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flightfoot · 4 years ago

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Tower of Nero quotes

So since I’m planning on writing some analyses for Tower of Nero, I decided to assemble my usual catalogue of quotes, so I won’t have to constantly flip through looking for them and typing them up hopefully. This is based on the kinds of analyses and things I want to talk about or just found interesting, but hey, I figure other people may find this useful as well.

Beware of spoilers, because no duh.

It was a silly thing to say, but some stubborn part of me insisted that Percy Jackson must be here somewhere, waiting to do dangerous tasks for me. That was his job!

But no. That was the old Apollo’s way of thinking - the Apollo I’d been the last time I was in this apartment. Percy was entitled to his own life. He was trying to have one, and - oh, the bitter truth! - it had nothing to do with me. (TON 37)

“Paul...” I ventured. “Aren’t you worried about having us here? We might endanger your family.”

The corners of his mouth tightened. “I was at the Battle of Manhattan. I’ve heard about some of the horrible things Sally went through - fighting the Minotaur, being imprisoned in the Underworld. And Percy’s adventures?” He shook his head in respect. “Percy has put himself on the line for us, for his friends, for the world, plenty of times. So, can I risk giving you a place to catch your breath, some fresh clothes, and a hot meal? Yeah, how could I not?” (TON 40-41)

What was it about kindness? In my time as Lester Papadopoulos, I had learned to stand up under horrendous verbal abuse and constant life-threatening violence, but the smallest act of generosity could ninja-kick me right in the heart and break me into a blubbering mess of emotions.

Damn you, Paul and Sally, and your cute baby too!

How could I repay them for providing me with this temporary refuge? I felt like I owed them the same thing I owed Camp Jupiter and Camp Half-Blood, the Waystation and the Cistern, Piper and Frank and Hazel and Leo and, yes, especially Jason Grace. I owed them everything.

How could I not? (TON 41)

Sally Jackson crossed her arms. In spite of the grim matters we were discussing, she smiled. “You’ve grown up.”

I assumed she was talking about Meg. Over the last few months, my young friend had indeed gotten taller and- Wait. Was Sally referring to me?

My first thought: Preposterous! I was four thousand years old. I didn’t grow up.

She reached across the table and squeezed my hand. “The last time you were here, you were so lost. So... well, if you don’t mind me saying-”

“Pathetic,” I blurted out. “Whiny, entitled, selfish. I felt terribly sorry for myself.”

Meg nodded along with my words as if listening to her favorite song. “You still feel sorry for yourself.”

“But now,” Sally said, sitting back again, “you’re more... human, I suppose.”

There was that word again: human, which not long ago I would’ve considered a terrible insult. Now, every time I heard it, I thought of Jason Grace’s admonition: Remember what it’s like to be human.

He hadn’t meant all the terrible things about being human, of which there were plenty. He meant the best things: standing up for a just cause, putting others first, having stubborn faith that you could make a difference, even if it meant you had to die to protect your friends and what you believed it. These were not the kinds of feelings gods had... well, ever.

Sally Jackson meant the term in the same way Jason had - as something worth aspiring to. (TON 45-46)

And are you any better? taunted a small voice in my brain. How many times have you stood up to Zeus?

Okay, small voice. Fair point. Tyrants are not easy to oppose or walk away from, especially when you depend on them for everything. (TON 57)

I already felt disconnected from reality. I couldn’t concentrate. I didn’t know who I was, who I was supposed to be, or even who I wanted to be. I was getting emotional whiplash from my exhilarating surges of godlike power, my depressing crashes back into mortal frailty, and my adrenaline-charged bouts of terror. In such a condition, approaching Dionysus was asking for trouble. Just being near him could widen the cracks in anyone’s psyche. (TON 76-77)

Dionysus eyed me with a mixture of shock and horror, much the same way I looked at myself in the mirror these days. (TON 77)

In retaliation, Dionysus decided to look and act as ungodly as possible. He was like a child refusing to tuck in his shirt, comb his hair, or brush his teeth, just to show his parents how little he cared. (TON 78)

“Dad!” Will shot to his feet. He ran down the steps and tackled me in a hug.

That’s when I lost it. I wept openly.

My beautiful son, with his kind eyes, his healer’s hands, his sun-warm demeanour. Somehow, he had inherited all my best qualities and none of the worst. (TON 80)

“I figured you’d come back to camp eventually,” he said. “I hoped you would, anyway. I wanted you to feel at home.”

It was enough to start me crying again. Gods, I was an emotional wreck. Will hadn’t inherited his thoughtfulness from me. That was all his mother, Naomi, bless her kind heart. (TON 87-88)

“You’ve grown up!” Kayla gripped my shoulders with her archery-strong hands. The June sunlight made her freckles more pronounced. The green tinted tips of her orange hair made me think of Halloween-pumpkin candy. “You’re two inches taller at least! Isn’t he, Austin?” (TON 88)

I wanted to tell them that they were all so young. Their lifespans were a blink of an eye compared to my four millennia. I should be wrapping them all in warm blankets and giving them cookies rather than expecting them to be heroes, slay monsters, and buy me clothes. (TON 90)

“Nico has been having... I guess you’d call it post-traumatic stress disorder. He gets flashbacks. He has waking dreams. Dionysus has been trying to help him make sense of it all. The worst part is the voices.” (TON 93)

I frowned at Dionysus. “You could always, oh, I don’t know, decide to help.”

He scoffed. “You know as well as I do, Apollo, that quests like this are demigod business. As for advising, guiding, helping... that’s really more Chiron’s job.” (TON 99)

I wondered, bitterly, if there was anyone I hadn’t neglected, hurt, or overlooked during my time as a mortal - strike that - during my four thousand years of existence, period. I could only be grateful that my shoes were not sentient. Or my underwear. Gods, I would never be able to stop apologizing. (TON 110)

“I betrayed you once,” she said. “Right here in these woods.” She didn’t sound sad or ashamed about it, the way she once might have. She spoke with a sort of dreamy disbelief, as if trying to recall the person she’d been six months ago. That was a problem I could relate to. (TON 114)

“I have to go back,” Meg insisted. “I have to see if I’m strong enough.”

Peaches cuddled up next to her as if he had no such concerns.

Meg patted his leafy wings. “Maybe I’ve gotten stronger. But when I go back to the palace, will it be enough? Can I remember to be who I am now and not... who I was then?”

I didn’t think she expected an answer. But it occurred to me that perhaps I should be asking myself that same question.

Since Jason Grace’s death, I’d spent sleepless nights wondering if I could keep my promise to him. Assuming I made it back to Mount Olympus, could I remember what it was like to be human, or would I slip back into being the self-centered god I used to be?

Change is a fragile thing. It requires time and distance. Survivors of abuse, like Meg, have to get away from their abusers. Going back to that toxic environment was the worst thing she could do. And former arrogant gods like me couldn’t hang around other arrogant gods and expect to stay unsullied.

But I supposed Meg was right. Going back was the only way to see how strong we’d gotten, even if it meant risking everything. (TON 114-115)

“So now you believe the Trogs exist?” Nico asked.

“I am learning to believe in all sorts of things that can kill me!” (TON 136)

If my trials as a mortal had done anything, they had shown me how many times I’d abandoned, forgotten, and failed my Oracle over the centuries. I could not abandon Rachel in the same way. I’d neglected the basic truth that they did not serve me; I was supposed to serve them. (TON 158)

Nico smirked. “Friends, meet my glow-in-the-dark boyfriend.”

“Could you not make a big deal about it?” Will asked. (TON 163)

“Rachel, I’m scared,” I admitted. “It was one thing thinking about putting myself in danger. But the entire camp? Everyone?”

Strangely, this comment seemed to please her.

She took my hand. “I know, Apollo. And the fact that you’re worried about other people? That’s beautiful. But you’ll have to trust me.” (TON 175)

When he’d told me to remember being human, he’d meant building on pain and tragedy, overcoming it, learning from it. That was something gods never did. We just complained.

To be human is to move forward, adapt, to believe in your ability to make things better. That is the only way to make the pain and sacrifice mean something.

I met Rachel’s gaze.”I trust you. I’ll make things right. Or I will die trying.”

The strange thing was, I meant it. A world in which the future was controlled by a giant reptile, where hope was suffocated, where heroes sacrificed their lives for nothing, and pain and hardship could not yield a better life... that seemed much worse than a world without Apollo. (TON 176-177)

Not one deserved to be snuffed out by Nero’s cruelty. The revelation stunned me. I had become a human-life hoarder! (TON 182)

“I’m so sorry”, I managed at last.

“No, no,” Jason said. “I made my choice. You’re not to blame. You don’t owe me anything except to remember what I said. Remember what’s important.”

“You’re important,” I said. “Your life!”

Jason tilted his head. “I mean... sure. But if a hero isn’t ready to lose everything for a greater cause, is that person really a hero?”

He weighted the word person subtly, as if to stress it could mean a human, a faun, a dryad, a griffin, a pandos... even a god. (TON 218-219)

As a god of healing, I knew something about psychology and mental health, though I’ll admit I did not always best practices to myself. (TON 225)

I knew my anxiety about my own weakness was getting mixed up with my anxiety about Meg. Even if I somehow made my way back to Mount Olympus, I didn’t trust myself to hold onto the important things I’d learned as a mortal. That made me doubt Meg’s ability to stay strong in her old toxic home.

The similarities between Nero’s household and my family on Mount Olympus made me increasingly uneasy. The idea that we gods were just as manipulative, just as abusive as the worst Roman emperor... Surely that couldn’t be true.

Oh, wait. Yes, it could. Ugh. I hated clarity. (TON 225-226)

I found myself back in the caverns of Delphi, volcanic gasses layering the air, the dark shape of Python moving heavily in the background.

“So, I have you again,” he gloated. “You shall perish-”

“I don’t have time for you right now.” My voice surprised me almost as mush as it did the reptile.

“What?”

“Gotta go.” I lashed the reins of my dream.

“How dare you! You cannot-”

I rocketed into reverse like I was tied to a rubber band. (TON 233)

We both knew that, under most circumstances, Meg was fully capable of rescuing herself. But with Nero... I suspected Lu, like me, wanted Meg to be strong enough to save herself. We couldn’t make the hard choices for her. Yet it was excruciating to stand by while Meg’s sense of independence was tested. (TON 244)

But now, after knowing Lu, I wondered how many of these Germani really wanted to serve Nero, and how many had been conscripted into his service with no choice. Enough people had died. My grudge was with only one person, Nero, and one reptile, Python. (TON 250)

“Well, no, not Mr. D,” Nico said. “You know how it is. Gods don’t fight demigod battles. Present company excepted.” (TON 263)

Austin and I had gotten to know each other - not just as god and mortal, or father and son, but as two people working side by side, helping each other get through our often messed-up lives. (TON 273)

My heart broke. Meg looked elegant, older, and quite beautiful. She also looked utterly, completely no longer herself. Nero had tried to strip way everything she had been, every choice she’d made, and replace her with someone else - a proper young lady of the Imperial Household. (TON 285-286)

I tried to contain my horror. “Meg,” I said. “There’s only one person you need to listen to here: yourself. Trust yourself.”

I meant it, despite all my doubts and fears, despite all my complaints over the months about Meg being my master. She had chosen me, but I had also chosen her. I did trust her - not in spite of her past with Nero, but because of it. I had seen her struggle. I’d admired her hard-won progress. I had to believe in her for my own sake. She was - gods help me - my role model. (TON 293)

“I didn’t kill my father,” she said, her voice small and hard. “I didn’t cut off Lu’s hands or enslave those dryads or twist us all up inside.” She swept a hand towards the other demigods of the household. “You did that, Nero. I hate you.” (TON 295)

“Lu has immortality,” I said, “because you’re immortal. The two of you have been connected for centuries.”

Nero’s eye twitched. “But that’s my eternal life! You can’t trade my life for my life!” (TON 309)

Python had always been the real power behind the throne - a bigger puppet master than Nero’s mother ever had been. Like most bullies, Nero had been shaped and manipulated by an even stronger abuser. (TON 310)

Nero hissed. “Ungrateful child. The Beast-”

“The Beast is dead.” Meg tapped the side of her head. “I killed it.” (TON 311)

Rachel pulled out a blue plastic hairbrush and threw it at the nearest barbarian, beaning him in the eye and making him howl.

Sorry I underestimated you, Rachel, I thought distantly. You’re actually kind of a hairbrush ninja. (TON 313)

"You - cannot - take - it - Lester!” Nero said through clenched teeth, pulling with all his might.

“I am Apollo,” I said, tugging the opposite direction. “And I - revoke - your - divinity!” (TON 317)

“Hasn’t he proved himself already?” Artemis demanded. My heart ached, seeing my sister again. “He’s suffered more in these last few months than even you could have expected! Whatever lesson you were trying to teach him, dear Father, he’s learned it!” (TON 319)

“This has gone on long enough. Too much loss. Too much pain. But if my husband insists on seeing it through, the least you all can do is not talk about Apollo as if he’s already dead!” (TON 320)

Then I was back in my mortal form, looking up not at the Olympians, but at the faces of my friends (TON 320)

I alternated drinking my nectar and Mountain Dew, which was sort of like alternating between premium gasoline and regular gasoline. (TON 323)

Meg had thrown away her sandals, braving bare feet despite the arrows, rubble, bones, and discarded blades that littered the floor. Someone had given her an orange Camp Half-Blood shirt, which she’d put on over her dress, making her allegiance clear. She still looked older and more sophisticated, but she also looked like my Meg. (TON 323)

I considered that perhaps courage was a self-perpetuating cycle, like abuse. Nero had hoped to create miniature, tortured versions of himself because that made him feel stronger. Meg had found the strength to oppose him because she saw how much her foster siblings needed her to succeed, to show them another way.

There were no guarantees. The imperial demigods had dealt with so much for so long, some of them might never be able to come back from the darkness. Then again, there had been no guarantees for Meg, either. There were still no guarantees that I would come back from the caverns of Delphi. All any of us could do was try, and hope that in the end, the virtuous cycle would break the vicious one. (TON 324)

Even if I survived, I would not be the same. The best I could hope for was to emerge from Delphi with my godhood restored, which was what I had wanted and dreamed about for the past half a year. So why did I feel so reluctant about leaving behind the broken, battered form of Lester Papadopolous?

“Just come back to me dummy, that’s an order.” Meg gave me a gentle hug, conscious of my injuries. Then she got to her feet and ran off to check on the imperial demigods - her former family, and possibly her family yet to be. (TON 327)

“We all have a duty to rescue each other, wouldn’t you say?”

