#but never again in the let’s smoke all weekend and binge watch an entire series way

[sob-dylan]

the cruelest thing about life is that i quit smoking weed before i could ever watch twin peaks its entirety.

[mr-gallavich]

Gallavich x Reader Heacanons

What I think it would be like to date Mickey Milkovich and Ian Gallagher. The headcanons are vaguely in chronological order from season one to season eleven and beyond.

Male Reader!

~~

In the early days of your relationship with Mickey and Ian, Debbie loves you and constantly tries to get you to play with her every time you go over to the Gallaghers.

Mandy is the same way when you go to the Milkovich's, but she tries to act much more chill about it and, instead of asking you to play dolls like Debbie does, she asks you to play Borderlands 2 and makes you pizza rolls without you asking.

When Terry is home the three of you either leave the house entirely, to go hang out at that abandoned building where you, Mickey, and Ian built the ROTC course, or you say you guys are smoking together and lock the door behind you. Sometimes you guys actually do smoke. Other times you don't...

You get invited to all the Gallagher family functions, like Thanksgiving and Christmas and birthdays.

Showing up at the Kash and Grab conveniently when they are scheduled to take their breaks so the three of you can 'hang out' in the cooler or back room.

Spending your weekends binge-watching movie series like Star Wars or The Lord of the Rings or Hunger Games (and obligatorily pretending like you don't see Mickey tear up when Rue dies, and then again when they salute her death in the 11th District). When you guys get to Divergent Mickey relates a little too much to Four.

In the beginning the birthday and Christmas presents are things like a bag of weed or a six-pack or your favorite candy bar, but the further your relationship goes along the more thought out the presents get.

The both of them steal your clothes at every chance, they have no boundaries. From your socks to your boxers/briefs to your hat.

After Mickey complains he's cold when you take back your winter hat, so Ian buys them matching hats with pom-poms. Mickey throws a fit, calling the pom-poms gay but when Ian offers to return them Mickey threatens to cut his hands off.

Ian uses his height to purposefully tower over you every chance he gets. Reaching above you to get things out of the cupboard while you stand between him and the cupboard. Hugging you from behind while you do the dishes. Holding his hand up too high for you to reach when you go to high five. Holding everything out of reach, actually. So many drinks have been spilled this way, so many innocent snacks lost to the mercy of the dirty floor.

You convince Mickey not to try and kill Sammy, though he's not happy about it at all, and Mickey never goes to prison. When you, Ian, and Mickey come back from the baseball field and Ian breaks up with you and Mickey, you and Mickey are left standing on the sidewalk.

The two of you go to your house and Mickey cries a little though he will always deny it, and then the two of you decide you aren't giving up that quickly.

Even if Ian doesn't want it, the two of you will be there for him. The two of you show up at the Gallagher house every day, keeping friends with his family and treating him just the same as you would before he broke up with you. You ask him about his medication and offer him weed when he begrudgingly tells you it sucks ass.

The three of you smoke together, huddled on the back porch close enough you're all touching and Ian tries to pretend like he doesn't miss you guys. He doesn't last long, and slowly but surely you're let back into his life until it's like nothing ever changed. After his meds settle he apologizes for pushing you both away, but you and mickey will hear nothing of it.

Ian never meets Caleb or Trevor and he never becomes Gay Jesus or goes to jail. He tries going to community college, but doesn't really feel it's for him. While walking through the main building he sees a flier on a bulletin board for an EMT program. He snags it and then goes right to the registrar's office to drop out.

Because polygamy is illegal, you guys can't technically get married, but after what was basically your 10 year anniversary the three of you decide to have a wedding anyways. Fiona 'officiates' it, and Kev and Mandy are Mickey's best 'men', and Lip and Carl are Ian's. Franny is the flower girl and Liam is the ring bearer.

Frank still cries, and after the kisses Fiona can't stop herself from crying too.

Everyone (The Gallaghers, V and Kev and the Twins, Mandy, Iggy, and Sandy) has a great time, with lots of stories of your shenanigans being passed around the wedding.

The three of you all cut the cake together, which is messy and uncoordinated but nobody notices and everyone cheers when the knife hits the cake plate.

At one point Fiona and Frank do a father-daughter dance in honor of keeping the peace on Ian's special day.

Once you guys get your own apartment you have Franny and Liam over at least once a week, because Mickey really is Franny's favorite uncle and your Liam's favorite brother-in-law.

