more, Dad would sleep on the couch more often than not because of his “restless leg syndrome,” and the spark was gone. Dad spent all his time up in his office while we would be downstairs watching our favorite TV shows, me and my mom. *I want to add a little side note here that I am not angry with any member of my family. I am happy that they are all doing seemingly well for themselves now, but more on that later* It was in the air that they weren’t together anymore.

Fast forward about 3 years. All of a sudden mom wants to go to our cabin up in New Hampshire a lot more. She needs time to herself. One day my dad brings my sister and I up to his office and gives us each a hug and says,

“That’s it. The marriage is over. Your mother is having an affair.”

My favorite author, Chuck Palahniuk once wrote in Fight Club, “We have just lost all cabin pressure,” and I have never related to a set of text more in my life. Right around the same time, and a week before my birthday, my girlfriend of 7 moths decided another guy was more suitable. Whatever, I was learning life lessons a lot this year it seemed.

Now, to be fair, to this day I don’t actually know what my mother was doing and it’s not really any of anyone else’s business. Both of them were unhappy and it needed to end for both of them so that they could be where they are now. My mom is happily living in New Hampshire at the same cabin, and my Dad is putting around the country with his lady. Good for them, right?

Backing up a little bit, before my dad met his new lady, we lived in several different places. We lived in a quiet little town that held the high school that I graduated from, then we moved back to the town we lived in when we moved from Kansas all those years ago. We went on like that for about three more years, trying to repair ourselves as a group after the divorce, my father, sister and I. We didn’t abandon my mother but there was a lot of confusion at that time and my sister and I didn’t know what to think and my mom was too far away to form our own ideas based on her story. So we were quiet for a little bit. I finished high school and was in a relationship for the majority of these three years. I was trying my best to be happy and I didn’t realize that I was cramming all of these emotions down and away until now. And then my dad met Her. Thats when it REALLY started going downhill for me, and it hasn’t gone far back up since.

My dad was 50 years old when I was born. He didn’t want to have children but then woke up one day and decided he wanted his family name to go on. I was 17, I think, when he met Her. I’m 21 now. If he was 50 when I was born, I’ll let you do the math. He realized he may not have too much time left and decided that he wanted to start living for himself. He moved to Florida with Her, and my sister moved in with a friend. I went back to our broken family home, which was on the market at the time. I’m not mad at him. I’m happy that he’s able to finally start living his life the way he’s wanted too.

I worked. I worked a lot while living in this house at a race track about 10 minutes up the road. I loved this race track as if I owned it, like it was mine. It was a newly built facility and I became a part of the crew at the end of its first year of operation. It was bittersweet work because while watching amazing pieces of machinery race around 2.3 miles of some of the best racing surfaces you can find in New England, I was stuck out in the sun and the heat. This is where my anxiety really started to get ahold of me. I stayed at this track for 2 years.

If you’ve never been through an anxiety attack, you’re more lucky than you may know. I thought my heart was stopping. I remember being hunched over in my chair on my corner of the race track telling my GM on the radio that I needed to get down and that I was having a serious problem. I felt like my heart was stopping, dear reader. I was hunched over in that fucking green folding chair with no feeling in my hands staring at a rock on the ground waiting for my life to end.

A small part of me was okay with it and I’m just now admitting it. That racing season ended and I haven’t been back very often since. This was 2016. Hold on tight, we’re moving a little quickly now.

After the racing season ended I ran out of an income and I couldn’t qualify for unemployment based on how much I had made from the track. I couldn’t afford to heat the house I was in for the winter because it was too big, and again, I didn’t have any income. Nobody was hiring. At this point I was still with the girl I had been with since the beginning of the divorce. I had a lot of feelings for this girl and she was kind enough to let me kind of go back and forth between her parents for a while but ultimately decided that she needed to do things for herself. That’s fine. Good for her. Noticing a pattern? This was December of 2016.

Well, now I’ve got nowhere to live. Look what you did for yourself, Sam, save your money you stupid fuck.

Lucky for me I’ve got some DAMN GOOD FRIENDS. Honestly, I don’t know what I did to deserve my inner circle in my life. My friend, Bej, we’ll call him for fun, and his amazing mother decided they could put me up for as long as I needed. I was infinitely grateful obviously but felt terrible deep down in my gut. I know that I have these friends but I felt like I had nothing. My family was all over the place when I thought for my whole life leading up to this point that I would always have the support group of my family right there behind me. They were there, but so, so fucking far away. I was newly out of a relationship and felt like everything was going against me.

I stayed with Bej and his mother for 3 months until I was able to find work at a new chain restaurant that was opening not far away. The second that I heard this place was opening I was the first to apply, the first to be interviewed, and the first to be hired to this new store. I was finally doing something for myself and felt amazing about it. I willingly drove an hour every day to go to the proper training for the new store and worked as hard as I could as often as I could. I actually ended up landing Bej and another friend their first jobs here and we’re all still with the company as of Sept, 2017. I was still lonely, though.

Remember the race track that I worked at? I went back for a regional event for a club I was a member of. It was a two day event. The first day wasn’t very eventful, cars raced, cars spun, people won awards. It was normal. We went down for lunch at noon.

There she was.

She was literally a fucking angel.

She was wearing a white BMW sweatshirt, white pants, and white Rosches. Literally an angel, guys.

I didn’t think I had a chance, honestly, so I didn’t fucking bother.

I tried to forget about her during the day. I got lost in the smell of race fuel and the loud engines until the end of the day. That’s when the Flag Chief told me who I’d be stationed with the next day.

Guess.

Okay, Sam, you don’t have a chance buddy but you’ve got nothing to lose.

“Hi, I hope you like sarcastic assholes!” -Nailed it.

We hit it off. I have said it before and I will say it many more times. I have NEVER. NEVER had any sort of connection like I do with this girl. It went well enough that I asked her out for ice cream after the event, and even though it was far too cold for it, I had to ask. I could not pass this opportunity up. She said yes, and we went, and even though it wasn’t exactly a date because of some other friends that were there from the track, it went amazing. I knew that day that good things were going to come of it. You’re probably sitting there thinking things are turning around, huh? Ha, me too.

I don’t know how to really explain the next whole bit without giving out too much personal information that I’m not at liberty to give, so I’m just going to try to wrap this up.

Legally, we can’t be together. Nothing to do with age or anything, we’re both the same age, but things are going on in her life that are keeping us apart. In addition, she has attempted school before but got caught up in social/love lives and school fell through because of it. She and I don’t want that to happen again. We’re taking a break. It’s a bit more of a break than I thought but I will do everything I can to be here on the far end of it. I don’t know how long this break will be and the lack of communication scares me. I fell HARD for this girl, reader. And as far as I know she fell hard for me. Why does this look so easy for her?

Basically, this has just been a sob post about how much of a mess I think my life is but its all really starting to weigh on me and I don’t know what to do about it. I’m getting to the point where I don’t really want to be here anymore. I left out a lot about how the multiple jobs I have/am trying to keep up, aren’t working due to abusive bosses because I suck at writing and this whole post is a shitshow anyways. I don’t know. I should shut up. Sorry for the anticlimactic ending. I’ve been at this for several hours and took a long break to work in the middle. I just wanted to let something out somewhere.

Thanks for reading. I hope you’re well, whoever and wherever you are. Better than I feel, at least.

#personal #storytime #mylife

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sailaway-frmthee-safeeharbor · 7 years ago

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My school experience with ADHD

I have always known that I had ADHD. From the time I was a little kid running around playing crazy detailed games of pretend and asking everyone I met questions about any subject a mile a minute. I always knew that there was something unique about the way my brain worked. The problem is, neither I, nor my parents, or my teachers were able to get an official diagnosis until I was 17 and in my Jr. year of high school. Being an only child, with several medical issues from the start and with parents who didn’t really know what to do with me made school, and life in general kind of difficult. Fortunately I was very lucky to have always loved learning no matter how hard the process had been. Math, (like many people) has always been my worst subject. I struggled with learning the concepts in the first place let alone trying to get them in my head enough to bring it to the test or move on to higher levels. And it sure as hell was not for lack of trying. The problem with school and especially teachers who do not understand that people have extremely varying was of learning, is that when it comes to kids with ADHD, we can put in a solid three hours, and only have half a page of work to show for it. It is extremely discouraging when you put all that effort in and you’re so proud of those solid three hours, and go into school the next day and have your teacher rip you apart for “being lazy”, and “not trying hard enough”, and asking the golden question of “why can’t you JUST do the work like everyone else!?”. Sometimes they even do it in front of the entire class. What kid is going to want to keep trying and is going to be motivated to keep learning about themselves and how they learn after a teacher, who is supposed to be your mentor, completely degrades you in front of everyone? The questions of “why cant you JUST…” are really hard to hear when you are young and you yourself would absolutely LOVE to know why the heck you can’t “just do the work like everyone else”. For me these disheartening questions started when I was in first grade.

