#decided to binge it on a whim and it kind of fucking sucks in all the areas that matter to me

[knxfesck]

things about arcane that made me want to roll around on the floor and die

- faked british accents for the rich people and slavic accents for the poor people

- completely unprompted hetero sex scene between 2 bourgeois politicians

- even more unprompted fucking imagine dragons cameo?????

[dragonheart-swtor]

Imperial Agent Storyline: Drunk History Version

Since people really seemed to like the last one! Y’all’s collective wish is my command. Spoilers for the Imperial Agent storyline, obviously. Enjoy!

- so you start out with your agent on Hutta, a little polluted slimeball of a world that literally everyone but the Hutts canonically hates. there's lore but we're going to ignore it. the important thing is that you're here to con a Hutt, always a dangerous gambit, into working with/for the Empire.

- you sneak into a corner to space facetime your boss, a guy we only ever know as Keeper because Intelligence is weird about names. sneaking into corners to facetime people is a repeating theme throughout the story.

- you are informed that you've already got a cover story set up, and you'll be posing as an infamous pirate called the Red Blade who'll be able to get in close to the Hutt in question, whose name I've forgotten. Nethro or Nefro or something.

- "wait, what about the actual Red Blade," you ask your boss, probably

- "he's halfway across the galaxy, you don't need to worry about him," your boss replies, in a textbook example of what we in the writing business call “foreshadowing”

- (spoiler alert: you need to worry about him)

- but we won't worry about that for now. bada bing bada boom, you stroll on into the Hutt's place. you are immediately confronted by a guy who, shock and horror, actually knows the real Red Blade and knows you ain't him. (one would think that all-seeing Intelligence would have known about him, but nuance.) this is a problem for a number of obvious reasons.

- your options are as follows: bribe him, kill him, or sleep with him. (this is also something of a recurring theme throughout the story.) whatever option you take, he's dealt with. (yes, this is the man eris fucked five minutes into her storyline.)

- (I didn’t want to pay him money, leave me alone.)

- anyway, the mission progresses smoothly. meet the Hutt, do some jobs for the Hutt, betray the Hutt's right hand and stab him in the back right after convincing him you were friends, invade the Hutt's rival's palace, McMurder the Hutt's rival, you know. your average day at the office

- most of the way through, the Hutt's other right hand starts to be suspicious about you. this is Kaliyo Djannis, and she will be Plot Relevant™.

- by which I mean she shortly thereafter walks in on you facetiming your boss and gets hired by Intelligence to help out for gods know what reason. welcome to your first companion

- (or possibly you walk in on her facetiming your boss in your room, I.. don't remember, honestly. something like that.)

- anyway one Hutt is dead the other is working with us bada bing bada boom this is going great and hey remember when I said you needed to worry about that guy you're impersonating this whole time? yeah, about that,

- so the real actual Red Blade comes sailing in to Hutta and Intelligence immediately calls you up like "hey, hate to bother you, but your cover's about to get blown in a big way and we need you to murder the guy whose identity you've stolen before he can expose you.” 

- "so, just like that training mission last week. gotcha, boss, no problem."

- murder time™

- congration you done it! go home to Dromund Kaas.

- "You're on Imperial soil now, agent. Welcome home." [nonhuman Agent immediately experiences 27492738957 microaggressions] (this joke isn’t mine, for the record)

- first off, Intelligence HQ has a bomb aesthetic, as does the entire Empire in general

- second off, you do walk in on your boss talking to - by which I mean "being given a speech by" - a Dark Lord, which is less than optimal for a number of reasons, first and foremost that speeches by Dark Lords of the Sith quite often immediately precede someone getting killed

- said Dark Lord is one Darth Jadus, who will proceed to be a thorn in your side for approximately the next three hours of gameplay

- (don't worry, after that three hours you'll get a worse thorn)

- Darth Jadus decides he likes you and declares you "his" agent, which you immediately get the gist is about the worst thing that can happen to an Intelligence agent from the way everyone around you treats you like you've just had a ticking bomb strapped to your back for the rest of this meeting

- you're sent on a handful of missions, including one to the Dark Temple which, you know, Force-deaf people aren't supposed to be in, but Jadus Does Not Care

- Jadus calls you into his office at one point and tells you he's going to do some ritual to bind you to his service or something, it's not really clear, but it's clearly Not Optional and also terrifying in concept

- now, quick sidebar. there are basically two paths to take here: one where you suck up to the Sith and treat them with the utmost care and respect and fear like you're kind of supposed to, and one where you mouth off at every opportunity. Eris is mortally terrified of Sith, so she just kind of.. submitted knowing she was going to die if she didn't.