Ian gets these little planter boxes that go on the outside of your windows, and if you or Mickey even think about touching them Ian is threatening to bury you both in an unmarked grave.

Getting take out frequently unless you enjoy cooking every meal, since Mickey and Ian are useless in the kitchen.

Ian and you try many different things to help Mickey get acclimated to life on the West Side, specifically to sleeping in an apartment where there aren't gunshots outside your window every five minutes. Everything from tiring him out (Mickey is in full support of still trying this one) to meditation (Mickey hated that one) to whale noises (Mickey also hated this one) but you guys ended up buying him very expensive noise-cancelling bluetooth headphones.

When asked what the price was you might have fibbed a little, just so Mickey wouldn't freak out.

Once you've all settled into life on the West Side you decide it might be time to hint at therapy, for all three of you. Your time on the South Side took a toll on all three of you, and you could all use it. Mickey takes a lot of convincing, but eventually he agrees to it because the two of you will be doing it as well.

There are a lot of times early on where Mickey storms into the apartment, pissed from a therapy session, swearing up and down that he's never going back but after gentle persuasion and Ian's way with his mouth (because he's diplomatic, and good with his words of course) he always ends up going to his next appointment.

One day Mickey comes home, and this time he's not angry. He's sort of quiet. You and Ian exchange a look, and decide to let him come to you on his own time. About an hour into the movie Ian put on after dinner Mickey says he mentioned something to his therapist. His fear of turning out to be a bad parent, turning out like his father. You and Ian are quiet as he relays the conversation to the two of you, and then finally Mickey ends with "And she suggested parenting classes."

And so the three of you take parenting classes.

And then Ian's on a kick of learning about parenting and starts bringing home books on parenting children of all ages from the library. And if you saw Mickey skimming one of the books when you and Ian weren't looking, well then that was your business.

[nickgerlich]

Split Opinion

The streaming era ushered in a completely new word to the English lexicon. Sure, we could have done it with DVDs, but the thought just never gained traction until it became possible to sit on our sofas and never have to get up, as long as the food and beverage didn’t run out, we didn’t have to make a mad dash to the water closet, or the batteries in the remote didn’t die.

Say hello to binge viewing. It was the new black, and it became so quickly entrenched in modern culture that when new shows were released on Netflix and others, viewing parties occurred. They became social events, not just something we did at home alone.

But little did Netflix know, it was sowing the seeds of its own undoing by allowing people to focus all their viewing efforts over a very short period of time, like a weekend. And then interest in the series would wane for another year. That’s bad from a marketing perspective.

Worse yet, as competition heated up among streaming providers and inflation reared its ugly head, viewers figured out they could cherry pick their viewing pleasures by simply subscribing to a service for a month, watching everything they wanted, and then canceling their subscription. It became the chain smoking of watching TV.

The answer, as several providers have determined of late, is to either split seasons in half, or go with week-to-week episode releases, just like old-school television.

For example, Stranger Things 4 was split in half, as was Ozark 4, the series’ final one. AMC’s Better Call Saul Season 6, available on cable and AMC+, was both split in halves and episodic (meaning weekly). Last winter, 1883, the prequel to the amazingly popular Yellowstone series, was weekly, and Yellowstone Season 5, which debuts in a few weeks, will also be weekly. There are more.

Top be perfectly honest, I hate having my chain yanked like this, and have resorted to my own tactics in some cases. Although I did watch 1883 and Better Call Saul episodes each week because they were that good, with other series I merely let the episodes stack up, and then binged them on my own terms. Take that, you miscreants.

Perhaps the middle ground now is simply a split season, with which you can still binge the smaller number of episodes. That’s how we did Ozark 4 and Stranger Things 4. And yes, the strategy allowed for more hype, especially Stranger Things, which had a massive merchandising effort tied to it. Walmart is still stuck with an in-aisle display of Stranger Things cookie and brownie mixes, because now that most of the serious ST fans have watched everything, we’re off to other things until Season 5 comes along.

So yeah, I get it. I’m a Marketing prof. Hype is critical, and once the sizzle fades, it is practically impossible to keep things going until the next big installment. And now that Netflix has announced its intentions to crack down on password sharing and allow—I mean require—user profile migration to new accounts, I sense a battle is about to take place that will cause users to find other means.

