#boy this was. a lot

[je-suis-problematique]

*inhales* *exhales* So. Addiction.

Triggering topics below the cut.

We were addicts long before we ever touched street drugs – we've been abusing Klonopin for years before the street drugs came along and it's a medicine that was prescribed to us at age 17 if I'm not mistaken. The body is 26 right now.

I don't know what started it if I'm being completely honest. I think it was instantaneous once we figured out Klonopin gets you high, we just.... started craving it I guess. Chasing after it. Because when we were high on Klonopin it didn't matter that we were victims of CSA and domestic violence, it didn't matter that we were bullied everywhere we went, it didn't matter that we started thinking about death at age 12 or that our closest friend ended up becoming our biggest abuser (besides all the adults in our life). It didn't matter that every waking moment was pure Hell, because when we were high on Klonopin we didn't feel any of that. We didn't feel stressed, anxious, suicidal, triggered, angry, or afraid. We felt.... at peace. Happy, even. Giddy. It made us more social, more bold, less meek, less frightened. For a few hours while the drug was in full effect we weren't a prey animal anymore. And that felt AMAZING. But quite frankly I don't remember when abusing Klonopin became an actual habit or when we went from 0.5 mg to 30 mg per day. It just happened at some point. At some point we became so dependent on Klonopin that whenever we didn't have any on hand we'd feel awful. In the past we'd substitute the pills for booze, and that developed a whole new habit of its own. First it was pills OR drink, then it was pills WITH drink. Weed, too, whenever we could get any. We'd usually pilfer some from our drinking buddies, we'd rarely if ever buy it ourselves, so it wasn't too-too often that we smoked pot, but it would still happen here and there.

It was contained, at first. But then we started day drinking, and then we started going to work high/drunk, and going to important meetings high/drunk, and generally just spending more time being under the influence than we did sober. We'd pop an obscene amount of pills or drink a bottle and a half of vodka every time we felt a vaguely uncomfortable emotion. The slightest inconvenience would become a good enough reason to get wasted – we just couldn't cope with life sober. The fact that we were in an abusive/toxic relationship at the time was not helping, either. It was abusive/toxic on both sides in the sense that we hurt them and they hurt us but that's exactly it, SOMEBODY was ALWAYS getting hurt, and that would be considered a normal Tuesday morning. Just existing at home felt as if we are being chased by tigers at all times. It was stressful, it was bad, and it lasted for literal years, so, we had a reason to use every single day. And that's exactly what we did. And try as we might to hide it from our partner system, you can't really hide the stench of alcohol or the fact you slur your words when you speak and can't type coherently. They knew. And it made our relationship with them worse than it already was since it became the subject of many arguments and fights but no matter how much we fought, we didn't even THINK about quitting. We didn't really want to.

The decision to start using street drugs was mine and I made it while high off my ass on Klonopin already. It was the middle of a Thursday night and I felt like the Klonopin high was not enough, I needed something stronger to feel satisfied. So I downloaded Telegram, which is where most people in my city get their drugs from, and blindly searched for someone who sells that sort of stuff. I had absolutely NO idea what I was doing, I've never spoken with dealers before, I literally just typed the word "Cocaine" into the search bar to find some groups that I immediately joined without thinking before starting to chat people up. Somehow that worked though, because several verifications that I'm not a cop later, I had 2 grams of Cocaine in my hands. I did a couple of lines, got the high I wanted, felt good about myself.... And then reality hit me like a bus. I just impulsively purchased Cocaine from some dude I found on Telegram. It TERRIFIED me, to think I reached a new personal low. So I called my social worker in the middle of the night, still high mind you, and told him everything. The next day he had me locked up in a psych ward.