- my second run, however, was just a "hey how bad can I fuck this up" character because I already knew the story.

- I decided to mouth off to Jadus at every opportunity, including adamantly refusing this ritual.

- "What can he do to me?" I asked the person I was playing with. "I'm the protagonist! It's not like he can kill me!"

- Jadus: *kills me*

- me:

- (mechanically, anyway; story-wise I'm sure he just. put her on the brink of death. but mechanically speaking he literally actually did kill my toon)

- (this should be a warning for exactly how much this storyline is willing to put its usually-heavily-plot-armored protagonist through.)

- anyway.

-  do some missions, blah blah blah, Sith possession in the Dark Temple, blah blah blah, you know the drill

-  well, turns out Jadus is going on tour with several hundred Imperial civilians, military, and Sith, allegedly all hand chosen, to share his ~vision for the Empire~. that's all well and good, whatever I gue-

- sorry what do you mean his ship exploded

- what do you mean a member of the Dark Council just blew up in orbit

- cue Kill Bill sirens

- Panic! At The Intelligence HQ

- this throws everything into chaos; not only was Jadus more directly involved in Intelligence, but he was a Dark Councilor so now there's a massive power vacuum

- the Sith who ends up filling this power vacuum? Jadus's daughter, Darth Zhorrid.

- remember when I said you'd have a bigger thorn in your side after Jadus?

- so yeah. so Zhorrid is, for lack of a better word, fucking terrifying

- she's sadistic and completely careless of others' lives or wellbeing and oh yeah she also instantly latches onto you even harder than her father did and demands you find his killer

- a lot of your meetings with her aren't really plot-relevant so I'll sum them all up here:

- Zhorrid was horribly abused by Jadus, completely broken. She tells you a story about how she used to sing, and her father hired a tutor, then had her sing at a Kaas City performance until her throat was so damaged she could never sing again. He tore every scrap of joy out of her life, completely failed to teach her what she needed to know to survive the rigors of the Dark Council, and instilled every ounce of hatred, sadism, and complete lack of pity he could in her.

- She kills people for no reason other than a whim, because she was listening to a Sith opera and the aria was "very moving" (an actual literal thing that happens).

- She acts like a complete spoiled brat child. At one point the other Dark Councilors literally beat and torture her, presumably for this reason because she's insufferable and arrogant and way out of her depth, and she cries to you about it

- If you’re like me, your response to all this is basically “cool motive, still murder”

- I have sidetracked  very hard. where was I

- so you spend a while trying to hunt down the people who blew up Jadus's ship. There's a bunch of rebels, you hunt them down, they've got biotech weapons called Eradicators set up to destroy cities on multiple planets, skippity skip to the big reveal

- Jadus is alive, and he organized the whole thing so he'd be able to remake the Empire into the image he wanted. He tortured and enslaved the survivors of the Dominator's destruction

- Jadus gives you a whole speech about how fear is a gift to be shared and "Through victory my chains are broken" but there must be chains to break and blah blah blah holy shit this man is genocidal

- you have three choices: join him for real, pretend to join him so you can sabotage his ship and then kill him (at the cost of hundreds of thousands of Imperial lives), or refuse outright and save those hundreds of thousands of lives but Jadus escapes (and you know he's allegedly likely to return and do even worse damage later).

- (Quick sidebar again, for those who haven’t played it: Eris chose the second option and has nightmares about it for the rest of her life. It's actually extremely haunting in-game - as you're running through Jadus's ship to sabotage it as fast as possible, you can hear the distress calls from various colonies and planets being attacked, the screams of the dying that you doomed. It's horrifying.)

- so yeah there’s really no winning that situation but hey! at least Chapter One’s over. surely in Chapter Two things can’t get worse.

- Chapter Two: Things Get Worse

- there's this guy, Ardun Kothe, an SIS agent. he's a huge threat for some reason I don't remember. you're supposed to infiltrate the SIS to get close to and eventually kill him. not an easy job, but okay, we can do this.

- Intelligence sets up the meeting; months ago they sent the first word to Kothe that there was an Intelligence agent ready to turn and they've been building up from there, sending him a steady stream of information

- enter Hunter, aka the worst bastard in this entire storyline and that is an achievement. He's the one you meet first on Nar Shaddaa.