I nodded, wondering how the centaur had become so wise over the centuries, and why that same wisdom had escaped me until I had been Lesterized. (TON 328)

I felt a tingly sensation of power building just under my skin - perhaps my divine self, trying to reassert itself in the proximity of my old arch-enemy. I hoped it was that and not just my mortal body combusting (TON 332)

Deep breath. This was for Meg. This was for Jason. This was for everyone who had fought and sacrificed to drag my sorry mortal butt from quest to quest for the last six months, just to get me this chance at redemption (TON 333)

And yet, along with humility, I’d learned something else: getting humiliated is the beginning, not the end. Sometimes you need a second shot, and a third, and a fourth. (TON 335)

“YOU CAN’T HIDE!” Python bellowed. “YOU ARE NO GOD!”

This pronouncement hit me like a bucket of ice water. It didn’t carry the weight of prophecy, but it was true nonetheless. At the moment, I wasn’t sure what I was. I certainly wasn’t my old godly self. I wasn’t exactly Lester Papadopolous either. My flesh steamed. Pulses of light flickered under my skin, like the sun trying to break through storm clouds. When had that started?

I was between states, morphing as rapidly as Python himself. I was no god. I would never be the same old Apollo again. But in this moment, I had the chance to decide what I would become, even if that new existence only lasted a few seconds.

The realization burned away my delirium.

“I won’t hide,” I muttered. “I won’t cower. That’s not who I will be.” (TON 339-340)

I had done my best. Surely, Zeus would see that and be proud. Maybe he would send down a lightning bolt, blast Python into tiny pieces, and save me!

As soon as I thought this, I realized how foolish it was. Zeus didn’t work that way. He would not save me anymore than Nero had saved Meg. I had to let go of that fantasy. I had to save myself. (TON 341)

The prophecy came true. Apollo fell, and Python fell with me. (TON 346)

The river sapped my memories, my emotions, my will. It pried open the burning cracks in my Lester Papadopoulos shell, making me feel raw and unmade like a molting dragonfly. (TON 348)

I held onto my purpose. I remembered Meg McCaffrey’s last order: Come back to me, my dummy. Her face remained clear in my mind. She had been abandoned so many times, used so cruelly. I would not be another cause of grief for her. I knew who I was. I was her dummy. (TON 348)

Wow, Apollo, you marvel. How did you survive?

I didn’t.

But at that point I was no longer Lester Papadopoulos. I was not Apollo. I was not sure who or what I was (TON 349)

“Have you learned?” she asked.

If I hadn’t felt so weak, I might have laughed. I had learned, all right. I was still learning.

At that moment, I realized I’d been thinking of the Styx the wrong way all these months. She hadn’t put destruction in my path. I’d caused it myself. She hadn’t gotten me into trouble. I was the trouble. She had merely called out my recklessness. (TON 353)

Why couldn’t I let go, then? I kept clinging to the edge with stubborn determination. My wayward pinky found its grip again. I had promised Meg I would return to her. I hadn’t sworn it as an oath, but that didn’t matter. If I said I would do it, I had to follow through.

Perhaps that was what Styx had been trying to teach me: it wasn’t about how loudly you swore your oath, or what sacred words you used. It was about whether or not you meant it. And whether your promise was worth making.

Hold on, I told myself, to both the rock and the lesson.

My arms seemed to become more substantial. My body felt more real. The lines of light wove together until my form was a mesh of solid gold.

Was it just a last hopeful hallucination, or did I just pull myself up? (TON 354)

I rose with a sob and hugged her tight. All my pain was gone. I felt perfect. I felt... I almost thought, like myself again, but I wasn’t even sure what that meant anymore.

I was a god again. For so long, my deepest desire was to be restored. But instead of feeling elated, I wept on my sister’s shoulder. I felt like if I let go of Artemis, I would fall back into Chaos. Huge parts of my identity would shake loose, and I would never be able to find all the puzzle pieces. (TON 355)

My chest was bronze and perfectly sculpted. My muscular arms bore no scars or fiery lines glowing beneath the surface. I was gorgeous, which made me feel melancholy. I had worked hard for those scars and bruises. All the suffering my friends and I had been through... (TON 355)

I felt awkward and uncomfortable in this form, as if I’d been given a Rolls-Royce to drive but no car insurance to go with it. I’d felt so much more comfortable in my economy-compact Lester. (TON 357)

I remembered my dream of the throne room - the other Olympians gambling on my success or failure. I wondered how much money they’d lost.

What could I possibly say to them? I no longer felt like one of them. I wasn’t one of them. (TON 358)

My poor Hyacinthus. Had I really created these flowers to commemorate him, or to wallow in my own grief and guilt? I found myself questioning many things I had done over the centuries. Strangely enough, this uneasiness felt somewhat reassuring.

I studied my smooth tan arms, wishing again that I had retained a few scars. Lester Papadopoulos had earned his cuts, bruises, broken ribs, blistered feet, acne... Well perhaps not the acne. No one deserves that. But the rest had felt more like symbols of victory than laurels, And better commemorations of loss than hyacinths. (TON 358-359)

I turned and strode out of my room, trying to recall how the god Apollo walked (TON 359)

As much as we pretended to be a council of twelve, in truth we were a tyranny. Zeus was less a benevolent father and more an iron-fisted leader with the biggest weapons and the ability to strip us of our immortality if we offended him. (TON 366)

My father coughed into his fist. “ I know you think your punishment was harsh, Apollo.”

I did not answer. I tried my best to keep my expression polite and neutral.

“But you must understand,” Zeus continued, “only you could have overthrown Python. Only you could have freed the Oracles. And you did it, as I expected. The suffering, the pain along the way... regrettable, but necessary. You have done me proud.”

Interesting how he put that: I had done him proud. I had been useful in making him look good. My heart did not melt. I did not feel that this was a warm-and-fuzzy reconciliation with my father. Let’s be honest: some fathers don’t deserve that. Some fathers aren’t capable of it.

I suppose I could have raged at him and called him bad names. We were alone. He probably expected it. Given his awkward self-consciousness at the moment, he might even have let me get away with it unpunished.

But it would not have changed him. It would not have made anything different between us.

You cannot change a tyrant by trying to out-ugly him. Meg could never have changed Nero, any more than I could change Zeus. I could only try to be different than him. Better. More... human. And to limit the time I spent around him to as little as possible. (TON 367-368)

I still didn’t feel like my old self. I didn’t want to feel like my old self. (TON 371)

When I’d first met Meg, she’d assured me that Lester’s appearance was perfectly normal. At the time, the notion had horrified me. Now I found it reassuring. (TON 371)

Ugly weeping would not have been appropriate for a major Olympian god, so that’s exactly what I did. (TON 372)

To be honest, though, I could no longer consider my time on Earth a punishment. Terrible, tragic, nearly impossible... yes. But calling it a punishment gave Zeus too much credit. It had been a journey - an important one I made for myself, with the help of my friends. I hoped... I believed that the grief and pain had shaped me into a better person. I had forged a more perfect Lester from the dregs of Apollo. I would not trade those experiences for anything. And if I had been told I had to be Lester for another hundred years... Well, I could think of worse things. At least I wouldn’t be expected to show up at the Olympian solstice meetings. (TON 373)

She laid her hand on my arm. “You haven’t forgotten. I can tell.”

She meant about being human, about honoring the sacrifices that had been made.

“No,” I said. “I won’t forget. The memory is part of me now.” (TON 390)

It would have been inconceivable to the old Apollo, but the idea of aging in this lovely desert tree house, watching Meg grow into a strong and powerful woman... that didn’t sound bad at all. (TON 394)

Call on me. I will be there for you. (TON 396)

#trials of apollo #ton spoilers #tower of nero #the tower of nero #tower of nero spoilers #the trials of apollo

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brokenmusicboxwolfe · 4 years ago

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With running out of storage space for pics, it’s time to unload insomnia writing with another round of....

From the drafts!

In this case I was rambling on about my hating Spring. I wrote this about a month ago, but it’s still 100% true and will be until half past June.

As usual, no proof reading and no promise it’s complete, but I just couldn’t delete it.

I HATE this time of year.

The days get longer and warmer, and I get sadder and sadder.

It’s spring, people say. The season of new growth, rebirth, young love, and blooming flowers. How can you not feel all that hope, optimisim, and potential?

But I think that’s the point. It makes me aware of what I lack, what I can never be or have.

Oh, I’ve had an amazing talent for focusing narrowly on the now and believing everything would work out somehow. I’d figure things out or get lucky or something. Stumbling through each day with a bullheaded determination and never letting myself linger on the futility of it all, distracting myself with anything interesting I’d come across along the way served me well.

Yet this never worked in spring.

The budding of the trees and the explosion of daffodils in all the yards would mark the start of if it. I’d find myself thinking about things to do with life. Beginnings and births would become thoughts of maybes and could bes that I longed for, but always found out of reach.

Despair and disappointment. Lost and alone. Trapped in a cage with no way out.

As a teenager I’d end up having a kind of meltdown every year. I’d run off to the woods to skip school at least once, hiding and crying. I would just not be able to stop crying, and at the time I was so ashamed to cry I could go the rest the year without shedding a tear, so this was dramatic for me.

My parents were great about it, never once chiding me even. Not talking about it really either of course, since I was always seen as fine really. They just assumed I’d cope, and if going to school the next day like normal, without the slightest blip in the grades I wasn’t having to work for anyway, was coping I suppose I was.

I suppose mostly it just would throw them. They knew of my insecurities and anxieties, but I don’t think they ever could quite see the depths of unhappiness that stayed submerged most of the time.

And that was when I was young. Back then there was still possibility and potential. I was a kid with a future ahead of her.

It was reasonable to assume that one day I’d have all the things I wanted. I’d have friends and family, someone that loved me, a career, a purpose, a few adventures, and just enough success that I could live comfortably enough survival wasn’t a daily worry and feel I’d accomplished at least one good thing to make the world better.

Okay, maybe just a few of them. But certainly I’d have at least some of those things, because it would be almost impossible not to at least accidentally end up with a few of them.

Or not it turns out.

Middle aged me has discovered just how bad a person can be at life, and how luck can end up not compensating at all. A life really can just be a slide downhill and you can suddenly realize you not only have no realistic hopes any more, you actually peaked at four!

The last few years have been increasingly worse. What used to offer stability and comforts have twisted into sources of anxiety or simply been stripped away. My loved ones have been lost to me, leaving me now friendless and alone. Worrying about surviving day to day, and trying to accept I can’t hold my world together occupies me thoughts. I have to let go of even little things that give me pleasure.

The future I never much looked to I can see more and more often as a bleak, dark, wasteland.

My optimistic and hopeful side is nearly gone, burned away by the bright glare of harsh realities. It gets that way when things never seem to work out and day after day offers fresh disasters you won’t be able to fix.**

I can’t even divert myself with all those little things. You may have noticed my photos are more perfunctory than they even used to be, my sculpting more awkward, and my text posts only venting and moaning. I don’t notice things and I can’t seem to get my imagination to work, and these were the cornerstones of my emotional survival.

Spring used to be the depressing time for me, and I could hold it back the rest of the time. Since certain events in 2012 that were the tugged threads that began the unraveling of the fabric of my life, it has increasingly gotten so the whole year feels like the awfulness of spring.

And yet spring is still actually worse.

The world comes alive each spring, while I wither just a bit more each year.

To be clear, I do NOT want to die. Never have, and expect I never will. As I like to say (and think I got from Blake’s 7) I intend to live forever, or die trying. (didn’t work out to well for them, did it! LOL).

I do admit I frequently try a little little mental trick of telling myself to think of myself as already dead. The idea isn’t I want to die, but that if I’m already dead the story is over and it doesn’t hurt anymore. If my story is still going on I desire what I can’t have and hope for what I can never get, so daily have to deal with the rapidly increasing impossibility of achieving any of it. It’s like starving to death slowly. It’s painful to very rationally and clear eyed face the simple fact that my life will get no better. The dead don’t feal pain, or grief, or loneliness, or fear, or unrequited love, or guilt, or shame, any of the rest of what has weighed me down.

So the game is to be a ghost, haunting the places I wander. I observe the world without an ache at being ignored, since most people never see a ghost anyway. I let myself be adrift between a warm memories of the past and the empty rooms of the present with no dread of the future, because that’s the story of others and not me. Nothing new can hurt a ghost.

But it’s just a thing to comfort myself when things are bad, but it never quite works. I can tell myself to pretend to be dead, but I’m very much alive. I feel and feel and feel, the raw nerve too sensitive girl still.

My other thing to repeat to myself on bad days is “I don’t matter.” This isn’t self loathing or anything, but me keeping my suffering in perspective. I’m not significant and contribute nothing to the world. I’ve no one depending on me or noticing me. If I died tomorrow only my mother would even mourn, and one day I won’t even have her. My sufferings are only mine and mine alone. I do not matter to the world.

Oddly this can be comforting and freeing. I don’t have to feel ashamed about how I’m stuck living. If a repair is out of my reach, well no one else is bothered so I can just deal with it unrepaired. I only have to worry about enduring.

But that’s the rub. Enduring can be grueling.

Watching your home rot away around you, being unable to get a vehicle repaired because you can’t get a lift to a repair shop, limping as you try to cut up a fallen tree blocking your driveway using only a handsaw, wearing five layers topped with a thick coat in your house in winter because you don’t exactly have heat, deciding what food not to buy yourself because you need to buy feed for the animals, and a thousand other things. It’s tiring.

Not mattering to others can’t stop you mattering to yourself. Mattering is what hurts. “It doesn’t matter” you shrug off. “It matters” you can’t ignore. My life is too full of things that “matter”, despite my attempts to feel otherwise.

And here is Spring, salt in the wound of my life. I’d probably be depressed in a good life this time of year, and I’d probably be depressed with the current state of my life whatever the season. The two together? I just want to curl up somewhere. Believe me, if I didn’t have so much I have to do I’d just stay in bed until June...

**Today’s disaster? I shattered the screen on my iPad. It still works, obviously since I’m writing this on it, but if it ever stops I won’t be able to afford to replace it.

#rambles #depression #spring #seasons #tired

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bookwormdeen · 5 years ago

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Love 101 (Aşk 101) Theories and Connections

Hi! I am back again! This time I have theories. I was reading some theories about the TV show and guess what? I played Sherlock and investigated some of them. Follow me!

I did a playlist to you listen while reads my crazy text.

--------------The playlist -------------

I put there some 1990-2000′s songs + covers + songs from the show

I don’t know turkish songs, if you know share.

SOME FINDINGS AND OBSERVATIONS

1. Eda is the source of problems

Don’t judge me. Eda is a good person and character, I love her draws and attitude. I want to prove another thing here. Let’s focus in three big confusions that happened: the debate one (EP1), the broke up of their early friendship (EP3) and the laboratory fight (EP7). All of them had Eda involved in the first moment or as a catalyst that only made things worse.