I was in the hospital for 3 weeks before I was discharged and during that time, the fear I had about what I'd done.... dissipated. I made peace with what happened and actually thought of buying from that dealer AGAIN, because I liked the Cocaine high. I was hooked. And the moment I returned home I just went berserk. I bought a little bit of everything, eager to try every flavor of high there is. We still had money at the time so funds weren't an issue and honestly I wasn't even thinking about going broke when I bought pretty much everything the dealer had to offer and it was EXPENSIVE. THOUSANDS of NIS went down the drain while I was shopping around for the best high, TENS OF THOUSANDS even. I even made him get me some Cyanide because I was beginning to plan what I thought would be the "perfect" suicide one of those coming days. Soon enough I was completely broke so I started taking loan after loan after loan. Our debt to the bank alone stands at 100K NIS at the moment, all thanks to our drug habit. Good thing we managed to get a lawyer for that. But anyway.... Fentanyl was it.

I didn't really like anything I bought until my dealer suggested I try smoking Fentanyl so I did, and as I later found out from fellow addicts in rehab months later, I overdosed on it that night and passed out. It's a miracle I woke back up at all but as you've probably learned by now my self-preservation skills are shit so I tried it again. And again. And again and again, and kept overdosing on it, again and again, until I learned the right way and the right dose to smoke per-use. Fentanyl was like a miracle drug for me because it did everything Klonopin did only better. Stronger. So I kept buying more and I kept using it, hiding it from everyone except for two friends. The only friends I have, really. THEY knew everything, but my social worker didn't, my doctors didn't, my now-ex didn't. I mean, my ex probably GUESSED or ASSUMED given my history but I don't think I acted that weird or anything while being on Fentanyl. It made me calm and elevated my mood but that's about it, really. I was still able to function, still able to speak and type. I didn't sway or stumble when I walked and I was mostly alert. So I don't really know if they knew at the early stages.

I tried to quit once before the big detox. I was okay at first but once the withdrawal symptoms hit me I broke and bought more drugs. It took me another while to try again but the second time I went with the detox 'till the end. I even kept the hospital blanket I was given when my social worker took me to the ER as a sort of reminder of the Hell I've been through to quit Fentanyl. The detox was.... traumatizing, to say the least. Imagine you're experiencing both hot and cold flashes at the same time, you're sweating profusely, you're shaking like a leaf for no reason, you vomit everything that you try to ingest to the point you can't even keep water down, you're shitting yourself, everything hurts, you're blacking out, AND you have to go through all of this alone at the ER for hours where the doctors and nurses mostly ignore you because your country's at war and the injured soldiers are more important (and your social worker just left you there with 15% battery on your phone). Yep. I was on the phone with my friends half the time for moral support just crying and sobbing repeating the phrases "I'm scared" and "I want to die" like a broken record whenever I wasn't busy puking. I was exhausted when I got back home the same night but still couldn't fall asleep so I just watched animated films until morning came.

We stayed clean for 2 months after the detox but Zed, God bless her, relapsed and dragged the rest of the system back down into drug use. I avoided the front like the plague knowing this though I won't lie, I may have partook in it too once or twice myself and just don't remember I did, even after making my big promises not to touch drugs again and all. I may have snorted a powder or taken a pill but I managed to MOSTLY stay clean, personally speaking. Right now we are about a month clean from all substances and we're managing to keep it up, mostly because we owe our dealer 4K NIS and just can't afford to buy more drugs even if we wanted to. We've decided to block him and not pay the debt so if we disappear one day we've probably been murdered or something.✌️Just a heads up. I'll probably talk about our time in rehab in a separate post since this one is already long enough as it is, but.... just know that I won't have anything positive to say about that experience either. If you've read the whole thing then, honestly, thank you for taking the time to read about our journey. It means a lot, especially when we feel so isolated as of late. Cheers to you.

