#depression and shitty money situation have made me not willing to think of anything

[poetic-emptiness-fanfic]

Rant in the tags, I don’t bother to write it in a post bc why would I

[wickedmilo]

SOUNDS LIKE A YOU PROBLEM | MILO & CHLOE

PLACE: A dive bar TIMING: 10:49 PM SUMMARY: After realising he has run out of money, Milo approaches Chloe and asks her to pay for his drinks. WRITING PARTNER: @chloeinbetween ​ CONTENT WARNINGS: Addiction, alcohol, references to emotional abuse, drug manipulation (Leanan-Sidhe kiss), chronic illness

There were a lot of things Chloe hadn’t done for years, banned because the only thing allowed to be a detriment to her health was the fae feeding on her. There were a lot of things she wasn’t supposed to do now either, against medical advice or the general opinions of the town on what wasn’t and wasn’t safe. Drinking a glass of whiskey by herself in a bar that was too dingy to have a crowd on a weeknight probably fell into all of the above. Which was why she was doing it. Her fingers drummed against the sticky linoleum of the bar, looking at messages on her phone that she had no plan of answering. Her old messaging app had kept all the old messages from before she’d been taken, so in her worst moments she scrolled through the texts she’d received demanding to know where she was, and why she’d abandoned them. 

It was hardly surprising in pits like this that she didn’t notice the young man sidling up to her curiously. Not until he was much too close. “Can I help you?” Chloe asked, looking him up and down. 

Until very recently, Milo had no reason to concern himself with boundaries. The circles he usually ran in had far more important things to worry about, like who had the drugs, and where they were going to use them. He was too used to stumbling, getting close to strangers, or sharing paraphernalia with people he didn’t recognise. Being forced to avoid people, Humans, was new. A habit he was being forced to form. That didn’t mean his other habits, the ones he had been establishing for years, weren’t demanding his attention though. Which was why he had made his way over to a quiet bar, a bar he knew didn’t often draw in the crowds. As depressing as it was to drink alone in a shadowy corner, that’s exactly how he had been spending his night. Up until the moment he had reached into his pocket for the crushed bills he usually kept there and realised they were no longer present. He shouldn’t be surprised, he had been handing them over for hours. But everybody knew running out of money was anxiety inducing, even when you didn’t have habits to maintain. 

His bank account was empty, that had been the last of it. He wasn’t stupid enough to assume he counted wrong when he had withdrawn the remainder of his funds. And he hadn’t been to work since his official time of death. He could make a run for it, but even in his inebriated state he knew being chased down and potentially tackled by a bartender would only end in said bartender being drained of blood. There didn’t seem to be many options ahead of him. So instead of eyeing the door, he began to eye his fellow patrons. It was very easy to single out the person least likely to punch him in the face, and he pushed himself out of the booth he had been slouching in, getting far too close before he could hold himself back. His limbs felt heavy, his entire body clumsy, and uncoordinated. But he pushed on. “Yeah, actually-” He insisted, a familiar rush of longing creeping up on him as her scent began to permeate the space. Taking a hesitant step back, he swallowed his craving, willing himself to stay where he was. “You can pay for my drinks.” Maybe it wasn’t the smoothest way of asking the woman for money, but his brain wasn’t functioning at full capacity and pathetically, it was the best he could do. Maybe she would take pity on him. “I mean- I’ve probably had the worst fucking month of my life, and I… shit, I mean I have no money. What do you want me to say?”

“Excuse me?” Chloe replied, twisting in her seat to look him over. There was a buzz in her head, but it did nothing to numb the immediate annoyance at his request. If anything, it removed any social insecurity, Chloe was no longer interested in being careful with her words. A fae would be more eloquent than that anyway. She pushed her drink further onto the counter so that she would not knock it, and looked him up and down. There was a loose, chaotic way of his movements, like he didn’t quite know how to hold himself together. He was drunk, drawling, obviously. Her lip curled in disgruntled annoyance. “Why the hell are you at a bar if you haven’t got any money?” Chloe snapped back, looking right back up at him. 

“I really don’t see how that’s anyone’s problem except yours. And the bartender’s. How disrespectful do you need to be to expect something like this from other people?” She rolled her eyes pointedly at him. There was another thought, biting at the corner of her mind, after another moment of looking at him, the sentence slipped out before she could stop herself. “Can’t have been too shitty a month if you still have the capacity to make bad life choices.”

Milo knew the moment the woman turned to face him that she wasn’t about to hand over her credit card. Even if it hadn’t been obvious in her tone, it would have been obvious in the way she was looking at him. Letting out a huff of breath in response to the question, it was a sharp reminder of how important it was to take shallow breaths. He didn’t need the oxygen, and breathing in too deeply was only going to put her in danger. Each intake brought with it a wave of tantalising scent. “I had money.” He countered, an edge to his own voice. “I drank it.” Honestly, he wasn’t sure what he would do if somebody approached him and asked him to pay for their drinks. Maybe in the morning her reaction would feel reasonable, and valid. Right now though, in this moment, it was infuriating. It didn’t make any sense. 

“And it isn’t disrespectful to be a total dick when somebody asks you for help?” He demanded, twisting the situation to frame himself as someone to sympathise with, someone to feel sorry for. He fell silent again, his eyes narrowing as she carefully observed him. Even with so much alcohol in his system, it made him feel vulnerable, and exposed. He didn’t like it. Shifting awkwardly on the spot, he felt a spark of genuine anger when she eventually commented on his life choices. Did he really look that bad? “Oh, yeah?” He snapped. “You’re here drinking alone too, you know? Seems like we’re both making shitty decisions. I’d like to see anybody go through what I’ve been through and not want to drink themselves into oblivion. Haven’t you ever heard of coping mechanisms? Fucking crutches? Maybe I just need a fucking break.”

“Sounds like a you problem,” Chloe replied, matching his edge just as harshly, even though her voice croaked with the effort. There was a way he looked at her that made her skin crawl, like he knew more about her than he should, or that he wanted more than her money. Perhaps what was left of her life, she though, and shook the thought away. He didn’t have the charisma to be like Lydia. He was pitiable. Still a threat, maybe, but under her anger she understood just want this looked like. 

There was a knife edge difference between drinking to cope and drinking to lose herself, and Chloe was terrified of landing the wrong edge of the line. 

Then he opened his mouth again and her sympathy was quashed immediately. “Only if they’re not a dick in asking for it. You didn’t even ask! You demanded. You look young but not too young to know the difference.” If nothing, her barbed comment only seemed to raise his hackles even further, his voice raising. Her hands curled tightly around the edge of the barstool. “I’m not pissing off anyone else though, am I? I don’t think you’re in a place to throw rocks, dude. Oh fuck off, do you really think you have a monopoly on suffering?”

Milo glared at the woman, irritated by the tone she was taking although he had a feeling he might look back on this conversation and feel it was entirely justified. “I’m trying to make it an us problem.” He muttered, thinking of every time Dani had ever called him a smartmouth. “I didn’t ask for shit.” He added, his glare only growing in intensity. Clearly it had been a mistake to approach her. She must have known he was likely going to ask her for money regardless of how she chose to begin their initial interaction, but technically he was being honest. “You asked if you could help me, and I said yes, you could pay for my drinks. If anything, you offered.” 

Noting her voice growing in volume, the last thing he wanted to do was cause a scene. But he also felt as though he had every right to be angry. He hadn’t done anything wrong. “I didn’t come over here to piss you off. I actually have better things to do.” He snapped, running a clumsy hand through his hair as he struggled to reign in his frustration. “You know what? Yeah, I really fucking do have the monopoly on suffering right now. Why do you think I’m even here? I had friends, and a fucking family, and I’m really fucking tired. So forgive me for not realising I was nearly out of cash. And forgive me for thinking that maybe someone might actually take pity on me and offer to help me out. It’s whatever, okay? I’ll fucking go-” 

“I’ll remember next time to be clearer with my sarcasm as you don’t seem to get it. I fucking doubt that,” Chloe snarled back, eyes creased in a frown, back straight. She couldn’t say whether it was the alcohol or the attitude that was giving her a headache, but she was pretty sure he was the problem either way. But somewhere in his furious tirade, Chloe heard the hints of something that… well, nothing justified treating people shittily, but something awful, something Chloe understood a little too well. 

No friends. No family. Alone in a dark place with an unhealthy coping mechanism and a need to drown your thoughts in a buzz. Chloe hadn’t had access to alcohol for the last few years, but… well, there had been something available to take the edge off. Chloe shivered. “Wait.” She said curtly, jaw flexing, unable to believe she was about to say this. Maybe because in the biting harshness of his features she saw snippets of Todd and Sammy, young lost men who had found the wrong source of comfort in their troubled lives. Chloe already knew it was fantastical to think she could fix things, but if there was a kindness to be offered…. On the other hand, he was an asshole who had pissed her off, so she almost let him walk away just to teach him a lesson. “Just this once, okay? So you don’t end up in jail on top of whatever other shit you have going on. Now get the hell out of here.”

“Maybe don’t engage strangers in conversation and you won’t have to.” Milo countered. She had spoken to him first. He wasn’t about to take responsibility for something that wasn’t his fault. He was just turning to leave, his hands balled into fists, when he heard the woman call out to him. Surprised, but too irritated to show any gratitude, he faced her once again, a frown still fixed firmly in place. He hadn’t been expecting her to change her mind, and he was in too bitter a mood to be honest about just how much the gesture meant. Taking the bills she was handing out to him, he was careful to only take the amount he needed, leaving a few of them behind. There were other ways to find money if he became desperate. Right now, it seemed like the very least he could do to acknowledge she was offering him help. Crumpling them in his hand, he sheepishly caught her eye. He knew he should say thank you, but he was stubborn. Too stubborn to admit he might have been unfair to her. So he left, instead. Without saying another word. Maybe one day he might feel guilty about that fact, but it wasn’t as though he was ever going to see her again. Something, he thought, that might very well be for the best.

[thegc4life]

Do you any other Hawks fic ideas you'd like to write? Or is Hawks-sensei all you've got on your mind right now?

Wyv. You know not what you ask. I have to put them in categories, Wyv. Categories.

Kid!Hawks:

-Kid!Hawks growing up with the LOV (both as a permanent thing and various ridiculous drabbles) This involves Unwilling Big Brother Shigaraki, scarily willing Big SisterToga who knows all the coolest knife tricks, Best Uncle Twice who sometimes on his real good days doubles as temporary Dad, the Dad who teaches you how to hot wire cars and laugh people’s money straight out of their wallets Compress, mother-henning can-not-leave-you-alone-for-one-god-damn-minute Spinner, True Mom Kurogiri, Big Sis Mag who seems to be the only actual one that realizes that children need to sleep at some point for the love of god, extremely confused but horrifically soft Dabi who may or may not eventually turn his whole life around because of this feathered idiot that needs someone to make sure he lives a happy life whether it be a permanent shrinking or not. Oh, and Machia. The best Mountain Monster Dog brother (?) a boy could ask for.

-Kid!Hawks with UA (staff edition) also both in temporary and permanent circumstances. Temporary is already in progress. Permanent? Oh boy, permanent world. They raise him within UA so as to keep him from the Commission. Hawks often sits in on their classes with coloring books, picture books, or just to sit there and watch them. He is very smart. He picks up on things, but mostly he just likes being around all the staff. He picks a new person to sleep with every week because some of them have really shitty sleep schedules and even as a kid he knows they would feel bad keeping him up, thus forcing them to go to bed through good-person guilt so he tragets the sleepiest looking people for the week (hint: Aizawa gets picked a lot, and even if he’s not sleep deprived Hawks would pick him because he adores his grumpy cat Dad). Thirteen does crafts with him all the time. She watches every kid show and gets really into it with him. Hawks and Mic make the meals and they sing the entire time. They sing together throughout the day. Hawks will chirp out a line of notes and out of nowhere Hizashi will burst in to sing the lyrics. Midnight reads him bedtime stories cause her voices are the best. She does his nails and lets him do hers. He practices on the UA students to surprise her with new designs (the students fall over their own feet to offer to be his test subject). Snipe does little challenges with him. Things that, while technically helping him get used to controlling his quirk, are more fun than anything else because Hawks enjoys using his feathers in games. Hawks dresses up like a cowboy for an entire month, quoting old western movies and driving everyone but a very proud Snipe up the wall. Hound Dog and Hawks go on walks together ALL THE TIME. They explore the woods around UA and Hound Dog tells Cementoss to change up the geography every once in a while so they have something new to explore. He teaches Hawks how to go camping and Hawks fricken adores him and is always on his shoulders just kicking his feet or napping in Hound Dogs hair. Ectoplasm is Hawks favorite person to play any kind of tag based game because the others are too easy to catch with his feathers. But with Ectoplasm and all his clones? hawks goes nuts. Ectoplasm cried once when Hawks asked Aizawa for peg legs for Halloween and when someone asks him if he wants to be a pirate he says no because he wants to be a super cool hero like Ecto for Halloween. No one will be as cool as him. Hawks fricken loves Vlad. Like, adores him. Whenever Vlad is in the room Hawks will just go hang off his shoulders, or tuck under his arms with a book to read, or just lean against him. He has a little stuffed bull dog that has Vlad’s exact resting bitch face and carries it with him every time he leaves the dorm because he feels safer with it. He goes to Vlad when he’s injured because Vlad just takes care of it, gives him a hug, and doesn’t tell him to be more careful. Just asks if Hawks learned something and moves on. Hawks and Nezu are penpals. They see eachother every single day, but they are penpals. Hawks grows up with the most beautiful calligraphy handwriting because he keeps trying to out-do Nezu’s. He absolutely tattles on every single teacher in these letters, giving Nezu years worth of blackmail. Hawks thinks Nezu is a stuffed animal until he is fourteen because Nezu never fesses up. He just thinks the staff is even cooler for letting a stuffed animal run the place. He only ever cries around Nezu.

-Kid!Hawks UA(Student edition): So many. There’s lines I’ve written where they’re still in school when Hawks is kidified. When they’re already pros. In Canon, in Hawks-sensei, I even a small blurb sentence of Deku running a preschool that Hawks gets put into in an AU with quirks still. I can’t even... there’s too many students, cause I’d do all 1-A and 1-B. My favorite one to randomly wake up in a panick and write about though is the one where it’s Hawks-sensei verse based and Kid!Hawks gets taken in by the Monoma family. Rui and Eiko are older and Monoma is a pro-hero by then. The pure amount of fluff, sass, and Hawks spoiling that will happen. Big Brother Rui and Bigger Sister Eiko.  I think about this one a lot.