Churn has always been a problem for anything that requires an ongoing commitment. This runs the gamut from magazine subs to the student body at universities, and in between are people cutting the cable or hand-picking streaming services for short-term durations. Customers come, customers go, and everyone is constantly in recruitment mode. It’s a never-ending battle.

Thankfully, the split seasons and episodic releases are limited mostly to top-shelf releases, meaning only the most popular. Streamers want—and need—to hang on to their customers as long as they can, like home gardeners will do everything they can to protect their fragile vegetables as Jack Frost invades from the north.

I’m just glad that Netflix allowed The Watcher to go all-in, seven episodes and done. It was fun bingeing this one. But then again, The Watcher was never destined for multiple seasons, and there was no way to gauge the success of it without first dumping the entire series online.

We can thank digital content for putting all this power in the hands of the viewer, and now the streamers want some of it back. If they’re not careful, they could madden enough people to cause problems. But the lesson from all of this rings very true: Be careful how much autonomy you cede to your customers. You can’t let the inmates run the asylum. As much as I love my students, they’re not in charge of the class.

And Netflix, et al., have told is in no equivocal terms that we aren’t their masters either.

Dr “I’d Still Rather Binge“ Gerlich

Audio Blog

[astrologista]

ok, seriously. i’ve been graduated from college for six months and adult life is a joke.

there is literally no time in the day to take care of yourself properly AND do your utmost at work. pick one. i’ve been wondering why suburban americans are always so nuts about “health binges” and going “keto” and 10k runs and kombucha. well, news flash. americans are fucking unhealthy

people drink and smoke like there’s absolutely no tomorrow, so many people are addicted to drugs and painkillers, if you’re lucky enough to avoid mcdonald’s and other artery-clogging delicious fast food, you end up only having enough time to heat up a disgusting tv dinner in the microwave. if you want to work out or “jog”, you better be up at 4:00 every day to make time before you have to leave for work.

i’ve done the math and for me to be both healthy and put in full hours at work, plus overtime when needed, i’d have just a few hours or even less in order to do anything fun at all. i understand now why people get pissed in traffic, because it’s just more of your precious time wasted sitting in traffic. time that could be spent repairing your frazzled nerves.

i can understand why people want to move away from urban/suburban areas and just live a subsistence lifestyle on a farm or something. i don’t think i could handle it, as i’ve been raised in a moderately big city and the idea of not having modern conveniences and good medical care nearby is rather off-putting to me.

but, really. it’s such a joke how much of a push there is nowadays for people to “make healthy choices”. you can’t make healthy choices when you’re forced to wake up at a certain hour, slog your way to your office, forced into social interactions that physically drain most introverts (look it up), then you have no choice but to work overtime in order to complete the work you were supposed to do during the day but were interrupted by people talking to you / at you, and by the time you finally see the sun again, it’s almost set and you’re on your way home to collapse into bed. only to do the entire thing again the next day

there aren’t even jobs for things that people want to do. what if you want to work on games, the arts, writing fiction? even those who get jobs doing that put in crushing hours, and you’re likely to end up having to work on something like minions to get a foot in the industry. very precious few people get the privilege to create and work on their own IPs, and for the rest of those out there, you would have to get a second job in retail hell to support yourself financially, unless of course you have rich parents, in which case, bless your little heart and can we trade lives for a few decades please.

in the remaining time you do get for yourself, you have to quickly slap together meals that are bad for you and usually taste bad. rather than taking all day to cook something elaborate, you will inevitably order in and it costs like $20 plus tip. good luck learning to cook after working all day. what a joke.

not to mention the very idea of owning an entire house, having to clean and maintain said house and lawn, running errands, shopping for groceries, remembering which bills you have to pay manually...

and if you’re a woman, you better take the time to make sure you look presentable at work. which means waking up an hour earlier than you would like to slap on makeup and ensure your outfit is spotless. and for those of you with naturally curly or wavy hair, well... good luck finding time to sort that out, because only stick-straight hair looks professional i guess

what money you do get from a job goes straight to fucking bills and debt.

there is no time to maintain relationships with friends and family outside of holidays. much less to make new friends. how people can maintain a relationship and have children (some people have more than one child????) is absolutely a mind blower. not to mention making sure your pets are well cared for, it’s something that can’t be neglected.

there is no time to do volunteer work and outreach, i wish i could say there was. there is no time to join a club, take a class, make a personal project. hobbies are dead - crafting, painting, even watching netflix. it’s all kind of out the window, except for precious weekends which are basically two days of sleeping.