– Chris

[lazylittledragon]

if i had a nickel for every au spawned from twitter that i SWORE i was going to be normal about

[inbabylontheywept]

i did wrestling in middle school. on one hand, i was actually quite good at it, which was nice. being good at any sport was a new achievement for me. on the other hand, i was bi, and i was trying very hard not to notice that i was bi, and getting folded into knots by very kind, very muscular dorks made that task somewhat difficult.

adding fire to the problem was that my parents and my grandparents wanted to watch my matches, because they were very proud that their Gangly Nerd Son was actually Sporting, and they wanted to cheer me on. which would've been sweet and all, but if there are four people you do not want there during a key part of your Burgeoning Sexual Awakening, it is your mom and your dad and your grandma and your grandpa.

right? i mean, imagine some guy's got your head in his armpit, and you're going you know, old sweat smells bad, but fresh sweat has a sort of and then you make eye contact with your grandpa in the stands and you remember you're swearing spandex so if you pop a boner people aren't just going to be able to see the outline, they're going to be able to count the veins, and the only way you will be able to restore your family's honor after that would be by moving to siberia and renouncing joy, forever. that, or lift your entire body up by your kneck then twist 180 degrees without paralyzing yourself.

it’s a lot of pressure, is what i’m saying.

still it did motivate me to win my matches really fast. because i was so tall and skinny, i was stupidly good at the double leg takedown, and then once someone was knocked down, i'd just do the half nelson and kind of flip em over for the pin. then the ref would count to three and i’d win. EZPZ.

i had one match where that went great. won in the first ten seconds, sat back down, and prepared myself for a good hour or two of doing fuck all. didn't even feel bad the parents/grandparents were gonna be bored. the matches went up from me in 5 pound increments (i was in the 115 lbs division) and it was going great until we got to the 145 lbs division. the other school's wrestler stepped onto the mat, and she turned out to be a girl so our guy flipped, because for straight guys, wrestling a girl is not a pleasant experience.

i'm not entirely unsympathetic. my experience wrestling dudes was definitely a little traumatic. but also, i dealt. guy could've dealt too. instead, he refused to wrestle, and the coach went - fine. not even worth fighting over.

so he went to the 140 pounder, and that guy said, nosir, my mom said mormons can't wrestle girls. next guy down, 135 pounder, now he knew he could pull the same card and thus did. 130 pounder, 125, both tapped out. he got to the 120 guy, and that guy was catholic, but he said he was considering being mormon, and thus would have to pass. as a precaution.

coach blew up a little at that. he said "is there anyone - anyone - on this entire goddamn team that is willing to wrestle a girl?" and then he pointed at me and said "YOU. MAT. GO."

and i'll be real, if i'd been paying more attention, i'd have pulled the mormon card too, but i'd just been putting all that audio into a buffer file because i was reading, so i was halfway across the mat before i even processed what had been said and by then it was too late to turn back.

still i had a plan. and my plan - my beautiful, perfect plan - was to do what i'd always done. tackle, flip, pin, win. sit down. read. bore my family to death. move on.

i got the first part right. she was bigger than me, but she wasn't taller. just an incredibly stout woman. god built me like a snake with glasses, just as he built her like a combat cube. the problem was the half nelson. soon as she was down, i tried hooking my arm under hers from behind and for both genders, the defense for this move is just clamping your arms really fucking tight against your sides. if you're a guy, that's whatever, but if you're a girl - especially if you're god's chosen combat cube - that pins your opponents hand right against your boob.

so, i got the hook in, she clamped, my whole arm pressed against something soft, my coach was yelling THE HALF NELSON. BABYLON! JUST FINISH IT! FINISH THE HALF NELSON! and i was just trying to press hard enough to finish, when then my brain went

...oh.

and i flipped out. of course i flipped out. i like girls, and touching a boob is an elemental experience, and i was not ready. i was not prepared. i had not committed the sacred rites. i recoiled like i'd just brushed my arm against the surface of the sun, stood up, and backed away. nobody in the room knew why i'd given up. all they saw was me, right about to win, suddenly flailing around and scrambling. so everyone started screaming at me to just get the half nelson again, and i couldn't really yell back there's a fuckin' boob in the way and it was very distressing, and the only way i could think of to make them stop was just doing it over again the right way.

so i did.

i hunkered down and prepared myself for Wrasslin' Attempt #2: The Sequel.