-I’m currently (slowly but progressing) writing a gift for @saltwater-sweets where Kid!Hawks is taken in by the Uraraka family. Like, he’s not even shrunk in this one. Uraraka’s newlywed parents were involved in the accident he first saved people in and they found him before the Commission. They realized his homelife situation and opened their home to him and now he is Uraraka’s big brother and that one line I threw out there? About him being a global superpower in household moving? Teaming up with Uraraka for that? Yeah.

-Kid!League of Villains and adult Hawks. Yeah, you heard me. They all get shrunk instead of him. And he can’t just... turn them in. They’re kids. They haven’t done any of the crimes their older counterparts have. And if it’s a permanent thing? They stay kids? Then he has a chance to really, truly save them. To give them the happy lives stolen from them. The Commission doesn’t like that. So Hawks takes them and runs. Dabi can be an adult too, I guess, if that’s the ship or something, but I just really wanna write Kid!LOV and Dad!Hawks.

-Kid!Aizawa. Dad!Hawks. Same concept. Beautiful dream. Need I say more.

-Kid!Hawks, Best Jeanist

-Kid!Hawks Gang Orca

-Kid!Hawks RUMI!!

Vigilante Hawks:

- Raven was born and I dived down that rabbit hole so fast I went back in time. Raven. But from a way earlier age. Those guys mugging Hawks when he was fifteen? The spark. Hawks stayed on the streets, he never went back, and he learned some things. He got some freedom, learned some shit, and realized that hero society was pretty fucked up. Shigaraki starts the LOV up and realizes there’s this whole underground community he was never aware of that Hawks has been building for years. It’s great.

-Hawks was never found by the Commission so he was never ‘Hawks’. His Dad raised him as a criminal but Hawks, with his little heart of gold, took every chance he could to make something good out of the bad deeds. Then he got old enough and he took full control. You ever seen the Levi OVA’s of Attack on Titan? Where he’s walking down the stairs and you realize every single person there is part of a huge ass gang of awesome with Levi at the head? That. THAT.

-Hawks loses his shit in Canon and goes completely AWOL. full Feral. He sees the problems, and he is prepared to do whatever it takes get rid of them. Whatever it takes.

AU Hawks

-Horribly injured, recently retired at the ripe old age of 23, and looking for something to save him from depression. Hawks meets Todoroki Fuyumi who gets him a job at her school. This one makes my brain happy.

-Takami Keigo and Todoroki Natsuo meet in college, graduate together, join the same hospital, and open one as partners as soon as they can. Ship or no ship, they go through their entire lives together. (I just... I really like the Todoroki sibs, okay?)

-Takami Keigo was born a lot earlier. So much, earlier, in fact that he is classmates with this overly optimistic ball of light named Yagi Toshinori and the grumpy ball of flame Todoroki Enji. Big Three anyone? Also, everyone needs a dumb smart birb to keep them sane. Hawks loves his friends, and he’ll kick anyone’s ass that tries to hurt them be it physically, mentally, or emotionally. Also, he meets Nana. 

-I LOVE THE IMAGINARY KAMAKIRI FAMILY DYNAMIC OKAY?! literally anything with Hawks involved in their lives, okay?! I did not expect to spiral so hard when I made up Hideo and his relationship with Kamakiri but my god did I spiral! I just really love them!

-I’m a sucker for the classics. Tattoo/flower. Coffee shop. College. Roommates. Love. 

- (she made me write this) a story surrounding the amazing love story of my sister and Iida Tenya with Aizawa crashes the wedding even though he was invited and Mirio is her maid of honor, with Eri as the ring bearer, and All Might is the flower girl. Twice is the officiator. Uraraka releases a flock of fake pigeons (not real ones cause they don’t deserve that). Oh, and everyone else is there too, I guess. Except for Mineta. Cause he’s in jail.

Right now, at this very moment, I can not for the life of me think of any others but I KNOW there’s at least seven more that I just can’t remember because my brain is work dead. Wyv. @wyvernspirit do you see what you’ve opened here? Close the box! Close it before it’s too late! There is always more! I am never without MORE ideas!

[gevejsbvdj]

Pt. 2

the continuation of what inspired my leave beneath the cut

I have a friend, who I got along with really well because we are both Afro Latinas (only she can speak Spanish. I don’t, not really) and we are black kids who had an interest in unconventional topics. I messaged her before disappearing about the ending of the server. I was keeping her updated all throughout, but after telling her the ending, I left her on read

I won’t disclose what I got up to during my absence. But again, don’t think that I had a breakdown because of the server ONLY. It was the final straw. I had so much going on in my life and I couldn’t take it anymore. 

Anyways, she took it upon herself to send hateful messages to Ley’s account and thought it was something to be proud of and told me. I...wasn’t impressed. But I still didn’t respond to our chats. Then she (her name is Rex. I’m gonna call her that) dmed Ley and was actually pretty aggressive towards her in an attempt to get answers. Again, not impressed but it was enough for me to actually come online. I feel like that’s why she acted out, to get me online. I don’t think she cared about me and used my pain to hurt others.

I had extremely brief, passing conversations with people who weren’t involved with the situation at all right before I messaged Rex. 

Ley was special to me before her message. I was always very defensive and protective of her like I was everyone else, but her especially because I thought she was nice. And I remembered when people were being mean to me, she reached out. And I still appreciate her for doing that. 

Which was why it was so confusing when Rex told me that they were all mad at me because I ACCUSED JOANE OF GROOMING PEOPLE. They wanted a reason to make me the villain so badly that they made shit up.

Notice how here, she says that I called Joane a FUCKING PEDO. Not even just a groomer but an outright PEDOPHILE. 

I’ve been raped. I’ve been sexually assaulted, groomed, all of that. I don’t say shit. I never say anything. I’ve even been accused- yes, ACTUALLY ACCUSED unlike Joane- to being a paedophile. I’m 19. Not even just that but I’m freshly 19. I got accused when I was 17. But I would never just- ughhhh moving on I don’t wanna get into it. 

When Rex asked for proof, this is way Ley sent her:

In this screenshot, I’m literally discussing how Joane’s childish behaviour could get her killed. I was concerned. Again, where’s the bullying?

Rex told me that Ley said she was wrong for not having proof, and I understand. Ley wasn’t present when it all went down

But really Ley? 

I heard a quote from someone that said something like “if someone believed a lie about you without checking up on you first to see if there was proof, then they were already looking for something to destroy you with to begin with” or SOMETHING like that. So I thought back to that quote and felt awful. I always suspected that they didn’t really like me, but always marked it up to my depression talking nonsense. But after all of this...maybe it was true. Why did I come out the most damage? Why were they making up lies about me? Me, out of all of them. Why was I consistently being seen as the bad guy overall? No really tell me. 

Anyways, this was Ley’s justification to believe that I would say such an awful thing:

Okay. Let’s just say that- Joane WAS a groomer. That she actually is a paedophile and I commented on it. She’s obviously not but I’m pulling a Ben Shapiro here. Everything else is the same only Joane is a paedophile. 

That motherfucking “it’s weird that he only spoke up when they were arguing” argument, and other arguments like that are so fucking toxic. As well as “well it wasn’t a problem that never came up before” so??? That’s what the fucking #metoo movement was all about. Timing means NOTHING when it comes to that. It doesn’t matter if it’s Joane or fucking Bill Cosby. The fact that thought came to Ley’s head is so fucking upsetting and DISGUSTING.THAT mentality is why people never want to believe victims of assault. Same goes for “they could have said that privately” guys she’s talking about that user who said they were uncomfortable with Joane coming onto him. Privately? It was private to him. In that server, we’ve made it known that it’s a very homey and comfortable environment. And who the fuck are you to tell someone where and when they can speak up about something like that???

Also, she accused me of calling her a pedo again. Good for me right? I’m a bully and I’m someone who just blindly calls people paedophiles. Good for me, damn. 

No, you shouldn’t believe someone right away when they call someone a groomer. God don’t I know that. But you definitely don’t say THAT what the fucking fuck. 

Jesus. Okay, moving on. 

Rex aggressively messaged Mel who had something similar to say:

uggh, you WERE the toxic environment i wanted to flee from,.

It hurts. It hurts a lot to see another friend you looked up to call you a bully. And that they just say that you called someone a groomer when you didn’t. 

Mel couldn’t provide proof either. 

Mel also tagged her post with someone kinda ignorant. 

Imagine if (thinking of someone I and others don’t always agree with) someone like James Charles made a post broadcasting all the homophobia he dealt with during his career, and I or some other asshole said something “while I don’t always agree with James…” like now isn’t the time. Now isn’t the time to let people you know you disagree with me ESPECIALLY on a post where you agree with me 100%??? What is the point then? You agreed with me, so agree with me. There. No one is saying that you have to agree with everything I say lord fucking knows I don’t always agree with you guys. fucking DUH. It makes me think you just wanted to put that in to lesson me and my words, even only slightly. Why? That hurts a lot, Mel. It really fucking does bruh.

When Rex called her out on it, she deleted the reblog. Not just the meagre little tag but the whole post. If she couldn’t be slick with me, then she wasn’t going to support me at all. It isn’t worth it if she can’t be shady. That’s the message I got from that. Tells me a lot. 

I am not friends with Rex anymore. She’s always been really aggressive and drama craving and I can’t take it. It’s impacting me negatively as well. But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t somewhat happy with the screenshots she gave me. Told me a lot about these people I was still willing to talk to. 

Now? I won’t even waste their time.

After all of that. I made the post. The big announcement post. It was too much. I can’t escape the racism in my hometown or in the country in general, but I can leave and distance myself from the fandom. 

I was talking to someone today, and she, as a white woman, admitted that white people act so shitty when it’s implied that they’re racist. Which is so true. 

As I said, people make mistakes. No white person EVER is 0% racist or biased. I’m sorry but it’s not true unless you’re a baby or something. Same goes for other races, but mainly white people who have always had the upper hand, the privilege, the money, the chances, the power, all of that. 

Listen to me. 

When a person of color tells you that you are being microaggressive, biased, ignorant, or prejudice, or straight up RACIST, YOU FUCKING LISTEN TO THEM. Why do you guys get so AGGRESSIVE AND MAD?? That is so fucking WEIRD. 

And yes. I’m talking to you Vulture. 

I really had no ill feelings towards you prior to your comments.

Or your posts. 

peep that clumsily used aave. never fucking talked like that to anyone but me. either way, you sound dumb.

Why?

Why so...mad?

You felt guilty? Why did you feel guilty? 

...I’m gonna let you answer that. 

Moving on. I know that not everything has to be about race. I hate making things about my race. I do, even when I should! But you can be racist unintentionally. Does that mean you’re racist? No! I have yet to receive a genuine apology from any of you, meanwhile, I’ve been over here grovelling and hoping that you like me again. God. Why is it so hard for you to apologize and move on??

No, in that same fucking server, someone sent a racist meme after joking about slavery all day:

And yes, the people in the chat at the time laughed at it... 

I told them that WASNT funny and they freaked out all “WHY CANT I TALK TO PEOPLE IM SO FUCKING STUPID I SUCK” like oh...my god. You guys make it so awkward being black oh my GOD. I- like it makes me never want to say ANYTHING but I know I have to but god what the hell guys???

I wouldn’t really think that the members of the server chat were racially biased if they just accepted the fact that they were micro aggressive and didn’t flip out about it. Not really, at least. That reaction is so- well it’s sus as fuck. People who aren’t prejudiced will apologize, correct themselves and move on. Not dismiss me constantly and DEFINITELY not freak the fuck out. 

I also wouldn’t assume they were racially biased if this SAME EXACT SITUATION DIDNT HAPPEN TO ME BEFORE. 

Yep! On the Beatles Amino, I was called a bully and was reported by the LEADERS. Why? Because I told a curator she was inconsistent with her rules… that’s it. And that was back when I was sugary sweet all the time and was deemed to be a cinnamon roll. Nah. They knew I was black and I got told that people were scared of me and that I was bullying people. Yeah okay. Messaging ONE curator about her rules is the same thing as bullying people. Chile I can’t. And it only happens in the Beatles fandom. But no when someone calls John Lennon a racist it’s all “Zach! Zach! Tell them they’re wrong.” Ugh...

So that’s that on that. I have nothing else to say. Don’t message me about this post if you didn’t read all of this. I’m an idiot and I’m honestly still willing you hear you all out but don’t expect me to ever want to have anything to do with you. Out of the what- 50 people from that server, only two stood up for me? And two separate people APOLOGIZED TO ME. AND THEY HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING. That’s a shame. Thank you Johnny, Lenny, Laurie, and Remy. All of your names rhyme and you didn’t make me feel like I was CRAZY, unlike those I mentioned. There’s so much shit going on in the world rn, especially to do with racism. I know that you guys know. But some posts really....really tried me. oh well. I’m black. I like The Beatles. And I’m a victim of microaggressions, false accusations, gas lighting. I’m also out. bye.

black lives matter resources

[marionsblack]

Intro; Marion.

❛ ☆ › landon liboiron & he/him male ‷ watch out , marion black has crash-landed into roswell !! they look 27 years old and celebrate their birthday on november 28th . they are from almira, WA, have lived in roswell for 2 years, and are currently working as a librarian at roswell high. one thing you should know about them is he has a two year old daughter named violet!

CHILDHOOD

Marion Black was born to perfectly bland parents, in the perfectly bland small town of Almira, Washington (pop. 217). Growing up surrounded by more trees than children, Marion was always a pretty lonesome child, with a tendency to latch on to anyone who was kind and stuck around for more then a few weeks. A tendency that would follow him into adulthood. Almira being the small town it was, meant that everyone knew everyone's business. So when word got around that Marion's father hadn't come home from his current worksite in a few months, it was no big surprise. Teachers would stop Marion in the halls at school as ask after his parents with thinly veiled glee, eager to glean some exclusive gossip straight from the source.