- you do some missions for the SIS, whatever, it's not important. You finally get to meet the rest of the team - and Ardun Kothe.

- Kothe wants to speak alone, which is p typical tbh. He expresses some doubts, which you assuage as best you can; he gives you your code name: Legate. It's from a form of sabbac, he explains, you'll have to play with him sometime.

- (It is difficult for me to make what happens next funny instead of horrifying, so forgive me if the tone changes a bit here.)

- Everything is going fine.

- "I'm sorry about this, Legate."

- What?

- "Keyword: onomatophobia. Engage Thesh protocols, phase one."

- Everything is not fine.

- You black out and have an extremely rude awakening.

- So it turns out whatever happened with Jadus, the Dark Council decided you were too dangerous (usually for doing your job too fuckin well) and that you needed to be leashed. So not you have mind control programming in your brain, and anyone who has your keyword can take complete and unequivocal control of your body. this is, in a word, not great.

- (This is, as I mentioned, actually extremely horrifying. You have dialogue options and they don’t change what you actually say. You have an opportunity to shoot Kothe and even if you try to select it nothing happens. But we’re not here for the horror take (not today, anyway) so let’s just This Is Fine that and move on)

- Tl;dr you can’t harm Kothe or any members of his team, you’re forced to obey anyone who has your keyword, and this wouldn’t be that much of a problem because we’ll just tell Watcher Two what’s happened and oh wait you can’t tell anyone about your programming either. well, shit.

- You go on to work double agent, like it was planned, with this new, uh. twist

- about a third of the way through the chapter, your mind kind of cracks and you start having hallucinations - seeing things you know can't be real during a holocall, passing out in the middle of your ship and waking up in medbay.

- After that, a new voice lives in your head! Watcher X, someone you either killed or let flee on Nar Shaddaa, has sort of joined the party. Is he an AI in the spinal implant the real Watcher X gave you? is he a figment of your broken mind trying to process its situation? Who knows! Not you! either way, this is not optimal but at least he seems to be being helpful this time

- so anyway we should probably try and figure out how to undo this programming bc Intelligence is being Wholly Unhelpful

- (ASAP, please, especially with how horrible Hunter acts toward you - let’s go with “uncomfortably leery,” which I promise is generous.)

- by the way, your companions still have no idea what’s going on during all this, although they try to be varying levels of supportive (thank you vector I love you bug husband)

- Good news! The Intelligence Archive almost definitely has information on what they did to you and how to fix it. Bad news! You’re definitely not authorized to look that up and crashing the power mainframe to make sure they don’t see you do it sends the security droids after you. whoops.

- Good news! There’s a way to fix you. Bad news! You have to make and inject yourself with a still-kinda-experimental cocktail of chemicals and it may or may not give you permanent brain damage. it’s fine. this is fine.

- also it takes a while to kick in which is Less Than Optimal and by the time it finally does you’ve just been left with a binding order to stay and guard the door on what is, for you, a suicide mission. there’s some incentive to “break your chains” for ya.

- You fight and kill Kothe. Who, shock and awe! is an ex-Jedi! this was in no way painfully obvious by how he kept talking about “sensing” things, I’m sure. definitely not.

- Hunter escapes, because of fuckin course he does. Hunter, who suddenly seems far more in control of everything than he had before. Hunter, who knows far more than he should. Hunter, who ends up leading you to a much, much larger conspiracy.

- End Chapter 2.

- Hate to disappoint, but Chapter 3 is honestly the least interesting to me personally, so this’ll be brief compared to the previous chapters

- You spend a lot of time hunting down this much larger conspiracy, including Hunter specifically. There's a lot of betrayal and secret reveals. (It's not tedious by any stretch of the imagination, but the story beats definitely don't stick in my head as well as the first two chapters, even after two playthroughs.)

- you go to Voss and, in order to get into a Voss-only archive, get married to a person you just met before almost immediately leaving the planet (and your new spouse) behind. this is never mentioned again.

- you get hold of a holorecording from the Star Cabal, the big conspiracy. problem: the holorecording contains a trap for the brain-enhanced Watchers, and now half of Intelligence is in a vegetative state. this is not optimal.

- partially as a result of this, Intelligence basically gets dissolved, which is Not Great because it puts you right under the thumb of yet another asshole Sith lord

- the Watchers are recovering, though, so that’s something. Watcher Two, now Keeper (the old Keeper got promoted), contacts you so you can keep working on this Star Cabal thing.