My birthday falls in kind of a weird place in late June that made my parents really question if I was ready to go to kindergarten when I had just barely turned 5. I was already reading Junie B. Jones books and loving the work books my mom had given me so they figured it would be fine and it was. I started going to a private Methodist school and had a blast in kindergarten, just like many kids. But the next year really changed everything. I was younger than the majority of the kids in my class and it was my teacher’s first year of teaching. I don’t remember a ton of details from that year because I guess I spent a lot of my childhood desperately trying to forget it; but my parents still talk about how horrible it was to this day. I started to struggle with reading a little bit and the attention deficit was really starting to affect my learning process. It wasn’t that I was having behavioral issues in the class room or that I was being disruptive I just was having a little trouble with the work. I fall more under inattentive type rather than hyperactive type on the ADHD spectrum and what people don’t realize about that is it isn’t always about simple wandering thoughts, but it affects the way you gather, process, and categorize information in your head. At this point it was not a huge problem yet and had I had the little bit of support I needed I would have been fine. This of course was not the case. Instead of supporting me and giving me any kind of guidance let alone kindness, my teacher decided to make sure I knew just how stupid I was. Like I said I can’t remember a lot of detail but apparently I, a previously abnormally cheerful child, came home crying from school every single day for several months. Every day I grew more and more discouraged as any 6 year old would who had a teacher, a TEACHER constantly belittling them every single day. Needless to say after weeks of fighting the school my parents found a way to let me switch to a different class and a different school the next year. This helped me emotionally and helped me get back on track accedemically but the root problem was still there. My grades were ok enough for me to move to second grade but my parents had felt that I was so emotionally devastated by the constant daily humiliation and degradation, that it would be a good idea to repeat the first grade at the new public school. For the first two years the school change had really helped me get back to a productive mindset but again the signs were still there. I had a hard time sitting to study my spelling words and I was often asking to leave class to go to the nurse or the bathroom when I didn’t need to. I didn’t understand why I was doing those things or why certain simple tasks like cleaning my room took me so much longer than they should have. It was my normal. The rest of my schooling through 8th grade was pretty ok. There always seemed to be at least one teacher every year that didn’t really get me and I just had to kind of suffer in silence through it because honestly I didn’t really get me either. My grades were alright, mostly B’s and a few C’s with the acceptation of math. If I would have had any kind of additional support and a better understanding of the ADHD and how it manifested itself in my head then I am positive that I would have gotten straight A’s and would not have had so many emotional struggles in high school. The biggest thing at that point that got me through school was the fact that I really did enjoy learning and my love of reading. Being able to hyper focus on books has helped me keep up in school and has helped teach me how my brain categorizes information. Hyper focus is a great thing because when you’re in it, you can see how you think and feel in a productive setting. But you have to understand what is happening first. I was not able to make sense of why I could focus on some things and not others, and why I could learn something easily in one class and not the other, until my Jr. year in high school. And honestly it was a really tough process.

The transition to a private high school was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do. The classes were so so much harder and the expectations were much greater and I struggled immensely. It was devastating for someone like me who genuinely loves learning, to fail so hard. I desperately wanted to do well and gain more respect from my teachers but I couldn’t even find a place to start. It was an entirely new environment and the teachers were so different from what I was used to. The atmosphere of that high school was built on academic success and athletic accomplishments so there was a lot of pressure to be exceptional. All of a sudden I was in the position again where the teachers did not have a clue how to connect and interact with me and I started to really fall into depression and anxiety. Those questions of “why aren’t you trying hard enough and why can’t you just…” started coming up again and I wanted to give up. I was so depressed because of my failures at school that I barely had a social life because I couldn’t bring myself to make the effort. I felt like because I was so bad at school that I didn’t deserve to go out with friends or even deserve to be happy. With my teachers and the administration making school a kind of hostile unsafe environment, and the constant frustration I felt toward them and especially myself, my depression and anxiety became very damaging. I was self-harming and my anxiety was so bad that I couldn’t ask for any kind of help, not for school work and noy for myself. I ended up failing math that freshman year and it was just an all-around bad situation. This stress and distrust of teachers continued into my sophomore year. Amazingly I was able to get into an honors level history class Jr year because history has always been my passion and for some reason I liked all of my teachers a lot more this year too. I took the fact that these teachers seemed to genuinely care about me more than past teachers had very seriously. I wanted more than ever to do well for myself and to make them proud. It took an extra toll on my anxiety but I was able to start asking more questions. Not just questions in class but I was able to ask my self questions too. My parents had also been asking questions and trying to somehow find out why I had been struggling for so long. Toward the end of that year we were able to get documented in writing that I had ADHD. Once I finally had the actual diagnosis and started to connect the dots I was finally able to understand myself and start to forgive myself for all those years of struggle. So for my senior year I was actually allowed to utilize the school’s intervention specialists and it was amazing. At that point I had a fairly more decent grasp of my brain and how it worked that I was finally able to do a lot of the work on my own. The school had hired new intervention teachers and the one I was assigned that first semester made a monumental difference in my life. She didn’t really help me very much with my actual assignments but just the sheer fact of knowing I had at least ONE person on my side who believed in me, was there for me, and understood where I was coming from made all the difference. I finished my senior year a decimal point away from being on the honor roll.

It was a healing experience to start to finally have answers, but it was also hard at first because I was very bitter about it. I held on to so much anger that all these years of frustration and self-hatred and desperately wondering why, when there was a pretty simple answer all along. It has taken me a while to come to terms with my journey and the impact all of this has had on my life, and I still today as a freshman in college have some days where I really struggle with it, but I can honestly say that I am grateful for the whole experience. All of it. I am at a place now where I know so so much about myself and how I learn and how my brain works in general that I cannot even put into word how amazing it feels. Of course I can still get depressed and I still battle the anxiety every day, and I still encounter huge setbacks but without this amazing and horrible experience I wouldn’t know how to bounce back from it and how to keep going. If nothing else these are the most crucial things I have learned:

NEVER. STOP. ASKING. QUEESTIONS. No matter how defeated you are, no matter how much you want to give up, no matter how much you think you don’t even deserve answers, never stop asking questions because it is how you grow.

Also, be able to understand the importance of being able to take those little steps to being more productive as victories. Even if you work all day on a paper and that doesn’t seem like enough, you have to be able to reflect on the good things you did that day and really look at the things that went right, so that way it might not take you as long tomorrow. It really does suck having to fail a bunch of times before you can get into the swing of things, but you can find peace in knowing that you will never be perfect. You just have to take those few strengths you may have and make them work for you. It will take a lot of time, and tears, and frustration but the peace that comes from progress and knowing you are doing the best you can is worth all of those tears.

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#adhd #school #highschool #college #mental illness #mental health #sensory processing disorder #therapy #failure #attention deficit disorder

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j0sgomez-blog · 5 years ago

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By Michael Lanza

So, you’ve been an avid [circle all appropriate terms: hiker/backpacker/climber/trail runner/skier/kayaker] for years, and now you’re spending big chunks of your days changing diapers and your nights wondering when you’ll sleep again. You’ve never gone this long without getting out into the mountains, and you see no remedy for that shortfall in the foreseeable future. Your new baby is more wonderful than you’d ever imagined—and yet, you’re feeling a little despair over what’s missing from your life lately.

I know where your head is right now. And I have good news for you: I’ve seen the bright light at the end of the tunnel, and you can get there faster than you might think. Here’s how.

My family on a hike in Idaho’s City of Rocks National Reserve.

First of all, I know it’s hard to take a long view when you’re so deeply buried in the day-to-day management of a hectic life. But as a father of two teenagers, I can tell you that growing children race through development stages—each one very different—with blinding speed. While in many respects the infant and toddler years are the most demanding (and cutest), and can seem eternal at times, they do pass. In my experience, parenting keeps getting better.

But for now, you need some strategies for surviving the early years of parenting, when you face the greatest demands on your personal time—and your sanity. The following tips reflect what I’ve learned from more than 18 years as a parent who has always strived to get outside as much as possible—dayhiking, backpacking, climbing, running, paddling, skiing—with my family whenever I can, but also, at times without them.

My family at a hot springs while backpacking in Idaho’s Smoky Mountains.

1. Ignore the Naysayers

You’ll hear too many parents say things like, “Oh, you won’t be out backpacking/climbing/skiing anymore!” Don’t listen to them. These comments tend to come from people for whom getting outside isn’t as important as it is to you. They don’t understand your lifestyle or how much and how often you need to get out there—or how hard you’ll work at accomplishing that goal, no matter the obstacles.

When my kids were babies and toddlers I’d put them in a front pack or a child-carrier backpack and go for a hike by myself. My wife and I took them camping, dayhiking, skiing, backpacking, paddling rivers, and climbing from the time they were very young—even though it was a lot of work—because it gave us time outdoors and helped turn our kids into young people who now love backpacking, climbing, skiing, and paddling with us. She and I also took turns solo parenting to let each other get outside—for an hour, a few hours, a few days.

If you’re that type of person, that’s what you’ll do—regardless of what other people think or say.

Find your next adventure in your Inbox. Sign up for my FREE email newsletter now.

My kids inside a favorite rock formation at Idaho’s City of Rocks.

2. Hike Your Own Hike

That’s a motto among thru-hikers of long-distance trails, but the message applies just as well to raising children. Just as there are many ways to tackle a months-long hike, there are probably almost as many styles of parenting as there are parents. Just like setting out on a long hike, those first steps on the path of parenting can get bumpy. You’ll fall down and end some days bruised, sore, and wondering what the hell you’re doing.

Just figure out your own comfortable pace and what you need and don’t need; it doesn’t matter whether it resembles someone else’s approach. You’ll get there.

Hi, I’m Michael Lanza, creator of The Big Outside, which has made several top outdoors blog lists. Click here to sign up for my FREE email newsletter. Join The Big Outside to get full access to all of my blog’s stories. Click here to learn how I can help you plan your next trip. Please follow my adventures on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Youtube.

The pack of kids on a five-day float trip down the Green River in Canyonlands National Park.

3. Embrace Good Advice

As much as you must hike your own hike as a parent, you will also meet other parents—some with kids older than yours—who, by all appearances, are doing it right. They get out as much as they like. Their kids actually like getting out with them, and seem like great kids.

Get to know those parents; they just might know some tricks you will find useful. At the least, they’re probably fun to hang out with.

Don’t miss my popular “10 Tips For Raising Outdoors-Loving Kids.”

My daughter, Alex, age six, on a family backpacking trip in Grand Teton National Park.