But Marion knew about as much as anyone else did, and was no help to the local gossipers. His dad was just... gone, and his mother was a wreck because of it. By the time everyone had kind of accepted that Marion's father was gone for good, Marion had become largely self sufficient in hopes of relieving the burden of raising him from his mother. He picked up shifts at the local diner and tutored on weekends to make sure the lights stayed on and there was food in the house, and later to pay for the many prescriptions the doctors put his mother on; not that they seemed to do much.

PAST (TRIGGERS: PREGNANCY, BABIES, ABUSE, SELF HARM MENTION, CHILD ENDANGERMENT, KIDNAPPING)

When Marion was 25, he met a girl. She'd come bursting into the diner one night just before close, yelling wildly into her phone and very much pregnant. There was more life in her than he'd witnessed in his entire life, and he was half way in love before he even poured her tea. By some stroke of luck, Marion managed to talk to her and got her number. There was never really a friendship between the two; instead they jumped headfirst into a serious relationship. She had just moved to Almira, and Marion was quick to offer her the spare room in his apartment. His mother was hardly coherent enough to butt in and knock some sense in her son, and the locals were too greedy for drama to maybe let him know that generally speaking, you don't move in with someone before you even go on a date. He wouldn't have listened though, too blinded by first love. They moved in together and life was like a movie; they ate breakfast in bed, and danced in the kitchen, and went on silly dates into the surrounding forest to skinny dip and scream at the moon. The only real dark spot in their relationship was the baby. She flat out refused to talk about it, or even really acknowledge that there was a baby at all. Marion, in all his wild googling, had read about post partum depression, and how it could sometimes present during the actual pregnancy, and figured her indifference was not unusual. He took the lead with anything regarding the baby, prepping their apartment and making doctor's appointments, and dragging her to said doctor's appointments. He made potential baby name lists, and spent a weekend converting their walk in closet into a nursery, and when the baby was finally born, he was the first to hold her (the only one willing to hold her). After Violet was born, there was a direct change in their relationship. Everything Marion did was suddenly annoying, or stupid, or insulting. Violet was a serene infant, hardly ever crying, but any noise from her seemed to set off her mother. Marion kept the two apart as much as he could, still chalking her personality change up to post partum. He'd tried to talk to her about possibly seeing a therapist about it, but that had only resulted in a huge fight; her yelling and slamming doors, him trying to calm her down while avoiding whatever she could get her hands on to throw. She accuses him of awful, entirely fabricating things, says she'll kill herself if he keeps treating her this way. Marion didn't mention therapy again. As the years went by, Marion was forced to accept that the drastic change in his girlfriend's personality was nothing to do with post partum depression, and everything to do with her just being a bad person. Things he'd seen as endearing when they first got together he looked back on and saw them for the red flags they were. Her possessiveness wasn't so amusing when he was being accused of fucking the woman who babysat Violet every so often. Her impulsivity wasn't so thrilling when she disappeared for days at a time to party with friends he wasn't allowed to meet. The longer he stayed, the more trapped he became, and the more comfortable she got with her treatment of them. Marion learned to sense her moods, hiding Violet away if he had the chance to. He would have left ages ago ( he tells himself he would have left, anyways) if not for Violet. Despite her complete lack of interest or affection for her daughter, she never hesitated to use the toddler against him. He had no legal claim to Violet, after all. So what if he was her sole provider, and the girl hardly even recognized her mother? He's working a late shift at the diner, Violet at the neighbor's house, when he gets a call from the neighbor. She's frantic, but he finally gets out of her that Violet's mother is at the front door screaming and trying to break in. When he gets there she's just bashed in a window. Anyone on their street can hear the commotion, hear the screaming baby, but no one so much as investigates. It takes him what seems like hours but is only actually about 15 minutes to defuse the situation, leaving the neighbors with his meagre tips from that night's shift and a promise to never involve thme in his drama again. He packs a couple of bags in the middle of the nights and grabs Violet and the cash from the oatmeal canister on his way out the door. Fuck legality, he's not letting the shittiness of his life ruin his daughter.

PRESENT

So now technically a kidnapper and criminal, Marion picked the most random place he could think of to settle down and build a new life for him and Violet. He changed their names, spent a good chunk of their emergency money on new papers for them, and the tiny family of two settled down in Roswell. He took the first job that was willing to take him, set Violet up with a puppyish nanny, and now does his best to ignore the previos two years. As far as anyone in Roswell is aware, Violet's mother died recently and that was why they moved.

OOC:

this got long af i’m sorry!! I’ve just had him for so long that i tend to go on and on abt him. but yeah, so hit me up for any plots or connections, I’m open to anything with my sad boy!

[thosethoughtsinmyhead-blog1]

Trying out blogging for the first time.

Hello to everyone reading this, if someone might actually even read it. I really have no clue where to start overall, my initial thought was just to write about how I feel whether it be good or bad. So this will be my little introduction as to why I’m even writing this. The last 2 years have been really rough for me and my mental health has been getting worse and worse each day so a friend of mine had the idea to write a blog because I really don’t want to bother anyone who isn’t interested in reading what I have to say or how I feel. It pretty much all started when my girlfriend cheated on me with a guy I personally knew. It’s not like my life was going well back then, I quit college and had nothing else to do nor a plan for my future. I had a huge mental breakdown afterwards with my first suicide attempt. Afterwards I tried to apply for several jobs (or rather apprenticeships, because that’s usually the way to go here, either college/university or apprenticeships) but got no positive feedback. Fast forward a few weeks and I started working at a convenience store just so I had to do something and earned a bit of my own money (for drivers license for example). It was actually not that bad but physically exhausting sometimes and also mentally because I really wanted to finally find something that I’m interested in doing as a future job. That’s when my (I assume it’s depression, whenever I went to doctors about this they didn’t really take me serious I think or I’m just being dramatic about stuff?) depression really got worse. I really stopped enjoying doing anything. I loved to play videogames, watch videos, read manga, watch anime, go out with friends on a saturday night and I gradually lost interest in everything. The next thing that really made me feel bad was that I simply couldn’t remember ANYTHING anymore. I read articles and I couldn’t tell you one thing that I’ve read about. My concentration was also pretty much gone every single day. But I thought that’d all get better when I found an apprenticeship and would learn a fun job and eventually I even got an apprenticeship for a job i actually desired to get and I was actually happy about that back then. That was April ‘18. My last few months went by at the store and in the last month a good friend of mine (I didn’t know her personally, just over the internet but she still did mean a lot to me) literally said “I will be back” and blocked me everywhere out of nowhere. At first I thought I’d hear from her eventually again but as days went by it dawned to me that it wouldn’t happen and it added a huge amount to my sadness. On the 1st of August ‘18 I started my apprenticeship and I was immediatly overwhelmed by a huge wave of depression. It was nothing like I imagined and it sucked a lot. It kept getting worse and worse and worse. Then I messaged a friend on Twitter for her number because she said she wouldn’t really be active anymore and I wanted to stay in contact with her. We chatted frequently but she will get more importance later in this text. Months went by and I had ups and downs at work, a lot of them. It wasn’t as bad as when I first started (probably because I needed to get used to the change first) but it wasn’t pleasant either. After new years eve I felt really worthless for some reason and I thought my life literally had no purpose. Nothing really even happened my thoughts just got more and more negative out of nowhere. Every little thing began to annoy me. Friends tried to talk to me nicely? Immediatly annoyed. Friends talking about their interests? Immediatly annoyed. Just every little thing annoyed me. I don’t even really have much memory of anything that happened before my birthday (3rd of April) other than that the Twitter friend I talked about earlier and I have been still talking almost everyday or tried to at least. Then we become closer friends, really texting a lot everyday. She wrote me huge paragraphs especially for my birthday and it really made me happy. Fast forward to two weeks ago. I really started to love and appreciate her as a friend a lot (don’t worry, no romantic feelings involved on both sides) and she gives me a lot of happiness, but that’s exactly where one of my biggest problems lay right now. Works really shitty these past few weeks and she cheers me up but the here we go: She lives in another part of the world so obviously timezones are a huge problem and she herself is really busy with college.People who don’t really experience being happy often can confirm that when you rarely are happy happiness becomes like a drug, once you experienced it it’s hard to live without it again and you become addicted to the feeling of just being happy. So it’s really hard for me to not talk to her, it’s rather pathetic right? Moving on, with this little introduction (or whatever it is at this point) I just wanted to share my little story and how it’s gotten to this point. I’ll just keep going to post how I feel from now on so I have a little documentation and a little spot to vent for myself. So here we go: Today (2nd of Mai ‘19) I felt really suicidal again and I’m really sick of feeling this way. I’m currently having a one week vacation so I should be fine, right? But no, being alone with these thoughts is really killing me. I don’t even know why I’m feeling this bad. I have nothing to do, no pressure, nothing at all and yet I feel worse than when I’m being at work. I’m sitting here all day browsing youtube videos which I don’t really enjoy just because I don’t even touch videogames anymore because I ca’nt enjoy it at all. That basically sums it up, I may or may not add things throughout the day but I’ll definitely keep this little blog thing going and post from time to time. And for everyone saying I should just get help, I am actually going to get help, this here right now is more of a venting thing for me and maybe it helps people in similar situations to see that they are not alone (whatever that may help to be honest, but I mean I’m here and willing to talk to anybody who needs it as much as I do).

[reesewestonarchive]

I’m going back through the 23k of draft one that I’ve yet to comb through (I think I already cut out 10k) and I’m reasonably sure that this scene needs to be cut, but if you hate jet this might be a little bit cathartic for you

“Hey!”

“What do you even see in him?” Jet asks, shoving his hands into his pocket. It’s quiet, outside; the muffled sounds of the house, crickets in the distance. But no one else is out here. “He’s a repressed addict who won’t give you what you need.”

The way he words it seems suspicious, so Ryan says, “And you can?”

“That’s not what I said.” But he’s blushing. Ryan was at least partially right, though. It's not comforting to know he's right. Jet paces back and forth. Ryan sits on the swing and thinks back to the night he and Nakoa came here and made out.

If he closes his eyes, he can imagine it.

He misses Nakoa so fucking much. He loves his father, but living with him is nothing like living with Dice and Nakoa. Now Dice left, too, living with Aero, and Ryan's left subletting the apartment because Nakoa can't afford it, and he has his own place, still, anyway.

"You gotta move on," Jet says, his voice full of pity. "Look at what this is doing to you."

Maybe. Or he's just gotta move. This town feels too small, suddenly, if Nakoa's going to be in the same social circle. And how is he, anyway? He never came to these things with Ryan before, but he goes with some woman he doesn't know?

"It's not doing anything to me."

Jet laughs. "Yeah, right. You know, I talk with Jean. She said she saw you after class last week.” He pauses. Ryan can feel him looking him over, taking in just how shitty he looks. Messy hair, wrinkled clothes.

Even tonight, in comparison, Ryan knows he looks like shit. “Why did you invite me, then?” he asks. “If you know I’m a mess. I could just tarnish your reputation.”

He says the word with spite, but Jet just laughs. “Right. Some people might see it that way. Others might just see me taking on a project.”

“I’m not your fucking project.”

Raising an eyebrow, Jet steps closer to him again. His hands are in his pockets, the first few buttons of his white shirt undone, and in another world, Ryan thinks he’d try to kiss him.

But it’s this one, and Jet’s being a tool, and Ryan wants to hit him instead.

“You have seen yourself, right?”

“This isn’t going to turn into another one of your lectures about how I dress, is it?”

“You look like shit. When was the last time you showered?”

Ryan snaps his mouth shut, focuses away from Jet so he won’t punch him in the face.

Jet doesn’t get it. Jean doesn’t get it. Jean, who has lost Ryan once, doesn’t understand what this is. Ryan’s never been out of reach to her. But Nakoa’s not spoken to Ryan for a matter of weeks, and he’s already spiraling.

“The other night,” he says, even though Jet doesn’t deserve an explanation, and telling him won’t make a difference, “I got wasted. Sitting in my father’s living room, watching bad infomercials until two in the morning.” He looks down, inspects his nails, starts picking at them. “Usually Nakoa’s right there, but.” He laughs. “So, uh. Passed out on his couch, woke up to my dad freaking out later because I’d come pretty close to choking on my own puke in my sleep.”

That should rattle his nerves more than it does, but Ryan’s steady as he speaks about it. He can’t say the same for Jet. “If you need help…”

He makes a face. “I know where to get it.” But his entire life has been turned upside down. Ryan knows he’s white, that he’ll always have a support net, that there are people rushing to get in his good graces so he can bail them out of any sticky situation, but… he misses Dice, for one. He hasn’t seen him since he moved in with Aero.

Running a hand over his face, Ryan exhales, slow, and wishes he could get high. But with Nakoa went his steady supply of weed, and Ryan’s not about to get overcharged on cheap weed, because he’s white and white guys are idiots.

Jet says something under his breath, then, aloud, “You know you’re too good for him, right?”

Ryan levels him with a stare, stone-faced. He doesn’t mean that. Ryan’s just as much of a lowlife as people think Nakoa is; he was just born into money. He spends his weekends getting drunk, getting high, being happy. He hears about his parents playing the stock market and investing their money, and hosting parties and barbecues where no one says what they’re really thinking, and he hates it. There’s no reason for it except to save face, to make themselves look better, to harbor a reputation that’s good enough to show off.

At least Nakoa’s lying had reason, had merit.

“No.” He takes a deep breath in, exhales slowly. “No, I’m not.”

Jet huffs an angry laugh. “So you’re content to throw your life away? Just sit there and rot, never doing something for yourself again because you’re too sad, you’re depressed? So you didn’t get him in the end. Not all love stories are meant to have happy endings. There’re plenty of other guys out there willing to deal with your bullshit and get you laid regularly, too.”

“You offering?”

“You wish.” Jet nudges Ryan’s shoulders. “He’s not worth this. He’s some loser from a broken home with a Molly addiction. You think for one second he’s worth all this? Next thing you know, he’ll be snorting coke or shooting heroin—“

Ryan moves before he knows what he’s doing. The fear that sparks in Jet’s eyes, Ryan’s forearm cutting off the air at his throat, pressing him over the back of the bench… it’s more satisfying than Ryan thought it would be. He doesn’t want to hurt Jet, but it’s the first time all night he hasn’t felt like a dog walking with his tail between his legs. It’s the first time all fucking night Ryan has felt like he had a leg up over him.