In the debate she messed with lights and threw a sticker in Kerem’s face. When Sinan panicked with Işık act, Eda said “We were not friends anyway” and she hurt Kerem’s feelings too. She burst and everyone went sideways. And she played with Burak, that later provoked that huge fight in the laboratory.

“Troublemaker is you middle nameeeeee” - Olly Murs song.

I think that Eda is a match to where is the fire. This can explain why she feels guilt of something. She was the center of another problem.

Also, the older Eda feels sorry for what she became: what her parents wanted. She lost her attitude, angry and fire. Something happened to her prefer marriage and children. Remember when Sinan told her that she prefers someone making her decisions? This happened because she was running away of something, a problem that hurt her feelings. She ran away from who she was. Heavy.

2. Something surely happened to Sinan

Now don’t cry thinking he is dead. I will present some things to push that away. First: Love 101 is a comedy-romance. Meaning: they don’t go really deep into mind problems, they make it a trait (like eating disorder, depression, mania). So, Sinan did not commit suicide or died, because is too heavy to let the story proceed.

Second: Is love 101. How to love. How love create, ruin and heal. Is admiration, passion, entertainment. If he dies the episode will be named after what: Lost, Hurt? I will not even come closer to it.

Third: Is a kid’s show (PG-13 rated). Do something big as a death will hurt the plot’s drama quality. And, suicide can’t be portrayed, so chill out kids. A thing that is possible is accidental death (Sinan, the guy that was hospitalized in the fight, Kemal or Burcu).

Fourth: He is the narrator big love. Sinan appears a lot because Işık likes him the most and wanted to know him more deeply. Even if something really bad happens to him (STOP), we will not know now but very later in the show. She would crash with his death and she seems quite calm now, not crying or grief, just nervous to see them and not lose the house. She even sits in his bed, upstairs. So they were quite a romance.

YES. I AM HOPEFUL. Stop saying that Sian dies because I will not take it. I will hate Netflix and the world.

Sinan is a good person reader. Is impressive actually. He hides his emotions but read it very well. He has scars. They eventually will come between him and Işık. Surely.

If he is not dead, then what?

Something, maybe his grandfather’s death or university mixed with group fight and love problems will make him go away and never look back (that house for him is a sad place guys). Maybe he left without talking to anyone and Işık couldn’t contact him, but, for love, she stayed looking his house. Or maybe they were not a thing anymore (runs away).

Oh, and the prison choice (cringes). Seriously? He spend all his life alone and then, maybe, more 20 years alone? Unacceptable.

People told me that his name appears in the prison scene but I really couldn’t see it. Does anyone have it? In my opinion, would be unfair make a person so lonely like this all his life. The show wants to end it with hapiness, how it would be possible after all this pain? If Sinan was in prison, no one visited him? that hurts.

The thing is, we will know what happened to him slowly because it is a result of what made the group went sideways and don’t talk for 20 years. What I mean: big huge separation situation --> Sinan leaves or dies.(no,no,no).

So his abandoned house is a proof that something surely happened.

3. The show may have a format to keep interest

Cliffhanger = More seasons, more public. Smart move. The show is simple but want it to get attached emotionally and mentally. I learned with Sinan, yay.

The plot may go: (counting 8 episodes)

Take in count that the house is dangerous to stay in. So, they might take it to another place and see each other’s lives closer. This is excellent to the plot. I don’t think they will cry and hug in front of the door.

We will also supose that is 5 people. 2 we already know.

1 --> More story, solve some mysteries (who is at the door); things get good at first moment (love and self acceptance);

2 --> Things get bittersweet (love but parents and more problems). For me is by the end of the Ep 2 and on.

3 --> (if only one more season, a forth person appears by S2E4, then a fifth by the end or S2E7). This person (for me not Sinan yet), will clarify somethings and contribute to the story with more details. Problems that start to hurt them. So, EP 5 - Ep7 will hurt.

4 --> Things get really bad; if they have a third season, we will not have the forth person, will end up just like S1E8 or, as I said, he will appear in the S2E7.

If only a second season, EP 7 - EP8 the fifth person appears and they finish the story together, end.

Following all my theory it will go like this: Osman - Kerem or Sinan. I am not sure who will take up all the heavy stuff and end up being the last. For now they put this weight in Sinan and maybe is to play with us.

4. What bound them, can destroy them

The thing is, they are a thigh fit as a group. Emotional and explosive. They lash at each other and have some friction along the way. Osman is more neutral. In the episode 3, where they cry and do crazy things after their fight, Osman is simply not there. He is simple, only said: You got what you wanted Sinan. Done.

So, they can fall apart actually without big evens like death and murder. Somethings hurt deeper, like words, misunderstandings and separation. Their parents evil powers for example. I mean, in their first fight they were arguing about a test. Simple things + emotion = BOOM

5. Character development

Here we go. Remember I said that Osman doesn’t have emotional outbursts?

He goes on with his business and things. We see him crying with his father and being upset about his business fail but he always get over with using a plan. Unfortunately, his leadership will not keep the group bonded but he is the healing remedy, surely. I hope he open up more. Be more more emotional besides his carisma and soft friendship. He is a good boss, good son, good friend, bad student; what else more? He is such a good leader. Will he sacrifice himself for all them?

And, who is Kemal really? He is a sweetheart with an armor but what happened to him, besides being an ex-basketball player? Will his romance really last? The characters in the show are deep, they have personality. Kemal seems simple to me sometimes. His relationship with Sinan can develop and we can see more of his demons (besides his attitude) and story.

All they got better but we have a way to go. Kerem has to be less violent, Eda has to try being herself again; Işık has to be more mature because Sinan will need her a lot and if she can’t stand up her mother it can go really wrong. Sinan has to confront his parents more, get less lonely somehow. He is the only one that is slowly healing himself but nothing changed: he still lives alone, this still hurts.

We will see they get much better, but, again, they end up not really good 20 years later. We will see a regression in so many points.

6. They maybe can be students still

Words matter. A lot. Before the boarding Karakis (the principal) said that a friend of his would call the Minister and make that a majority board. Maybe he rushed it to grab the teens and the expulsion is not valid. Also, for me, Işık was only suspended. Why burn her uniform? (Her mother will kill her, I would too).

The scholar year in Turkey ends around June. Why expel them so close to the end? And, I think that are finishing the 2 year of High School, not the third. If not, they lose the hole Burcu-Kemal arc and their common place.

Maybe they can all move to a nearby school, even with bad records, and have another challenges. This is unlikely, even if I think that school conflicts got saturated.

The other part of this theory is my home-made timeline. In 19th May, the would have an event that is important in Turkey (the red umbrella ones). They were close to finish the year and go to summer time (I want this really, would be fun).

7. No earthquake okay!

I saw some theories about it. Nobody will die in the 1998 and 1999 earthquakes. They were far away from Istanbul and the only one that got to the city were far away (geographically) from the school and Sinan’s house. I made a post about the locations, see here.

I received more of Burcu dying in a earthquake. In my CURIOSITIES post I said that Sinan was taking Işık home after being in Eda’s house. Eda lives in Kadıköy in my opinion, so Burcu does too. This neighborhood is in the Asian side, while the earthquake affected the European side. Very far away. For me is kinda impossible to make this a bid thing. Why Burcu would be so far away from her house, the school that she teaches? Strange.

8. New challenges

Burak told Eda: You don’t get to play with people lives. Ouch. Is true. Not only him had his chance being the “villain”. We have... The english teacher that likes Kemal; the professors; the parents being mad about the speech thing and even a few classmates (if they come back).

Their parents seems to be in a contest of who is the worse, maybe not Osman’s father, that’s why I think that he is more calm and centered, despite being money drived. Society pressure (college, money, marriage) will get to them too.

9. The true always comes out

Well, well, well. When one makes a plan, in the movies and TV, they always confess it, but in Love 101, this moment is not entirely solved. Sinan told the group that now Kemal knows about the set up? Probably no. Eda finds Burcu’s behavior strange but it ends there. Oh-ohh. Ops.

Maybe their teacher now will not stick out for them anymore. She was afraid of deciding their lives but they were deciding hers. If they come back to school and do something wrong again it will be worse.

What if Karakis discover about Burcu’s bold move with the fire alarm? He is pissed more than never now. No laboratory; he didn’t get to humiliate the group. He will be worse than ever if they come back;.

10. Yes. 5 plates, cups and chairs.

The camera angle wants to play but if you pause, you can see two times the same thing, inside and outside the house.

11. The guy in the farm is Osman. End.

Now, Sinan may be in prison or a successful person (the one that is eating). If you consider that the one that has his letter in the pocket is Osman again, Sinan is the only one that is hidden. He did not appear yet. Pick one and Kerem is the other.

If you have questions like me, see HERE.

Leave comments so I can investigate your theories, haha!

See my first edit here (Sinan x Isik). With HALSEY’S SONG, BE KIND.

XOXO.

#love101 #ask101 #netflix #aşk101 #love 101 #sinanIşık #sinan #eda #love 101 netflix

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moomoopookie · 4 years ago

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Introduction

I'm Michelle, the people closest to me also know me as Pookie, I’m 33 years old and a married mum of 3. I have a 13 year old daughter, an 11 year old son and a baby son born in June 2020 (nearly 9 months old). We live in our happy (and hectic) home just outside of Brighton.

I decided to make this blog for several reasons, one of those was to share some of my ideas with baby arts and crafts, the other was to share my story with the sinister pregnancy condition Hyperemesis Gravidarum and the last reason was as a kind of diary, a small snapshot in to our lives. I have been diagnosed with several different chronic health conditions which make my journey as a mum that much more difficult. This blog may give its readers a snap shot into the life of a mum struggling with disabilities. If it can give even one person hope or make someone smile then it is worth it.

A brief history of my health

From the age of 11, I have had 2 different mental health conditions that run along side each other; they are depression and anxiety. And at the age of 13 I suffered with regular back pain, which after x-rays showed to be scoliosis. It caused pain but as it was not discovered until adulthood there was very little that could be done. At the age of 17 I lost my son at about 20-22 weeks gestation after a shock discovery of pregnancy. Things starting getting bad from there, later that year I ended up with glandular fever but did make a good but slow recovery. I started university but after my loss I was not particularly careful at preventing another pregnancy; I fell pregnant with my daughter at the end of 2006. I had a mild HG pregnancy with her that resolved at about 14 weeks. After delivery in 2007 things were ok however I became quite depressed and routine blood test showed I had hypothyroidism, despite not having symptoms.

In 2009 I became pregnant again with my son; his pregnancy was difficult with HG and obstetric cholestasis. I was originally carrying twins but was so unwell that sadly lost one of my babies. I was so ill I went into early liver failure and had to have an emergency induction at 35 weeks. I never really recovered from that pregnancy; we originally thought I was depressed and withdrawing but found that I was so tired I would not be able to get out of bed. It got worse and worse, and after what seemed like a long period of investigations I was finally diagnosed with M.E. A few years later I was also diagnosed with Fibromyalgia and Sleep Apnoea (by this point my weight had increased spectacularly).

I will go into these conditions in future posts, but to this date these are the conditions I live with. By the very nature of M.E and Fibromyalgia they are very unpredictable and hard to live with. But they do NOT define me, I am not my diagnosis, I just live with them.

Things can be hard - there are times when we have to put our plans on hold - but generally our family function like every other family; we just have to adjust to mummy needing extra time and support. This blog will highlight some of those difficulties and hopefully bring hope to others with chronic conditions, showing that you can shine and have a happy family life even with disabilities.

Me as a Person

My biggest passion in life is animals. I love animals and always dreamed of becoming a veterinary nurse. Some of the other things I enjoy are arts and crafts, digital art, watching horror movies, gaming, reading and I love spending time with friends and family.

I am looking forward to this new challenge of becoming a blogger. Please do reach out and say hello, I love to make new friends and have a chat!

I do hope you enjoy my blog posts, please message me to give advice or how I can improve it or if you would like us to try any ideas.

#introduction #m.e #fibromyalgia #hyperemesis gravidarum #artsandcrafts #baby art #family #fun with baby #ideas for kids #mental health #chronic illness #spoonie #chronic illness warrior #strong woman #hg #still birth #baby loss awareness

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lucaniisdellamorte · 4 years ago

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!! I’d love to hear about your a6 ocs 👀

OH BOY ARE YOU IN FOR IT BECAUSE I WANNA TALK ABOUT THEM SO BAD SO I WILL TELL YOU EVERYTHING I CAN THINK OF

Under a cut because it got long and uh spoilers I guess?

Okay so first I’ll talk about Farren

I hc her as not the youngest child but the 9th or 10th giving her at least one younger sibling (I’m still waffling on where her place was specifically)(but that puts her more towards 23-24)

Also hc that she was sneaking out of the palace long before she met Vexx, the first time she was about 12, after being told to sit down and shut up after trying to take Nerissa’s side in an argument against their father, she left and for the first time she felt like she could really breathe

After that she started leaving at least a few times a week, sometimes daily, just to go walk around the gold district (and bringing her younger sibling(s) treats from one the bakeries)

So I imagine she was the favorite among the guards and her minders when they realized what she was doing but not knowing how she was sneaking out

Eventually her older siblings also found and given her proclivity to be a little shit, started calling her Feral behind her back since her name is only a few letters off

You know the music box? It used to be Nerissa’s but Farren loved the song so much she started stealing it just to listen to it over and over especially when she was missing her older sister. Eventually Nerissa gave her the nickname Mouse and let her keep it so that Farren would always remember that there was at least one person in the palace that loves her

Was very aloof when she learned about who she was and what happened to her family, she didn’t want to think about in the moment but when she was alone all she could was cry

While she does objectively understand that she isn’t responsible for the deaths of her family, she still feels like she’s to blame since her actions lead to them dying

Feels deeply, deeply ashamed that Vexx was able to trick her, that she was so desperate for a friend, to fall in love, that she missed whatever warning signs were that maybe Vexx wasn’t all that he appeared to be

So every time he calls her pathetic or tells her that she made his job too easy, it hurts her deeply though she tries her hardest not to let it show

Was dating Vexx and is now dating Damon

Yeah she’s got a Type (further proven by the fact that she has a little crush on Alisa) but at least this time around she’s massively upgraded

Also hc that Nerissa (if she was still alive or somewhere in the afterlife) approves of Damon actually but never approved of Vexx

She wants to get Zovack off the throne but isn’t sure that she wants to be the one to replace him. Sure she’s the last of her father’s line (which she hates being reminded that she’s related to him) and it’s her family’s throne, she just has the self awareness to admit that she isn’t the best person for the job. Yeah she got Princess Training but since she was so far down the line of succession, she was never taught how to be a Ruler like Nerissa was

Plus she sees being royalty in general as a cage and she wants out, signing up to be Queen feels like permanently clipping her wings

Doesn’t like being told what to do! Which of course gets on Cal’s nerves but he’s got her reasoning all wrong. Farren doesn’t like being told what to do not because she was a spoiled princess, but because for most of her life she was constantly told what to do or what not to do and she’s sick of it!