4. Take the Kids Outside Often

Both of my kids went on their first hike—in a front pack on my chest—within a few days after they were born. That was merely symbolic, of course. But those short walks were emblematic of the philosophy my wife and I embraced from the beginning of parenthood: Our kids would learn that getting outdoors together as a family is normal.

We dragged the kids out camping, cross-country skiing, mountain biking, dayhiking and backpacking, paddling rivers and climbing (when they expressed an interest in the latter)—doing everything we liked to do with our kids, even though it often meant going much slower when the kids were little, and involved much more work. Even at home, whenever we had to go somewhere in town within biking range, in reasonable weather, we biked there.

If you want your children to share your passions, start them young and do it with them.

I can help you plan the best backpacking, hiking, or family adventure of your life. Find out more here.

Alex, age nine, getting lowered off a cliff in Utah’s Capitol Reef National Park.

5. Stop Worrying So Much

Before they were out of grade school, our kids had backpacked in parks from Grand Canyon to Olympic and among grizzly bears in Glacier; sea kayaked through wet, raw weather and camped on remote wilderness beaches in Alaska’s Glacier Bay; paddled among alligators in the Everglades; trekked through cold rain and wet snow in Norway’s Jotunheimen National Park; rock climbed 150-foot cliffs and rappelled into and crawled through slot canyons; and cross-country skied through snowstorms to backcountry yurts miles from the nearest road multiple times. (My award-winning book Before They’re Gone chronicles the year my family spent backpacking, rock climbing, paddling, and cross-country skiing in 11 national parks facing major threats from climate change.)

Bad parents, right?

Yes, we worry like any parents. We’re hyper-conscious about safety and ask a lot of questions. We’ve always tailored family activities to suit their ages and abilities. We’ve abandoned plans and turned back on trails when necessary.

But every time we’ve worried that we’re pushing our kids beyond their abilities, they have risen to the challenge and loved it.

It doesn’t matter whether your family tries to do what my family (or any other family) does; establish your own comfort zone. My point is this: Don’t over-worry about the kids. They’re often more resilient and adaptable than adults give them credit for.

Plan your next great backpacking adventure in Yosemite and other flagship parks using my expert e-guides.

A family backpacking trip on Zion’s West Rim Trail.

6. Find Other Parents Who Are Like You

Before your kids reach school age and start choosing their own friends, their friends will consist primarily of the children they meet through you—the children of your friends.

Seek out and cultivate friendships with people who share your interests and have kids the same age as yours.

Do things with families like that and your children will likely become good friends, which helps facilitate getting all of you outside more—and which becomes more valuable as your kids get older and want to have peers joining your family on outdoor adventures.

Let The Big Outside help your family get outdoors more. Join now for full access to ALL stories and get a free e-guide!

7. Negotiate With Your Spouse

You and your spouse may not always land on the same page when it comes to decisions over how much time you each want to spend solo parenting while the other gets outside, or even the return on effort invested to spend a weekend outdoors with little kids. Discuss these issues together, respect one another’s needs, and figure out where you can meet in the middle to achieve results you’re both happy with.

Want this lifestyle for your family? Use my “7 Tips for Getting Your Family on Outdoor Adventure Trips.”

My kids on a backpacking trip in Wild Basin, Rocky Mountain National Park.

8. Sleep When You Need To, Play When You Must

Sure, over time I’ve come to the acceptance that I can pass on an outing when I really need some sleep—and it’s okay to do that. But on many occasions, I’ve squeezed in a fun climb, hike, trail run, or dawn patrol ski tour because I got up really early and knocked it off before my family had finished breakfast. I’ve always been an early riser and viewed the hours when my kids are sleeping as belonging to me, and I like to make good use of that time, whether at home or when we’re on a family trip somewhere.

“Get Up Early” is one of my “10 Tips For Getting Outside More.”

My kids on a family backpacking trip in Oregon’s Eagle Cap Wilderness.

9. Accept the Occasional Disappointments

Kids get sick. Your spouse gets sick or has to work late. Kids have myriad special events you don’t want to miss: games, performances, school meetings, unexpected stuff. It never ends, it merely occurs in unpredictable cycles. You will occasionally miss planned and impromptu opportunities to ride, hike, run, climb, ski, paddle—the very moments you look forward to, that bring you deep and powerful feelings that your life is moving in the direction you prefer. That’s naturally disappointing.

Get over it and move on. Rather than dwelling negatively on what you missed, look ahead positively to the next opportunity to get outside—it will come. The right attitude really does make a difference. And the happy times of parenting outweigh the disappointments.

Planning your next big adventure? See “America’s Top 10 Best Backpacking Trips” and “The 25 Best National Park Dayhikes.”

My family on a multi-day hut trek through Norway’s Jotunheimen National Park.

10. Most of All, Enjoy It

This time is fleeting and changes happen rapidly. While that’s true of all childhood—and becomes ever more apparent when they reach their teen years—children grow and develop with blinding speed in those early years. If you work or go away too much, you’ll miss out on entire stages of physical and emotional growth in your kids. Neglect to give them your attention, especially when they need it, and you may end up like the father in that old Harry Chapin song, “Cat’s in the Cradle,” with a son who grew up just like him—and now has no time for his dad.

I remember friends—who were expecting their first just months after our first was born—asking me what I saw as the biggest change in my life when we became parents. My answer: “I suddenly have this brand-new, most-important person in my life.” It has really proven true over the years. Now my teenage kids are my skiing, backpacking, climbing, and paddling partners—and getting better than me at the technical sports.

Lie down in the grass with your kid and watch the clouds pass by. You might be shocked at how much fun it is. As the late singer-songwriter Warren Zevon once said: “Enjoy every sandwich.”

Tell me what you think.

I spent a lot of time writing this story, so if you enjoyed it, please consider giving it a share using one of the buttons at right, and leave a comment or question at the bottom of this story. I’d really appreciate it.

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milesbeardworth · 8 years ago

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Treating Separation-Related Fin Biting in Domestic Bettas

I have recently been talking with @oliviner about our experiences with domestic bettas and separation anxiety, and put together a post summarizing some of the things I have done over the years to treat my bettas that I believe have bitten their fins and suffered other symptoms characteristic of separation anxiety.

I am sometimes met with skepticism when I bring up this topic, but I think people often forget that bettas are a domesticated animal species and that being domesticated is inherently a process that changes the way a species relates to and behaves around humans. In my eyes, a betta fish having separation anxiety is just as plausible a scenario as it is for a dog or a cat.

Interestingly, with this sort of fin biting, tail type seems to have little to do with the behavior. I have had veiltails, crowntails, halfmoons, even plakats and one female betta fish bite their fins for this reason.

It’s true that most of what is out there on the topic of separation anxiety is dog-centric. I spent the majority of my Canine Training and Animal Behavior/Welfare classes a few years back adapting what we went over to my bettas and other aquarium fishes, despite rarely ever actually talking about fishes in class. Just like in training, all the same concepts do work here, they just sometimes have to be applied slightly differently. Taking those classes was when I first started to really see the parallels in behavior and symptoms between canine separation anxiety and what I have observed in my own fishes, and started trying to figure out how I could adapt existing treatments to be used with my bettas. I am in no way a veterinarian, but without access to a professional to consult on the matter, these are the methods I have come up with myself and found to be most effective.

I apologize in advance for the length of this post, but it is a subject that is difficult to explain (at least for me) without going in to some amount of detail.

General things to help with separation anxiety:

Changing your departure routine

A few years back I realized that every time I left the house, I sat down and put my shoes on right in front of Puck’s tank. I thought I was doing a good thing by spending time with him before I left, but the opposite was actually true. This potentially could have made his condition worse, as he came to associate me putting on my shoes with me leaving, and he may also have started getting into that stressed state as soon as he saw me sit down to put my shoes on.

You can change up what you do before you leave the room your fish is in, and you can also practice doing things that are associated with you leaving (such as putting shoes on, in Puck’s case) without actually leaving, thus breaking the association between that behavior and your departure.

Making hellos and goodbyes calm and brief

I try to keep things simple and somewhat detached when I am about to leave the room. I drop in food or turn on videos for Duo, but don’t sit in front of or interact with him before I leave. I do the same thing when I come home; I will give him a small wave, let him know I’m back and that I see him, but I will not go sit down with him until at least 10 minutes have passed since I returned. This helps keep from unintentionally reinforcing the anxiety/fin biting, by not giving your fish excessive attention as soon as you return.

Giving noncontingent reinforcement (using social interaction/attention as the reinforcer)

Noncontingent means that the reinforcement is given regardless of whether or not the animal performs a desired behavior. In this case, it means giving attention to your fish regardless of what they are doing at that moment. With one of my past bettas Phoenix, I found that having fixed periods of time throughout the day in which I would sit and give him attention regardless of anything else that was going on or that he was doing, really helped to reduce his fin biting.

Training a signal behavior that the fish can give you when they want attention/want you nearby

This one is not really adapted from anything I’ve read about in regards to treating separation anxiety in dogs, but if you’ve ever trained a dog to ring bells on a string or bark when they want to go outside, the idea is very similar. I once had the thought that Puck’s separation anxiety might be so bad in part because, unlike a dog or a cat, he was restricted entirely to his aquarium and could not approach me directly when I was not sitting with him to interact or spend time with me. I thought that training him to give me a signal when he wanted me to come over to him might help him feel like he had more control and influence over the situation, and may help decrease his separation anxiety symptoms.

To do this, I captured a behavior he already offered, and reinforced it with attention. Most betta keepers are familiar with the wiggle a fish will often do at the front of their tank when they see you. Puck would do this whenever he saw me come into the room, or when I was moving around it. So I started immediately going over and sitting with him whenever I saw him perform this wiggle at the front of his tank. I only ever reinforced the behavior with attention, never food, and he caught on very quickly.