people need uninterrupted leisure time. hours of it. days worth, to make up for days spent at work. we need vacations and breaks to calm our minds and keep us mentally healthy. if you’re an introvert you need sleep and you need time by yourself just to be yourself - no makeup if you don’t want, comfy clothes, no demands, no interruptions, do anything you want to do, or just do nothing at all. and even hours isn’t enough. you need at least a whole day, maybe two or three in a row. and sometimes you can’t get that.

people need time to learn new things, to travel, to meet new people, to work on art projects and learn new skills. there is so much more to life than just living to work, infinite things you can do (or not do) with each given day.

it’s hard not to burn out. because the demands on us are greater than ever. i haven’t had time to go to church anymore for a long time. i pray while commuting, just in my mind.

sometimes, it just feels like i’ll never have the life i want. never enough time, enough money. i’ll never look right, or finish that game i want to build, or find the people i want to be with, never have a job i love, with enough pay or benefits. i’ll never travel to that place or have time to read that book series.

i recommend that each day, everyone remember that you don’t have to do any of it. executive dysfunction is real but sometimes, when your body’s telling you to rest, you need to rest and that’s real, too. you can take a day off from work. you can reschedule a date or appointment. you can say “i’ll do it later”. if you have to do it, just do the most important part and be done with it. time is very important. take the time you need, do stuff for you, even if it means staring at the wall for two hours. this is not and will never be a waste of time.

everything you do, even working a shitty job, is improving you. change will happen, and everything is temporary. if you’re liking your life, enjoy it. if you’re not, it will change. you will change. some things will be better and others worse. just let it go, because most of it is out of your control. you are doing your best, and that’s all that really matters here

[spotlightsaga]