She does what she’s told to do sometimes though, she would just prefer to be asked to at least give her the illusion of having a choice

Here she is (her hair is like two shades darker though)

And now Daciana!

She also isn’t the youngest kid but she’s more in the middle somewhere around 6th or 7th (so she’s about 26)

She always tried to be a Good Princess, wanting to make Nerissa proud and always followed her lead, learning from her

Of course that put her in close proximity to her parents which she loathed but she was always willing to deal with it if that meant getting to be with Nerissa

Very good listening

Sure she was never likely to take the throne herself but she always wanted to be an advisor to Nerissa

She always wants to help

Woke up on the A6 to June’s pretty grey eyes and never recovered

Was very close to the two brothers that were the same age as her, Noa and Sorenn along with Nerissa

Loves learning about all the plants that Ryona is growing even if it is a tiny bit unsettling that most of what she grows is poisonous

Not a fighter but her words can cut just as deeply without ever having to raise her voice, a talent she (unfortunately) learned from her mother

Seriously though this poor girl is so in love with June, the most memorable thing about her first time in a strip club (literally not just the first time in her memory, she’s never been in any establishment like the Arc) was that she got to hold hands with June

So of course it was absolutely devastating when he pushed her away after finding out who she is

Which she didn’t blame him for, it made sense, but it still sucked

Was very held together and strong when she found out about who she is though she also cried and cried the moment she was alone

Was only ever friends with Vexx and sneaking out with him was the first time that she had ever done anything against her parent’s wishes before

The music box was a gift from Nerissa, Daciana always loved it and Nerissa gave it to her before a trip where she was going to be gone for at least a month to try and help her when she was missing Nerissa and she when Daciana tried to give it back on her return, Nerissa let her keep it

Also really enjoys hanging out with Bash because she never got the chance to learn about mechanics and he’s a great teacher!

Likes wearing dresses and skirts, things that make her feel pretty and give her that little extra boost of confidence

Doesn’t necessarily want to be queen (since that was always supposed to go to Nerissa) but at the same time she’s not going to leave Zovack on the throne and if the only one that can replace him is her, then she’s going to do it

This is her!

And lastly Zuri!

Actually the youngest of her family! (making her about 21)

And a kitalphan!

Naive about so much, being locked away as one of the lesser important kids will kind of do that too you

She did read a lot though so there are things she does know but she doesn’t have a lot of real world application

Is absolutely horrified by the conditions on other planets (and even being told about things in the copper district)

She may be naive but Aya thinks she’s adorable so there’s that

Seriously Aya flirts with her and sometimes you watch it go right over her pretty head

She’s catching on though, she made Aya blush once and it was GREAT

Was very emotional when she found out about her past and who she is and it got worse when she was alone

Is absolutely down to help Damon sneak a cat aboard the ship but only if he sneaks her one too

Pretty easy going most days

Loves watching the stars and planets go by as they travel and especially loves watching them go by from the cockpit

Is it because Aya is there? Yes, yes it is

Was overwhelmed going into the Arc, there were so many people and so much going on that it got to be a little too much at one point

Would have loved to be born into a deep sea kitalphan family especially before everything went to shit, she can only imagine that living that deep in the water would have been fun

Is probably the least prepared out of all three of my ocs for the things that are going on around her atm but she’s doing the best she can not only to deal with it but to help out as well

Is kind of okay with possibly becoming queen since it seems that really only she and Zorack want the throne and he sure as shit isn’t going to be sitting on it much longer. She wants to help make things better and even if she is the least prepared she is the most willing to try

Zuri always wanted a music box like Nerissa’s but with a different tune (she wanted something a little happier) but since the metal (I forgot how to spell it) is ultra now, Nerissa gave Zuri her music box for her 21st bday and Zuri has treasured it ever since

She also dated Vexx, which of course she deeply regrets!

She still cares for him though despite everything, especially once she sees that he’s in pain, she wants to get him help and get him better but she’s not going to ever trust or date him again

In fact it might years and years before she would even consider calling him a friend again

Zuri always wore this necklace that her mother gave her, all bue and silver with a pretty opal stone that looks like a full moon over the ocean but between her escape and her rescue, it got lost and she’s really depressed about that

One of the things she used to do when she and Vexx would sneak was to feed the local stray cats until eventually she had a whole little group of them hanging out in the palace gardens which of course no one but her was excited about

And here she is!

#oc tag #farren peg'asi #daciana peg'asi #zuri peg'asi #sorry this took so long #I stopped in the middle to play around in picrew #and I got DISTRACTED #also! Amy!#we should talk more!#and I know you have a6 ocs!#I would love to hear about them!#also I think I misspelled Farren partway through #it should be Farren not Ferran #toreadours #askbox #a6

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khixsoncounselorpdx · 4 years ago

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Being a Counselor In The Year 2020

Not a single one of the articles that have come out about working as a mental health provider during the COVID-19 pandemic has even scratched the surface of the struggles we’re facing out here. If it was only a poorly managed global pandemic that is being met by utter indifference to lost lives and with a disparate impact within marginalized communities….. That is, by itself, horrific. However, there are so many more layers we are holding, as people and as mental health providers.

It’s the economic impact of the pandemic. It’s the extreme discord within the nation about whether being required to wear a mask infringes on your individual rights. It’s seeing the infection numbers jump way up. It’s 5G and QAnon conspiracies. It’s our friends and clients getting tear gassed, arrested, and traumatized out on the streets. It’s climate change and devastating wildfires on the west coast (and the related 10 days of hazardous air quality that pushed us to the breaking point). It’s vigilantes taking over in some rural areas to patrol them from…..ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. It’s the everyday oppression that our clients are facing. It’s fear about what will happen on November 3rd and afterwards. It’s wondering what the long term impact of telehealth on our clinical relationships. It’s sitting in our empty offices (if you’ve decided to keep yours) and panicking over the internet speed. It’s wondering how long insurance companies will pay for telehealth. It’s being worried about our own health/mental health and that of our clients, families, and communities. It’s working in these completely marginal systems that have long forgotten their June 1, 2020 public statements of solidarity with Black Lives Matter*. It’s just so many things...

As counselors, we’re seeing more serious symptoms of depression, anxiety, mania, OCD, substance use, and psychosis. Demand for mental health care is higher than ever. (We’ll leave my long-form essay about the barriers to access to care for another time). The painful reality is that everyone who is doing direct care work is putting out an unbelievable amount of energy just to be present right now. And i’ll tell you the whole truth: I’m not at my best right now. How could I be? How could any of us be? I’ve faced ruptures with my clients and with my own therapist in the last couple weeks. Luckily, all involved have the grace to work through these moments where we disappoint or invalidate each other because we know this time is too much to contain.

The truth is, we are not trained for this. Even on the best of days, the skill set of individual psychotherapy only impacts a fraction of the difficulties people experience. Clients bring in struggles that are deeply connected to the interlocking systems of oppression, capitalism, and beyond. But we keep doing it because being in a therapeutic relationship does, in fact, make a difference. Having someone to witness, encourage, and validate you does make a difference. Having support to disrupt this project of national gas lighting does make a difference. Sharing tools, skills, and knowledge does make a difference. Mutual aid does make a difference. And ultimately supporting people in staying alive during this time does make a difference. But we are facing unprecedented collective trauma and we must search for the collective means to work through it. It’s always been bad and it’s worse right now.

*George Floyd’s death was on May 25, 2020. When his death wasn’t ignored and activated a national uprising, many organizations, corporations, and workplaces released statements in the weeks following.

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alexsfictionaddiction · 4 years ago

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Alex Recommends: May and June Books

I must apologise for the late arrival of this post. It should have been up days ago but I’ve been struggling to read much for the last month or so. My head has been very foggy and dark with all of the confusion, anxiety and hate that has been filling my news feeds and I’ve been filled with a desire to combat it. Before this month, I’d have run in the opposite direction from any kind of confrontation but recent events have given me the kick up the butt to actively do better. I’ve been calling out bigotry when I come across it and I’ve noticed that some people, notably my older relatives, haven’t necessarily reacted favorably to the changed, more outspoken Alex. It has been pretty daunting and I’ve worked myself up into fits of rage and tears several times over the last couple of months.

A lot of things have changed for me since my last Alex Recommends post. I’m currently temporarily living in Staffordshire with my boyfriend because my depression got too bad for me to stay at home for much longer. I missed him unbelievably much and I knew that spending some prolonged time with him would help -and it has. Both him and I have spent 12 weeks religiously following all of the rules, so we’re both extremely low-risk for catching and spreading COVID-19 and being together was something that we simply really needed to do. Please don’t hate me for it! In other news, I have also started writing again, which feels amazing. I’m now a few thousand words into a queer Rapunzel retelling that I have lots of ideas for. Maybe I’ll even post an extract or two, when I feel it’s ready to show you.

In the centre of the renewed energy of Black Lives Matter and the undeniable exposure of the horrors that is police brutality, the book blogging and BookTube worlds vowed to uplift Black voices. I wrote a very long, in-depth blog post full of Black-written books and Black book influencers. Please check it out to diversify your TBR and educate yourself on Black issues, which is what every white person should be doing now and always.

June was Pride Month and I tried my best to compile a series of recommendation posts in honour of it. These included gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, non-binary, ace, pansexual and intersex lists. I’ve had some great feedback on this, so I hope you find some fantastic new reads. It felt especially poignant to put them together the same year that one of my childhood heroes came out as an ignorant trans-exclusive feminist. As a lifelong Harry Potter superfan and someone who has repeatedly publicly supported Rowling in the past, I feel the need to clarify where I now stand. I do not support or agree with a single thing that she has said in recent times with regard to transgender people. I’ve never felt my own status as a cisgender female threatened by trans people wanting more rights or believed that children or women were at risk due to their existence.

I read her words more than once and struggled to find any semblance of the woman who wrote the books that have most defined my life. I’m hesitant to say that we can always successfully separate the art from the artist but I will say that it makes sense to me that the Rowling of 2020 is not the same Rowling that wrote Harry Potter. She was a destitute single mother when Philosopher’s Stone was published in 1997 and of course, she is now a million worlds away from that lifestyle. It breaks my heart but it makes sense to me that she has changed beyond belief because her life has changed beyond belief. I’m not and never would make any excuses for her recent behaviour and I have stopped supporting her personally but I will not be getting rid of my Harry Potter books and I will undoubtedly re-read them several more times. However, I am now hugely reluctant to buy any more merchandise or special editions of the books, which saddens me but at the moment, it feels right. There is no coming back for her from this and I will make a conscious effort to keep Harry Potter and Rowling away from my future content. It can be really tough to admit that the people you once really admired aren’t great humans but it’s something that we all have to acknowledge in this case, in order to move forward with our own quests to become our best selves.

It didn’t feel right to post my May recommendations last month as I didn’t feel comfortable promoting my own content in the midst of boosting Black voices. So today I’m bringing you a bumper edition of Alex Recommends. Here are 10 books that I’ve enjoyed since the start of May that I’d love to share with you. Enjoy! -Love, Alex x

FICTION: Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

Set in the affluent neighbourhood of Shaker Heights, Ohio in the 1990s, two families are brought together and pulled apart by the most intense, devastating circumstances. Dealing with issues of race, class, coming-of-age, motherhood and the dangers of perfection, Little Fires Everywhere is highly addictive and effecting. With characters who are so heartbreakingly real and a story that weaves its way to your very core, I couldn’t put it down and I’m still thinking about it over a month after finishing it.

FICTION: Get A Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert

When coding nerd Chloe Brown almost dies, she makes a list of goals and vows to finally Get A Life. So she enlists tattooed redhead handyman and biker Red to teach her how. Cute, funny and ultimately life-affirming, this enemies-to-lovers rom-com was exactly the brand of light relief that I needed this month. The follow-up Take A Hint, Dani Brown focuses on a fake-dating situation with Chloe’s over-achieving academic sister and I can’t wait to get my hands on that.

FICTION: The Rearranged Life of Oona Lockhart by Margarita Montimore

Just before her 19th birthday at midnight on New Year’s Eve 1983, Oona Lockhart finds herself inexplicably in 2015 inside her 51-year-old body. She soon learns that every year on New Year’s Day, she will now find herself inside a random year of her life and she has no control over it. Seeing her through relationships, friendships and extreme wealth, this strange novel has echoes of Back To The Future and 13 Going On 30 with a final revelation that I certainly never saw coming.

NON-FICTION: The Five by Hallie Rubenhold

Atmospheric and engaging, The Five details the previously untold stories of Polly, Annie, Elisabeth, Kate and Mary-Jane -the women who lost their lives at the hands of Jack the Ripper. Full of fascinating research and heartbreaking accounts of what these women’s lives may have been like, Rubenhold paints a dark immersive portrait of Victorian London and gives voice to these tragic silenced lives. Although we can’t know for certain if these accounts are entirely accurate, they feel very plausible and in some ways, The Five exposes how little time has moved on, when it comes to the public portrayal of single, troubled women.

NON-FICTION: Unicorn by Amrou Al-Kadhi

From a childhood crush on Macaulay Culkin to how a teenage obsession with marine biology helped them realise their non-binary identity, Unicorn tells the story of how the obsessive perfectionist son of a strict Muslim Iraqi family became the gorgeous drag queen Glamrou. Packed full of humour, honesty and heart, this book will give you the strength and inspiration to harness what you were born with and be who you were always meant to be.

MIDDLE-GRADE: The Super Miraculous Journey of Freddie Yates by Jenny Pearson

When fact-obsessed Freddie’s grandmother dies, he discovers that the father he has never met may actually be alive and living in Wales. So he has no choice but to grab his best friends Ben and Charlie, leave his home in Andover and go to find his dad! I laughed so many times during this madcap adventure and I know the slapstick crazy humour will hit the middle-grade target audience just right. It’s also a wonderful depiction of small town Britain with a focus on the true meaning of family.

MIDDLE-GRADE: A Kind Of Spark by Elle McNicoll

When Addie learns about her hometown’s history of witch trials, she campaigns tirelessly to get a memorial for the women who lost their lives through it. This wonderfully beautiful novel gives a unique insight into the mind of an 11-year-old autistic girl with a huge heart. Busting myths about neurodiversity while tackling typical pre-teen drama, you’ll laugh, you’ll cry but most of all, you’ll close the book with a huge smile on your face.

HISTORICAL FICTION: Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell

In 16th century Warwickshire, Agnes is a woman with a unique gift whose relationship with a young Latin tutor produces three children and a legacy that lasts for centuries. This enchanting, all-consuming account of the tragic story of Shakespeare’s lost son, the effects that rippled through the family and the play that was born from their pain will send a bullet straight through your heart. Wonderfully researched and beautifully written, Hamnet is worth all of the hype.