Eventually we got to the point where I would see him offer the behavior and go sit with him, he would go back to doing what he was as soon as I did, making it look like he was “ignoring” me, but as soon as I got up to walk away he would come straight back to the front of his aquarium and signal again. The same thing would happen over and over again, making it apparent to me that he was very aware of what the cue meant and what he was doing when he offered the behavior.

If there is a day or period of time in which you are going to be home more than usual, make sure you still spend time apart from your fish

When I was in school, I had to make sure to give the bettas space on the weekends (even if only by going into another room for an hour or two), or else they would be much worse with their fin biting when I went back to class on Mondays. I made the mistake with Puck over winter break a few years ago of being home and around almost all the time, and when I finally went back to school after about a month of this, he bit off over half his caudal and anal fins in just two days.

Over time I have realized that I need to be conscious of my schedule and how it might affect things in this way, and even if I don’t really need to go anywhere for the day, I make sure to get out of my/the bettas’ room for a while. This also helps ensure your treatment stays consistent, and that your fish doesn’t go long periods of time without being exposed to it.

Some adapted treatments you can enact to help a fish suffering from separation anxiety:

Using “medication”

In severe cases, dogs and cats with separation anxiety are sometimes treated with medication. I am not aware of any instances in which a companion fish has been treated with medication for anxiety, and I would not suggest trying it without the supervision of a veterinarian. However, there are some things commonly used to decrease stress in aquarium fishes that you may also be able to try with a betta fish suffering from separation anxiety. The main things I have used are: Indian almond leaves, rooibos tea, StressGuard, and dim lighting.

Indian almond leaves and rooibos tea perform similar functions, adding tannins into the water that are both beneficial physically and that darken the color of the fish’s water, which could potentially help to reduce stress and make the fish feel more comfortable. I have used rooibos tea in place of almond leaves when I did not have easy access to them, or when it was already working well for that fish in particular. One of my worst biters, Makoto, was also the only one I cured entirely, and rooibos tea was what he had in his tank when I was treating him.

StressGuard (or a similar product, if this one is not available) can help reduce stress, as well as promote healing and prevent infection if the fish is fin biting. I also dosed this daily when I was treating Makoto.

Finally, dim lighting can help to reduce stress and keeping the lights off or dimmed while you are gone may help to reduce the stress and anxiety caused by separation. None of these are truly “medications”, but they are additives that may be used in combination with other separation anxiety treatments.

Providing additional mental stimulation and exercise

“Mental stimulation” can mean a lot of things, as can “exercise”, but in the context of treating a betta fish with separation anxiety, I usually accomplish this through training sessions. I can provide more information on how to do this if desired, but I have found this to be a good way for some bettas to expend energy and focus that they might otherwise be using to feel anxious when you are away. With Puck, I held daily training sessions, usually 30-40 minutes before I was going to be leaving the house. We trained various behaviors such as flaring on cue, pushing around a floating ball, and giving “high-fives”.

Providing additional environmental enrichment

A more complex environment may help to decrease symptoms of separation anxiety. Different forms of enrichment may be more effective for different individuals. For example, I had one betta, Odysseus, whose fin biting was greatly helped by having another betta in a tank neighboring his that he could still see and interact with while I was gone. Puck, however, was actually worse with his fin biting when he could see another fish next to him.

Training itself is another form of enrichment. Enrichment can also entail changing the physical environment, offering new plants and decor, changing the environment outside their aquarium, and so on.

Variety in the diet

This is actually another form of environmental enrichment, but I mention it separately because it has been one of the most successful treatments I have tried for separation anxiety. There are two primary ways I have used food/variety in the diet to treat separation anxiety: by varying how the food is delivered, and by varying what foods are given.

Primarily, I vary “delivery” by scattering food around a fish’s tank as the last thing I do before I leave the house, leaving them to forage for it while I am gone. This keeps them busy and focused on something other than me being gone, and allows a positive association to form in regards to our separation. This is somewhat like leaving a Kong toy stuffed full of treats for a dog, just adapted to better suit a betta fish and their environment and behavior.

To make this even more effective, you can also vary the types of food that you use. I have found foods that are more stimulating for a betta fish to eat to be more effective, and some of the foods I have had the most success with are: canned mini mealworms, canned crickets, canned river shrimps, and gel food (made with insects as an ingredient).

I often use pellets for this purpose as they are easy to scatter, but the other foods work very well and even just including them in the diet has, in my experience, helped decrease this particular sort of fin biting. There are also treat tablets made for fishes that you can stick to the aquarium glass for the fish to pick off, and though I have not yet used this specifically as a treatment for separation anxiety, it is something I intend to try myself. Eating these foods takes more time and effort, and may be a good way to keep a fish engaged and (productively) active while you are gone for a long period of time.

A digital photo frame for your fish

For one of my current bettas Maes, I put together a digital picture frame filled mostly with pictures of myself, as well as some other people he knows, some pictures of my other bettas, and pictures of other things he might find interesting (such as flowers).

I specifically trained this to function as a sign that I am gone, but could return at any moment. Some people suggest doing something similar with dogs (often with something like a radio), but I picked a digital photo frame because I thought it would be the most salient thing for a betta fish as well as being easily customized by picking out pictures I thought would be most effective.

I started by only having the frame on when I was going to be gone for very short periods of time, and slowly worked up to having it on for several hours. This was done in combination with other treatments, such as scattering food and having a neighbor. This combination of treatments has been extremely effective for Maes, to the point where he only bit his tail once (as opposed to biting large chunks out of it) when I was out of town recently.

Playing videos for them when you are gone

In particular, I have found videos of fishes swimming, cartoons, and video game footage to be the most engaging and most effective for a betta fish. I have a Youtube playlist specifically put together for Duo, and so far this has been the most effective thing I have tried for him. Duo in particular seems to like the Wind Waker Collection Series on Pbggameplay’s Youtube channel, and Maes has always really liked watching lightsaber fights, if you are looking for some specific videos to try out.

Other bettas in the past have also shown interest in and benefited from watching videos while I am away. If I am sneaky enough, I can often return home and catch them in the act of watching what I’ve left on for them!

These are just some of the things you can try, and some of the methods that I have found to be most successful. If more clarification is needed on anything or more information is desired, feel free to ask! And of course, I am always happy to hear others’ opinions or experiences with their own fishes!

#bettablr #fishblr #betta fish #fish training #fish behavior #separation anxiety #fin biting #milesbeardworth writes

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cosmosogler · 8 years ago

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hello. when i went to therapy on friday my therapist recommended i start writing every day again. then i didn’t write on friday. but i am writing today!

been having a lot of trouble sleeping. between feeling super restless and having nightmares i don’t get a lot of sleep. i tried taking wiley out for a long walk today and we’ll see if that helps me get a little more settled in when i try to go to bed.

i realized several days too late that i had left my pokemon in a timed mini game in poke pelago, where if you leave them in for a while their happiness goes up, but if they’re there too long their happiness starts to go down instead. so all their happiness stats were at 0 again and i accomplished nothing. i’ll try to be on top of it this time and take them out in the morning.

i have been utterly unable to eat more than a few bites at a time for the last three days. i try to break up my meals into halves and eat the leftovers the next day and i STILL can’t handle the half portions. it’s like, no matter how small i make my meals, i can still only eat a fraction of whatever i make. i guess i was hoping that exercising with the dog would bring back my appetite but it didn’t. i’ll have to try again tomorrow. i get super nauseous every time i try to eat even a little bit, to where i almost threw up immediately after getting halfway through a pb and j sandwich. that is not a hard to digest meal.

i’m not sure what to write about now... i haven’t really talked to many people the last week or so since my last entry. i am trying to build some new friendships since i don’t have the other physics majors to spend time with any more. but meeting new people is like trying to climb a wall using only my fingernails.

i am trying to be at the very least nice, if i can’t be kind. i wonder if my trepidation makes me a bad person.

star vs the forces of evil is an interesting choice for disney to broadcast. i guess the tv channel doesn’t mind letting its relationships get messy. the show has a lot of elements that i like in OTHER tv shows- but the way they’re put together in this particular show is somehow unsatisfying. i still can’t figure out why. i want to say the villain is too straightforward, but the lich from adventure time does that too and i like that villain in that show’s context. i think it’s really interesting how ludo is an ineffective villain without being sympathetic or too multi-dimensional. everything you need to know about him you learn in the first episode he shows up in. he never really shows hidden depths. you learn his dad was real hard on him and it’s like “yeah, i could have extrapolated that” and also i still didn’t feel sorry for him. i don’t think he deserved what happened to him toward the end of season 2, but it didn’t come as a surprise. he gets in way over his head and then he finds too late that he can’t swim. but having watched his first appearance, i KNEW he couldn’t swim.

i dunno. it’s a character i’ve seen before played in a way i haven’t seen before. like a captain planet villain that wandered into the horned king’s castle. the horned king is from, uh, the black cauldron. it’s not the most widely-known disney movie but it’s the best comparison i can think of.

i do have problems with the way it handles the protagonists. i was hoping that two seasons would sharpen up marco’s character but he still feels really... vague and not as perceptive as i thought he would be. i can’t get a handle on what his character is about, because it changes completely between the first and second episodes and i guess i never got over that confusion. i could forgive early installment weirdness, but the first episode is not the pilot. and marco doesn’t change over time the way finn or steven universe do. it’s a stark difference between the first and second episodes. like “these are his main character traits” differences. and the love conga line is frustrating at best. it’s not even a love triangle. it’s just a line of people pining for each other. but we know how it’s going to end because of the “blood moon destiny” thing so i don’t know why they’re bothering with all this unnecessary drama. the only thing i can hope for is that the whole “destined soulmates” thing gets directly subverted somehow.