- you get intentionally captured so the Star Cabal can torture you and you can “break” and give them false information to lead them into a trap. you are immediately afterward expected to get back to work like nothing happened. this is never mentioned again.

- You track the Star Cabal to their base, way out in the Unknown Regions iirc, and infiltrate it during a meeting of the top agents.

- murder time 2: electric boogaloo (well, more like murder time 45, to be honest, but shh it’s fine)

- You fight the Star Cabal guys, chase Hunter through the whole place, and finally corner him.

- (Salt warning ahead on my part for the next story beat, if you can call it that.)

- Hunter, when beaten, reveals what I personally think is the most bullshit stupid reveal in the entire game: he is actually a she, and has been using a stealth field generator (or something similar) to change his/her appearance the entire time. There are multiple interpretations of this - "he's trans" is my least favorite, sorry-not-sorry, because a) it's pretty clear she still considers herself a woman and Hunter is just a convenient persona, and also b) a clearly predatory man is absolutely horrid representation as far as playing into harmful stereotypes about trans people, thanks. Personally, my rather cynical interpretation is that they wanted one more shock value reveal at the end of the storyline and I guess couldn't come up with anything better. It's my least favorite thing in the whole IA storyline.

- anyway, that's not really important. I just needed to be mad about it for a minute. ignore me. moving on

- The important part is this: what you gain from the Star Cabal's base is an item called the Black Codex, an ancient piece of technology with the power to erase all records of a person's existence.

- Unless you are very stubborn about it the Agent’s reaction to this is basically “oh thank fuck I’m freeeeeeeeee” and you fly off into the hyperspace sunset with your crew, giving middle fingers to the Sith whose grip you’re escaping all the way. which, really, who can blame you.

And that’s the Imperial Agent storyline, folks. Roll credits. I’ll probably do the Bounty Hunter storyline next while it’s still fresh in my mind, but I could also do the Sith Warrior storyline probably if y’all’re more interested, vote now on your phones.

[lovelyirony]

hi, saw your request for pairings and AUs & there's something I thought of the other day, if you consider it an AU. How about Pepperony & Hanahaki disease? what if palladium wasn't the only thing killing Tony slowly in IM2? :) ah, the smell of angst. hehe. thanks

ooh, aren’t you the evil one? also: anyone know why i included the year of 1977? 

There were many things wrong with Tony’s life at the moment. 1.) Heavy metal poisoning (remind Pep–have Jarvis make a reminder to e-mail Black Sabbath about the new album title, that’s a winner) 2.) He was starting to hate pizza (for…reasons, but still) and he wanted pizza but at the same time it felt like when you were a kid and just slightly tipped the scales at sugar consumption and you just want to sit down for an hour or so, but– 3.) There was a Thing. That Came Up. Because of course it did. Heightened the death thing up by a week, go figure. 

His whole body was wracked in pain for a moment as he braced against the counter top. Body’s last hurrah, still can’t believe he’s dying in a fucking bathroom, such a 1977 thing to do, honest to god–

There are petals. Red petals, and he puts one under a microscope because that’s what scientists do, and he’s basically just staving off a full on breakdown, because he knows who this is about, and it’s… 

Red tulips. Red fucking tulips, because of course life hates him. He remembers being in Ana’s study at their house, reading a book. And Jarvis would always bring her red tulips. It meant a love confession. 

Ain’t that a kick in the head. 

And he remembers the red hair, the eyes that he’s completely fallen for, and the way that she rolls those gorgeous eyes and the easy way she wears jeans and old shirts on her off days and loves those novelty shirts just as much as he does and–

Well. 

“Sir, with the added complications arisen, we have to shave a week off,” Jarvis says. 

People could live years with the…thing. With the petals. If they were careful enough, no one would ever know. If they were smart, people would never know. It was a heart attack. A shame they died so young. 

Tony takes a swig of scotch, and decides that his death will be one of a vice. 

He starts pushing people actively away. His therapist–or rather, the little voice in his head because as much as he would probably like to settle some deep-rooted issues, talking to people about actual emotions, is just, ugh–said that he always did that. But now it’s just. More. 

He sees how Rhodey looks at him as he creates this huge fucking mess, blasting up his home that he and Rhodey had planned together. Says things like not needing a sidekick, knows that it’ll piss Rhodey off, being second-rate, because that’s what he’s always viewed himself as, that’s what others have–

and there’s a petal dropping to the floor, and Rhodey stops. He looks at him, face dropping. 