HISTORICAL FICTION: The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave

When a vicious storm kills most of the men of Vardø, Norway, it’s up to the women to keep things going but a man with a murderous past is about to come down with an iron fist. At the heart of this dark tale of witch trials, grief and feminism, two women find something they’ve each been searching for within each other. Gorgeously written with a fantastically slow-burning queer romance, Kiran Millwood Hargrave’s first adult novel is an addictive, atmospheric read with a poignant, tearjerker of an ending.

SCI-FI: Q by Christina Dalcher

When one of Elena’s daughters manages to drop below the country’s desired Q number, she is sent away to one of the new state schools and Elena is about to find out something she’d really rather not know about the new system. Packed full of real social commentary and critique of life as we know it while painting a picture of how things could be even worse (yes, really!), this pulse-racing, horrifying sci-fi dystopian gripped me from the first page and refused to let me go.

#book recommendations #recommended #recommendations #may #june #books #bookworm

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selphiahaven · 5 years ago

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Selphia Haven: How it Began

Just over a year ago, I decided to make Selphia Haven. I would like to believe most blogs are made just for fun, or in order to show support and love for a special niche.

This blog was originally made for a different purpose.

Please note that my story may hold some triggering subjects for people. Please read at your own risk.

It was February of last year when I realized I had depression, but the seeds of it started to plant a lot earlier. For example, I think the hopelessness in my life started around the time that the Charlottesville white nationalist protest was being covered. News stories like this are shocking, and unbelievably scary, for a young adult who is trying to find their way in life.

I had always tried to desperately hold onto the belief that everyone, everywhere, can love and care for each other if they are either given the right knowledge or the right opportunities. I had originally picked up this belief as a child, and wanted to grow up to become a writer who would share stories with kind messages. I pursued a passion for writing all the way up until university, wherein I discovered psychology. My area of focus switched from becoming a writer to becoming a counsellor. I was going to help people, to become someone that could help manifest hope and love within people who had lost their way.

News stories like white nationalism, and similar hateful topics, made that hope slowly slip away from my fingers.

It was a slow fall. I don't remember what happened, exactly, between the Charlottesville protests and February of last year that really wore down my hope. But, by the time the Parkland school shooting happened, all that hope disappeared. The last shred of my love for the world was gone.

What are you supposed to do in life when all this terrible, terrible stuff happens in places that you cannot directly impact? Things far worse than you can imagine, to people far younger than you might think. Watching on a TV screen, you can distance yourself; pretend it doesn't happen. But you know. You know that these terrible things are someone's reality. Someone, somewhere, has to deal with each and every one of these realities that pop up on our news stations. And you can do nothing to help it.

I didn't do much from February onwards. I ate. I slept. I still went to school and worked. But it was...robotic? Everything just kind of happened. Nothing held purpose or meaning. Assignments were just assignments. Work was just work. Food was just food. And sleep was never enough.

My love for my future career was gone. I no longer wanted to be a counsellor, because I couldn't bear to deal with it. I couldn't bear to think that I would be facing these realities every single day—talking with people who had gone through losses of loved ones, suicide attempts, rape, abuse, and so much more—and yet could not provide a source of hope for them. How do you find hope for others when there are stories out there that tell us that everything bad is still happening, right now, right here, in this moment? I could be murdered next week by simply being in the wrong supermarket when a terrorist walks in and starts shooting.

I hadn't exactly contemplated suicide. Another belief I held on to was that, no matter what happens, every step alive is still a step in a growing direction. I would not commit suicide; but I was starting to think about it a lot more. For example: What it would be like to die. And, well, how long it would take for this belief to slip from my fingers just as quietly as my previous belief on the love in the world did. How long would it be before I actually started contemplating it. How long would it be before I actually committed it. What would it take for me to believe that death would be the "best option."

What got me moving wasn't through some miraculous determination. It was fear. I didn't want to die— It scared me to even be thinking about it. I still loved things in this world. My family. My friends. I actually did like school, and though I had been viewing my schoolwork at this time a mostly assignments, I did want to continue learning about the mysteries behind psychology. It was more than just the big things, there were also simple things I wanted to live for. I love ice cream. I love the smell of vanilla. I love the feel of the sun. I love the feel of the rain too, actually, and you can't feel these things, smell these things, taste these things when you're dead.

I wanted to stay alive. I wanted to still laugh at things. I had more funny videos I wanted to watch. More books I wanted to read. There are things in this world that I haven't even heard of yet that I want to stay for and experience in the future. I wanted to write. Oh my god, I wanted to write so much. I would write without end when I was in high school, but gave it up when I started pursuing psychology. I never got back to it because I felt I wasn't good enough, but I still wanted to do it.

All these lovely things that I wanted to do, and see, and experience...

But no effort to give.

I was tired, always. Constantly. My motivation to do anything outside of "the mandatory" (School, work, etc.) was nonexistent. I wanted to write, but every sentence I wrote looked ugly, or wrong, or faulty in some way. I wanted to go out for walks, but I also didn't want to get up and out of my room. I wasn't confident in anything I did; including the things I did at school and work.

I just needed something though. I wanted to do something. Anything.

I didn't start Tumblr for Selphia Haven specifically; I started it to look at funny pictures of animals (see also: an escape from reality). But it seemed like an inviting website to find...something to do on it. It wasn't limiting like on Twitter where I could only have, like, one blog per email. Tumblr gives the opportunity to try many different blogs, if you choose to pursue many different niches.

So, something small, then. I wanted to do something small. Not something meaningful; just something that would motivate me to get out of bed and do...something outside of the mandatory. It was here that I discovered something that seemed easy enough: incorrect quote blogs. In fact, I was so interested in hearing random, funny quotes that I even follow blogs for fandoms I have never seen anything from (eg. Voltron, Harry Potter, Mystic Messenger).

RF4 wasn't my first stop, but seeing as Pandora Hearts and Vanitas no Carte already had frequently updating incorrect quotes blogs, I had to find some other fandom that didn't quite have an incorrect quote blog yet. And... Well, Rune Factory did have one before I started. @overheard-at-selphia existed a few months before I walked in. However, they seemed to only be updating maybe once or twice a month. I thought for a day about whether they might be open to sharing the spotlight with me. Then, I decided that, what the hell, I'll just do it and if they aren't a fan of it, they can always just message me and tell me to shut up.

(I still follow @overheard-at-selphia too. They still update sometimes. It makes me happy.)

On June 14th, 2018, I made my first awkward post.

I made a commitment to myself then: I would make 5 posts a day. They were easy enough to make (this was, of course, before I started adding images) so this kind of goal was realistic for me. Also, I was in the heat of summer, so I didn't have schoolwork to worry about. The queue system still saves me to this day; I don't need to worry when I know I have a busy week coming up, because I can just fill it up when I have effort, and then let it run on my "off days".

Small motivations included just a handful of notes per post, and a handful of followers that gave me incentive to continue moving. Followers meant that people were relying on me to continue making posts. I couldn't just stop without reason; this little project was my own, but I created it to be my own meaningful "mandatory project".

Five little posts a day. Gradually, gradually, gradually, I discovered some courage to try something new. I created the picture incorrect quotes through a small burst of motivation in November, and the results had been astounding. I went from getting maybe 10 notes per post (If I was lucky) to around 20-50 notes per post. And that's not even counting this fukkin monster of a post that exploded straight outta nowhere.

Three posts a day. Gradually, gradually, gradually, I discovered some new courage. Gradually, gradually, gradually, I started writing again. Gradually, gradually, I wrote something. I finished writing something. I actually posted something I wrote; just over one year of Selphia Haven's existence.

I'd love to be able to say life is better now, but I can't really say that for certain. I'm not really sure if things will be okay, and I can't make promises about life when news stories are just as depressing as they have ever been. I have no grand answers for the mysteries that plague our existence; why are we alive and what's the point in all this. And, really, none of the problems that caused my depression have really been "solved" (I still don't want to be a counsellor anymore and I haven't found a different career path yet, for example).

But...I dunno. I'm enjoying this. Making Selphia Haven. It may not be a grand, exuberant show that's going to cure depression or save the children or give starving people food, but... It's my little effort. It's my little attempt at making a bit of light. A little bit of laughter in this dark world. I think we all need that— A little bit of something that gives us light. For me, that was creating Selphia Haven. Making a little effort of my own to (hopefully) make someone smile— Even if it's just a little smile. If my existence on this Earth is just to bring a small smile to your face, well... I guess that makes it worth it for me to continue, right?

That's why I'm so eager to promote any kinds of Rune Factory blogs you guys make, actually. It was me gaining those first few followers that motivated me to continue my first small steps... Gradually, gradually, gradually, I hope that those who start small can grow into something larger too. That people have something small that they can love, or create, or follow along with.

But, I also realize that, you know, not everyone experiences depression in the same way, right? My depression was helped because I had something small I could do every day. No story is the same; but I hope that if you do want to try out making a blog like mine, you will allow me to advertise it for you.

This...maybe isn't a super uplifting story, but hey. It's my story, and it seems to be working out for me so far. I'm happy with it. I'm happy that I'm writing again. And I'm going to continue making gradual steps towards the future too, which might lead me to something bigger. Who knows.

...But I hope I can finish Castle to the West, at least. Writing that story makes me really happy. So... I guess I hope you all continue your small steps to find that thing that makes you happy too. And if you need help, please ask for help! I’d be happy to give you my support!

#Admin talk #This is as good as I got for a 'positive saying'#Hope it helps-

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entriesfromangels · 5 years ago

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Journal Entry (#5) ~

Oh the times we are living in right now.

It’s crazy how a virus is changing our daily lives. How it affects people mentally and physically. But we have to do what we can to keep others safe. Stay home y’all. It’s the best we can do!

Staying home is ideal for anyone who is an introvert at heart. I am but I do like to go out from time to time and socialize with others. Its weird not being able to do that right now.

Lately I’ve been struggling. Not with the whole quarantine stuff but with family. As y’all know, I’m living with my fiancé and his family or my future in-laws.

My MIL (mother-in-law) and I are not in the best situation. Our relationship is complex. There is respect there but right now its not anything more than that.

We had a talk a few days ago about where we stand. I have had previous talks with her but it involved me writing things down that bothered me and after she told me to place myself in her shoes... i realized I’m going about this all wrong.

She felt i was ambushing her with all the negative things i don’t like that she does. After sitting down, hearing how she felt, it really hurt me to know i have been treating her so poorly. I also have a bad habit in venting about my issues with her to my fiance and my parents. My MIL sees it as talking s**t and obviously... that wasn’t my intention but i see where she is coming from.

I’m Hispanic. Our culture involves gossiping and venting thoughts and emotions to ones we are the closest to. All my life, i never saw it as an issue because I’ve always done it. My family does it. My friends do it. I was bound to pick it up.

My fiance is white. Obviously their culture is different and gossiping is seen as a harmful thing. After hearing what she felt about me doing this, potentially damaging her having a future relationship with my parents, painting her in a negative light and just overall not feeling good about herself and how she’s portrayed to others, has been a negative impact on her self-esteem.

Another issue that had been bothering her is when i vent about her to my fiance. Things she does that bothers me, things that annoys me and things that make me angry. She mentioned, in order to maintain a positive relationship, i need to go to her for any issue i may have with her. I don’t know why its taking me so long to understand and realize that's what i should be doing but I am doing that now.

There is also a lack of trust. I promised her i wouldn’t tell my fiance about our talks and continue to complain about her. After our last talk before our recent one, i did the opposite and told him everything we talked about. Big mistake.

She saw it as backstabbing and from then on, has slowly lost trust in me. After she explained that, while crying, i was starting to realize how my actions are affecting her.

Being from a different culture isn’t an excuse. Being used to how i handle things and express myself when it comes to difficult situations isn’t an excuse. I have been treating her basically like a piece of trash and i feel so f***ing terrible about it........

All my life, after coming out of treatment, i have embraced positivity and wanted to live my life with no negative people or negative thoughts. Since living here and getting to know my in-laws better, I have done the complete opposite to my MIL and i just feel like the worst person...

She told me it will take time before she can fully trust me again and i totally understand. I’m 24, going to be 25 in June and i am acting like a child tbh.

Sometimes when you go about things a certain way for so long and don’t think anything more about it, you don’t really realize how someone else, who might not be used to that, may feel.

I have so many positive people in my life, i do but we gossip. Not always but it does happen. That may not be positive to someone else and you know what? It really isn’t. I saw a normality behind it and didn’t think it would be harmful to someone else.

My MIL can get on my nerves and i know i get on hers. That is bound to happen. The way i have been handling our conflict has not been the best. I know i can do better. She said she was going to watch and see if i do hold up to what i said i was going to do and with time, slowly grow her trust back with me.

I have been so blessed to have a wonderful fiance and a great MIL. She has done so much for us and is a literal angel for her efforts. I just haven’t been showing it... my actions haven’t spoken for my words and that is a real problem.

I know deep down I’m not an awful person and i know she isn’t either. How can she know that if all i have done is gone behind her back and vent about all the things i think she is doing wrong. That isn’t right and it hurts to think i have affected someone else in this way.

Since our talk on Saturday (3/28), I haven’t spoken to anyone about what we specifically discussed. The most i have said is our talk was good and we are doing okay moving forward. I have not even mentioned it to my fiance and honestly, we have been more playful and loving without me spreading negative feelings towards his mom. If he gets annoyed with her on his own, i have just been comforting him and reminding him that she loves him and talk her up instead of agreeing and making him think worse about her.

I never in my whole life considered gossiping or venting as being a negative thing or impact on someone else. I’ve always done it. It may seem odd to someone else that it has taken me this long to understand the dangers of this. Especially when i have experienced it on the other end. Its not fun, it makes you feel helpless since you cant defend yourself when the gossiping takes place. So you may ask, “if you understand how this can be negative to someone else, why are you still engaging in it?” My answer is, i don’t know.

Gossiping is a very social thing. Your friend brings up something someone else did and complains. What do you do? Agree with your friend and comfort them. If its about a friend, we bring in what also bothers us about them and continue with that. It seems harmless but you might also think, what about the person you are talking about? What is this issue that annoys you so much that you can’t bring it up to the person being talked about? How would that make them feel if they knew you were talking about them in a negative light?

And you know what, that's true. How would that make the other person feel? The answer to that is, not very good. I saw it with how hurt my MIL was about it. How she tries so hard to please others and make others feel happy and comfortable. I was so heartbroken to see that i caused her to feel so bad about herself, made her cry and loose her trust with me.

She also mentioned if this is how i really am as a person, that she doesn’t want to be involved in that. The truth is, i am not that person. I love people. I love my family/friends and i want nothing but for them to be happy and feel loved. I just haven’t properly given my MIL the love and respect that she so greatly deserves and for that, i will always feel terrible; even when things get better.