i knocked her down again, EZPZ. i went for the half nelson again, but she knew what i was about to do so she super clamped, and i knew she was gonna super clamp, so i wound my arm back like a pop-eye cartoon punch before swinging my arm through the gap between her bicep and her side, but the amount of time i spent winding back super signalled what i was about to to do, which gave her time to clamp even harder, which somehow redirected the entire force of the popeye punch to the bottom of her bra.

it spat out a single boob the same way an action hero might spit out one single tooth after getting a solid crack across the jaw. as if to say:

*ptooie.* "that all you got?"

i did not actually see this. my experience was that first there was an arm, then there was a bit of boob, but i was braced, i was ready, forward at all costs, tatakae motherfuckers, and then the boob went away, and i didn't know where it went but my team, and the audience, and everyone who was in front of me, they all gasped like i just kicked them in the stomach. except for my coach. he was behind me, and thus one of the four people in the room who did not see the boob. now my mom, my dad, my grandma, and my grandpa, they all got flashed but nooooooo, coach thunderbutt was behind me, and he didn't see shit so he was still yelling NOOOOOO BABYLON WHAT ARE YOU DOING JUST FINISH THE NELSON! GO FOR THE KILL! BABYLON! BABYLON!

but i did not go for the kill. i stood up and she stuffed her boob back real fast, and we just kind of circled each other awkwardly until time ran out and i won on points. that's not technically allowed, but the ref had some mercy on me.

my coach did not.

i barely had time to sit down before he strode over to the bench to chew me out.

"babylon," he said, in that very calm way people get when they're too pissed to yell. "why didn't you pin?"

and i didn't know how to say well coach, i tried, but there was a boob, and it kept getting in the way, and my mom was watching, and so was my dad, and so was his dad, and his mom, and god (like bible god) and that's a can of worms because i'm pretty sure he was already mad at me, and i'm wearing spandex, and i think i might have to move to siberia, so instead i said

"i uh. i forgot how to do the half nelson."

which is actually impossible. forgetting how to do the half nelson is like forgetting how to swallow your spit.

and he looked at me, like i was the dumbest person in the entire world, and i looked through him like i'd just survived my 250th day in a trench at verdun, and he said: fine.

fine.

but we're all going to practice it for an hour tomorrow because you forgot.

and then he left.

and my buddies had the gall to be salty about it. i got so many comments saying "dude, why didn't you just tell him the truth?" and i said "you can if you care so damn much. you could've wrestled the girl too. maybe someone else should do the hard thing today."

but they didn't. so the next day, we did an hour of half nelson drills, and i spent a decent amount of time getting thrown around the mat, and it was pleasant in exactly the way that i hated and the year after that, to the surprise of everyone but myself, i quit wrestling and joined the trivia team.

and if you want more reasons to love my mom, my grandpa joked after the match that i might have to talk to my bishop about it, and my mom told him he would be allowed to make jokes after he stood in front of a crowd of 110 people in spandex underpants while wrestling a woman that was not his wife.

he paused for almost five seconds after that. then he said: aw. hell. sorry babylon.

and i'd have preferred my apology from god, but getting it from him was pretty good too.

[ciearcab]

how do you live?

[hinamie]

I'll give them shelter like you've done for me

[chloesimaginationthings]

Michael Afton and Jeremy Fitzgerald are FNAF besties..

[sabertoothwalrus]

Literally every character in dungeon meshi gets mischaracterized and whatever whatever it happens it’s inevitable I’ll move on. It’s just really sad to see the way Mithrun is sometimes portrayed cause he’s such a cool character!!

He’s not naive. He’s not gullible. He’s not ignorant of how to do things. He’s not confused all the time. He understands social cues. He doesn’t take things literally, or just at face value. He still understands humor and sarcasm. He’s not forgetful. He has an impeccable memory. He doesn’t have shame. He’s incapable of being hypnotized— when Cithis tried to kiss him or told him to eat out of a dog bowl, he was fully capable of saying no, and just saw no reason to. He’s stubborn (he’s a taurus <3). He used to secretly be a Huge Asshole and thought poorly of those around him (this is one of my favorite aspects about him) but he was really just insecure and struggled with jealousy. He’s now outwardly an asshole because he’s blunt and no longer has the ability to care if it hurts people’s feelings. It matters to him that other people don’t fall victim to the demon. He’s thoughtful.