Kevin Cage of @spotlightsaga reviews... Riverdale /S01\/E10\ Chapter 10: The Lost Weekend Airdate: April 13, 2017 @cwnetwork Ratings: 0.872 Million :: 0.32 18-49 Demo Share Score: 8.5/10 @riverdaleseries @archiecomics TVTime/FB/Twitter/IG/Tumblr/Path/Pin: @SpotlightSaga **********SPOILERS BELOW********** Four Months late isn't too bad, right? See, in Miami, it's never cute to be the first person at the party, and really the party never ends until someone actually says it does... And clearly the Riverdale Party is still very much in full swing. So consider this 10th Entry 'Riverdale Revisit'; the after party to end all after parties. Of course, we're going to be set up for S2 when it goes live. This is definitely not one of the tv shows that Spotlight Saga will be dropping in the coming, world famous, 'fall tv' season frenzy. But don't get it twisted, there are many on the chopping block... OUR chopping block. We're looking at what gets our blood pumping and our thoughts racing, giving us something more to talk about than "Last Night on ___insert uninspired show number #45 here___." 'Riverdale' has made a massive stir across social media and of course on The CW & their worldwide dominating partner, Netflix, as well. I love that due to streaming, the new large amounts of cash pouring in from its subsequent deals, and actually several generations full of 'cord cutters', there are no longer rules to watching and writing about television series and films... Get to them when you can, some will watch them live, some will stream them later, some will wait until they can binge them all at once like a Weekend Warrior with a pocket full of Ecstasy and a head full of hallucinogens. It's our world now, and CBS, NBC, ABC, FOX, and more (or less) importantly 'Nielsen Holdings', no longer control what, when, where, why, and how much. Smell that? That's the sweet smell of change... And the remnants of murder and sticky maple syrup, obvi. Ive been extremely careful not to overpraise 'Riverdale' in the past. Similar series have only led to frustration or feelings of complete frustration. Its hard to know what to expect from a show like this in the near future... We all saw the demise of similar series like 'Pretty Little Liars' and other shows that run through the same type of vein... Kind of like many of the other ones attempted over at the now defunct ABC Family where PLL first started. Like The WB, UPN, and now The CW, ABC Family has also gone through a newly rebranding process that didn't do much to help the sinking ship they now call Freeform TV... A network that only 'The Fosters' and its cheesy sister show 'Shadowhunters' seem to be keeping afloat. We aren't being negative, we're being real... And when you're at a party, or in this case, 'After Party', you've got to be real. You just gotta... Even if no one ever wanted the party in the first place. If you don't know what I mean, let me spell it out for you. Ready? Set? Spell! Ah fuck it, we'll just spill the tea... 'Let's have a Kiki! Lock the doors tight!' I sometimes wonder if my obscure pop culture references I often sneak into these articles ever actually connect. They probably don't, but to that one person that got it, FUCK YEAH! It's the birthday of Jughead (Cole Sprouse)... And much like the very similar, fellow female counterpart, Sheila the She-Wolf, another introverted style character from 'Riverdale's sister show on Netflix, 'GLOW'... Jughead is not really into parties and/or making a big fuss about a birthday or bringing any unnecessary & unwanted attention to his person. Unfortunately for Betty (Lili Reinhart), Jughead isn't really big on camaraderie, most definitely not in the spirit equivalent to the 'Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling'! The reasons behind throwing these two characters' each their own impromptu birthday bashes on their respective tv shows are done for totally different reasons. With 'GLOW', it was slightly annoying at first (for Sheila, anyway), but eventually it turned from an apprehensive & anxiety filled event to a touching, sweet moment, where a closed off character had a major breakthrough that was captured in the perfect beam of light, allowing a significant development and enabling an insight into another character's backstory, bringing the whole cast together for the most part. In a great juxtaposition, on 'Riverdale', the psychology behind this one is actually much, much different... It's still got the 'trepidatious yet possible potential for a surprise moment of gratification' aspect down to a certain degree, but it doesn't go down the path of the balmy & charming. The reasoning behind Betty's sudden obsession to give Jughead the party that he never wanted, and the background as to why he's so against the idea in the first place certainly doesn't inspire camaraderie or any kind of 'feel good' moments, especially at the party itself. If anything, the intent is slightly bordering on the side of creepy. Riverdale?! Creepy?!? Yup! Keep up! It's only getting creepier. You see... We've been up on 'Riverdale' and then back down, and then back up and down again... And I think everyone here will openly admit that it's mostly due to a shaky CW track record, as well as similar networks just like it, though there has been a few inconsistencies outside of this oddball tone & beautiful color scheme we're always raving about. However, when the show fully embraces its complete and total anomalous, almost freakish eccentricities, we all just fall right back in love with the show again. It's episodes like 'Chapter 10: The Lost Weekend' that completely make us forget about past network follies and shows like PLL completely losing their way after gaining our