Moving forward, she said she will watch to see if i fulfill my promise to not vent or complain about her and if there is an issue, i come directly to her instead of being a chismosa (gossip in Spanish). So far i haven’t complained, vented or talked about our whole conversation to ANYONE.

Instead, i’m writing it on here. My positivity blog where i feel the most safe with my thoughts. This is better than spreading gossip and bringing others into a situation when its just between the two people involved.

Everyday since our conversation, i have been feeling lighter and happier with my surroundings. One thing that won’t change is my mental health struggles with anxiety and depression; having thoughts and needing an outlet to let them out. Thanks Tumblr! Lol

I will continue to post how our relationship progresses and my feelings/mood since giving up gossiping. To tell you the truth, I feel so much better and understanding about the situation knowing what i did wrong and how that affected someone else I love/care about.

You are never to old or young to better yourself and improve relationships.

I hope for nothing but positive feelings and thoughts moving forward and if i do have something negative to say, its better to not say it at all.

#journal #journal entry #personal #my thoughts #moving forward #MIL #relationships #positive thoughts

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maskmakervega · 5 years ago

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First entry: clearing my head on the end of the relationship

I don’t know if i’ll really use this much, but for now I’m just going to describe the issues with, and surrounding the end of my breakup. First and foremost, love doesn’t die. It can change, like energy, but it never goes away, once it is present it will always be there. For her, lets just call her X, she seems to believe that love is the only thing a relationship needs, and if the relationship ends, the love was never real. This was a common thing she would either directly say or elude to after our numerous breakups. We got together in january 2019, but didn’t really start dating until around march, which is when she stopped pulling the plug on it. She was very indecisive at first, and considering we work together, it is both understandable and smart, we both had reservations... but both of us grew emotionally attached very quickly. To say that she is both very harsh on herself, and hugely jealous, is accurate but underselling it as well. This became very evident after we started having sex, as she was intimidated by how many people I slept with back in my “confused and wanting to feel normal” days. She was also uncomfortable with the fact that i am attracted to certain aesthetics, and she doesn’t look that way, so she would always tell me that she isn’t my type and then let it get to her. This was a big bag of red flags that I should have run from, but I was really into her and figured she would learn that I am absolutely faithful and do not require someone to dress like a goth for me to be attracted to them. That did not happen, really ever, regardless of what she said. During the planning of her friends wedding (march?), they all decided to scour fetlife to see if they knew people on it, and she found my profile. It outlined what i find attractive, but also that I am not looking for anything but friendship, and that I hadn’t used the website in like 4 months. She saw that i liked a face picture of someone she knows, and that irked her (this person is goth). The profile description and lack of time i logged into it (before we dated) didn’t seem to matter, a week or so later she told me about that and that she couldn’t stop thinking about it, and how she isn’t right for me and she doesn’t know if she is happy. After hearing about that and me arguing with her for over an hour, I decided that this time I needed to break the relationship off. Clearly she wasn’t happy, and I didn’t like being told that a personal taste of mine is responsible for her feeling like she can’t be with me, something entirely out of my control and was never brought up to her. X had returned my key and my things with a “sorry” card. I made the mistake of telling a mutual friend that i wanted her to make sure X is ok, and that shared the information and we started talking again. After 3 days we got back together. Up until this point, she really wanted to keep our relationship a secret from everyone at work, adamantly, but within a month or two a few people knew. Not a big deal.

In april/may, basically her birthday, she was going on about how one of her friends thought i was dark and bla bla bla, The dude is in love with her and tries to get into her head. It kinda worked, because a few weeks later when she had a little get together where 5 of us drank and played cards, she got hammered. We ended up leaving and going to my place, and that same guy texted her the entire time, trashing me again. She drunkenly broke up with me that night, didn’t remember in the morning. That let to another fight and honestly i don’t remember much about it. It was about May/June when she really went ballistic, jealousy, over my roommates girlfriend. I had known this person for 14 years, and we slept together maybe 3 or 4 times (this person only remembers once). She was a long time friend, and her long distance boyfriend needed a place to stay in the area, so i let him move in as a favor. I am an unnecessarily honest person, I can’t keep lies straight and i don’t like to lie, so i just don’t. I told X about all of that before he even moved in, and she didn’t seem to make that much of a deal other than calling her a whore and all that (not to her face). The roommate was almost always in his room, and his girlfriend really only came over on weekends. Things seemed fine, until one day X started blowing up about the other chick at random. Talking about how i shouldn’t be friends with her, how she doesn't want her to come over, how shes a whore and she doesn’t trust her (by proxy me) This was a vicious fight, and it made no sense. To make a long story short, i broke up with her because of how ridiculously unreasonable she was being. Her jealousy caused 2 breakups at that point, and we had only been dating for a few months. I can’t think at the moment, there were several more breakups, i think 6 more. She counts 1 as me breaking up with her, but really it was her drunkenly making a fool of herself, embarrassing me with this in an up-scale bar, telling me every horrible thing she can about me, and breaking up with me on my birthday. But, she doesn't remember any of it and expected me to just forgive her. What caused it? Well we went out to dinner and then went to a club i like, it was a really great day until 30 seconds after we left the club.

Outside there were 2 chicks and she was telling me they were checking me out, and i said something along the lines of “eh it happens”. It kinda snowballed for the next few minutes, delicately, enough so we drunkenly walked into the nice bar and sat down to order our desert martinis. This is where she kinda goes off on a tangent and then brings up how she doesnt trust a long time friend that i talk to, because MONTHS before, she got onto my COMPUTER while i was in the shower, and read my old messages with this person. Old messages from before we even started dating, and saw that i had told her i missed her (we had a romantic connection but never met in person, again, this was a different 16 year friendship). I was not making the best judgement, and gave her my phone to scroll through my messages to that person. to the effect of “really? prove it, prove where i said i miss her”. She scrolled through about 6 months of texts, going “oh you talk a lot huh?” and things of that nature, but she never found what she was looking for. She accused me of deleting the message, which i didn’t even know you could do. I told her she had major trust issues and was blowing everything out of proportion and cant hold it against me that i have female friends, and she said “yeah well i’m not a whore, like you”. Then went OFF as we were leaving. This went on for about 20 minutes, as we are driving home and she is piss drunk. Its at this point she gets even madder and says she is done with me. We get back home about an hour later, i have to shake her to get her out of the car because she is so blackout drunk. she goes inside, takes my blankets and wraps herself in them in the middle of my bed, so i have to go sleep in the living room. Justifiably hurt and pissed off, i made a jab on facebook about how great it is to be dumped on your birthday. She sees this because one of her 4 friends that is in love with her, buzzes her asking to hang out, so we wakes up to the knowledge that people understand her to be single. Then she freaks out at me, i take the post down (its about 7am), only a small handful of people saw it, unfortunately they were coworkers. I didn’t think or plan it out, i was hurt and angry and it seemed like a good idea. We get into a big discussion about it, and how she would never break up with me, i tell her about every detail from the night before and she doesn’t even remember leaving the bar. That made it worse, because i drank A LOT when i was with her. About a bottle of scotch every 10 days, and we would go to get beers and stuff sometimes. She loves her booze, a lot of people do, but she doesn’t pace herself. Days went by with her trying to whittle me down and take her back, i think it turned into about a week by the end. When she had whittled me down to the bone with begging, i folded to an extent. I told her she needs to cut back on the drinking, and we got together. This lasted a few weeks (toward mid september) until she got into the jealousy issues again. It was a friend on facebook, who posted a workout photo and they had lost a lot of weight. I liked the photo, and that turned into a fight. Between that, and her telling me she was feeling like i didn’t love her as much since the last breakup, i broke it off again for about another week. I was going to have surgery in a few days and we started talking again, we made peace and agreed that as long as she started seeing a therapist we could try dating again, but i didn’t want to jump back into it super quickly, just hang out. That lasted a good while,and she really seemed to be trying. Bla bla bla, 2 breakups later we are where we are now. The final breakup was January 10th. We had been together, secretly, for about 6 weeks at that point. It was secret because her friends all hated me by this point, and her roommate (her ex of 5 years) said he would kick her out if we started dating again. Yeah, she left that last part out, which really burned me. Her housing situation was dependent on her roommate not finding out we were together again, and that meant she had to spend less time with me. Between the 2nd week of december and the first week of january, i saw her probably 8 days... we used to spend nearly every day together. I started seeing the pattern more clearly, and saw how this would not work. It was also about this time that my depression started to kick in again (huge theme that entire year, go figure), and i couldn’t help but over-analyze. You think quite a lot when there is deafening silence in your head, you feel nothing but empty, and the dark swallows you whole. I ended up doing what I should have done months ago, which was to be good to myself and take some much needed space. I needed to look out for me, because this relationship was making me feel unwanted and depressed.

The relationship was a roller coaster every few weeks, of whether she would freudian-slip some jealousy (that she said she fixed in therapy), or seem to withhold affection and time alone because of reasons she wouldn’t share (usually relating to those incidents). I couldn’t continue question myself because she’d question me, i couldn’t feel like i was nothing but a warm body to cuddle up next to. We didn’t have the ability to get into long conversations, she was afraid of them, and it made me feel a growing divide between us. At the one month mark of the breakup she was still trying to hang on. We talked about trying to hang out as friends, and she swore thats all it would be, but within 2 days she completely changed her tune and said she didn’t want to hang out unless it was to move toward getting back together. As of last week (valentines day) she had to leave work because someone decided to give her anonymous flowers and she thought it was me. She started messaging me and i had to shutdown what she was thinking, which made her cry and she left for the day. This has not been an easy process, because i deeply care for X. Although we had a lot of good times, i am a realist and to many, a pessimist, and looking back I see more bad than good. Distrust is a demon that must be slain to make a relationship function, and that is why ours was so dysfunctional. Hell, i think i have trust issues too now at this point. A lot of detail has been left out here, I don’t know if she will ever find this so I left a lot of personal and identifying details out, many of which are crucial to why the relationship failed so many times... but, i also don’t think anyone will read this.

#reflection breakup confusion heartbreak selfimprovement space staystrong

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mildlincrs · 5 years ago

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hi, tumblr — it's been (way longer than) a minute, but i'm back from the chaotic journey that was junior year! and with that, i wanted to continue what i started with my advice for rising freshmen and rising sophomores; i’ll be writing a final post for rising seniors once i (theoretically) finish high school.

note: i'm currently attending high school in the united states, so there are certain points i mention that may not apply to you if you aren't also studying in the u.s., but i still hope that you get something out of this post!

note 2: this post is pretty long -- a lot longer than the previous advice posts -- and also pretty personal. i go in-depth on what junior year was like for me (spoiler: not great), and subsequently, i have plenty of advice to help avoid some of what i ended up experiencing.

my junior year experience

for reference, click [here] a list of my junior year classes (along with classes i’ve taken and plan to take). i took two ap courses, and the rest of my courses with the exception of band were honors courses.

to be blunt -- junior year was one of my worse years of high school, academically and mentally. sophomore year was definitely one of my lowest points, too, but junior year was really shitty in a lot of ways. i was busy working (trying to) nearly all the time, and i found myself constantly under stress, struggling to maintain my grades -- especially in my calculus and physics classes. at a certain point in the year, i subconsciously stopped caring, i think, to the point where i couldn’t focus at all when i was working, instead opting to do things that were considerably less productive. i’d study for up to five minutes at a time, only to stress myself out of studying and go to sleep -- yes, i stressed myself to sleep. other nights, i’d stay up doing absolutely nothing, in spite of the massive amounts of work and studying i still had left to do. i was close to failing my physics class, at one point, too, and physics was arguably the class i studied and worked the hardest for.

another reason that this year was pretty terrible for me was the fact that i was recovering from several injuries. in june of 2018, i injured my knees -- for reasons i’d prefer not to disclose -- and though they were healing over the summer, with marching band, the injuries were only exacerbated. if you want an idea of how bad they were, i struggled to simply walk short distances if i didn’t have any sort of support. marching band is basically dignified, faster walking, so you can imagine the kind of stress that i was under. because of this, i had to stop dancing and take a season of winter guard off -- two of my biggest emotional releases in life. without both of those things for over six months, i felt pretty directionless, and i ended up relapsing (i have chronic depression). that along with the business of junior year made life feel pretty damn miserable. physical therapy didn’t help me, i had virtually no time to schedule a meeting with a therapist or other mental health professional, and i was exhausted 24/7.

all this being said, junior year still had its good moments! i got to take two astronomy semester courses, both of which only reinforced my love for astronomy -- i’ll be doing astronomy-related research in the fall - i got to play some pretty damn good music in band, qualified and made all-state band for the first time, and i became closer with my best friends and got to make new ones. i completed a year-long research paper (while missing quite a few deadlines on the way) that turned into what’s probably the most vulnerable piece of writing i’ve ever produced (message me if you’re interested in reading it!), and i didn’t fail any of my classes. good stuff.

more on not failing my classes: 2nd semester was kind of weird for me, in that my grades went up in some classes, but slowly sort of decreased in others. for example -- i studied and worked my ass off trying to improve my calculus grade during 1st semester, but my exhaustion caused me to fall asleep during a lot of classes, meaning that i would always miss the material being taught, and by the time i got home that day, i was so exhausted that i would just fall asleep until the next morning, not even bothering to figure out what i had missed during class. with physics, worked harder than i ever had during 1st semester, but i continued to receive low scores on tests and heavily relied on my lab and quiz grades to keep me afloat. i cared less about japanese more and more, (which SUCKS because i really loved the class and language but my effort just went downhill) and i can distinctly remember not studying for several of the tests that were administered, and as such, receiving subpar scores. i did, however, pass all of my finals and ap exams, which was definitely a plus.

tldr: my work ethic went to shit, and i salvaged it somewhat, at the cost of losing a lot of sleep and not eating for multiple days at a time WHICH IS NOT HEALTHY. DON’T DO THIS PLEASE. junior year was worse than sophomore year in a lot of ways, but i fucking MADE IT so who’s the real winner here

advice for junior year

my number one piece of advice is to take care of yourself. you’ve probably heard it before, but that’s because you should do it. i’m 100% serious when i say that it can really make a difference. i mentioned that i lost a lot of sleep and didn’t eat sometimes during the school year, and because of that, i was super super sick at one point which only made my mental health worse, which only decreased my ability to focus and work properly. please stay healthy ahh like hydrate, get some mf sleep, and eat well! if you have to choose between studying for a test and sleeping at 3am, then go the fuck to sleep. and it’s not just about being healthy enough to do well in school! it’s literally your own wellbeing. put your physical and mental needs first, no matter what.