He’s strong!!!! He’s smart and analytical. He became the captain of the canaries after his recovery. The thing that motivated him to recover was because all be wanted was to rejoin the canaries. When he met the demon, his deepest desire was to live a life where he never joined the canaries to begin with. He didn’t even want that much, and that’s why the demon’s appetite wasn’t satisfied. The demon intentionally left him with the desire for revenge so that he would have a reason to come back, fresh with new desires. He wants to make noodles. He wants to make noodles!

[artsymeeshee]

Sometimes a hug is all that’s needed

[technically-human]

Payneland² 

[onebadnoodle]

beast boy

[zinnie-zoloft]

I NEED to point out that Edwin technically isn’t fixing Charles’s collar in that one scene, he’s doing the opposite because that’s how Charles likes it

It’s such a subtle way of showing how well he knows Charles, and can be seen as a representation of how he’ll go against societal norms and expectations for him

He’s messing it up on purpose because that’s how Charles wears it, deliberate and defiant like a reflection of himself, and Edwin wouldn’t want him any other way

[finchfvkingcortes]

thank you to this tweet for giving me the perfect opportunity to ramble about edwin’s outfit during the confession scene because oh how i love it

the juxtaposition between these two scenes and what edwin wears is so good because he goes from an outfit he chose and put together when he planned to confess vs a blood stained shirt when he actually did but what i think a lot of people don’t realise is that edwin isn’t wearing pyjamas when he’s in hell, he’s wearing undergarments. he’s in an undershirt and drawers, which was typical edwardian underwear and it is such a perfect way to show how vulnerable he is in that moment. so often clothes are used as armour or a way to make oneself feel more confident and that’s exactly what edwin is doing when he made himself look, as niko says, really nice. a nice outfit and feeling good about yourself can go a long way in making yourself feel more ready to, i don’t know, confess your love to your best friend of 30 years. now compare that to what edwin’s wearing when he actually confesses and you immediately feel a sense of vulnerability and almost nakedness in that situation because the modern day equivalent is standing there in your boxers. all of that armour, all that confidence is gone, he is both literally and metaphorically bare. in the end it’s just edwin, in the most basic sense, baring his soul to charles and i think it’s so so beautiful

[lazylittledragon]

more bg3 x taskmaster bc you're all indulging me, thank you so much

[mearchy]

The best fics are the ones that recognize that although Luke Skywalker may APPEAR on the outside to be a normal friendly twink who happens to have cool powers, especially when contrasted with such ship partners as Boba or Din or even Han, he is arguably the scariest person alive in the galaxy around the prequel era. AND, crucially, he is also a fundamentally weird guy. This man was homeschooled on a rural farm his entire life and then apprenticed to a swamp gremlin who showed him how to tap into the cosmic power of the universe. He blew up the death star age 19, killing approx 2 million-ish Imperials. He is a vortex of Force power that can communicate with the ghosts of dead Jedi. He’s staring into the distance and mumbling to himself and doing Yoda aphorisms and casually pulling out the “yeah I could crush that guy into a paste with my mind (:” and nobody around him knows what to do with that. I think he is a character who has very little frame of reference for how a Jedi or a person in general is supposed to act and there is some thing about him that is by necessity really fucking weird and a little scary but he’s so nice that it can throw you off the scent a little bit. Thanks for coming to my TED talk

[fawncrw]

I think it’d be really funny if after they got together, Charles made tons of jokes about Edwin’s horribly timed confession.

Charles: makes an inappropriate joke

Edwin: Time and place, Charles.

Charles: Oh you wanna talk about TIMES and PLACES??

[nonbinoclard]

YOU: Think about the PLUR lifestyle. [Pursue thought.]