trust and enthusiasm in its beginning stages. Reinhart is effortlessly serving up 'Bizarre, Bilateral, Betty Bananas' like a full-on, award ready, seasoned vet. Seriously, I don't want to blow too much smoke up the kid's ass, but I'm pretty sure her breakthrough performance here would even make the likes of decorated actress such as Nicole Kidman proud. Betty Cooper has a duality that Reinhart not only highlights with strong, hearty performances... But it's also the efforts of Director Dawn Williamson, a phenomenal Art Department (you guys KICK MAJOR ASS), Cinematographer Stephen Jackson (this guy was award-worthy in this episode), and Costume & Wardrobe (hell, everyone involved in the smallest, minute details) framed from shot to shot... The absurdity of how tight & perfectly situated her ponytail is, how hard she clenches her hands (leaving scratch marks on her palms), even the way she holds the cake & dawns the signature 'Jughead Crown', to whoever made the call of having those weirdo party goers in horse masks in the background - Good call, guys! That was freaking CRAZY! It's all those little things that make the picture such a pleasure to watch... Turning what seems like a normal teen drama at first glance, to a finely tuned, surprisingly compelling theatrical spectacle. The crazy is in full on abundance, though... It's not just Betty. Suddenly after a string of a few disappointing episodes, I come back after a break and either see things in a totally different light, or it could be that this was just slowly building right under our noses the whole time, or *the most plausible of all three options* is that the ironically lowest rated episode of the series, according to the great analysts over at Nielsen, is actually the most technically sound, character driven, insanely atmospheric entry of the entire 1st Season. Veronica Lodge (Camila Mendes) finally lets go of some deep resentments she's been bottling up and goes after Cheryl Blossom (Madelaine Petsch). This is a task that I wouldn't suggest to any person of sound or capable mind to attempt in any way, shape, fashion, or form. The act is crazy in and of itself, and pissing off the 'Ravishing Redhead' that literally wears the letters 'HBIC' on the back of her cheerleading uniform, that's 'Head Bitch in Charge' for anyone too young or too old to remember Tiffany Pollard of VH1's 'I Love New York', is obviously going to lead to a backlash that Veronica won't likely forget. Sure she might get her big 'W' now, but we must remind you... There's no 'W' in 'HBIC'. Meanwhile, Cole Sprouse & Skeet Ulrich, who plays Serpent Gangster FP Jones & Jughead's father on the show, are literally close to actually convincing me that they are really father and son in real life. The little ticks and nuances that they share are out of this fn' world insane. Either these two have spent a week in a trailer together mirroring their every move or we seriously need to ring in Maury Povich for a DNA Test! Oh, and apparently there's some guy on the show named Archie Andrews (KJ Apa)... The only drawback is that they've failed to make the main protagonist (is he tho?) even remotely interesting. He's good looking, but he's not a convincing redhead, and I'm still not hooked into his arc. Hey, that's ok... Enter Mary Andrews (Molly Ringwald - ChaChing!), Archie's long lost mother. So nice of you to finally drop in, Molly! Fred Andrews (Luke Perry) is ready to finalize the divorce, but we're just biting on all the possibly juicy dramatic scenarios! Who is Archie again? Back at the party, that burgeoning rivalry between Veronica and Cheryl hits its boiling point when Veronica gets a bit too carried away and accuses Cheryl and her deceased brother Jason (Trevor Stines) of having an incestious affair. Ah, gotta love seedy underbelly of the United States! The more money, the crazier the family!!! Oh but there's more! Good ol' All-American Chuck (Jordan Calloway), who actually WAS almost boiled alive, attempts to out Betty on her 'Dr. Jeckyl/Ms. Hyde' issue that surfaced when a hot tub prank got a bit too out of hand earlier in the season. To our surprise, and viewer delight, Jughead and his Dad actually had a moment, which was completely unexpected, yet felt completely real. Like I said before, Ulrich & Sprouse have stellar chemistry, and the writers seem to know this and obviously derive great pleasure in giving us this moment where the two aren't at total odds and Jughead not only carefully considers, but actually takes his biological father's advice... Providing solid proof that the series isn't trying to meander or stretch out any unnecessary storylines at all. No disrespect to fans of other series broadcast on The CW, but clearly this isn't 'The Flash'. These storylines seem to be heading into important territory at a reasonable pace, and not just hanging around to fulfill an episode number requested by an executive to make sure ad-space quotas are filled... Although I have considered that this could be an issue that the show could run into in its expanded 22-Episode Run that it's been greenlit for S2. There's plenty of juicy drama to go around, but when we see that drama making moves instead of being drawn out, then you know you've got a potentially good show on your hands. For now, 'Riverdale' is back on a solid trajectory, delivering what appears to be a set-up episode for the impending S1 finale... A set-up episode that was easily the most consistent entry to date from start to finish. The impression that an episode as good as this exists to move its characters like chess pieces, seemingly just to put everyone in place for the final three episodes is an exciting notion for the last 3 hours of S1 of 'Riverdale' to come!