i also am not sure how to feel about how it “gets dark.” but it’s not because i have a problem with kids’ shows getting dark? because i liked it in gravity falls, it seemed appropriate. and i liked it in adventure time and homestuck, i guess because i like getting mood whiplash. it’s been a few days and i still can’t put my finger on why it doesn’t feel right in this situation. the moment i realized i didn’t like it was very specific though. it was when queen moon goes to the monster king guy’s shack in the forest of death. ludo’s parents’ house. and you see the monster queen for the first time, and she has a black eye, and it’s very obvious that there’s some domestic abuse going on there. i saw that character and i said to myself “hmm, no, that’s too much.” but WHY did i say that to myself? i don’t expect every cartoon relationship to be happy or healthy. i guess i got too used to steven universe or something. the abusive relationship between the joker and harley quinn in the batman cartoon didn’t feel so... out of place. maybe because harley has a personality outside of “battered girlfriend/wife?”

hey look at that! i typed for like 40 minutes. most of it was navel gazing about a children’s cartoon.

i am beta reading an acquaintance’s story too. i want to talk about that now, but i think i’ve talked long enough about the media i consume for one night. i think i’ve said everything that is helpful to him, and everything that is not helpful to asher. so at least i’ve said it at some point. the story is not personally to my taste, but looking at other books that have become popular, i don’t think that the premise and direction necessarily make it a bad story. so i try to keep my critiques to the guy focused on the mechanics of the story rather than ruminating on potential metaphors and emotional payoff.

my therapist says i think a whole lot. i wondered how she knew that before we even spoke for a whole hour, but looking back at what i just wrote i feel like some things about myself might be really obvious. i’m not really as inscrutable as i’d sometimes like to be. i wonder if, since it seems easy to get a handle on my personality, that makes me a less interesting person.

i talked to asher last night about how i feel life is going for me right now and how my dreams might reflect that. he described my dreams as “fruitless tasks” and i think that is an accurate assessment. i don’t know how to summarize the feeling right now. i spent like an hour describing it last night and i don’t have that much energy left right now.

he did say something really interesting that i’ve been thinking about all day though. he said i could always choose to not do the tasks my dreams set up for me. i realized that that’s what my jumbi story is kind of about. the climax of the story, and where it kind of abruptly cuts off, is jumbi’s decision to NOT do something, and then the story ends there because she’s kind of refusing to participate in the narrative any more. she quits and goes home.

i think the only way i wouldn’t do one of my dream tasks though is if i realized i was dreaming and specifically remembered to try that, which doesn’t always happen. otherwise in my dreams i always feel like i’m going through the motions even suspecting or knowing that there’s absolutely no “reward.” feels like that when i’m awake too.

hey, sorry i talked so much. i didn’t think i had so much to say. i’m not sure how to wrap this up. everything just kind of fell out and i don’t have a pretty bow to tie it all up with. sorry, i guess.

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romanticatheart-posts · 6 years ago

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King Sized Revelations - 2

In this chapter we will meet Liam’s mother by way of a letter she wrote many years ago. You are interrupted by a phone call from Liam and have a little family time with Regina and Constantine.

NSFW! Pixelberry owns all characters but I do love writing about them! Enjoy!

Master List

You are in your office holding the letter Constantine gave you just minutes ago. It is a letter from Liam's mother, written to the woman he chose to be his bride.

You slowly unfold it as your heart begins to thump wildly in your chest. Taking a deep breath… you begin to read…

My dearest daughter,

Let me start by saying it is not my wish to introduce myself to you in this manner and yet somehow, there is a feeling within me that I won't be there the day my sweet Liam marries the love of his life. As dismal as this all may seem to you, I still want to be a part of your life. Even if only in memory. I'm sure you've been told many things about me by now, but I want you to know me as a woman and not just as a queen, wife and mother. I suspect you and I share many similarities in our thoughts and overall character. I've tried to imagine the kind of person my son would fall in love with and ultimately marry and I must believe that even though he is bound by the expectations of being royalty, Liam will never let the court decide that direction of his life. Only his beautiful heart will control that outcome.

Liam has a kind and generous heart and he genuinely loves those closest to him, but I believe that falling in love means more than a casual emotion, and his vision of love is deep and abiding. Several months ago, he and his circle of friends were play acting, as most children do at this age. But, when it came time for him to choose a 'wife', he would not participate. He just walked away and as he approached me, I could see that he was troubled. When I asked him why he didn't want to play with the others, he simply said, "Mother, they want me to choose a wife." I explained that all children play this game in one form or another, but he was not going to be one of them. He said, "Being in love should not be a game and I won't pretend to be married to someone I do not love." I couldn't argue with that. Even at this youthful age, he knows love and marriage are to be revered…

I was very proud of him in that moment and I couldn't help but smile. He dashed up to his room and I followed. Right before entering I overheard him talking to his favorite stuffed animal, so I stopped to listen. "When I'm ready to choose a wife, she won't be like any of these girls at court. She will be smart, beautiful and kind and she won't care that I'm a prince. She'll love me for who I am and not because of a dumb title." Those words penetrated to the very depths of my soul from the moment I heard them spurt from his mouth. Instead of going in, I slowly backed away to give him this moment of privacy. He has such a beautiful heart and I'm sure that is just one of the many reasons you fell in love with him to begin with.

Liam does have a beautiful heart and she is right, it is only one of the many reasons you fell in love with him. You marvel at how perceptive she was and is about him.

I must assume that you are not a noblewoman by birth, as I know my son and he has never taken an interest in the lifestyle to which he was born. He wants so desperately to just be a 'normal' person and I can't imagine that will ever change. Also, I have read that most men will marry a woman with qualities like their mother and women will marry similarly to their fathers. If this is true, then I will believe you are a commoner like myself and possibly quite tenacious and down-to-earth. Which brings me to the next point of this letter… I was determined to create a life of my own and the only way to do that was to move away from my home and family. They were not direct descendants of nobility, so I had no aspirations of ever becoming Queen of Cordonia. Upon arriving to the capital, I immediately secured employment as an assistant to one of the local florist's. I became quite skilled at arranging and assembling the flowers, much to my own surprise.

There was to be a ball at the palace within the week and the royal florist had closed its doors for mourning, due to a death in the family. With over one hundred matching centerpieces needing to be created, our little shop was hired to complete this seemingly impossible task. We worked night and day for three days straight, only sleeping in shifts on a cot in the back room. As embarrassing as it might sound, I'm not sure I ever went that long without a full bath, or proper nutrition, but when we finished on time, the accomplishment far outweighed any inconvenience.

Two days after the ball, and our recovery from sleep deprivation and mal-nourishment, we were visited by the King of Cordonia. He wanted to thank us for accepting the job on such short notice and to offer an official request to become the new royal florist! Of course, the owner accepted, and I could see that Constantine wasn't as interested in that as he was with me. I already knew that his first marriage had ended in an annulment after she abandoned him and their young son. My heart went out to him and how hard it must have been trying to raise his child alone… It wasn't long after, that he began to frequent the shop, usually around the time we would close for lunch. For weeks, we spent that time getting to know each other and one day, in front of the store owner and his own guards, he asked if I would be interested in spending some time with him away from the shop and I eagerly accepted. By then, I had fallen in love with him and I was convinced that he felt the same.

After ten months of proper courtship, we announced our engagement… much to the dismay of the nobles at court… They only saw me as a simple commoner who would most likely be the reason for the fall of the monarchy… To my surprise, Constantine didn’t let that deter him from making me his queen. It was hard, but in those few short months before the wedding, I had gained the support of most everyone in the court, not to mention the people. Now, I can’t take all the credit but what mattered the most to me was that I would be with the man I loved… nobles and their arrogance be damned! I know Constantine can be quite commanding in his duties as the king, but in private… he is the most loving and romantic man any woman could hope for. It’s why I fell in love with him to begin with.

After we were married, one of my primary duties as queen was looking after Leo. He is quite boisterous but is always polite and kind to me. I never tried to take his own mother's place, but I never objected to him calling me mother either. It was very rewarding caring for Leo, but what I wanted more than anything was a child of my own. I'll never forget the day I learned that my dream would soon become a reality. After the arrival of this precious gift, my life was complete. Having the title of queen has its advantages, but there is nothing more rewarding than being a mother. Once you've experienced it for yourself, you will know exactly what I mean... Motherhood is bliss!

Just then, your phone rings. As you pick it up, you see it's Liam and smile.

CATHERINE "Hello sweetheart!" LIAM "It's so good to hear your voice my love." CATHERINE "I miss you already." LIAM "I missed you the moment I left this morning." CATHERINE "Aww Liam…you are so sweet." LIAM "Only to you. So how has your day been My Queen?" CATHERINE "Okay I guess, but I did have an interesting conversation with your father this morning." LIAM "Oh? What about?" CATHERINE "He mentioned your coronation and…" LIAM "Why would he bring that up again?" CATHERINE "I think he wanted some closure and maybe he just really feels bad about what he did." LIAM "Only because you unveiled his scheme. He wouldn’t have given it a second thought otherwise." CATHERINE "I don’t know Liam… I'm not so sure he didn't want it to be revealed. He said he’d lost sight of the things that were important, and that he’d let power control his better judgement." LIAM "That's an understatement." CATHERINE "He was very sincere Liam and asked for our forgiveness." LIAM "Oh. And how did you respond?" CATHERINE "Well, speaking for myself I told him I already had." LIAM "Things between us have been less tense but I'm not so sure I'm ready to just forget that it ever happened." CATHERINE "I don’t think he expects you to forget it, but I think he would like the opportunity to apologize. If you could have seen him this morning... he was in tears remembering how devastated you were when you saw those pictures of me and Tariq. I think he truly regrets the whole thing." LIAM "Catherine, I never doubted your integrity, not even for a moment, but it was hard for me to see you in the arms of another man…" CATHERINE "I can only imagine what was going through your mind at the time." LIAM "I’ve thought the same about you… In that moment though, I was so conflicted… my happiness or your safety. In retrospect, there are many things I would have done differently… I have my own share of regrets from that horrible night Catherine." CATHERINE "I know… and I understand all of it but what truly matters is that we’re together…. I wish I were in your arms right now Liam." LIAM "So do I."