“You don’t know shit about him,” Ryan says, his voice thick with barely contained anger. “I get it, you’re an entitled rich dude—“

“Takes one to know one—“

Ryan presses against his throat just a little more, and Jet gasps. “But you’d do well to learn when to keep your fucking mouth shut, before someone punches it.”

Pulling back, Ryan stands from the bench, shakes his arms and pats his pockets for a joint he knows isn’t there. Beside him, Jet keeps coughing, all for show because Ryan didn’t cut off his air that bad.

There’s no joint in his pockets. He’d known it, and he was still disappointed.

[evergrace]

college advice part 7/7 : how to get over a bad semester

→ this took me a while because i wanted to make sure it was valid advice and it wasn’t just thrown together. here are some things i’ve tried/noticed/whatever in my time at school and in dealing with these kinds of situations.

take a break. take a one-week break, a two-week break, even a month if you need it. take that time to relax and get your head back in the game. overworking and over-stressing are not the way to get back on track. 

get a job. doing some work and making some money can really make you realize that you wanna get a degree so that you can get a better job make more money. doing some work can also get you on a schedule and make you realize that you do have responsibilities!! and this is key to being able to remember that school is one of your major responsibilities!!

get an ESA (emotional support animal). my partner and i got a cat when he started having trouble and it has helped immensely in giving him the ability to be able to realize that he has a responsibility to another living being. we have to take our cat to vet appointments, etc. and it’s reaLLY helpful to have to allot time and build a schedule!! it has also helped him in maintaining a schedule since he knows the cat can’t be alone for days at a time, so it’s made his class time very valuable and even more important since it’s good to keep a schedule!!

see a therapist, and maybe get on some medication if you need to. there’s a certain stigma around seeing a therapist and being on medication for mental illnesses. there’s a certain stigma around mental illnesses in general. these stigmas need to stop. i firmly believe that everyone should have someone professional that they can talk to about anything and everything that causes them stress, anxiety, depression, etc.

let your professors know what’s going on. oftentimes, professors are completely underutilized. if you let them know what’s going on, they will likely be very willing to help in any way they can. especially if they see you putting forth extra effort like going to their office hours to understand things if you missed class, writing them emails letting them know what’s going on, talking to them before/after classes if you need to, etc.

establish a link between the Dean of Students (or the equivalent at your school), yourself, your advisor/counselor, your psychiatrist/psychologist, and your professors. this will be very helpful when you’re having some severe stress or anxiety that causes you to miss class. alternatively, find out if your school has a Disability Resource Center or something similar and see if you can get accommodation, still keeping everyone in the loop!

remind yourself that you are worth it. read happy things everyday. here are some.

it’s okay to not be okay all the time

step by step guide on how to become extremely beautiful

quotes by esteé lauder, anonymus, nathan w. morris and diane von furstenberg.

rainbow reminders

things i tell myself

relax

i needed this so badly

you belong among wildflowers

i think you need a break

hey if ur ever feelin shitty use this

also, suicide hotline. do not hesitate to call it or any of the number here if you need to.

i hope this helps someone, even if it’s only one person and even if it’s not today or tomorrow or anytime soon. i just hope that you all know that people care and that you are not alone. as always, i’m here if anyone needs anything.

[theliterateape]

The Therapeutic Approach to Nationalism

by Don Hall

When it came to Chicago Thanksgivings, I could be a real cunt.

Sure, Jen and I would host Orphan's Gatherings—Thanksgiving for people stuck in Chicago and unable to travel to their family's homes over the holiday. I would drop a couple of hundred bucks and make a huge spread of food but the transaction for coming was to have to listen to me bitch about how shitty the holiday was.

"Enjoy the turkey. Afterward, I'll be providing each of you blankets covered in small pox and steal your property. I mean, I'm thankful for a lot but I'm mostly thankful I wasn't native to this country because, man, then I'd be fucked, amiright?"

This screed went all day long and became more and more incessant as I drank Scotch and beer and cooked. Depending on the year, it would spread out from the genocide of Native Americans to the American military industrial complex, the woeful state of our civil rights, and how evil the Republicans were.

"Here's some food and some vitriol as gravy. Happy Fucking Thanksgiving!"

What an asshole. It's hardly a surprise that most of those people in those early days don't bother to talk to me today.

I used to think that blunt honesty was always the best approach to all situations. It's, well, honest, and it's mildly therapeutic to simply air your truth to those around you. I used to believe that until I lived with Alice.

Alice was like me at Thanksgiving but every day of the year. Her inability to accept less than exactly how she wanted things was maddening. She was always brutally honest about her feelings (unless it was something she decided needed to be kept a secret and then it was as if she locked it away in a trunk she bought at a yard sale and hid under the stairs).

"I hate your hair." "This is a stupid Christmas gift." "I can't believe you're wearing that to dinner." "Wow. You're really getting fat." "Don't embarrass me by talking politics with my University friends, OK? You're practically right wing."

After a few years of this constant honesty, I found myself walking around like Eeyore, head down, eyes on the ground, feeling a sense of dread overcoming me with the now drilled-in idea that nothing I did could possibly be enough or correct. If Alice wasn't happy it was because I was inadequate. She now had someone to blame for her disappointments in life.

What I learned from Alice was that for blunt honesty to be effective and useful rather than merely a bludgeon of self importance leveled upon those who are willing to put up with it, it was about seeing how that honesty could be used by them.

If the criticism couldn't be utilized for the betterment of someone or something, it was just noisy, pointless bitching. Childish complaint and attempts to beat down those around into some aspect of submission. Looking for someone to blame as if the recipient's guilt and subsequent anguish could be healing in some way.

Common wisdom suggests that by thoroughly revisiting our traumatic experiences to understand why they happened and how to move past them is therapeutic. Unfortunately, like the movies in the 1980s subsidized by the Pentagon to help recruit kids with a Top Gun drumbeat of "How Cool is War, Right?," the therapy industry proliferates this constant vomiting of pain and search for who to blame for it is in contrast with new research.

"New research is showing that some people only get worse by continuing to brood and ruminate,” Stanford psychologist Mischel said. “Each time they recount the experience to themselves, their friends or their therapist, they only become more depressed."

SOURCE

It's quite possible that I have had uniquely bad therapy experiences. A few when I was younger felt pointless, the couple's therapy I went through with my first and second ex-wives felt disingenuous. While skewed for maximum satire, the talk therapy groups in Fight Club ring more true than anything else—sad, busted up people sitting in a circle complaining about how hard their life has been next to another room with another circle complaining about theirs next to another.

Talking about your problems to be heard seems fine but it also a cul de sac of constantly re-opening the wounds over and over without any sort of solution provided. Even if one discovers an abuser in their past to pin the blame upon, even if there is some sort of reckoning and accountability, neither talking about it or understanding your place in the grievance hierarchy manages to solve the inability to move past the trauma.

That's the goal, right? Move past it? It may not be an easy task but, at the end of the process, learning to get on with things, heal the pain, live with the scars is the goal, yes?

It is the same when it comes to big picture items as well.

As someone decidedly Left in political views, I can't say I've ever been in a huge Bitch Session of Truthtelling with anyone right wing. Not my monkey, not my circus. On the hand, I can't count the number of Leftist circle jerks I've been mired in, often contributing more than my fair share of discourse and blockading to the mix. It is the Choir Preaching to the Choir so that One Solidifies Membership in the Freaking Choir.

So many of these sessions amount to telling the truth and identifying who is to blame for that truth.

"There is no reason for the evil that is represented by the Billionaire Class. How much money does anyone need? And at the expense of everyone else? The System is rigged by the wealthy, for the wealthy."

"The systemic racism in the country's policing stems from its racist beginnings and that's why so many black men are indiscriminately killed by cops. How many videos do we have to endure before things change?"

"Fossil fuels are the source of climate disaster. Everyone can see that. If we don't change course, the planet is going to be destroyed in our lifetime!"

All true, I'd think. But I heard that last week and the week before and the week before that. Sort of like my Thanksgiving rants.

Who’s to blame? The rich. The police. Big Oil. Where are the solutions to the problems?

Playing the blame game never works. A deep set of research shows that people who blame others for their mistakes lose status, learn less, and perform worse relative to those who own up to their mistakes. Research also shows that the same applies for organizations. Groups and organizations with a rampant culture of blame have a serious disadvantage when it comes to creativity, learning, innovation, and productive risk-taking.

Harvard Business Review

Blame, beyond personal accountability, is likewise pointless without a plan and “Hold Those to Blame Accountable!” isn’t a great plan.

Truth without pragmatic action is meaningless.

And so … the birthday of the nation comes up. The therapeutic gripe sessions begin. Instead of celebrating the country’s progress, the ideals it is founded upon, any sense of national pride, we have a host of Thanksgiving Don Hall’s pissing and moaning about the missteps and outright horrors committed by those long dead.

There is a lot of blunt trauma truth tossed out just before, during, and after our national day. Things like the fact of indoctrinated worship of the Founders without some serious views upon their flaws as human beings. Like the intentional absence in our collective history of the contributions made by those not in the majority. As I would've said on a typical Thanksgiving, an absence of any genuine reflection on the near genocide of the natives.

Not so much the next step of how to fix the issues or even the simple truth that most of the problems in the past cannot be fixed rather the recurrent results modified for a more just and equitable nation. Lotsa bitching. Not lotsa solution building. Tons of blame. Ounces of creative problem solving.

A whole bunch of Thanksgiving Cunts holding court and demanding that if you want to shoot of fireworks, wave the flag, eat some grilled meat, and get a bit drunk in celebration of the enduring experiment in democracy and multi-culturalism America strives to be, you are forced to listen to them piss all over the parade.

The thing about Alice was that for all of her brutal honesty, none of it made me want to change my hair, I stopped buying her gifts altogether, I intentionally wore things and said things that would embarrass her and the only reason I lost weight was because the gym was a place I could escape her for a few hours. Her mean spirited honesty accomplished the exact opposite of what she was aiming for.

The United States ain't so united and maybe it never has been but wallowing in the painful trauma of the past only has value if the next step is to focus on what we can do together to avoid the mistakes made by our elders. That's the entire point of America in the first place.

So, Happy Birthday, America. Let's keep trying to improve.

[ihazbacon]

How can say sorry for my emotional unavailability, I always hate that because it feels like an shitty excuse but i think I actually lack emotional maturity. I always feel stuck in myself afraid of expression in fear of opinions and thoughts and intrusive voices. Genuinely think i made a huge mistake, but i also see where they were 100% correct, i was so afraid of opening up that i just push n pushed even thought they said theyd help me i rejected all the help, im stuck in this cycle of false independence, so used to fending for myself and dealing with my own thoughts and reactions but living off of others with nothing to my name, even though i thought its normal its not normal to be avoidant and secretive it doesn’t do anything. Its too late for apologizing but i just wish I could actually fucking speak up, i wanted to make everything work but I never wanted my past traumas and habits to get in the way of anything but I realize that im just really fucked up and “self medicating” with weed doesn’t help when its at abuse point, although I don’t admit it or just talk about it but theres alot of times where im just dissociating from sun up to sun down, all these shitty excuses for shitty behavior, I could’ve acted different, said different things than i did, n just genuinely change my behaviors. I just think they wanted me when i was in 8th grade, head over heels for one person, willing to bring them food any time of day just because, willing to go against our parents rules and do what we wanted and enjoy ourselves, nothing sexual just genuine love and care for each other, and even though we weren’t officially together just like with everything else it hurt to leave, even though i judged others for venting on social I actually see how this helps, seeing your words in front of you instead of thoughts shooting around in your head overwhelming you, even though i hope they see this i still think that i need to heal my parental issues because I don’t want to have to be babied because im feeling bad for myself and i also don’t want to be avoidant or just have a “i need to be in control of said situation or else it won’t be right” mindset which im slowly getting out of, i wish I could clear my brain of any memory of porn, for years it’s controlled my life thinking it’s something normal because all the guys around would watch it too but i never thought about how that would absolutely ruin how I thought about women and how it ruined how i viewed physical attraction, and i do believe this which is why i loved them is because I always believed that it was internal, and theirs was beautiful but like an idiot i was caught up in the physical while my internal was rotting, another thing i let ruin everything was my worry of money and the future and just living, they would actively journal and go to therapy and just practice self care, i was so caught up in chasing the bag that I unintentionally was ignoring them and my own self care and mental health for that, which in my defense but also a shitty excuse because I should have my money in order but I don’t is that family mainly my own mother depends on me for money fir home renovations and apparently made more than here at work before i got fired, but because of my “self help” I couldn’t help her which just made me angry at myself and just question myself. Sometimes i think about checking into like a crisis place for a while to see if just being away in a different setting with professionals would help me get my 8th grade pre first heartbreak depression , pothead, acid shroom trip brain because I remember just enjoying my life and the little that i did have at the time but i would alway make the most of what i had, now i just feel like a huge lump of wasted potential who’s waiting to die any one of these days, I don’t think id be able to leave a body for my family because then I’d be putting them through unnecessary pain and hurt too, but i do want to stop hurting people and just be explosively positive, i always have so many great thoughts and ideas but too many voices in my head(pt1)

[sending-the-message]

Tobias by Ilunibi

The one drawback of Dead Coyote keeping himself clean-ish was that his social circle collapsed in on itself like a dying star. The regulars I’d grown up with were pretty sour that Dead Coyote kicked them to the curb after his first relapse, when he realized that their mere presence made him regress back to his old, self-destructive self. People who’d demonized him when he was a known dealer were incapable of wrapping their minds around the fact that he could turn over a new leaf, and very few were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. That’s not even to start in on the folks who wanted him to “go back to Mexico” when they realized that he was approved for disability because of all the emotional backlash of overcoming his addiction, accusing him of stealing their hard-earned money when he “probably doesn’t have a green card.”

He chose to find humor in it, or tried. Still, you could tell that he was jonesing for something a bit more substantial than a hit of heroin, and it got worse when I went to college.

His girlfriend was dead. His princess was an hour away. His family wasn’t really on speaking terms with him. The most companionship he usually had, surprisingly enough, was my mother, who’d stop by from time to time just to make sure that he was eating. After all, he was the surrogate father to a daughter she hadn’t got a chance to raise. Even if she still had nagging thoughts in the back of her mind that he was a dirty junkie with impure thoughts about her little girl, nine years of committed babysitting had secretly won her over.