[bpdbiscuitblog-blog]

How Many Did You Take? How Many, My Angel? ***TRIGGER WARNING***

Woohoo is one of my oldest friends. She’s an ordained Wiccan priestess and performed the marriage ceremony for my second husband and me. She’s been my spiritual advisor and counselor since before I was old enough to drink, and I’m 34 now.

Before I was diagnosed with BPD, back when I hit the Big Red Button (the one that says - DO NOT TOUCH because the consequences are catastrophic) on my life, Woohoo was still there for me. I was obviously going insane, up and leaving my 13-year marriage with my then 35-year-old husband and my 14-year-old daughter, Moon, and my house and my entire existence to move in with Gypsy, a 33-year-old failed musician-turned-gamer who lived with his mother and had no job, education, hope for his future, or even basic social skills, where I immediately began a life of weird, unsatisfying, and infrequent sex, binge drinking, and running from past and present trauma-drama. On a positive note, I became a teacher again, a fulfilling experience speaking to my soul, as I am a teacher in more than just career, but completely mentally incapable of taking care of myself, much less a group of 17 8-year-olds, and became overworked, exhausted, and an emotional hurricane in a matter of months.

But between the Big Red Button and the hurricane was a time of destruction and devastation where I used the fires of my own personal hell to burn every possible bridge to my old life that I could, many of them badly in need of burning, as I would never return to walk them again, but others, like the Bridge to Woohoo, one of the few structures still anchoring my rapidly deteriorating mind in reality. Woohoo never traumatized me. She never hurt me. She never sought to control me. But the night I lost my daughter Moon and what remained of my ability to cope with the pain I was experiencing, in my grief and despair, she became just another representation of that trauma, and in the days that followed surviving my suicide attempt (notice I did not say my first suicide attempt) she became one of several targets of my BPD-strengthened rage at that long-buried trauma, a casualty of Hurricane Biscuit, although I was still more of a Tropical Storm back then.

Woohoo is a force of nature herself at times. Just as crazy, just as sarcastic, just as devastating a wit as myself, Woohoo brings with her a kind of controlled chaos, a tornado-in-a-bottle personality, ready to let loose a barrage of her own hellfire if the mood strikes her, but mostly just fun, easy-going, patient, a breeze that could whip up into a frenzied tornado if the mood strikes, but content at the moment just to enjoy the current. Voluptuous, sex-driven, raven-haired, loud-mouthed, and profane could all be used to describe her accurately, as accurately as kind, generous, soulful, and motherly.

I no longer believe in soulmates, but I do believe we have, say, connected souls, and as much as anyone I’ve ever met, she is one of my connected souls. And yet, when she stepped up to do what needed to be done to save my life, I turned my back on her.

She warned me about Gypsy. Told me there was something “not right ‘bout that boy,” in her Oklahoma twang. They had an immediate dislike of each other, Gypsy and Woohoo. Gypsy called her a man-hating feminist. Woohoo called him a lazy, worthless piece of shit, among other things. Neither of them were wrong.

My response to her warnings, over and over again, like a love-struck teenager fawning over a, well, a worthless piece of shit, was a protesting, “But, I love him, Woohoo! He’s my one and only.” (I am now picturing myself striking a dramatic pose, forearm to my forehead, turning away and looking plaintively out the window into a setting sun, while declaring that she just wouldn’t understand.)

I blatantly ignored the mounting evidence that this pairing would only leave me broken and broke, and continued blissfully unaware along my journey of self-destruction, orchestrating a series of events that would leave me running from my home, my marriage, my family. I’m not saying I should have been leaving these things, at least the marriage and the home, but I shouldn’t have been running towards Gypsy, of all people. Woohoo would have been a better choice. She did offer me a place to live, a chance to “get my shit together” in a relatively peaceful environment, free for a few months at least from financial worry, a safe haven to start anew. Meanwhile, I waved merrily from my car window as I drove away, hollering, “Nah, I got this!” as I hauled ass down her driveway, blaring Gypsy’s music at full blast and heading back to the city, to his mother’s house and the tiny 10x10 room that was to be my new prison of my own making for the next several months.

Meanwhile, still unable to communicate the massive amount of emotional stress and pain I was under to anyone, my mind began bringing all my fears and the traumas of my past to bear, forcing me to deal with them however I could. Financially, I was surviving, barely, in no small part to Woohoo herself, who kept my business running mostly smoothly as the day-to-day operations manager, supplying me with a steady income even when I wasn’t actively working.

My ex-husband meanwhile had no intention of patiently waiting out my midlife crisis, immediately replacing the vacated space in our marriage bed with the first woman who would tumble into it. He convinced Moon that my mental state was due to the fact that I was a bad person who did not love her, and therefore she had no need to further associate herself with me.

The day I received that smug text message from him, superior in his position as head of a new family to control, I gave up. Oh, not without setting a few more fires of course, screaming and stamping my foot and using whatever means I could to manipulate my ex-husband into returning my daughter to me, letting me hear her voice, even if it meant terrifying a complete stranger, his new bed buddy, into thinking I was going to share photos of her in lingerie with the world. And where did I get these photos? Oh, Mr. Manipulation himself had provided those just days before when he was so very interested in seeing if I would join them for a threesome. But, that’s another story for another day.

After several hours of realizing that torturing Mr. M and and the future Mrs. M was not going to get me my daughter, my emotions spiraled me into a well of despair that I was not capable of pulling myself out of. I seized upon a bottle of pills, a prescription Mr. M procured from his doctor that I had been told was for helping me with anxiety from my ADHD, but in fact were mood-altering antidepressants that, when prescribed incorrectly, could lead to suicidal ideation.