There is a slight pause in conversation as you begin to imagine him holding you close, his breath gently caressing your skin… you sigh.

LIAM “Catherine, is something wrong?” CATHERINE “No, no. I was just… thinking about you actually…” LIAM "Oh? And what were you thinking exactly?" CATHERINE "I was thinking… how much I want you right now…" LIAM "Catherine…"

Another pause… and when he speaks you can almost hear the smile in his voice.

LIAM "Tell staff to add an extra place setting. I will be arriving in a couple of hours." CATHERINE "But, what about the summit? Shouldn’t you stay and finish?" LIAM "I can leave early in the morning and make it back in time before the next one starts. They won’t even miss me." CATHERINE "You're serious, aren't you?" LIAM "Of course I'm serious. You can't expect me to neglect my queen in her time of need. And besides, I have a few of my own…" CATHERINE "Mmmm… what should I be expecting?" LIAM "Whatever Her Majesty desires…" CATHERINE "And what does His Majesty desire?" LIAM "Before or after we undress?" CATHERINE "After… of course." LIAM "Hmm… let’s just say I won’t stop until you’re completely and utterly satisfied…"

His breath becomes shallow.

LIAM “… whatever it takes…” CATHERINE "Mmmm… I can’t wait for you to get here…" LIAM "I promise to make it worth the wait. I'll see you soon my love."

CATHERINE "Liam has decided to join us for dinner tonight." CONSTANTINE "Has the summit concluded already?" REGINA "My, that was prompt." CATHERINE "No, not yet. He wanted to have dinner with us tonight and plans to leave first thing in the morning." CONSTANTINE "I hope this won't become his usual practice for heaven's sake. The cost of jet fuel is astronomical." REGINA "Now Constantine, surely you wouldn't begrudge these two over a little jet fuel. After all, they are still newlyweds."

You blush as Regina smiles and Constantine suddenly grasps her meaning.

CONSTANTINE "Oh! Well... I wouldn't want a couple of thousand gallons of fuel coming between young love. I look forward to seeing him. Are we still on for six?" CATHERINE "Yes. And I need to finish a few things before he gets here, so I'll see you two then." REGINA "Certainly dear."

You make your way upstairs to your bedroom suite and immediately start rummaging through your wardrobe. Finally, you find the perfect dress. It's a low cut, wrap around that emphasizes your curves and allows easy access...

CATHERINE "Perfect!"

You hurry to the bathroom and turn on the water for a quick bath. Afterward you get dressed and head to your office with the intent to busy yourself until Liam arrives. Upon entering, the familiar pile of documents still sits on the table, awaiting your attention and signature. Before beginning, you search the playlist of tunes on your phone and after placing the earbuds in each ear, you start. With the diversion of singing aloud and swaying to the music, time goes by quickly… and before you know it, you've reached the end of the stack. Just then your favorite song starts playing so you stand and reach for the stapler on your desk. Holding it as if it were a microphone, you close your eyes and start singing along while the beat of the music finds you dancing in perfect rhythm… as you are about to hit the high notes you to look up to see Liam standing in the doorway observing you with a smile. Startled, you immediately drop the stapler onto the desk and your earbuds right next to it… then you smile at him.

CATHERINE “Liam…” LIAM "Don't stop on my account."

He steps in and closes the door as you run toward him jumping into his arms. He immediately catches you and your lips meet in a sweltering kiss, sending currents of heat throughout your body.

CATHERINE "How long were you standing there?" LIAM "Long enough… I was quite enjoying your performance."

CATHERINE "What about dinner?" LIAM "I have more important things to tend to at the moment..."

LIAM "Mmmm…"

CATHERINE "Oh Liam…"

LIAM "Oh Catherine…"

As he removes the dress from the rest of your body, he lets out a deep groan when he discovers you are completely bare. His hand delves down, gently caressing your sweet spot and with tender strokes he penetrates you with his fingers. You respond with a lively moan, moving against him until you are drenched and on the verge of spasm. With one hand gripping your thigh to pull you closer, he grasps your hair with the other and brings your face to his, thirst in his eyes. With your legs wrapped around him, you can feel the heat of his erection leaning near your wet folds, almost begging to penetrate… He kisses you, nipping at your lower lip then kisses a line to your ear and whispers softly…

LIAM "I love you…" CATHERINE "Prove it..."

LIAM "Oh how I need you… Catherine… always…” CATHERINE "I love you Liam …so much…" LIAM "I love you…"

His kisses deep and hot as he begins to drive harder, faster… his hands clutching your thighs until he feels you quiver in ecstasy and with one last powerful push, he releases inside you as a wave of warmth flows through your body.

CATHERINE "Liam…Ohhh Liam…" LIAM "Catherine...you are so beautiful…"

You collapse into each other's arms until the trembling subsides…When you both catch your breath, Liam lifts you off the desk and smiles. “Have you noticed how each time we’re together, it’s always better than the last?” You start gathering your clothes. “I have. What do you think it means?” “I’m not sure…it could be that our love is so strong that it allows us to connect on a much deeper level… as if you know what I need before I do and vice versa.” “Liam, I knew we were soulmates, from day one.” He kisses you and then smiles as you both get dressed and head to your bedroom.

After cleaning up you each put on fresh clothes, then make your way to the dining room where Constantine and Regina are waiting.

CONSTANTINE "Liam, good to see you son." LIAM "Father, Regina, it's good to be home tonight." REGINA "We were just about to begin without you two. I wasn't sure if you had decided not to join us after all."

LIAM "We are only a few minutes late, but we appreciate your patience." CONSTANTINE "Were you able to discuss the platform yet?" LIAM "Not yet. I will be presenting immediately following lunch tomorrow." CONSTANTINE "Oh, that might work to our advantage. Everyone will be more relaxed after a good meal. Keep me informed along the way. I'm anxious to see how Cordonia is received." LIAM "Certainly father." CONSTANTINE "I'm actually glad you came back tonight. I have a bit of news I would like to share." LIAM "I'm listening." CONSTANTINE "I saw my doctor this morning…" LIAM "And?" CONSTANTINE "And, you know I was placed on a new treatment plan recently and… well the report came in today." LIAM "What were the results?" CONSTANTINE "It seems there is a bit of improvement." LIAM "How much of an improvement?" CONSTANTINE "Enough that the cancer has slowed in progression and with continued treatment, it's quite possible to achieve remission." LIAM "That is wonderful news father! And I just noticed that you're not in your wheelchair. This is new." CONSTANTINE "I would prefer if you didn’t refer to it as my wheelchair… that thing is such a nuisance. I decided to put it away and try walking more... to build up my strength. " LIAM "So how’s that going?" CONSTANTINE "Very well actually. And as for my other issues, the lightheadedness is all but gone and the nausea is being well controlled with medicine." LIAM "I am relieved to hear that father. It's good to know that there is finally some hope." CONSTANTINE "Enough about that. I have other news as well. Catherine mentioned the Apple Festival this morning and I had neglected to mention that your brother might be in attendance with his family." LIAM "I don't know if I can stand any more good news. It will be good to see him and meet his family after all this time." CONSTANTINE "It will be wonderful having the entire family in attendance for a change. I have missed many opportunities with regard to that and I hope you won't make that same mistake Liam."

Liam looks at you with a smile, taking your hand and kissing it gently.

LIAM "Father, nothing is more important to me than family and spending time with the ones I love… And one in particular." CATHERINE "I'll make sure he doesn't forget." REGINA "Catherine, since this will be your first time organizing the festival, will you be needing any assistance with preparations?" CATHERINE "Actually, I was going to ask you about that. I'm not sure about the decorations and I want to keep it as close to tradition as possible. Would you mind giving me a few pointers?" REGINA "Of course not. To be perfectly honest, I have missed certain duties of being queen and it would be a pleasure to help any way I can." CATHERINE "And, I can learn from one of the best in the process."

Regina laughs appreciatively.

REGINA "Oh dear, I don't know about that, but I’ll be at your disposal. And don’t underestimate yourself. You have done quite well without my help so far." CATHERINE "I do my best but I'm sure there is a lot more to learn." LIAM "You have mastered many tasks my love and I am very proud to have you as my queen." CATHERINE "Well thank you Liam. You're not so bad yourself."

Liam laughs, as does Constantine and Regina. Once everyone is finished eating, you all sit back and relax for a moment.

CONSTANTINE "That was a very satisfying meal, as is the company." LIAM "I'll second that father." CATHERINE "Would you just look at us… I think you might say we’re behaving somewhat like a family." REGINA "Yes…it's quite refreshing isn't it?"

Everyone smiles pleasantly at each other but no one responds to Regina’s question. Obviously, it is agreed. Liam breaks the silence.

LIAM "Father, do you need my assistance before Catherine and I retire?" CONSTANTINE "No, I still have my nurse you know. No need to make a fuss. And besides, you have an early day tomorrow, so you should get some rest." LIAM "Very well. Regina, do you need help getting him upstairs?" REGINA "Actually, he's walking quite well but thank you. We'll manage." LIAM "If you are sure then, we shall bid you both goodnight." CONSTANTINE "Good night my children." CATHERINE "Sleep well you two." REGINA "And you as well dear."

Liam stands looking at you expectantly and you rise from the table, taking his outstretched hand with a smile. As you exit the dining room, you walk hand-in-hand toward the stairs.