Me? I worried. Even at the age of eighteen, and even having seen Dead Coyote in less-than-flattering situations, I still had this very childish, idealized view of him in my head. He wasn’t perfect, but I always thought of him as strong and unshakable and unbreakable. He’d overcome demons and hexes and curses and heroin, and did things no sane man would do without batting an eye, succeeding more often than not.

But that’s not really Dead Coyote. Dead Coyote is a perpetually exhausted, well-meaning man who made bad choices when he was my age because he lost all hope that he could do better. Dead Coyote has impulse control problems and anger issues and spends a lot of his time depressed and worried. He’s a human being who puffs himself up because he’s never been given the option of being weak, but he’s actually scared of a lot of things he stands up against. And he is hurt that he was essentially abandoned by everyone he ever knew, right down to Cheryl overdosing in her apartment.

My sixth sense tingled every time I talked to him on the phone. He began to sound more hopeless and listless, and I was terrified that he’d either wind up back with a needle in his arm or I would one day get a call from mom that they found him with a bullet in his head. Life without DC in it just seemed impossible and hollow, and I spent a lot of time crying over the thought.

Fortunately, it seemed the stars aligned just right enough for a single, solitary person to show up in his life. Or rather, reappear. He called me, confused, the weekend before finals week and told me that he’d heard from an old friend he hadn’t spoken to in years.

“Tobias,” he muttered, flabbergasted. “Of all the fuckin’ people, princess, it was Tobias.”

Now, Tobias was Dead Coyote’s best friend before he moved away from home. I’d heard a lot about him but never met the man because, well, Maryland was a pretty good distance away and I was under the impression that he was about as broke as either of us. Travel wasn’t really an option. But I did know that he taught him a lot about magic, he was the person responsible for the nickname “Dead Coyote,” and that he was eerily good at predicting things. Apparently, their old crew gave him the alias “Seer” because of it, and some people outright stopped talking to him because of how accurate he wound up being, accusing him of being the harbinger of everything he foresaw.

Not that he was psychic, no. When I suggested that on the ride home from campus for a summer of black magic and beer, Dead Coyote just laughed at me and shook his head. Psychics, he said, aren’t real, but spirits are. Tobias was just very, very good at reading omens and signs and was dedicated enough that he built up quite the rapport with a particular demon by the name of Vine.

Vine is, essentially, an oracle who takes the form of a circus lion. You think I’m joking, but what else do you think of when you imagine a big cat on horseback? Silly as that may sound, he supposedly knows all things past, present, and future, and doubles as a one-spirit demolition crew when riled. Allegedly. I can’t think of a time I’ve ever heard of a building toppling and immediately wanted to pin it on an archaic demon, but the capability is recorded in the old grimoires and just the thought of somebody being good enough at what they do to build up a working relationship with that was both terrifying and impressive.

The first few weeks of summer break, I was treated to quite a few stories of the good old days, Dead Coyote making it perfectly obvious that hearing from somebody who wasn’t me or my mother had made his goddamn life. The part of me that would have been jealous had pretty much died, because more than anything I was just happy to hear him happy. His one complaint was that he wished they could actually meet up. Phone calls are nice, but they’re nothing compared to sharing shitty beer in person and loudly complaining about said shitty beer.

“Maybe we could visit,” I suggested. He liked the idea and we tried to figure out the logistics of it in a drunken, emotional haze that eventually turned into an in-depth discussion about Beast Wars. Still, the seeds had been planted and we almost had a pretty good rough draft in place for our first ever unorthodox family vacation.

But, we never got to act on it.

A few days after our discussion, I woke up to the sound of somebody knocking, loudly, on the door. It was the kind of knock that instantly makes your heart leap into your throat: heavy, hard, and relentless. Not knuckle knocking, but side of the fist, open-this-goddamn-door-right-fucking-now knocking. It startled me so much that I took a spill off of the couch and waited in the floor, hopeful that I’d hear Dead Coyote shuffling around upstairs. That was obviously expecting too much. The man could sleep through the apocalypse.

My first thought was that it was somebody from the housing authority. They had a tendency to be assholes and I was bad at keeping track of the pest control regimen or the quarterly inspections. Maybe it was a very aggressive postman with yet another official letter from yet another person to whom Dead Coyote owed money. I crept toward the door, peeked out the peephole, and didn’t even have a chance to say anything before a voice boomed back at me.

“Where’s Angelo?”

I blinked. Nobody called Dead Coyote by his real name, not even the people at the complex’s offices. I actually forgot he had a real name.

I stood in silence on the other side of the door, holding my breath and trying to make sense of what was going on. I couldn’t even see anyone on the other side of the door. The opposite end of the peephole was covered, like whoever was on the other side had leaned in close trying to see their way in.

“Know you’re there. Know you’re not Angelo. Where is he?”

As deep and terrifying as the voice was, it wasn’t angry. I decided to take that as a good sign. Realizing that Dead Coyote wasn’t waking up and that I was now an adult who had to handle scary adult things myself, even if it was potentially a home invasion, I made the not-so-wise decision to open the door a crack. I only undid three of the locks, though, leaving the chain in place.

Hair a mess, glasses crooked, and still in my pajamas, I glanced through the gap between the door and the jamb and stared wide-eyed at the man on the other side. He had dreadlocks for days, half-tied back and half tied down with a bandana. He looked like a cross between a fortune teller and Medusa.

“You’re Seymour?”

I stared at him blankly and tried to close the door. He stopped it with his foot. I suddenly had a lot of regrets.

“Tobias. Where’s Angelo?”

And so, I met Tobias.

Tobias was strange. He was the human equivalent of a Clydesdale horse with dark skin, bright blue eyes, and a withering expression that just seemed to be his default. I also couldn’t peg what he was supposed to be for the life of me, beyond human. You could look at Dead Coyote and tell he was Hispanic, or look at me and tell I was Celtic as fuck, but Tobias just was.

Uncomfortable as it was, we sat and made small talk as we waited for Dead Coyote to drag himself up from his hangover and ooze down the stairs. He was polite enough, if a bit blunt and quiet, though it seemed less out of a sense of awkwardness than the fact he had too much on his mind. Halfway through our on-and-off conversation, he reached into his pocket and fished out a deck of playing cards, shuffling them and cutting them as though it was a nervous tic. His eyes never left the floor.

By the time Dead Coyote finally decided to join us, Tobias had cleared off the coffee table and laid out a chaotic spread of cards that began as a game of solitaire and turned into something like a tarot spread. The only thing that interrupted him was seeing his old friend, the two exploding into a series of excited yelps and overly manly hugs. According to Dead Coyote, Tobias hadn’t changed a bit. According to Tobias, though, Dead Coyote looked like he’d been crushed in a dumpster sometime between the ages of nineteen and thirty.

“How did you find me?” Dead Coyote finally asked as they cracked open a couple of morning brews and I sat awkwardly on the sideline. Tobias shrugged.

“Not a lot of people with the last name ‘Sepulveda.’”

“And why come all this way, man?”

Tobias gestured at his cards. I had no idea what the hell any of it meant, but Dead Coyote looked at the weird arrangement like an art connoisseur sizing up a painting. With each card he glanced over, the more concerned his expression became. Before I could ask what was going on, Tobias began to speak. It was as though he knew what I was going to ask.

He said he’d come because his readings and rituals were beginning to become more and more focused on Dead Coyote, seemingly out of nowhere. When he slammed into an actual coyote with his car and killed it--an apparent rarity in his parts--he took it as a sign from Vine and tracked down his old friend through a mixture of good old fashioned asking around and even more old fashioned divination. A few calls didn’t ease his worries, so he’d chucked a fair chunk of change for a one-way Greyhound ticket and had come to figure out what in the hell was going on.

“Knew you were bad when you left, but you didn’t set off the alarms. Now you do. Worried me.”

Despite the somber tone, I honestly didn’t have a damn clue what was going on. The only thing I knew was that almost every card in Tobias’ reading for Dead Coyote was a spade. When Tobias finally left, albeit reluctantly, he gave us a single warning to watch ourselves. Something was very, very wrong. His gaze lingered on me a bit longer than I would have liked and I shrank away as he disappeared out the door.

“I don’t get it,” I said, once the apartment was quiet and we had settled on the couch. Dead Coyote inhaled deeply and immediately fished for his cigarettes.

“He does cartomancy, princess. If it were anyone else, I’d think it was bullshit, but it’s Seer, so… you know.”

Cartomancy, he said, was like tarot but using a deck of regular old playing cards. It’s more direct and less interpretive, and the cards all had set meanings that made them more believable and less sketchy than the vague readings tarot spat out. Typically, Dead Coyote laughs at anyone who takes that sort of thing seriously, but Tobias had used cards for as long as he’d known him to tease out concrete answers from the powers that be. It was one of the many ways he interpreted signs and omens, because it was honest, quick, and handy. There was no specific store to buy them in or any hocus-pocus “relationship” you had to have with the deck. If you needed them, you just picked some up from the dollar store and got to work.

And spades? They’re bad. Very bad. I hadn’t gathered heads or tails of the reading Tobias had laid out on the table while Dead Coyote was asleep, but it predicted everything from debilitating depression to disruption in the apartment to death. I didn’t have a goddamn clue how one person could get all of that out of a game of solitaire, but Dead Coyote was shaken to the core of his being. It bothered me to see that sort of uncharacteristic weakness, to see him reacting with anything other than anger or apathy. The only thing that seemed to bring him back down to earth was reminding him that Tobias wouldn’t have come and told him if he didn’t think something could be done.

Honestly, I needed to hear it, too. Seeing him freaked out did nothing to help me calm down, and the fear was so overwhelming that my brain could only process it as anger. That night, I laid on the couch and stared at the ceiling and wondered aloud to myself just what in the fuck was going on and who the fuck Tobias thought he was. The prediction of “death” loomed over me like a storm cloud and I tried to think of all the ways something could happen to Dead Coyote and what I could do to stop it, if anything. It became a borderline obsession, this nagging fear, a paranoia more powerful than when I just wondered if his loneliness would drive him to self destruction.

The next few days were a blur; I couldn’t bring myself to pay attention to anything, especially when Tobias would stop by to do his wellness checks. He was a distraction, an unlikeable distraction whose “man of few words” act was beginning to grate on my last nerve. Even though Dead Coyote would light up and temporarily forget what fate had willed for him whenever he stopped by, I couldn’t find it in my heart to like the guy. When I looked at him, all I could think about was where the hell he’d been when Dead Coyote needed him most, why it took so long for him to realize his friend was in trouble, and whether or not they could even still be considered friends after not seeing each other for years and years.

I could stomach it for about a week. It was a week of watching Tobias pull spades repeatedly, knit his brows together, and pull them again. It was a week of watching him do nothing to try to figure out where it was coming from. Seven entire days of looking up from whatever I was doing to see him glaring at me like somehow this was all my fault. All I could think of was how desperate I was to prove Tobias wrong and how offended I was that--if he was correct--he was doing nothing but the same thing over and over, like an idiot, to try to “fix” things.

I had had enough.

Dead Coyote had gone to bed, drunk. I tried, but I couldn’t. Yet again, I lay on the couch and conversed with the ceiling until I felt this urge throughout my entire body to get up, a horrible and uncomfortable twinge in my legs and arms that compelled me to move. I stood, I paced, but I was still so fucking restless. And angry. And fed-up.

And scared.

Being a dumb eighteen-year-old is both magical and puzzling, because to this day I have no idea why the hell I decided to go steal Dead Coyote’s phone out of his room. He was snoring on his mattress, shirtless and tangled into a drunken mess of limbs, and for all intents and purposes he was dead to the world. I snatched it off the charger, snuck back down to the kitchen, and sat at the table in the corner staring at his contact list debating whether or not I should call his little friend. You know, just give him a little ring and demand he tell me what needed to be done to reverse fate and who in the screaming hell he thought he was bringing that kind of negativity into our apartment.

I wanted to tell him fortune telling was bullshit and that I didn’t believe he was as powerful as Dead Coyote had told me. I wanted to face down that giant of a man and threaten to kick his ass up one side and back down the other. I pressed the button, let it ring twice, then disconnected with a furious growl. Phone calls and voicemails didn’t seem like they would send a powerful enough message. I needed to tell him to fuck off in person.

I knew where he was, too. He was at an Econolodge just a few blocks away on the edge of the complex, holed up with a dirt-cheap weekly rate that I hoped he wouldn’t have to use for another week. It was dark and it was in a bad neighborhood, but I’d lived in that neighborhood my entire life and I’d wandered around at later hours. Granted, I usually wasn’t by myself, but I was a dumb college kid with renewed belief that I was invulnerable, just like when I was a kid. Old enough to have the confidence, young enough to be stupid.

I quickly threw on a bra and jeans, slipped on my shoes, and slipped outside.

For as much as I talk about growing up in the projects, I don’t think I’ve ever given you a good idea of what it looks like. During the day, it’s almost nice aside from the bars on the windows and the grass growing through the cracks in the sidewalk, the only real eyesore being the fact that people clutter up the stoops to their apartment with more bikes and junkyard trash than any one family would have a use for. At night, though, it’s like a scene from some kind of movie: dark with flickering street lights, and dogs barking on chains attached to the window bars, kicked out of the house now that the housing authority office was closed and their owners didn’t have to hide their undocumented pets. It’s unnerving with somebody, let alone by yourself, and had I not been propelled by a combination of sheer idiocy, desperation, and anger, common sense might have kicked in and told me to go back home.

But, it didn’t. I soldiered on, hands rammed in my pockets and glasses sliding down my nose, hair a mess and mouth held in such a powerful scowl that my entire face hurt. Hell, it hurt behind my eyes and the entire back of my head felt like it was being crushed. I’d never had a rage migraine before, and I hope I never have one again.

I could see the lights of the Econolodge sign when things took a sharp turn south.

You see, it had been years since Joseph Shepherd, the charming man who tried to molest me as a kid, had graced the neighborhood with his presence. Being a dick who chases his girlfriend with battery acid is overlookable, I suppose, but touching a little girl is not. Mean as he was, the neighbors just couldn’t tolerate him popping his face up in their territory any longer, and after his release he was treated to a few choice ass-kickings. Dumb as he was and as vicious as he played at, after a couple of years it finally sank in that it was only a matter of time before something more than his tires got slashed and he skipped town.

His place had been taken, oddly enough, by a kid I grew up with.