for ap courses: highly recommend looking on the collegeboard website for practice questions! the website also outlines the test structures, which i found helpful for me when i was studying for the exams. if you’re hoping to score a 4 or 5 on your ap exams, it’s in your best interests to go in prepared as possible. iirc the website also provides overviews of all the content that should be studied/is covered on the exam, which can help structure your studying, too!

another thing on ap courses: while if you score well enough on ap exams, you might be able to transfer those credits to your college courses (if you enroll at a u.s. college), i wouldn’t recommend loading your schedule with ap courses. they’re college-level courses for a reason; they will be fast-paced and involve a lot of work on your part. a rule that i used when deciding what ap courses i would take in high school: if i didn’t particularly like the subject, then i took the honors version of the course. otherwise, if i felt like i could challenge myself, was interested in the course, and if it was available, then i signed up for it. i knew from sophomore year that i wasn’t good at dealing with both school and my mental health, so i recognized that i’d need to lessen my ap coursework as much as possible so that i didn’t throw myself into an even worse situation (i took zero aps sophomore year).

don’t spread yourself too thin involving yourself in things in and out of school. sort of similar to my philosophy of not overloading my schedule, i made sure that i only committed myself to extracurriculars that i cared about and enjoyed doing. i personally marched my third season of marching band, and remained involved in my school’s urban dance club as much as possible (though when i took a break from dancing, that was definitely harder, but towards the end of the year, i was able to participate in a few performances with my friends). i also participated in an outside wind ensemble every week, and that was plenty for me -- i had a lot of music to practice both for that group and my school’s band, and then i had to balance THAT with practicing music for private lessons & auditions, and with schoolwork. i know there are people who are involved in so many extracurriculars, which i wouldn’t recommend. devote yourself to what you love in high school; that will also give you something worth writing about in things such as college applications! better to pursue what you love with passion and authenticity than to sign-up for a club for the clout even if you’re not remotely interested in it.

if it’s offered where you live, i would recommend taking the sat and/or act during your junior year. i’d also recommend taking subject tests if you have the time for it. the earlier you take these tests, the more likely you are to have an opportunity to retake them if you don’t score as well as you hope. you can also start taking these tests during sophomore year -- i took sat subject tests in june of my sophomore year, took the sat twice during junior year, and i will be taking the act in july. i’ll also be retaking an sat subject test and taking a completely new one.

while it may be daunting, start thinking about college -- whether you want to go to college or not, where or what you’d like to study, etc. since i plan on majoring in music, i started researching sort of early so that i could give myself enough time to finalize a list of the colleges i am applying to and the repertoire i need to learn and practice for auditions. but regardless of what you decide to do with your future, no one is expecting you to have every step of your life labeled out. things can change, and that’s okay! that’s literally how life works. definitely reach out to your counselors if you want advice from them! i’d also recommend sitting down with your parents and talking about the college application process with them and what they can do to help you.

there’s a lot of pressure during junior year -- it’s the last full year of high school before college applications, and typical for students to be busy 110% of the time. that said, find time for yourself to destress and do nothing school or work-related. if it helps, schedule specific times of the day where you just relax and do something that makes you happy. finding a work-life balance can really make a difference (i say, not having one, though i have many friends who talk about this to me).

if you need help with anything at all -- talk to someone about it! feeling super stressed and shitty? talk to someone you trust, whether they’re your closest friend or a teacher (which reminds me, if you plan on asking a teacher for a rec, take time to talk with them if you can, it makes a difference). you are not alone. i know for some people (especially for me, actually), it can be super difficult to open up about what you’re dealing with, but it’s arguably better than trying to push your way through it all on your own.

best of luck during your junior year -- i believe in you<3

love, fei

#mine #mmp #mp #studying #studyblr #high school #study #studyspo #advice #tbhstudying #studyquill #lookstudyblr #obsidianstudy #heysareena #focusign #study tips #school

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littlefaerose · 5 years ago

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you’ll never walk alone

WHO: Sam Evans and Marley Rose

WHEN: Friday, June 7th, 2019

WHERE: around the NYADA campus

WHAT: A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Who better to walk it with than someone who’s done it before?

WARNING(S): Heavy subject matter mentions ahead - depression, death, self harm, eating disorders, drug use, suicidal ideation, blood, violence.

Marley fiddled with the end of her dark braid again, using her free hand to reach out and knock on door #201. It had been a few weeks now since she'd last seen Sam. Since... everything. But while it was easier to lock herself away in her room or root herself in front of Saltus for hours at a time, neither did her any good. Or did anyone else any good either. She could talk from a safe distance but at some point she needed to actually face people. And right then, the safest person to face was Sam. She smoothed out her faded green t-shirt and took a step back when the door before her finally opened. "... hey," she greeted after a beat, deterred for a brief moment by the lurch of something uncomfortable in her chest upon seeing his face. "I don't have a place or path in mind, just... walking. I hope that's okay."

Sam was partially looking forward to getting to see Marley but also slightly apprehensive about what he wanted to say to her. He could see a lot of how she was responding to what happened in himself. He could relate to it even though the situations were so different. Having come from the darkest place imaginable to being where he was now, he hoped he could help her somehow. Hell, he was certain he still had his moments. But if Sam could help her, he would do what he could. When she knocked on the door, he made sure he had his wallet and keys before opening the door. "Hey." He greeted her with a small smile before he closed and locked the door behind him. "Yeah, no problem. Walking is good." He said as he indicated for her to lead the way.

Marley nodded and turned, leaving it at that as she led the way down to the main level of Eurus and out onto campus. It didn’t matter how many times she had walked through campus since the night of the Promenade, it still jarred her to see so much damage inflicted on the buildings around them. It made a fist-sized ball of dread sink into her stomach. But she kept them going at a slow pace, wanting to stretch out the time as best she could. She needed it to keep her from circling right back to staring at the downed trees. “... I think I lost my job,” she finally commented, crossing her arms over her chest as they walked. “Temporarily, anyway. So much of JIH Marketplace is under construction now. Did you get any notices in the mail?”

Sam found it difficult lately to go on his morning runs. It made everything that much more noticeable, when no one was awake yet to see the damage, how it looked at night. He couldn't imagine how Marley felt to look at it, especially with the damage to the forest. He kept his steps slow, not wanting to rush anything. It was a way to spend time with a friend, but also give her the time to open up and say anything she needed to. He frowned hearing about the shop. Sam couldn't imagine how that felt and he felt guilty that he even had a place to go still. "I'm sorry to hear that," he spoke honestly. "The art store is still open. Somehow they didn't get damaged much." He wondered how it was possible, maybe just certain areas were affected more. "Maybe you can see if one of the other shops still open can give you a place for now." He suggested.

“Maybe,” Marley murmured, though finding another job was admittedly low on her list of priorities. “Maybe it’s better if I just lay low for a bit though.” She could only imagine the hesitance another business on campus would have to seeing her application. She fell silent again as the rounded the path and Undique Stadium came into view. It hadn’t appeared to sustain too much damage, unlike other areas on campus. She slowed a bit as she caught sight of their reflection in a window, then immediately averted her gaze. “How did you do it?” she asked quietly several paces onward later, almost reluctant to ask as her gaze flickered back over to Sam. “I know we haven’t ever really sat down and talked about it but... how did you get through everything after the Brownstone incident? How did you ever move forward? Because right now I feel like I’m-“ She cut herself off as the words bubbled up her throat and out her mouth, bursting forth before she could censor herself. She could feel her hands shake even as they gripped her arms tighter. “-I feel like I’m drowning. And I don’t know how to come up for air.”

Sam knew how easy it could be to lay low and pretend like the world didn't see you. Having done it for months, closing himself off from everything he knew only made it worse. He was still trying to get back on his feet. He sighed softly, knowing how she felt. "Honestly, that's exactly how I felt. It was like the what ifs constantly kept playing on repeat. I would see the same scene in my head over and over. I didn't handle it well, to be honest." he found himself saying without stopping himself. He needed her to know how bad it could get but that she couldn't go down that road. "Actually two days after it happened and before I met with the Cardines, I...I went for a long walk and I found myself at a bridge. And all I could think of looking down at how high I was, all I could think of was how easy it would be to-" He didn't finish his sentence, shaking his head to prevent himself from going back there. "And I stopped taking care of myself. I wasn't eating. I would get scrapes or cuts and...I would let the pain consume me. I wouldn't heal. I didn't feel like I deserved to heal. That I betrayed my magic and all it stood for. I put myself in a really dark place. I think the one person who saw through it was Blaine. He knew what I was doing and it still took me a while to wake up and see I still had worth. And that doing right by the people I hurt, their families, was better than sitting in a cold, dark room. When I went back to my dorm, it was because I was sick and tired of doing nothing. I couldn't be in that dark place anymore. My dorm, the one I've always had, it has memories that remind me that there is still good and I can have it. I just do have to remember who I'm doing it for." He turned his gaze to her. "The one thing I do know is that being alone, it pretty much killed my relationships with people. Tina, Mike, Elliott, you. It killed me how my behavior affected the way I acted with everyone. It was like I let the self hatred consume me. And eventually I realized I couldn't do that anymore. I needed to be strong, not just for myself, but for the ones I owed it to. So I could make amends and do better by their community." He knew how heavy it was to talk about it, but they hadn't before and it was, unfortunately, the one way he knew that he hoped she could glean some insight from.

They were already moving slow, but Marley's pace petered off that much more as Sam began to open up about everything. Frankly, it scared her to think that he'd existed in such a dark place for so long without anyone noticing. Scared her to see so much of herself in what he was saying. It rocked her enough that at first, she couldn't find the words to say. What could she say? She couldn't take back the way she'd treated him or ignored him through all of it. The tough reality of the words just seeped into her skin, settling uncomfortably inside her. Flashes of moments across her brain leave her feeling dizzy - staring at a freshly picked belladonna leaf, waking up on the floor of her room willingly poisoned, her own blood spurting onto the floor of the Sanctuary room… she reached for his hand and grabbed on tight as the feeling in her chest overwhelmed her, pausing their walk for the moment. "I thought I was going to die," she admitted, unable to look at him as she did. It hadn't gotten any easier each time she told someone. If anything, in this case, it made her feel shame the instant the words left her lips. "I lived for years thinking that night was the night I would die, and... and after... I can't even number the times I've thought to myself since then that I wish I would've. That I had let myself bleed to death and the earth swallow me up as the earthquake rolled in." She pursed her lips against the sting in her eyes as one admission brought with it a bubbling up of so much more. "I'm trying to.... I'm trying to not shut down, to not shut people out again, but the whole world is in chaos right now, things have become infinitely worse for LN, I've effectively pissed off everyone, Olivia is missing, and I can't even face my own girlfriend because every time she says she loves me and that we're going to have a future outside of all of this someday, I just want to crawl out of my skin because how - how can she look at me and all of the choices I've made and all that's become of this and still think I'm worth it? I don't even think I'm worth it!"

Sam held onto her hand, squeezing it gently but also firmly, wanting to give her some ground to hold onto. He could see she was drowning, just as much as he had been at one point. While he knew this situation was different, one difference was he was there for her. She may not have been able to be there for him, and he understood completely, he was going to be there for her. "Hey, I get it, okay? I'm here for you." He put one hand on her shoulder, gently squeezing it while the other still held her hand. "It's hard when the whole world is against you. Or at least it feels that way. But you have support even if you don't think you deserve it. Because the truth is, you do. And that girlfriend of yours does not give up on someone if they mess up big time. She was literally there for me when I thought for sure I didn't deserve it. Because she still saw something in me that I didn't see. That I didn't want to see because of all of the mistakes I made. And she is doing the same for you because she loves you and she cares about you. And I still see my friend Marley in there. Because deep down you still want to make things better. Did things get royally messed up? Yeah, they did. But the hard part now is figuring out what to do next. You can do that with the people who love you and want you to be okay. That can start with Dani and I, if you want." His stomach dropped at the mention of Olivia, thinking of his own friend who had gone missing so long ago. Aether, how long had it been now? "I know you don't feel like it but I am so glad you survived. Because now you can show them that you are worth something and that you can make things right. I know right now it might be hard to know what that is. Trust me, it took me months to finally figure out what I needed to do. But at that time, I had only myself. You are a step ahead of me because you got me. Dani. You have us. We're not going anywhere."

Marley looked up when Sam grabbed her shoulder. Though it was hard to hear - hard to accept when everything in her head screamed the opposite - she couldn't discount what he said. He'd been there and back. He'd survived. And if she knew nothing else about Sam, it was that he was loyal. Even going through hell, he still stood by his friends. By what mattered most. If he could survive... if they had all survived this, then she had no other choice. She had to at least try. Or try harder, in this case. "I do want to make them better," she nodded, reaching up with her free hand to wipe away at the moisture on her cheek. "I just don't know how to yet. There's so much... there's so much wrong to be fixed." And not enough of her to fix it all at once like she wanted to.

Sam understood where she was coming from. It was hard to see what to do next when there was too much that needed to be done. "Sometimes the easiest thing to do is start small." He thought of the monthly donations he still made, how they never wavered from going to their recipients. "And just work your way up. But the first step is to take care of yourself and not pull away. The answer will come eventually. And you'll know what the right thing is."

It was hard to see what the right thing could be at that point - or that anyone would want anything from her at that point - but Marley could do small. She could take baby steps, however futile or frustrating they might feel. She could start at home. She could starting by going home. “Thank you,” she murmured and squeezed his hand again. “I’m so sorry I didn’t see how low you’d gotten. I’m sorry I dragged you into all of this, almost got you killed.”

Sam shook his head gently, "Hey, it's okay. You had every right to feel how you did back then. I don't blame you at all for not seeing it. I didn't want anyone to see it. I felt like I deserved it. Just...having you here now, that's more important to me. And now I can be here for you." He wrapped her up in a hug, wishing he could help more. "It's alright, Marley. It's over and done with. It's just time to move forward now. That's all we can do."

#paras #you'll never walk alone #aquaevans #tw: death #tw: depression #tw: self harm #tw: drug use #tw: violence #tw: blood #tw: eating disorders #tw: suicidal thoughts

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closemyeyesforgood · 6 years ago

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The Self

So the reason I felt the need to start this blog is the tremendous amount of grief I have been experiencing over the last 5 years.

March 22 2013, I lost my amazing, wonderful Grandmother to a stroke. We were very close and she was like a mother to me. A mentor, a teacher, a guide, she was incredible.

June 16 2013, My grandfather passed away after years of Alzheimer's . We sometimes think he was waiting for Grammy to go so he could be with her. He was very much a quiet and stoic man, but he taught us a lot about nature and hard work.

October 20 2014, I lost my infant daughter at 41 weeks gestation, she was a stillborn on October 21 2014. I have another blog dedicated to dealing with the loss of her. It is still so hard to think about this loss as it is so incredibly profound, and the lasting affects of losing a baby that is still in the womb at 1 week passed the due date is tormenting. I have felt so torn apart and broken as a woman and a mother.