CATHERINE "Hey Liam?" LIAM "Yes love." CATHERINE "Would you mind if we took a stroll through the gardens?" LIAM "I think I can manage for a moment or two."

You continue walking until you’re outside and in the palace gardens. The breeze of the summer air caresses your skin and gives you a peaceful sensation.

LIAM "So, why the gardens My Queen?" CATHERINE "I just thought we could both use some fresh air." LIAM "Good idea. It is a beautiful night, but would you mind if we sat on the bench?" CATHERINE "Not at all."

As you both sit, Liam drapes his arm around you and you lean against him laying your head on his shoulder. A wave of serenity falls over you and you sigh.

LIAM "Something on your mind?" CATHERINE "No, I'm just happy you came home tonight." LIAM "You were very persuasive." CATHERINE "Yeah, I have that effect on people." LIAM "I'd call it a gift."

You both look up to the stars dancing around in the open sky and listen to the crickets chirping and the leaves rustling in the trees.

CATHERINE "Liam, do you remember the Masquerade Ball?" LIAM "Of course I remember. It was the second time I laid eyes on the most beautiful sight I had ever seen…" CATHERINE "Aww, you’re such a romantic…”

LIAM “I’m only telling the truth my love.” CATHERINE “What were you thinking that night when you realized I had come here as one of the suitors?"

Liam smiles fondly. LIAM “I spotted you long before you made your identity known… And to be perfectly honest, a part of me wanted it to be you. But I had to keep telling myself that it simply couldn’t be. You can only imagine my joy and surprise when I realized the woman of my dreams had travelled all this way just for me. I mean, after that night in New York, I never thought I'd see you again." CATHERINE "So you thought about me after you left New York?" LIAM "I couldn't stop thinking about you, Catherine. The truth is, I was in love with you then… even though I wouldn’t let myself admit to it. When I got back to the hotel that night, I felt so empty. I had let the most incredible woman I’d ever met, walk out of my life for what I thought would be forever." CATHERINE "You know, after I walked back to my apartment that night, I remember thinking that same thing. How could I have fallen in love with someone I’d just met? Before I knew it, I was sitting on the edge of my bed laughing at the irony of it and didn’t even realize I was crying too until a few drops fell on my arm."

Liam pulls you closer.

LIAM "Oh Catherine, I never knew…" CATHERINE “Even with no promise of anything more, I couldn't stop thinking about you and how meeting you had changed my life. I felt alive for the first time and I was never going to be the same again. We truly had a special connection and I had to come here and find out for myself if it was real, because no one would have ever measured up to you in my eyes." LIAM "That's exactly how I felt Catherine... That night was no accidental meeting between two strangers, it was preordained to bring us together." CATHERINE "Yeah. I'm glad we didn't disappoint the stars." LIAM "Can you even imagine what things would have been like for both of us had you not followed your heart?" CATHERINE “I’m glad we’ll never know.” LIAM “My life would have been so empty without you…”

Liam reaches under your chin, tilting your head up and kisses you softly, slowly. You pull him closer, pressing against his body, wrapping your arms around him as the kiss quickly becomes enflamed with passion. He pulls back for a moment, a hunger in his eyes…

LIAM "Shall we take this upstairs?" CATHERINE "You read my mind."

CATHERINE "Liam…" LIAM "Mmmm… you taste so sweet…"

LIAM "What's this?" CATHERINE "You'll see."

LIAM "Oh Catherine…"

Then you let your tongue roll over the top for a moment before slowly taking him in your mouth. His breath heavy and he groans deeply as you devour him repeatedly.

LIAM "Ohhh…Catherine, don't stop...stop…"

As he struggles to keep from exploding, he reaches for you, but you're not quite finished yet. You flash him a smile and slide your tongue from the bottom of his length all the way up and quickly draw the tip into your mouth, tasting him as a trace suddenly escapes. He urgently pulls you up as you straddle him and without hesitation he guides your hips, and slides inside you. You hold onto the headboard for leverage as you steadily move against him, he eagerly matches your pace. With the heat intensifying, you quicken the rhythm and once he feels you tremble, a fire bursts inside you with uninhibited power.

CATHERINE "Liam… yes…" LIAM "Ohhh… Catherine."

LIAM "You continue to amaze me Catherine." CATHERINE "So I take it you approve." LIAM "Definitely." CATHERINE "There's more where that came from." LIAM "I almost didn't make it this time…"

He suddenly laughs.

CATHERINE "What?" LIAM "I just wonder what you would have done if I hadn't resisted." CATHERINE "You should have let me finish." LIAM "How would I ever satisfy My Queen if I had let that happen?" CATHERINE "I'm sure you'd figure something out." LIAM "I'm glad you think so."

He smiles and leans over placing a sweet kiss on your lips. You sigh in contentment.

LIAM "Let's get cleaned up and then try to get some sleep. I think two flights in one day has finally caught up with me." CATHERINE "Not to mention other activities that might have contributed to your fatigue." LIAM "I'll never get enough of you Catherine, fatigued or otherwise."

CATHERINE "I'm so glad you came home. I sleep much better with you next to me." LIAM "Me too my love." CATHERINE "If only I hadn't planned that charity brunch tomorrow I could have made the trip with you." LIAM "We should coordinate our schedules a bit better in the future." CATHERINE "At least I have you for tonight." LIAM "I wouldn't want to be anywhere else love."

You lean over kissing him and then lay your head on his chest as he pulls you closer and smiles.

LIAM "Good night My Queen." CATHERINE "Good night My King."

Soon you are both fast asleep.

#theroyalromance #the royal romance #playchoices #teamliam #team liam #king liam #liam x mc

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kitschcats · 3 years ago

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Giving Meaning to a Whole Bunch of Completely Doable Wants that I Just Never Got Around to Doing

I’m going to be reposting some older pieces that never made it here. (22/8/20)

A little under a year since my last entry. The hilarious irony of the way I ended my aforementioned last post here, all faith and sickening optimism and this ridiculous newfound enthusiasm to be writing again and all these other words and phrases synonymous with bullshit, is, quite frankly, pretty poetic, if you look at it a certain way. It makes me think of the short-livedness of those fleeting (and painfully rare) bouts of motivation. Where do they go after they're gone (and before they've had a chance to serve their purpose, because that's the way it always is, isn't it), having vanished in a puff of smoke? Where do they even come from in the first place? Why is it so hard for anyone to get anything done? (Mac's taking a class on motivational psychology this sem. I wonder if he'd know. I should probably ask him.)

As it appears, a lot can happen in a year. In the least amount of words possible, I started living with my best friend of 7 years and boyfriend of 6 months (at the time of writing), moving out from home and halfway across town in the process, started religiously inhaling poison gas equivalent on a regular basis (i.e. several times a day), developed several other just-as-bad habits, went to Langkawi for the first time and got absolutely blackout shitfaced barai mabuk for the first time, underwent body modification procedures that would horrify my grandma (sorry maktok) (yes I know it's going to be on my body forever) (no it didn't hurt that much) (it's a joke maktok it's supposed to be this meta-ironic acknowledgement of the throes of getting your first tattoo which is exactly what this experience was like for me too which yes again is going to be on my body forever) (yes maktok I love you too), experienced the singular 12 most spiritually-awakening hours of my life, and started school again just this summer (it sucks). But those are all entries for other days. (I promise.)

Today, I want to narrow my focus down towards how it's possible to simultaneously feel as if you've otherwise accomplished absolutely nothing else since. I mean yeah I finally got around to starting that art account I've been meaning to make since I first got my hands on Instagram all those years ago but I posted a drawing once during the peak of my enthusiasm about yet another creative pursuit and not another since. That's about as personally accomplished as I've ever felt since I graduated from high school and got a pat on the back about my O-Levels. Which is pretty sad.

It isn't exactly music to one's ears but allow me to indulge in self-sorrow. Allow me to pessimise (which post-quick Google search to verify my doubts I just found out was a word), allow me to wallow in regret and yearning and these ever-present insecurities of inadequacy and put in the simplest words possible, allow me to just feel sorry for myself. It's not like anyone apart from myself reads this anyway, unless you're the one odd stranger who just so happens to be peculiarly interested in the humdrum happenstances of my life (in updates of extremely random intervals), in which case hello odd stranger.

I have mixed feelings about social media. First, give me a chance to justify the relevancy of this statement towards the content of this entry. My thesis statement, if you will. I've been on and off the thing intermittently for the last few months now, and while I can't say I love it, I can't say I can keep myself away from it very long either. We have an extremely turbulent love-hate relationship, Instagram and I.

On one hand, it's the single gateway I have to most, if not all, of my casual friendships. I was never exactly the texting type, I hardly bothered with it when I could just opt for physical company (which I always did). Without that option I'm actually pretty terrible at maintaining relationships of any kind — something recent pandemic-related developments worldwide have forced me (like, grapple me in a chokehold and force-feed me my least favourite vegetables (with the vegetables being harsh realisation, in this case) type of force) to come to terms with. Instagram was, for a brief while, what temporarily helped me to bridge this gap.

And on the other side of the coin, it wore me out. That's right ladies and gentlemen, hobos and tramps, cross-eyed mosquitoes, bow-legged ants, and other variations thereupon: social media fatigue is a very real thing. Sometimes it just got too much for me to deal with. At one point I even stopped reading the news and just slammed all my doors shut to the world that existed outside of my own. This recurring theme quickly evolved (or de-volved?) into a repetitive cycle of delete, re-install, repeat. Kind of something like constantly getting back together with a toxic boyfriend that gaslights you like an unsuspecting frog in a frying pan. Or heroin.