Adam Emmert was almost my friend once, though that “almost” should be bolded and underlined for effect. I was a lonely child and he had seemed lonely, too, though I was too young to realize that he wasn’t a young, neglected kid like I had been. No, there was something deeply wrong with Adam in much the same way there had been something wrong with Joseph. Trade in throwing grade schoolers in front of a bus with threatening kids with broken glass and poisoning the neighborhood dogs for fun, and it seemed as though our lovely complex actually upgraded in terms of their local villain. And he only got worse as he got older, when he realized how much he hated anyone who wasn’t white.

I knew to avoid him, everyone did. I was not, however, expecting him to be sitting outside on the sidewalk with a crew of fellow miscreants at two in the goddamn morning. To be honest, I didn’t even really register who it was at first, stomping by with my eyes focused on the no-tell motel where Tobias was hiding, waving their cigarette smoke out of my face as I passed. No, it didn’t even occur to me who the ringleader of the group was until I heard his voice, unusually loud and echoing in the abandoned streets.

“It’s Seymour!”

It was almost a singsong. I stopped, turned, and short circuited. He stood up from the curb, grinning with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, looking at me from underneath the brim of his trucker cap. He was the epitome of white trash, and had a dangerous gleam in his eye.

“Who?” a dazed girl asked.

“That fuckin’ wetback’s whore.”

I didn’t answer because I suddenly lost the ability to do so. All I could think of was, in the previous week, I had developed quite the knack for being an idiot. I should have never been out alone at night.

“She fucks that greasy fuck? Jesus.”

I realized I had forgotten my phone and Dead Coyote’s phone in the kitchen.

“Oh, yeah. But why are you out now, Seymour? Side job? Meetin’ up with a John, eh? Guess crazy money doesn’t keep your little fuckbuddy on his feet very well, huh?”

What was in his waistband? What did he reach for? It was shining. Was it a knife? I thought of Joseph’s friend, the alley, the threat of being stabbed. I always thought a knife would be worse than a gun, but I was having second thoughts realizing that what he was holding was most definitely not a cheap folding knife.

“Maybe she needs a real man,” one of his toadies offered.

My brain was white noise, television static.

“She’ll have to pay first. What do you say, Seymour? Wanna walk crooked for the next few days?”

Amid their laughter, I found enough clarity to run, dead in the opposite direction of my apartment. I bolted for the Econolodge, faster than I think I have ever run in my life. A gunshot cracked through the night and I swore I could feel something whizz past me as I stumbled over my feet and landed on my palms. The asphalt scraped away the skin but I ignored it and sprinted, bleeding and crying, all the way to the lobby office of that shitheap motel.

Blood and dirt smeared the glass as I forced the door closed and twisted the lock. I’d lost my glasses somewhere between point A and point B, so finding my way to the desk was an adventure in and of itself. The attendant was nowhere to be seen (not that I could see), so I slammed on the bell until he came ambling out like a tired old dog, his voice shaking when I finally coaxed him to speak. That is, if you can call screaming hysterically that somebody was trying to shoot me “coaxing.”

“Tobias!” I yelped. “I need to speak to Tobias!”

“What’s the last name, ma’am?”

I could tell from his tone he really wanted to help me, but there were rules. So many damn rules. I didn’t have a surname or a room number, and my demands were so quick-fire and desperate that calling the cops seems to have been the last thing on his mind. I was my own worst enemy, a distraction from real help, scaring a poor middle-aged hotel clerk so badly that he seemed to believe that finding my “friend” was the only way to solve the problem.

He was about to offer to call him, refusing to give me the room number, when I heard a tapping on the glass. Somebody tried the locked door. I couldn’t see worth a damn to figure out who it was and every part of me was convinced it was Adam. Even when the clerk let out a sigh of relief, every nerve in my body buzzed with adrenaline.

“Oh, thank god.”

It was Tobias. With my glasses, no less. Apparently, I had lost them just out on the sidewalk.

Even if I had come with the intent of laying into him with all the fury of a particularly whiny hurricane, in that one moment, I could have kissed him. That all went away when, after he handed me my glasses, he didn’t even bother to ask what happened or if I needed help. He looked at my bloody hands, reached into the pocket of his jeans, and pulled out that same goddamn deck of cards he’d been carrying the whole time he’d been visiting. Instead of a spread, he drew just one and stared at it, intently and with mounting worry. I stole a peek and saw the ace of spades staring back at me.

He didn’t say a word, not to me, not to the desk attendant. He just hurriedly crammed his cards back into his pocket, turned tail, and ran back in the direction of Dead Coyote’s home.

I followed, like the idiot I had proven to be. Panic was the primary motivator, Dead Coyote’s voice ringing in my head. He’d said that spades were bad, very bad, and if the whole suite was awful wouldn’t the ace card be worst of all? I thought of Adam and his cronies, and it sank in that after I hit the Econolodge they never showed up at the lobby. I had spent a good five to ten minutes shrieking like a banshee about how somebody was trying to kill me. They had more than enough time to catch up.

So where did they go?

Even though I am built for strength, not speed, I did a pretty decent job of keeping up with Tobias for a while. I noticed that Adam wasn’t where he had been and my mind came to a screeching halt when I realized that that wasn’t exactly a good thing. Had I locked the door to the apartment when I left?

I hadn’t. For the love of fuck, I hadn’t.

Despite being a straight shot from the Econolodge to Dead Coyote’s apartment, I couldn’t really see far enough ahead to see if my fears were founded. My vision was blurred, people’s stoops were stacked high with bullshit, and there were more than enough overflowing garbage cans dotting the sidewalk. Eventually, I even lost Tobias in the maze of trash, panting and lagging behind like an old race horse. Even fear couldn’t keep me going forever, I guess.

I only stopped running, though, when I heard a gunshot. Then a scream. It was too high-pitched to be Tobias or Dead Coyote, though, and I thanked my lucky stars for that. Still, when home was finally in sight I didn’t expect to see a gigantic mass of dreadlocks and hate sitting on top of the neighborhood psychopath beneath the bottom step of our stoop. Nor did I expect to see Adam’s less-than-loyal cronies scatter past me like roaches.

Yet, there he was: Tobias, in all his glory, pinning Adam down to the sidewalk with his sheer weight. Adam squalled and lights began to turn on one by one, heads poking out of windows, people stepping out onto the street. I walked up behind Tobias, wheezing and gasping, waiting for him to make some kind of idle threat to Adam, but he just sat there in almost infuriating silence, eyes boring holes into Adam’s skull.

Then I heard Dead Coyote. I glanced up to see his head dangling out of the window, his hair a mess and his eyes squinting against the street lamps. Right as one of the neighbors demanded to know what was going on, Tobias calmly looked up at his good friend and huffed in exasperation.

“Call the police. Asshole was trying to break in.”

Calling the police made Tobias a sort of pariah, just as it had done to Dead Coyote briefly all those years ago. Not that he cared. It was the only way to make sure the threat was gone for a good, long while and he had a sneaking suspicion that they may have been what he was seeing in the cards and omens and dreams. And it was something that I had inadvertently triggered, he warned me, by leaving Dead Coyote alone and alerting the neighborhood ne’er-do-well to the fact.

He told me I was really dumb. Dead Coyote glared at him, but honestly? I agreed.

“Dunno what they’d steal,” Dead Coyote groaned, hiding from the living room lights as Tobias sauntered in, sat down on my couch, and began to lay out his cards. “Not like I got shit.”

“Car. Television. Five dollars in your wallet,” Tobias answered, making a gun with his fingers and pointing it at Dead Coyote. “Also, you’re brown with an accent. Enough for him, I think.”

I watched, transfixed as he spread the cards in the same chaotic pattern as before. I was still shaken, I was nauseous, and a part of me still wanted to kick Tobias in the throat, but as I saw the cards being drawn, my emotions began to settle.

Not a spade in sight. One red card after another, which he kindly explained out loud when he noticed me gawking, palms still bleeding and tears in my eyes. Success and unexpected good fortune and health and support from friends and family. All of it was really wishy-washy, but it brought a smile to my face.

“King of Clubs and Queen of Diamonds. Huh.”

“What does that mean?” I asked, Dead Coyote yawning on the floor as Tobias quickly shuffled his cards back together.

“Mm. Nothing bad. Not just Angelo’s reading, I guess.”

I won’t lie and say Tobias and I got along immediately. I also won’t lie and say that his residency didn’t end up being pretty permanent. However, in that one night, I realized why it was that Dead Coyote respected him so much, and I fell asleep wondering just how good of a connection one had to have with a demon to get that skilled at what they do. Tobias is kind of a jerk, but he’s also fairly amazing.

Even if, in the deepest parts of my heart, I still think cartomancy is full of shit.

[countdownto65]

Empathy for Self

What is the nemesis of shame? Empathy.

What is the root of most of your shame? Attention seeking, codependentcy and sexual misconduct.

Empathy. You were the oldest in the family fighting for parental attention against two babies.

You hit puberty early. This was a 2 fold problem. You started getting attention furthering the tight shirts but in turn Everyone in 4th grade started calling you a ho. You had never even kissed a boy. You were not a ho and kids are fucking mean.

But you know who else’s attention you got by having boobs, dressing in body suits and seeking attention at 11 years old? A fucking pedophile. While your behavior made you an easy target, NO ONE DESERVES TO BE SEXUALLY EXPLOITED AT 12, 13, 14, OR 15 YEARS OLD. Did you fuckin get that? No matter what your actions it was not your fault they targeted you. Even if you agreed to it at 13, 14, 15 you can leave that self blame right here bc that was their bad NOT YOURS. This is where you learned sex = attention, power, control. They would buy you stuff, get you high and drunk, make you feel like the best person they know all (not explicitly stated) for sexual behavior. I learned a skewed view on relationships and appropriate sexual behavior in adult married behavior. I learned to emotionally detach from sex. I learned to over ride the “this shit ain’t right” feeling you get in your chest when you are uncomfortable in a situation. All of these things are what set your boundaries and your very left field view of what kind of attention makes you feel worthwild. This was not your fault and sometimes life has shitty things happen that effect our outlook forever.

So it sure was easy to sleep with boyfriends, I mean you “loved” them, they were always older, sex was something that didn’t come from everybody so with my sexual skills I learned from the pedophiles I was the best gf a 16 year old could have. And bc I could so easily separate sex from emotion (as a conditioned response to molestation) and it was a way to get boys I liked to notice me, I gave it up easily. Not necessarily sex, but sexual acts. It was one way I felt power and control. Boys treated me special on the surface bc I was pretty with tight clothes…but I failed to realize the power was momentary at the cost of respect. Both self respect and respect of everyone else. This was when my first experience with the fuck and run type of dude came in. The first time I cared. After that I didn’t at least I told myself I didn't but This was when I began codependency. They didn’t always fuck and run. I was good at getting boys to stick around for a while. I was a serial dater. I had to have a significant other to feel worth so I had too many boyfriends. Always one on hand one on the backburner. This was you reaching out for real connection, something you felt had been missing both with your parents, your abusers and your random sexual encounters. When I had a bf I was faithful. I know that sounds fucked up bc I just said I had a backburner but I was never sleeping with this other guy. I just friend zoned him knowing he liked me so I could establish my safety net. So one day at 17 Ieft home, went to a house party, hooked up with the guy who’s house it was (Matt) and that was the start of my first adult relationship. I loved him from the bottom of my toes but he often cheated on me and I never left him for it. It was at this time that I severed my relationship with my abusers. I was old enough to at least have an inkling something wasn’t right, plus now I considered it cheating and I didn’t cheat on him. He started selling drugs. We both got into cocaine. It was easy bc I dated the dopeman.

Then he went to prison. I continued the relationship with him but continued to date/sleep with men while he was away. This was when I caught an std and began stripping on weekends. This is still caused by poor boundaries and a skewed idea of sex and power… Set in motion by sexual abuse. By now I had slowed way down on cocaine but had a huge weed and alcohol habit. I worked at a catholic preschool during the week but stripped to pay for my substances on Sat nights. This set off a little bit of the uncomfortable double life feeling but I pushed it down. I also hustled people for substances. Although I never slept with anyone for money or drugs. But I def made them think I might so they would get me high. Never felt bad either bc if your a dude willing to be got you deserved to get hustled…that was my mindset. I also saw stripping as a hustle. Hustle to me means fuck with a lame walk with a limp. I mean if your gonna be thirsty I’ll take your money. This is probably when I acquired my mindset that most dudes were creeps and out to get me. I realize now that by appearing easy I was literally attracting creeps but at the time I enjoyed the attention and the feeling of superiority and has a huge sample of men to confirm my bias.

Every now and then though I got tricked out of my hard exterior and caught feelings. This is my deep emotional need for connection, to feel worth while. This is where I met my daughters father. He was a giant red flag but problem with bad boundaries and emotional regulation is if I liked you I would ignore red flags and become overly obsessed with you. This has continued to be a problem throughout adulthood.

Anyways I dated Tony until He went to prison, then Matt got out of prison until we broke up, then Tony got out of prison and we has Olivia. Then Tony went back to prison and I met Jason, I left Jason when Tony got out of prison but when Tony and I broke up I went back to Jason and we had Leah. Are you seeing the boomerang effect of codependentcy and back burner relationships. One stable relationship was not enough.

I wanted Jason to be different. To be a family but unfortunately Jason turned out to be very abusive mentally, physically and emotionally. He was an alcoholic and a mean one. But for some reason I loved him and let him stomp on me over and over. He took my confidence. He took my pride. He took my soul. I tried to break up with him 30 times he would say no and just wouldn’t leave. I was faithful to him until I moved out into subsidised housing. But even then I didn’t have multiple men just one man that to this day I love. This guy put up with being #2 for 2 years on and off. Maybe he knew I loved him, maybe he knew that I was stuck with Jason, maybe he knew I needed to feel wanted and worthy. During this I felt guilty and shameful. I eventually bought a house and moved Jason in. That is when this other guy got a new gf and left me alone. It was like mourning a breakup that I couldn’t tell anyone. Eventually I legally evicted Jason and this left me with a self worth and connection black hole.