“You poor son of a bitch.” 

“I have a net worth of over a billion dollars,” Tony snarks weakly. He can feel the bile run from his throat. Leans over. 

“Blood toxicity at eighty-three percent,” Jarvis murmurs. “I would advise you in telling Colonel Rhodes about the situation, Sir.” 

“You could tell her,” Rhodey says. “You could do that. Maybe she likes you back.” 

“That explains why I’m spewing fucking tulips,” Tony says, sneering. “Just fucking admit it. I’m a lost cause, and I’m going out in the way that I fucking want to.” 

“In the way you want to, or the way that guarantees no one shows up to your funeral?” Rhodey asks. “Because you know she’s upset. Not even pissed, really. Just upset because she thought you were better.” 

“Everyone’s fatal flaw with me,” Tony says with a shrug. “And she deserves someone better than…better than me.” 

He gets pulled into a hug. 

A ton of shit happens after that. Rhodey is concerned, gets Tony a therapist, and he still doesn’t realize the heavy metal poisoning. It’s starting to take more effect. Tony forgot that Pepper was allergic to strawberries. She looks very angry at him. 

Natalie or Natasha–whatever the hell her name is, and he’s betting at least a thousand that neither are–is there. Always. It’s annoying, having a complete stranger so close to your life collapsing. Rude, is what it is, the absolute nerve of her–

There’s a video. He kind of likes it. 

“My greatest creation, Tony, was you.” All that happy-feely bullshit that Howard never fucking said to him when he was alive, but hey. Validation? Is that what he’s feeling? Love? Hell if he knows. He’s terrified by it. 

But he knows the element. Still getting schooled by the dead, which sucks. But he works, works past exhaustion and the fact that he still needs to figure out what kind of urn he’s getting, because there’s no way that weirdos will leave his body at rest, and yeah. 

A new element. 

Blood toxicity lowers. More time for him. Yay. A villain to stop, Vanko. What is it with Russians and Tony’s life? Is this a Cold War thing again? He’ll ask Fury, since that guy seems to think he knows the answers to every question of life. 

They…stop. The red petals stop coming, and he stops wearing pocket squares to stuff full of flower petals. And he looks towards Pepper, who hugs him tight and kisses him all over, sans lips because that’s personal, and–

God, he loves her. Still does, after all of that. Used to think he loved her like Icarus loved the sun, too close and too dangerous, but–

It changed. The wings lowered, and Pepper smiles him in the kitchen one day when she’s stealing his cinnamon sugar cookie coffee because she won’t buy anything fancy for herself, and 

“I think I want to date you,” Tony announces. Pepper blinks. 

“Date. Me. You want to take me on a date.” 

“Yes, that’s a thing people do. Normally.” 

“You’re not normal, Tony. You closed down a Tiffany’s store on a whim because you thought that they had a ring that they didn’t, and then sat there eating Chinese on the floor with Jim.” 

“Ugh, why do you always call him Jim? Why not Honey-pop or sugarplum?” 

“Because I’m the normal one? You’re the one who did weird stuff.” She’s grinning. She loves banter, thrives off of it. If she can trade back snipe for wit, laugh for laugh, she loves it. 

 “So, date. I want to take you out on one.” 

“Does this breach company policy? I think it does. I think it definitely would.” 

“Call it a conference? We just…veer off stock points. Immediately.” 

She laughs, that gorgeous laugh that makes him feel lighter than air. Makes him feel like those movies with Bing Crosby that his mother would always watch, sighing happily as she tapped her feet to any song that came on. 

“I want a lunch. With no salad or courses, I want a really shitty takeout lunch.” Tony laughs, making a note on his phone. 

“Do you want any fried food?” 

“Pickles.” 

“You’re a crime against humanity, Pepper, honestly, what was I thinking–” 

“You were thinking that you liked me,” Pepper says quietly. “Because I like you back. And I…well. I want this to work out.” Tony smiles. 

“Well, we’re in too deep now. You can’t quit, you need a pension.” She snorts, but kisses him on the cheek. 

“Pick me up at one. Bring wine.” 

[fivefourteensixteen]

2.7.2019

I just found the version of this post that I wrote last year and I’m not ready to sleep, so I decided to do a little reflecting on 2018, even if I’m already a month in to the new year now. Oops. The really upsetting thing is that I don’t actually remember that much of 2018. Somewhere in there the depression and anxiety really took over again and it feels like I lost months. Anyway, I’m going to try.