March 4 2018, I lost my mother to a blood infection following a hip surgery. I found her body on March 1st and the paramedics revived her, only to keep her in a drug induced coma for 3 more days. This most recent loss has really tossed me into the air, not knowing what to do or where it will hurl me. She helped me maintain my sanity, especially after losing my daughter, as she also lost my brother as a stillborn, and knew what I was going through. She was always so supportive and encouraging. She made me feel like I was capable of anything. Now I feel capable of nothing.

I have been fighting with very intense episodes of depression, and self loathing. I have not hated on myself this much since highschool. The pain started many years ago of course and has just gotten worse and worse. I’ve tried to open up to friends about it, but I have come to realize they are not equipped for what I am dealing with. So I only make myself available when I am feeling stable, so I can avoid spiraling into a negative and incredibly uncomfortable monologue.

I have been through a lot, and some may say too much for my age, but.. “it could be worse”. A phrase I have heard my entire life. This phrase throws me into visions of the worst possible things happening to me. War crimes, explosions, quartering, waterboarding, mutilation, etc. It is like being trapped in a psychosis of eternal hell, until I can shake myself out of it.

Counselling has been one of my only saviors at this point. My partner is very loving and supportive, but never really knows what to say, and it breaks his heart to see me in so much pain. I am left trying to hold it back, hide it, push it down. Unfortunately it only makes it worse when It all comes back up like a volcano.

I find myself more often than not, telling myself I am stupid, worthless, annoying, ugly, pathetic, disgusting, burdensome, negative, plain, boring, childish, immature, overbearing...and the list goes on for eternity. Its like I am subconsciously digging a hole deeper and deeper.

Every time I try to tell myself I am not these things, I just fall back on it.

“who am I kidding... I’m a fungus”.

It is especially difficult when I find the strength to confide in someone, and am patronised, or it becomes a reversed situation where I am the one providing support, or it becomes a superficial distraction of them not wanting to focus on anything negative.

I eventually gave up reaching out after months of trying and constantly contacting friends, and even acquaintances, just to see who was even interested in helping me on an emotionally supportive level.

Conclusion: People are terrified of emotions.

On top of all this, I have several bone conditions involving my spine and hips including: scoliosis(severe), osteoarthritis, spinal stenosis. My discs are grinding and creating spurs which pinch nerves and cause debilitating pain. I walk with a cane about 1/3 of the time, and am limited physically to many things.

So on top of being secluded, I'm also unable to do much for myself lately, like go for a walk, clean, cook, drive... And other things depending on the pain or the weather.

This is a pretty gloomy post, so lets end it with even more gloomy stuff so you can see why I might be struggling so hard with self worth:

Things I have been told my entire life by close friends and family when I reach out for emotional support:

- Just get over it

- No one wants to hear you whine about your problems

- You are being so negative, no wonder no one wants to be around you.

- You are such a downer, you gotta cheer up

- What do you expect me to do about it?

- It could be worse

- You are exhausting to be around

- You are acting pathetic

- OH, this again

- Maybe you need more medication

- Someone's paranoid

-Looks like someone loves to hear themselves talk

- What do you want, a pity party?

- Here’s a quarter... call someone who cares

- You have no right to complain, you have a roof over your head

- You are Spineless

- You are a crybaby

- You care too much

- You worry too much

- It’s not like its my fault, so why are you talking to me about it?

- You can’t expect people to care about your problems

... There is so much more. I once surrounded myself with a lot of toxic people, but most of them are gone now thankfully.

I’m not saying this still happens, but when it was happening frequently it took a major toll on me.

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simplemlmsponsoring · 6 years ago

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New Post has been published on http://simplemlmsponsoring.com/attraction-marketing-formula/copywriting/revisiting-2018-do-what-your-heart-feels-is-right/

Revisiting 2018 – Do What Your Heart Feels is Right

Last day of the year is always special. It’s the last time I sat down to write in 2018. It is also an excellent time to reflect upon things that happened this year and make plans for the year to come.

It’s been a while since I composed a yearly review, but here I am, documenting some of the moments of 2018 that I would like to remember forever. In the first week of December 17, We redesigned ShoutMeLoud and got a new logo and did some great work there. Sharat inked himself with ShoutMeLoud logo which is remarkable:

I started 2018 just after one of the most amazing trips to Antarctica, and for the first time, Delhi winter didn’t feel as freezing as it usually does. Now, unlike other years, 2018 was different.

It was a lot of introspection and self-learning for me. I had to fight a lot of my inner demons which I knew existed for years but never dared to face them.

It was more like trash piling up in one corner of the room that I knew was there, but I never took action.

The first half of the year unearthed many of them, and I realized that I had to accept them before I could fight them.

When I look back, I feel I could have done better in the first half of the year. The only thing I could do was to surrender myself to the whole experience and acknowledge my achievements, realize my mistakes and use the learnings to make better decisions in the future.

2018 was the year when I made the most mistakes, which also makes it the year of great learnings.

I will try to put down my experience below so that you can learn from my mistakes and have a better year ahead.

Also, when I grow old, it would be nice to look back at this phase and smile.

Ok then, here we go:

January and February 2018

Last few months of 2017 were super exciting. I achieved things I never thought I would on personal as well as the financial front.

I kept thinking of early retirement as it felt like I had achieved most of my goals.

I stopped growing for a bit and my perspective changed from being a student of life to someone who thought he knew it all.

I had, unknowingly, started surrounding myself with people who were nice to me, rather than those who were honest in my face. Instead of taking actions, my impulse to seek recognition started increasing.

For me, it was a tough one to digest as I never thought I could be such a person. But it was happening!

The first two months of the year were the toughest and also the slowest for me.

Day-dreaming and running away from accountability, I was making my future difficult.

Sometimes it gets hard to see things when you are in the middle of it all. Don’t you agree?

I was almost in the midst of a mid-life crisis, figuring out what to do next.

It was not productive but the questions I was going through paved the way for time to come.

Me and Sharat did a road trip to Chandigarh to meet Chatty who is a smart young chap and was working on a few projects with us.

March 2018

March started with great pace, and the first significant thing that I did was a trip to Hong Kong with my team.

It was a conference that we attended it as an official media partner.

We also tested a lot of new stuff like:

Podcasts Twitter chat

Podcasts and videos are going to one of the prime targets for 2019.

I also met Gary Illyes, Abhishek, Honey Singh and Fernando at different venues and events in the month of March:

April and May 2018

These two months were pretty busy with managing my finances and restructuring the company.

By the end of April, I moved away from managing the finances of my company which turned out to be a great decision. I also moved my whole blogging business to the newly formed company rather than managing under my name, something that paved the way for better structuring in the times to come.

This is the time when I shared my intention with my team of stepping down from the role of CEO of ShoutDreams and bringing someone knowledgeable to run the company so that I could focus on things that I like.

I could feel the pressure of increasing demand for growing the company and keeping up with writing content.

Honestly, running day-to-day operations was becoming a challenge. I had never felt so much pressure. Even though I knew the right thing to do, I was not sure what to do.

I could feel it in my heart that I was not enjoying what I was doing and that my business and life required some major changes.

The question I kept asking myself repeatedly were:

Do I really need to do this? Do I really need to build the company? What’s next for ShoutMeLoud?

On the one hand, I knew it was an important thing to do considering the way we do business online was shifting. On the other hand, I felt I was getting too business-oriented and was losing my freedom.

I could feel the requirement of having more key players on my team. Maybe a content guy, a video editor, a graphics guy, maybe an app developer. However, I was not enjoying the part where I had to spend time hiring and letting go of people.

The pressure of running the company was taking a toll on my overall performance. Moreover, I was not sure what I wanted from my life anymore. I had not yet confronted my inner demons and was trying to ignore them as much as I could.

To add to my troubles, Shallu (my wife) met with an accident and hurt her back in April 2018. She was bed-ridden for 3 whole months. When this happened, for the first time in many, many, years, I was really scared. Seeing someone you love in pain is heart-wrenching. I’m sure you can resonate with that.

I was struggling with everything. It was not the best place to be, but I can’t deny the importance of that phase in my career.

I realized I should be spending more time working. Honestly, I was starting to enjoy work again, and I knew it was time to make some changes. I rented a space in co-working office called Regus and worked from there for a month.

It was a boring place to be, but I was still happy as I was breaking out of procrastination and getting work done.

I worked from this space for almost a month. I discontinued with it later because it was becoming too corporate – more like a 9-5 job!

One highlight of April was addressing the audience at MindmineSummit.

June 2018

June is usually an action-packed month for me. In June 2018, I traveled to Helsinki to attend the SummerJam by SEMRUSH. SummerJam is a private event by SEMRUSH where they invite some of the best minds from the SEO and marketing industry.

It was great connecting with like-minded people in Helsinki. Here are some pictures from the event.

I also met Victoria, former affiliate manager of SEMRUSH, who currently works with Supermetrics.

If you don’t remember her, here is the video we did together last year about affiliate marketing for businesses.

youtube

Another highilght was this “Blogging birthday cake” sent by my friend, which made my day:

July 2018 – Half cooked Europe trip

After the Summer Jam, I planned to travel to Europe for a month with my family. It was one of our dream trips. From Helsinki, we went to Amsterdam and Prague. The plan was to travel to more places.

However, on the 9th day when I was in Prague, one of my key team member shared his intention of saying goodbye. I already felt I wasn’t doing justice to my role and this news couldn’t have come at a worse time.

We abandoned the rest of the trip and returned to India. I realized how important it was for me to resolve the burning question of the future of the company – putting up the system in place, ensuring everyone gets proper growth and credit for their work. I wish I could have done this more pro-actively a few years back, but as I said, I was no one to complain about how my life was unfolding. More on this later.

August

Half of the year was gone, and I could feel the pressure of not doing anything significant.

It doesn’t matter how well one is doing financially or growing if the ❤ is not in sync with the mind. It’s struggle.

👆🏻was my state of mind, and the first thing I did was change my office space. I found a nice place near my home called Instaoffice where I rented a spot.

It was a dream office and I enjoyed being there from day one.

Instead of planning, I started getting things done.

But I had accumulated a lot of questions in the past few months, and the answers were nowhere to be found. The worst decision one can take is not taking any decision, and I was doing exactly that.

As it is, I was not feeling super pumped up about much I was doing. Existential crisis along with mid-life crisis, it was a pretty awkward place to be in.

In the past 12 months, I lost two key players from my team, and I was failing to put up system and process. I was facing a new issue every day.

At the stage I was, it was not easy for me to open up to anyone and tell them what I was going through. I was feeling lonely, but I didn’t let anything affect my day-to-day activities. It felt like depression but I’m glad it wasn’t.

I was losing the whole perspective of my journey. I was unsure of what would happen next.

But life always has something to offer.

One gets help when he/she least expects, and this is what happened in August.

I opened up to a few close people and told them what I was going through.

“Are you enjoying what you are doing?”

A friend asked me this simple question, and straight away I knew the answer – No!

I was doing a lot of things that I wasn’t enjoying.

For example, working 9-6 thinking that working more was a solution.

Waiting for weekends to live life!

I was trying to live a perfect life which was not me. I was living someone else’s life.

I was not able to write regularly, because my heart was not in sync and nothing makes me better than journaling.

We discussed things, and after a lot of questions and introspection over the new few days, I realized I was doing the exact opposite of what my heart said.

Working 9-6 was not me, and there I was, forcing myself to work more thinking that was the solution.

Rather than looking at my problems with the lens of solving it, I was harsh on myself.

I was being cornered by my ego. I was not ready to accept my shortcomings.

Instead of keeping my blogging journey fun, being thankful for whatever I have, I was focused more on the things that I wasn’t able to accomplish.

Throughout, I knew I don’t enjoy doing some of those things and rather than asking “How” to solve it, I was looking at “Why” I couldn’t do it.

This is where I started following the mantra“Do what, heart says”.

I accepted the situation, and started to take it easy from there.

I started accepting that I’m good with some things and not so good at other things.

Believe it or not, this mere acceptance changed everything for me.

Working more was not a solution and sometimes taking a step back or slowing down is the best thing to do.

I needed a change. A significant shift in my mindset, and I needed to be at a new place.

What do I really want to do?

From here on, I started making every decision based on the question above.

That one simple thing (“Do what your heart says”) changed the course for the rest of my year and probably my life.

It drastically changed everything!

September – The African Safari and Brighton SEO

I had planned my trip to Kenya a long time ago and even though I had to move major mountains in my business, I didn’t cancel this 9-day trip.

Why?

Because I badly needed a change and deep down I always wanted to experience the Great African Safari.

On the 1st of September, I flew to Nairobi, Kenya, and something was waiting for me.

A new beginning!

Kenya reminded me of India 20 years back. Everything was so raw, natural and pure.

The next few days were full of African adventures.

“The Game Drive”, as they call it, had us travel in the jungle on a safari.

Being in the arms of nature was such an enchanting experience. It reminded me of this famous quote which was part of my social media bio for years:

Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning a lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death. It doesn’t matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle: when the sun comes up, you’d better be running.

For days, I completely forgot who I’m. Something was happening to me. I don’t have words to explain those changes. After months of self-loathing, I was truly free!

This is the same time I started practicing Yoga, and I made a commitment to wake up before sunrise. This was another landmark decision of 2018 for me as it positively impacted my health and overall awareness. I would take this moment to thank Rohit for being my Yoga guru.

At the end of the month, I attended the BrightonSEO. It was the 2nd event for me of the year, and I realized how much I enjoyed attending such events.

Apart from learnings, such events are the best place to meet people who walk the same path as me.

October: DMSS Bali and Lasik eye surgery

After returning from the Brighton SEO, I went straight to Bali to attend DMSS. I was particularly excited about the mastermind which was one of its kind and my first ever. DMSS Bali turned out to be more than a digital marketing event. I have written a detailed experience here.

I met so many amazing people and discovered a lot of stuff about running and managing a remote company. I realized how silly I was by trying to fix things which were not even broken. Another key learning is to surround ourselves with people who are on a similar boat.

Andrea also took me for my first ever surfing experience, and I absolutely loved it.

Lasik Eye surgery

Another highlight of the year was letting go of my eye-glasses. It’s been more 20 years that I have been wearing glasses, and finally, I got the lasik eye surgery done.

so happy that the surgery was successful and now I’m writing this without having anything between my screen and eyes. A huge thanks to Dr. Dariel Mathur.

November: The Change

By November, I was in the doer mode. I was making quick decisions, and my year-long procrastination attitude was long gone.

To make better decisions in life, we need information. If you don’t have the right information, you will end up trying too many times before giving up or keep trying. DMSS Bali has given me the information which I needed to make better decisions, and I realized it was time for me to step up the game.

My experiment with “surrender to the life” had begun again and from the “why is it..