I acted out for a minute on my usual single m.o.. Then an old friend from middle school came in. He was different then others in that he was genuinely nice and cared for my well being. Unfortunately he also came with a huge dose of depression leading to at the time an inability to keep a job or help with housework. But I stayed with him on and off for the next few years bc I loved him for his emotional support and that he made me feel worthy. Plus it was safe. As a woman in her 30s, I am at the point that if I’m in a relationship I don’t cheat or scope out new guys or have a backburner. It kept me emotionally reeled in. But bc of my trust issues, bc of my lack of feeling worthy, bc of my resentment for him watching me struggle, and bc of my need for excitement or passion (see drama) I couldn’t be with him forever. Even after he got better and held a job and helped my brain short circuits and told me that our lack of connection was insurmountable. I broke his heart and he did nothing wrong. I am just still searching for that lasting “in love” connection that I am not sure exists. I harbor huge guilt here. Both for his feelings and for what could be wrong with me that I left what I said I wanted. That maybe my brain will never let me really love. My only empathy here is that I am working on my shit and all I can do is that.

Every time in my adult life when I have been unhappy in a relationship I’ve left instead of fixing. I have searched out attention through suggestive facebook posts or selfies or sexting. I have been emotionally raw towards men. I had a shitty attitude toward relationships. Anytime that I was single or had freedom I either had a fuck buddy that I didn’t feel anything for or sometimes I would make a strong connection and go all in. I would rush it sexually (again not necessarily full sex but messing around for sure) and more times then not I get played. Within 2 weeks after they no longer answer my texts or calls. This is the shit adult shame is built from. How can you be so blind and stupid? Why can’t you be stable and happy? But here is where I need an empathy piece. Your sexuality was already not healthy then Jason stripped you of any self worth. He often told you no one could ever love me bc I was such a low down terrible person, a piece of shit mother, a whore. Six years of that and you begin to believe it. So if a man comes along and sells you a dream of being loveable its hard not to want with all your heart to believe them. And sexuality is my only tool I know for reeling them in. But when things get too serious I start getting scared of being broken or having to work on things that historically haven’t worked or old scars become obsessions.

I am at a point in my life now that I want to change but Tbh I don’t know how. I want to regain respect for myself and I would like to change peoples opinion of me or better yet not care. This has sent me into a major mental health crisis. I want to know how to reel it in and gain respect while still being true to myself. I still yearn for spark, sex and connection but I want to do it healthily. I want to take the emotional polarization and shame out of sex. Instead of not caring at all or being a crazy obsessive smothering weirdo and throwing myself at someone then feeling like an idiot for falling so hard. So maybe dates in public, counting actions over words and putting time in between the spark and the sex.

I am still struggling with what to do about social media. I mean I need to chill on the provocative selfies, attention seeking posts, and entertaining anyone that messages me… but I still like to be noticed. I want to post selfies and I think dirty memes are funny. Anyway this is long. I am still figuring shit out. And I can’t just look at empathy without taking inventory of what I could have done differently. But this post is empathy and it did help take off a small piece of that shame.

(*when I say act out sexually I don't mean I've had hundreds of partners but rather I have been quick to sexually experiment but I have also developed a "stop point". Don't get it too twisted.)

[kupoxv]

Feedback is important.

So I decided to delete one of my fanfics and a comment I’ve got about my decision made me frustrated. I won’t say angry because I’m not, but... I’m pissed.

There’s this one fanfic (on ao3) that I stopped updating a while ago because I got so little feedback (a total of 5 comments for 2 chapters), which was a little depressing. After a while, I totally lost my motivation and it never came back.

Yesterday, I made an announcement to say I will delete it.

And here it came, this comment from someone telling me that they’re sad that I’m not continuing this story, that they’ve been waiting for me to update it and that people’s opinion shouldn’t matter if I love my story.

First of all, I want to say to that person that I’m thankful they read my work and for their comment (I posted this announcement with the first chapter of my most recent fic), and that I’m not mad at them at all. But here is the thing, and this is not only for this person in particular, but for all the people who saw a fanfic they liked being deleted but never bothered to leave any feedback before:

If you liked this story, then why didn’t you leave a comment on it? Bookmarked it so I can see you liked it, wanted to recommend it to people visiting your profile? I haven’t updated it for 3 months, why didn’t you leave a comment to tell me you were waiting for an update? Knowing that someone actually liked my story and wanted more would’ve given me that kick I needed to finish it.

But you post a comment only now that it’s too late.

The second thing is ‘people’s opinion shouldn’t matter if I love my story’, I guess you meant people giving me feedback. Well let me tell you how I feel when I post a chapter and no one shows any interest in it.

Try telling a tale of yours to a wall for a solid 10 hours (the average amount of time it takes for me to write a chapter with a few breaks in between), and tell me how you feel after that. Because this is exactly how I feel.

If I just liked my stories, I wouldn’t bother writing and would rather keep them for myself, in my mind. I started writing fanfics because I want to share my stories but also contribute to the FFXV fandom, to make people happy, (and sad... and upset sometimes too lol).

So when I post something and get absolutely no feedback, I can't tell if I made someone happy, if someone enjoyed what they read, smiled or cried, or upset. I can't tell if I make people feel anything about this story.

Worst ! I'll put myself down. I even end up being embarassed by my own work, thinking that it must be really shitty and there must be something wrong with me (either my writing is terrible or my idea) for nobody to comment about it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not asking you to kiss my ass for every chapter I post (although I am so so thank ful for those people who regularly comment everytime I update. You guys keep me going, seriously. I love you.). You can just slam your head on your keyboard as a comment and post it. But you have to understand writers, just like artists, NEED FEEDBACK. Not only to be willing to continue and share more, but to improve through your comments and criticism.

You can’t tell someone to just keep on giving so much of their time (for drawing, writing, editing videos etc) and ignore this feeling than no one cares about what they’re sharing, while yourself keeping quiet and enjoying what they do.

When someone cooks something delicious for you, you’ll tell them how much you like it, so they’ll cook it again. This is the same.

I don’t make any money, any benefits of this time I’m spending to write my stories. The only thing I earn is the thought that people like/love what I write and are asking for more, it makes me happy!

Anyway, I’m sorry for this long post, but I had to let it out. Not just for me, but for all the people in my situation.

[sweetnestor]

Stone Cold | november pt. 1

university au + platonic + romantic + angst, teamiplier + jack

sequel to: Story of Another Us | also on ao3 | previous chapter

Bella’s song choices: Shoutout to my Ex by Little Mix, Hair by Little Mix

I wasn’t sure what was getting more attention: my tutorial with Jack, or his Antisepticeye Halloween finale. I mean, Jack always got millions of views on his videos. Why did I even have to think about it?

The most I was getting was more tweets from other YouTubers and people from Jack’s community. I received a lot of compliments on the Dollhouse tutorial, which made me happy and even more proud of it. For the last bit of October, it brought me out of my depressive mood. I didn’t expect it to last, given that I wasn’t entirely content. I wasn’t exactly sad, either. It was an empty but chill feeling. I felt good about my success, and how my YouTube channel was taking off. But I still felt down about certain things, like the breakup, my crippling loneliness, and just life in general. Naturally, that wore off and was replaced with crippling anxiety because homecoming was just around the corner.

I was still dreading the whole thing, and planning my makeup look wasn’t helping anymore. I was starting to lose sleep over it. I was considering going back on Xanax just for this occasion. I was spending money on various beauty products I knew I wasn’t going to use. I was typing on my laptop with shaking hands, and then I went to another site in between purchases.

The hashtag “ytuhomecoming” was starting to circulate on Twitter, and the only good it did for me was telling me which intimidating vloggers would be going. Well, all of the more successful vloggers were intimidating to me, and plenty of them were definitely attending the dance. I was debating taking a shot for every YouTuber I was afraid of, but then I was sure to die from alcohol poisoning.

Actually…

“Baller!” called Jack, who was finally home from recording.

I jumped at the sound of his voice, my intrusive thought immediately cutting itself off. I wandered out of my room, finding Jack placing his backpack on the sofa.

“Hey, how’d it go?” I asked, leaning against my doorway.

“It was good. The bus is weird. I’m tired now, but still full of energy.” He moved side to side, doing a little dance.

“You know, I’m starting to think you’re taking all of my energy,” I joked, watching his movements.

“I have enough energy for the both of us,” he corrected. “I do all the moving in this relationship.”

I giggled. “And I do all the sleeping.”

Jack pulled his phone out of his pocket and went to connect it to the small speakers I had on the coffee table. “Pick a song.”

“What kind of song?” I asked.

“Something jumpy and dancey.”

I told him the name and artist, and he quickly searched for it with a smile on his face. “Of course you would go for Little Mix,” he commented before the song started playing.

“This is a shoutout to my ex, heard he in love with some other chick Yeah, yeah, that hurt me I’ll admit Forget that boy, I’m over it”

Immediately, I started singing along, bopping my head to the tune. Jack held his hands out to me, encouraging me to come and dance with him. He was persistent, so I took his hands and timidly began moving from side to side. Once I got over the shyness, it turned out to be really liberating. Here we were, two single people repressing our emotions while dancing to a song about shitty exes.

“You made my heart break and that made me who I am!” I sang as I jumped around the living room. “Here’s to my ex, hey look at me now!”

Jack was trying to sing along, but he didn’t know the words as well as I did. He did frequently make his arms in the shape of an X over his face every time the word ‘ex’ was used. But then, he suddenly stopped dancing and placed his hands over his eyes. Then he plopped down on the couch, slumping over, his shoulders shaking.

I quickly paused the music and sat down next to him. Honestly, I expected one of us to crack, and I thought the first one would be me.

“I miss her so much,” he whispered.

My heart breaking, I placed my arm around him. I was at a loss for words. But he had plenty to say.

“I-I don’t know what to do w-without her… she doesn’t want to t-talk to me. She just left without telling me… I don’t know what to do…” His voice cracked on the last words, and he hunched over even more.

Left with no warning? I couldn’t imagine Signe being like that. Then again, I never thought I would see Jack break down like this.

“What happened?” I asked, cowering internally in case I accidentally hit a nerve.

Jack sniffed and sat up straighter. His eyes were red from all the tears. He looked so devastated, so unlike himself. It was painful to watch.

“I don’t even know where it began,” he spoke, his voice shaking. “We argued about dumb shit, then she started getting distant. I thought she just wanted some space, I didn’t think she would fly to fucking Denmark overnight. And then fucking dump me over a text.”

“No fucking way,” I said in disbelief. “Why did she have to leave like that?”

“She’s avoidant,” Jack explained. “I mean, I didn’t know she would go as far as leaving the fucking country. I thought she was getting better with being distant… but she never liked to face problems head on.”

I hated thinking like this but… if that ain’t me.

“What were you guys arguing about that made her leave?” I wondered.

Jack sighed, wiping his nose with his sweater sleeve. “Different things. The future, moving, mostly moving. Especially since I was traveling a lot for YTU. The first time I left really hit her, but she never told me until I was planning to go back. I told her to come with me, but she said she already did enough moving when she left Denmark for Ireland. I understood that, what I don’t understand is why I woke up the next morning with her and all her things gone.”

“And you still came here regardless?”

“I was ready to drop out of YTU for her. I was going to talk about it with her, but she was already gone. I tried explaining to her what I was willing to do to make things work. But instead, she broke up with me. Said it was too late, and that I was more in love with my career than her. Afterwards, I just felt really alone… so I registered for classes and came here.”

I didn’t know what to tell him. We were both abandoned in different ways. I could barely cope with my own, how could I help Jack? What could I say to make it better?

“I’m so sorry,” I told him. “I can’t believe she did that…”

“Me either.”

We were both silent for a while. What else could be said about this situation? I felt just as helpless as he did.

“So Signe left you because she didn’t want to deal with your problems,” I said, “and Mark left me because he fell for someone else.”

“Pretty much,” Jack concluded.

~

The week leading up to homecoming was filled with many deliveries from many places. I do a lot of online shopping when I get nervous. Or when I’m depressed. I was sure Jack had noticed that I got three packages delivered on the same day, but he never said anything. Most times, he was in class or in his office on campus, so I had plenty of time to stash the boxes and bubble wrap. At the same time, I was running out of space in my bathroom for all my makeup purchases. At least I had plenty of options for my homecoming makeup look.

I was good at ignoring my frequent shortness of breath. I didn’t worry about it because it usually happened right before anxiety inducing events, like going to the store or driving somewhere I wasn’t familiar with. My appetite was affected also, but I made sure to keep my stomach occupied with bottles of water, and sometimes a granola bar. It was easy to hide my trembling hands too; I just had to frequently fidget with my phone whenever I was around Jack. It was hard to keep myself from clenching my jaw, though, except for when I chewed gum. Sleep was out of the question, too.

But I had done things like this before. I could handle it. I mean, did I spend every waking moment with this feeling of impending doom? Yes. Was I completely dreading the dance and facing all my significantly more successful colleagues, along with my ex? Oh, absolutely. Was I only doing this because Jack had asked me to? Yes…

He was excited. This is what he came here for. He wanted to be around his friends and spend time with them. I was one of his friends, as well as his date to this cheap, high school-esque thing. The things I’d do for this man…

On the day of the event, I sat in my bathroom and glared at my reflection. My hands were clutching the ends of the counter for dear life. I had been in here all day, telling Jack that I needed all the time I could get getting ready. My hair was already done, simple waves and an equally simple high ponytail that took only about two or three hours.

The anxiety had been coming in waves all day, and it was currently hitting me, which was why I was angry at myself. I tried taking deep breaths, I tried to slow down. Mark would always tell me to take it one step at a time, but thinking about him made me tear up. The one person who could calm me down now made me want to crawl into a hole and hide.

My stomach turned as I remembered that he was going to be at the dance with Amy on his arm. I shut my eyes and placed my hand over my mouth, trying hard not to sob out loud. I couldn’t let Jack know how unstable I was about this whole thing. I didn’t want to dampen his happy mood.

I sniffed and wiped my eyes, trying to pull myself together. I pulled out one of my eyeshadow primers from the drawer, intending to start my makeup like I usually did. It was difficult due to the tears. Difficult, but not impossible. I just had to keep telling myself that.

Here’s another thing I do when I get nervous: I overdo it with the makeup. Typically I avoid intense, bright pigments, false eyelashes, and cream contouring but today, I felt the need to go all out. Good thing the dress code was to match your date, because I went to town with the bright green pigment I had picked out. I used that single color and blew it out on my eyelids, and then I added green glitter. The wings I created were actually impressive, given how shaky my hands were. I felt better by the time I had finished with my eyes. Oh, and I had to put extra effort into my wrists as well. I had to bust out the luxury makeup to make sure it would last.