January 2018: I ended 2017 “hopeful, but cautious” and I guess that was a sign of things to come. At the end of January, I got my first job offer. It wasn’t what I wanted for myself and it wasn’t what I expected either, but it was something and I was broke. Super broke. So, I said yes and took the job, but I was terrified.

February 2018: I officially started my new job, part time. I made my first appearance in front of a judge as an attorney. J came home from deployment a few days later and it was like a little missing piece of my heart slipped back in to place. I waited at the terminal at zero dark thirty only for him to walk right past me. It was only when someone else called his name because they realized he had just blasted right past me that he turned around and we made eye contact. The feeling of his arms around me that day is was one of the happiest moments of my life. 

March 2018: I decided on a whim to go to the doctor and get a spot on my back checked out. That turned in to biopsies, which turned into “oh, hey, I’m 25 and have skin cancer,” which turned in to surgery, which turned in to an existential crisis about how short life is and the fact that I’m going to die one day and at the rate I’m going I won’t have lived a life worth anything. I found myself in front of judges in “real court” more and more often and it was exhausting, because every appearance was preceded by overwhelming anxiety and followed by hours of post-mortem-ing my arguments and beating myself up over what went wrong. I distinctly remember thinking “if one day I can do a hearing without feeling like this, I think I’ll have made it.” (Spoiler Alert: I can now do a hearing without feeling like that, at least ... mostly).

April 2018: I had a case blow up in a real way in April and it rattled me. I worked SO hard for that client and I got such a good result for her, despite the fact that she was trying to ruin her own case in every possible way. I was threatened with a bar complaint, I got multi-paragraph e-mails that were so manic-sounding I could barely understand what was going on. I was constantly anxious and it felt like things were never going to get better. 

May 2018: May was hard. My anxiety was out of control, my therapist cancelled all my future appointments because she “needed to prioritize clients with more serious issues.” I felt frustrated and stuck and unhappy. I remember writing at one point that I couldn’t even enjoy anything - living in a gorgeous place with amazing summer weather, starting the process to buy a house - because everything just felt terrible. Unfortunately, I guess, this was kind of just the beginning. By the end of May I was moving up to full time and I was BUSY at work.

June 2018: I honestly don’t know how it happened, but J and I bought our first house together. J wasn’t home and I did everything - from signing the documents at closing to moving us in, all on my own. Work still felt like it sucked every single day, but I was starting to feel small improvements. I was less anxious about going in to court, at least. John reenlisted for 5 more years. I had a client commit suicide, and attempted murder. John left and would be gone for most of the summer. 

July 2018: I moved us in to our new house, and family came to visit. I got subbed in to a case that was headed for trial because the other attorney decided to go on vacation. Then it settled, the night before trial. That was, truly, a miserable experience. But I also got to experience the sheer joy that is representing a client who you believe in, and who believes in you, and hearing that they are truly grateful for what you do for them.

August 2018: All I remember about August was that it was busy, honestly. That makes me so sad. Did I do anything? What memories have I lost because I was so consumed by work and by checking stupid social media. I know John came home in August and we got to start settling in to our new house together finally.

September 2018: Another client died - this one was killed in an office involved shooting. Every day was a new reminder of how emotionally exhausting my chosen career path is. Again, I barely remember anything about September.  

October 2018: Here’s another month that I remember basically nothing about, at all. I’m so upset about this. Look at all the fucking time I’ve wasted. The only thing I do remember is that for some reason J and I binged every episode of Project Runway available on Hulu.

November 2018: Oh, look. I don’t remember anything about November either. Somewhere in here I became more depressed than I have been in a really long time - that’s something that I’m still trying to figure out how to deal with.

December 2018: John and I traveled home for Christmas together for the first time and it was nice. Otherwise, December was just another month lost to depression and general shittiness. 

I’m glad to have put 2018 behind me. It was a fucking hard year. My mental health was absolutely crap. I’m already a full month in to the new year and its still hard. I’m so frustrated with myself and the overwhelming feeling that I’m wasting my life and the time is passing so quickly while I spend my days unable to get up off the couch and do things that I KNOW I enjoy and that will make me happy. I’m trying to prioritize the real self-care that I need this year, even if it means doing hard things like working out when I feel like laying on the floor and crying and eating healthier food and drinking enough water when all I really want is coffee. 

So, here’s to 2019.