Google is a useful source for immediate access to the LD50 of literally anything. LD50 is the amount of a medication that will, when consumed, lead to death in 50% of the population of those who take it. The LD50 for this particular medication was 15 pills. I had 30. While texting Woohoo, Mr. M, and the future Mrs. M., telling them my intentions unless they returned my daughter to me, I began counting out 15 pills. I continued the threats as I used the Everclear under Gypsy's bed (where he was currently snoring after taking a dose of Benadryl after a long weekend of my emotional drama), to swallow them one by one. At eight pills, Woohoo warned me that she was calling the police. Hours away from my location, she would never arrive in time herself to stop me. She did the only the she could to prevent my death at my own hands - she narced on me.

At ten pills, for some reason, Gypsy stirred in his allergy-med-induced coma, and seeing me swallow the tenth, realized what was happening. He took the pills away as I screamed at him, “Just five more, please, just five more!” while he screamed back at me, “How many did you take? How many, my Angel?” (Gypsy didn’t call me Biscuit. No one did at this time, actually.) After counting and recounting, doing his own internet search, and counting once more, he sighed with relief, realizing I’d only taken enough to give myself a stomach ache.

My sobs had subsided at this point, and I sat in stony silence as Gypsy stared at me, seemingly in shock at how close I had come to leaving his life, and my own, at my own hand. Then one of those loud knocks that apparently policemen are trained in, one that can echo through a house to the back of a bedroom and enter into even the fevered dreams of a hallucinating woman who just wanted to be happy, smoke weed, and eat a chocolate bar in peace, sounded through the house, setting Gypsy's mom’s chocolate labs off in a frenzied bark as well as my wails of panic.

“Tell them I’m okay, Gypsy. Please, tell them I’m okay. Tell them she lied. Tell them they lied. Can I stay here? I’m so scared, Gypsy.” With an irritated sigh, he put his khaki shorts on over his boxers, pulled me gently to my feet, and guided me to the door. “No, you’ve got to talk to them. They’re going to want to see you.”

As if I was a frightened toddler meeting Santa for the first time, he guided me to the front door. In my head, I was psyching myself up. “You can do this, Biscuit. Just act normal. Act normal. Be angry. If you’re angry, you can’t be sad. If you’re angry, you won’t cry.”

After a heated discussion between me and the cops, a worried discussion between the cops and Gypsy, and phone calls and screenshots of my texts to Woohoo and Mr. and Mrs. M. between the cops and Woohoo, it was decided that it would be in my best interest if I was detained involuntarily at a mental institution for a three-day psych hold.

In the front yard of a house I had only recently moved into, in front of people I barely knew, in front of my beloved Gypsy, I was handcuffed, crying and scared. As the cuffs clicked into place, I could see Gypsy at the front door, watching behind the glass, mouthing, “I love you,” across the void separating me from the only vaguely familiar thing left in my life. Physically, I was being kept safe, but I was being traumatized all over again, my hands behind my back all over again, forced to do something I didn’t want to do all over again.

But what else could Woohoo do? Physical safety trumped mental safety. I could never be mentally safe again unless I was kept physically safe now. At the time, I couldn’t see that. At the time, all I felt was fear and anger. For someone with BPD, fear and anger are terror and rage.

By the time I was released from my prison 48 hours later (instead of 72, as apparently I wasn’t that crazy), my mind had been fueled by this terror and rage for days, consuming my thoughts completely. Unable to turn that rage onto the people who had hurt me, I instead hurled it at Woohoo, now the sole symbol remaining of that night. I stripped her from the business, allowing Gypsy to spew venom through social media as the new voice of the company, coming to my defense as Woohoo tried to warn our contractors that there was something seriously wrong with my mental stability now.

In my gathering momentum of destruction, I decided to strike one more blow against my former friend, business partner, and soul sister: I refused to pay her. I kept her final paycheck, using it instead to shower Gypsy with books and games, gifts for his loyalty perhaps. Meanwhile, Woohoo, still in shock over my behavior thus far, now had to figure out how to make ends meet without the money she was owed, how to provide for my own godchildren, her sweet son and daughter, now just that much shorter of being able to cover expenses.

The only wise decision I made in those days was enrolling in counseling. But of course, showing up to the first session did not instantly make me see what I had done and was continuing to do. That would take time, more self-destruction, more mistakes, more trauma, and finally, finally -- partly due to that first step and the hard work of a southern Biscuit, partly due to the luck of finding her Gravy -- peace.