Seeing everyone else in the world (at least as far as my social circle vicinity goes) get up to just about everything there is to get up to while I continued to dig myself an even deeper hole to help confine me to the mundanity of my daily, non-productive routine depressed me. At first I tried to pin it on the MCO situation, which was a thing a few months back. Things were weird, the new routines were alien, and it was a reasonable (and also convenient) excuse at the time. Until restrictions were relaxed, and I still found my metaphysical self lying face-down at the bottom of the pit I'd spent the last few months excavating myself.

At that point I tried to convince myself it was the nonstop peak-productivity no-breaks hustle culture bred by the disease of capitalism that I had deluded myself into believing all this while. I tried to convince myself that I deserved a break, that I just got caught up in unhealthy notions preached to me by a society that didn't care about me, that I let it all get to my head, my centre console. That I was doing completely fine on my own. That I was alright. That I was enough. And then I stopped believing.

I want to do things. I never stopped wanting to. I still want to write. I want to draw. I want to read. I want to learn. I want to teach. I want to get a job again, work on the side. I want to be able to make some extra income doing these things freelance. I want to give these desires meaning. I want something to show for all these wants. I want to make and do meaningful things. I want to make something with my own two hands, look at it when I'm done, and feel pride. I want to make. I want to create. And sure if I have the whole rest of my life ahead of me to do all these things, but why wait?

I want to do a lot of things. There's a lot I want to get done, and there's a lot that I'll have to do beforehand to get them done. I'm pretty upfront about that, and those goals have never really changed — only my means and motivations have. The Universe, oh so cold and cruel woe is myself, has cursed me with lots of ambition to do things and not much motivation to actually do things. My skill point for initiative is zero. I mean, just what did I think I deserved a break from? There's wanting, and then there's doing. And then there are another two kinds of doing, the second of which I have clearly neglected.

I'm no motivational speaker and I won't try to kid myself into believing I'm one. That wasn't even the point of writing this anyway, I just needed an outlet to finally be able to actually articulate these feelings of mine that I've been harbouring for the longest time because fuck knows I needed it. These could have all just been words for all I know, seeing as I'm picking up a pattern of suppressed optimism and hopefulness that was pretty damn similar to my last entry, but if nothing else, these words serve as acknowledgements. It's proof to myself of my own self-awareness, for if I ever start to have doubts again. I sure must be cripplingly insecure if I feel the need to justify myself to myself, huh?

Anyway, I'm far from perfect. I think it's a fact of life that everyone else is, too. As long as we're human, true, ultimate perfection can never truly be achieved. But I think that just adds all the more character to collective humanity. If, hypothetically, say I were perfect, I'd have my priorities set straight and I'd be studying for finals (which are, I would like to add, on Monday) right now, not lighting one up and thinking about how to end this one poem I'm trying to write. But hey. I'm human and junk.

#p #thoughts

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hamfamilyblog · 5 years ago

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Friday, March 27, 2020; Ham Family Update:

I have been very bad at this New Years Resolution lately, to write a weekly Ham Family update. I really should be documenting this crazy time in history!!!

So worldwide, the coronavirus is spreading around, and this week, my worst nightmare has occurred!! We are on lockdown, and I have three little boys in a three-bedroom apartment with a tiny balcony that doesn’t get much sunshine. This week really has been so emotional draining for me. At the start of the week, we started seeing some information from the government that seemed like we were going to head to some sort of lock down. After talking to people and reading everything it was decided that we weren’t on a full lock down and hopefully, the lock down would only be partial when it did occur. Partial meaning, people can still go outside within their neighborhoods to get sunshine. They have to stay in their living radius and maintain a certain distance from people. There are also certain hours people aren’t allowed to go outside. This is the lock down situation in the Philippines and many other countries. Going outside is viewed as a positive necessity of life to stay healthy and get fresh air and sunshine. Well, not in Dubai!!! As I said, my worst ever nightmare has occurred and I feel SO SO trapped. So basically, Dubai stated that all flights were going to be canceled going in or out in two days. A full lock down had not yet been announced. Mitch and I prayed about it and decided Dubai was probably heading to a full lock down, and the boys and I should get to Colorado so we could be outside daily in fresh air during this whole crisis. Well, even though flights were suppose to run for another two days, I was not able to get out of the country due to all flights being either full or canceled last minute. It was a nightmare. We had thought we had found a flight and made arrangements for my parents to pick me up in Denver, CO. Well, all of a sudden when we went to purchase the flight, it just disappeared, as well as many other flight options. Mitch spent hours on the phone with airlines and travel agents trying to get the boys and I out, but we were out of luck. The airlines never even answered due to all the craziness. It was so disheartening. I’ve been trying to stay positive about the whole thing and I am thankful we are all together. I kept trying to be positive we wouldn’t go on complete, full lock down. Well, as of yesterday, we are!!! The marina walk, where I went for a run with the boys, was being patrolled and I was told I wasn’t allowed to walk or run there. So today was our first day we’ve been home all day. The kids didn’t go outside today at all. It makes me so so sad. Luckily, today was our Sabbath, and we had church at home and made it a rest day anyway, but I don’t know how long this lockdown will go on. I don’t know how long my poor kids can tolerate this or I tolerate it. Honestly, we need fresh air, exercise and sunshine to keep ourselves healthy should this virus attack us as well. It’s frustrating as well, because Colorado’s philosophy is to spend lots of time social distancing in nature. I just feel that an accurate and clear statement about what rules we needed to follow here was never given and then adequate time was not given for people to get out of the country. I hope that the flights will open again soon, even just for a day or two to allow people to leave that would like to leave. There are also several families separated right now due to this. It’s so sad. I’ve been continuing to work at the hospital two days a week. Honestly, aside from yesterday, my life routine hasn’t changed much at all. Typically, on the days I didn’t work, I hung out around my apartment enjoying nature that is close by to us with the kids. So I definitively don’t find myself having more time on my hands like many people do during this time. I’m a firm believer in being social weekly (1-2 times a week), but then keeping life simple and chilling in nature around my apartment. So life for me has not changed or slowed down. I guess it’s now changed in the sense I have nowhere to take my kids to be enjoying the amazing Dubai weather right now. I fear that once all this is over, the weather will be too hot in Dubai!

So there was also a statement released that you cannot have more than 3 people in a vehicle at one time. It doesn’t make sense to me why a family can be stuck together all day in a small apartment, but not be able to be in a vehicle together. Well, we are contemplating trying to drive two hours to the mountains tomorrow morning to get out in fresh air and hike. It’s really hard to know what things are considered suggestions and which are considered the law. I know right now we for sure cannot go outside between the hours of 8 pm and 6 am the next morning. There are workers cleaning public transport and the streets. And I know that the marina is now closed. Basically, one is only suppose to go outside to grocery shop or go to the pharmacy. Once, again, as I said before, I really feel so so trapped. I’m the type of person that will do everything to change my situation so I don’t feel trapped or don’t feel the way I feel. I’m a doer. I don’t just accept things easily. I will try to change it. Not sure if this is a good thing or not. But I started looking into an airbnb we could rent with a garden and pool to get through this. Unfortunately, the one I found thus far is super expensive. I just can’t imagine next week though not knowing where I can take my kids day after day. Or even myself, I need exercise and fresh air as well. The only way to get in good cardio is to run the stairs in my apartment complex. I’ve been doing weights or TRX from home. All swimming pools, parks and beaches are closed. I do hope this passes. Poor Ellis keeps asking to go play with friends or go to a playground. Also, he keeps talking about his birthday party in excitement, which was scheduled for April 4th. As of now, it’s canceled, and I feel so sad for him cause he’s so excited about it as he helped me make the piñata and has seen the prep for it. I’ve prepped a lot of it in advance as originally, my parents were supposed to attend and we were all suppose to be in Egypt right before the party. Oh how things have changed so quickly! But I’m counting my blessings! I’m thankful Mitch and I have good, secure jobs during this time when lots of people are losing theirs. I’m so thankful for my children and for my husband and that we are a family. I’m thankful for my extended family and thankful they are all healthy. I hope that continues.

To make things even more hectic right now, Mitch was called last week to be the Elder’s Quorum President. I think that was a big surprise to him, but he will do amazing at it. He’s so capable and efficient at things. It’s just a challenging time with this coronavirus as some people in the ward need help with food as they have lost their job and are stuck here. I’m looking so forward to listening to conference next week. We have been trying to prepare as a family, as 2020 is the 200-year anniversary of Joseph Smith’s first vision. Conference is suppose to be special this conference due to the anniversary. We’ve been asked to study Joseph Smith’s life and read the first vision. Mitch has been working from home so it’s been nice to see more of him and for us to spend more time as a family. Honestly, I’ve been fine with all the things closing—malls, restaurants, even playgrounds and beaches. The one thing that I just cannot accept is that we aren’t suppose to be leaving our homes at all except to gather essentials! I suppose for those who have villas with yards, it wouldn’t be too bad. Lets see if much has changed in next week’s Ham Family Update…. Kids are all happy and healthy and at such fun ages. Especially Ryker. 1 ½ is honestly one of my favorite ages ever. Ryker is such a talker. He has his own little language that he will carry on in when playing and creating a narrative. He also speaks a lot where he is understood in either Chinese or English. He is really good at imitating speech. He is such an easily excited child, yet will easily anger as well. So loving, yet also willing to hit or punch you at any minute. He then will possibly turn around and kiss you right after. He definitely keeps us on our toes, as you never know how he might react. He laughs with full joy, and when he’s not happy he will whine non-stop! He’s so much fun but can also be challenging and exhausting. Flynn Flynn and Ellis are eager to learn. I’ve been doing home schooling stuff with them. Letters, numbers, basic math, and simple reading. Oh how blessed I am to be their mother and teach them and spend time with them. How blessed I am to see them learn and watch their eyes light up when they are proud of themselves for accomplishing something or creating something. They fill my soul with such joy. Thank you Heavenly Father. I look forward when we can also be reunited with my little Breck.

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