I looked pretty great once I finished with my face entirely. It was ironic, actually.

“Bella!” called Jack from my bedroom. “How long until you’re ready?”

I checked the time on my phone. I had spent over an hour on my makeup, which added to the large amount of time I had spent on my hair. I hadn’t spent so long getting ready in quite a while. I could only hope I hadn’t made us late.

“Not long!” I called back, dashing out of the bathroom to grab my dress.

However, I stopped in my tracks, when I found Jack standing in the doorway. He was wearing a clean black suit and his glasses. My eyes traveled down his figure, impressed.

“Do I look okay?” he asked, noticing my gawking. “Is this black enough for you?”

I cracked a smile. “It’s not as black as my soul, but it’ll do.”

He rolled his eyes, amused. “So I look good?”

“Amazing.”

I grabbed my dress from where I lied it out on the bed and then went back into the bathroom to change. I looked in the mirror, unable to shake the crippling anxiety. All I had to do was survive the drive over to campus and then I could drink the nerves away. That, and I couldn’t let Jack leave me alone for too long.

Before going to meet my date, I turned my neck from side to side, making the bones pop. It helped relieve the tension in my neck and shoulders, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to fully relax until I had a freaking margarita in my hand. I quickly left the bathroom, pulled on my heels, and then went to find Jack in the living room.

He stood up from the couch upon my entrance, and he smiled. “Look at you.”

For some reason, that didn’t help the anxiety. I looked down at my dress. “Do I look bad?”

“Of course not, you’re beautiful!” he told me, approaching me. “I have a present for you.”

My eyes widened. “Were we supposed to get each other presents? Shit, I mean, I-”

“Oh no, no! This is just for you, because I know you get nervous at big events like this.” He reached into the inner pocket of his blazer and pulled out a black, glittery flask. “It’s tequila. I know they’ll have an open bar at the dance, but I just wanted to thank you for actually doing this, despite how hard it is for you.”

For the first time in weeks, I felt myself physically relax. “You get me.”

~

You would think it was some kind of movie premiere with how the front of the university was set up. There was a red carpet spilling out of the front office doors. There were barriers set up on either side of the carpet to keep fans in control. Vloggers had to walk down a red carpet to get into the school. If that wasn’t the most extra thing…

Jack and I made it through that, only stopping for a few selfies with some fans. One person asked if we were dating, as expected, and I graciously said no. The second we were inside the office, I pulled my new flask out of my purse and took the first drink of the evening. The burning in my throat was my salvation.

“You okay?” Jack asked, sounding amused.

I replied with a strained “Mhmm,” before shoving the thing back into my purse.

“Shall we?” He offered his arm now that we were out of view of the fans, and I gladly accepted.

We walked through the back doors of the main office, leading out into the courtyard. It was decorated with balloons, twinkly lights, neon lights, any kind of light. White, circular tables were spread around on either side of the large dance floor. Directly in front of the fountain was a DJ who was blasting music on these giant speakers. There was a mini bar set up with a young looking bartender (probably the same one that worked at The Tube), and a table full of desserts with a giant jug of water. Actual. High school.

I gazed around the area, making a mental note of who to avoid. Tyler Oakley: avoid until third drink. Dan and Phil: avoid completely. Felix and Marzia: avoid, unless Jack brings me to talk to them. Shane Dawson: avoid, unless he talks to me first.

“Ooo, I see a chocolate fountain,” Jack said, dragging me over to the dessert table.

While he consumed all the sweets his body could contain, I took another drink from my flask. I could feel my “avoid” list shrinking as the tequila went through my system. Good thing too, because just as I coveted my maladaptive version of a security blanket, Jack and I were approached.

Two guys, one of them I recognized. The taller one, with curly brown hair and a husky, built form was Tyler Scheid. I had never properly met him, but heard plenty about him through Mark in the past. The other one was much shorter, had fading blue hair and these big, adorable glasses perched on his nose. They were both wearing nice red button up shirts and black pants.

“Hey! What’s up, guys?” Jack happily greeted them. “You just get here?”

“Yeah, Mark and Amy are parking the car,” Tyler replied.

“And you’re each other’s dates?” he asked, gesturing to their outfits.

“It’s a four way thing,” said the guy with blue hair. “We’re all wearing red. Kathryn was supposed to come too, but she got sick.”

“Oh, well this is my date, Bella.”

Shit, it starts now.

Tyler’s face filled with recognition. “Mark’s Bella?”

“Just Bella,” I corrected, holding out my hand. “Nice to meet you!”

“Right, sorry,” he said, shaking my hand. “I’m Tyler, I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“Ah, same.” I smiled. Thank you tequila.

“I’m Ethan,” greeted the blue boy, going to shake my hand. “I just moved here.”

“Oh, well, welcome!”

“He’s just getting to know people here,” Tyler added.

“I’d definitely love to get to know you,” I said impulsively, gently squeezing Ethan’s hand before letting go. Okay tequila, calm down.

Jack laughed before the awkwardness could take over. Then he changed the subject. “So you said Mark was coming?”

“Yeah,” Tyler said before pointing behind me and Jack. “There he is now!”

Nope.

“I’ll be at the bar,” I announced, quickly excusing myself from the situation.

“I’ll come find you in a bit!” Jack called.

Once I was at my desired location, I took a seat and ordered that freaking margarita I deserved. Honestly, no amount of alcohol would make me want to be around Mark, let alone Mark and his girlfriend. I did watch them from a distance, though, like the sad sack of shit I was.

Mark was wearing a shirt so red that it made his faded hair look orange. Amy was wearing an equally red, slim dress. They each greeted Jack with a hug, looking happy as ever. I saw them conversing, and quickly looked away when Jack gestured to where I was sitting. I was sad. I drank some more.

I kept my eyes on the floor as I sipped my drink, and I nearly froze when I saw a pair of feet approach in front of me. I knew it wasn’t Jack, so I hesitated before I looked up.

“Hello,” greeted my lovely little ex boyfriend, who was smiling nervously.

My straw was still in my mouth, and I sipped even quicker, not even taking my eyes off of him. While I remained silent, he ordered a cocktail, probably for lovely little Amy.

“How are you doing?” he asked, sitting in the stool next to me while he waited for his drink to be ready. I didn’t turn to face him.

I was honestly surprised at this question. I was also angry. At least I wasn’t anxious anymore. “Why do you care?” I spat.

Mark didn’t say anything at first, which made me look at him. I caught him barely taking his eyes off of my arms.

“Can you not do that?” I snapped. “Look, I’m fine.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that before,” he said seriously.

I rolled my eyes, even more infuriated. How dare he abandon me and then come and ask how I’ve been since then? “You don’t need to babysit me anymore! That’s pretty much why you left, isn’t it?”

With that, I made my departure. I stood up, praying I wouldn’t stumble on my heels, and I walked off. I sat down at an empty table, sulking. I looked down at my half empty cup and decided I would need something stronger if I was going to survive the night.

“Hey,” greeted a female voice I normally would have jumped at if I was sober.

“¿Que honda?” I greeted to Aria, who was looking as equally glum as I was.

“Pinche pendejo ya llegó,” she replied as she sat down next to me. She had her own half empty cocktail, and she drained the glass before continuing. “He showed up matching with his best friend! So much for trying to make things work after his tour!”

“He told you that?” I asked.

“Well, it wasn’t a promise, but I didn’t want any of the shippy, fan service crap,” she explained. “And he told me he would tone it down after he made bank with his tour last year. ¡Pero, miralo! I bet Tumblr is going crazy that he came to this fucking thing with his best friend.”

“Hmm, I remember the Septiplier shit from my last relationship,” I said. “Which ship did you get stuck with?”

“Phan.”

My eyes widened and my jaw nearly dropped. “Ayy, mija. I’m so sorry.”

Aria shrugged and rolled her eyes. “It’s nothing. It’s just, y’know one of the reasons we broke up. And now it’s just what’s keeping us apart. No big deal.”

I sighed. “If it helps, I just saw my ex with his new girlfriend. And he came and tried to talk to me like nothing was wrong.”

“Ouch.” Aria paused and then stood up. “I’m ordering shots, I’ll be right back.”

Finally, a woman who understands me!

When Aria returned, she had three shots instead of two, and she had Sophie by her side. My mood dropped once again.

Sophie, clad in a silver, sparkly maxi dress, smiled and waved awkwardly at me. I returned a mildly bitter smile and said nothing.

“Okay, drink up, hijas,” Aria said, placing our shots on the table.

We each took a small, clear glass of… I didn't know what, clinked, and then drank. Judging by the familiar burn in my throat, it was more tequila. I was fine with that, I had plenty to last me through the night.

“Alright, let's go dance!” Sophie suggested, hooking her arm with Aria’s.

“Bella, come on!” she offered, gesturing for me to stand up.

“No, no, you guys go!” I insisted. “I have to wait for my date, anyway!”

“Let's go!” Sophie said to her small friend as she dragged her to the dance floor.

I sat back and sighed. I took out my phone and looked on Twitter. There were already pictures of different vloggers together, fans conspiring against whatever ship, and many drunk tweets. I added to that last pile.

“I am tipsy and lonely lmao how are u guys??”

And I hit send. Then I slouched in my seat, resting my feet on the next chair over. When was Jack going to come and rescue me?

“Hey!” called a male voice that made me turn.

Ethan was coming over, and that made me sit right back up. Was he talking to me? I looked behind me to make sure no one was beckoning him over. When I turned back he was standing by the empty chair next to me.

“It's… Bella, right?” he guessed. When I nodded, he asked, “Can I sit with you?”

“Sure,” I replied. “What happened to your friends?”

“Ah, Mark and Amy are lost somewhere on the dance floor,” Ethan said, “and Tyler went to do shots with Jack, and I haven't seen either of them since.”

I chuckled. “You're not drinking?”

He shrugged. “I just turned twenty.”

Drunk Bella was coming through. I leaned in closer to him, as if we would be overheard despite the loud music. “Do you want me to buy you something? Because I totally will.”

He seemed amused by that. “No thanks. I'm good. I'll make Tyler do it later, since he ditched me.”

I nodded and sat back. This was a lot easier with alcohol in my system. “You just moved here, right? Where you from?”

“Maine,” Ethan replied. “I've been here for like, two or three days.”

“Aahh, an east coaster. You're gonna have a fun summer here when that happens.”

“Yeah, I heard. Are you from around here?”

“Palm Springs, it's in the middle of the desert, and like… three hours away from here,” I explained as I pulled out my flask again.

Ethan hummed. “At least you're closer to home. I miss my family.”

If I was sober I wouldn't have said anything at all. Hell, I wouldn't even be here to begin with. “You're lucky you have a family to miss.” And I took another swig of my tequila.

He looked at me, but I didn't return the gaze. I could see his look of pity from my peripherals. I wasn't that bothered by it at the moment.

“Anyway, I'm drunk, don't pay attention to me,” I added casually. “Tell me more about you, Ethan. Are you a student here or something? What kind of videos do you make? Or something?”

“Um… yeah, yeah I was taking classes online, then Mark asked if I wanted to move over here to make some videos with him. So I was able to transfer into actual classes. And uh, I make gaming videos.”

The mention of Mark sent a gross chill down my spine. He couldn't seem to go away, could he? Of course the cute guy with cute hair and cute glasses had to have a connection to my stupid ex.

“Nice, I love video games,” I said. “I just make beauty videos, nothing special.”

“Oh come on,” Ethan said, nudging my side, “I've seen that doll tutorial with Jack. It was badass!”

For the first time tonight, I genuinely smiled. “Thanks, you're sweet.”

We were quiet for a little bit, just gazing at the people dancing the night away. I felt calm, but that was only because I was drunk. Ethan spoke up again after a while.

“I gotta ask,” he prompted, “are you and Jack dating now?”

I nearly burst out laughing. However, I just patted his shoulder. “Nah dude, we're just friends and neither of us had dates. We settled for each other.”

“Oh, okay. Sorry if I was nosy or anything.”

“Don't worry about it. I can see why people would think we're a thing. We’re both going through breakups at the same time, we're here as each other's dates. Looks fishy, I know.”

Ethan nodded. “Yeah, Mark was wondering too. That was the first thing he asked Jack when he saw him.”

I scoffed. “I don't see why he should be concerned, considering he just dropped me for another girl, but whatever I guess!”

“Are you serious?” Ethan sat up, sounding shocked. “He dumped you for Amy?”

“Yup. Just came over like, ‘Hey, I found someone new! Buh-bye!’ Like, thanks! And then he had the nerve to come and talk to me like nothing’s wrong!”

Ethan sat there in stunned silence. “That really sucks. Maybe he felt guilty or something.”

“He should, I'm fucking great.” I paused. “Actually, that's a lie. But you're cute, and it would be fucking rad if you liked me, but whatever.”

He blushed and then opened his mouth to say something, but we were graciously interrupted by our dates. Tyler came and plopped down next to Ethan, and Jack came on my other side with some bottles of water.

“How you kids doin’?” asked Tyler in a much slurred voice than when I first spoke to him.

“Good. Me and Bella are best buddies now,” Ethan replied.

“Correction,” Jack said, handing each of us a water bottle, “you and drunk Bella are best buddies.”

“Yeah, sober Bella is quiet, nervous, and boring,” I added.

“I'm sure I'd like sober Bella too,” Ethan reassured.

I placed my hand dramatically over my heart. “Ayy, mi corazon! What a sweetie…”

“Drink your water, Baller,” Jack told me, nudging my bottle.

“Good idea,” I said, downing half of it.

Just as I put it down, a specific song began blaring through the speakers. I gasped, my mouth dropping open, and I looked at Jack excitedly. “Is this ‘Hair?’”

“Yeah!” he replied enthusiastically. “You wanna go dance?”

I nodded, completely forgetting about Ethan and Tyler sat beside us, and I followed Jack onto the dance floor. I almost didn’t notice Mark and Amy coming out of the crowd, then I wouldn’t have remembered that Mark hated this song. Then I wouldn’t have realized how much I could relate to this song now.

“‘Cause he was just a dick, and I knew it Got me going mad sittin’ in this chair, like I don’t care Gotta get him out my hair!”

If I wasn’t wearing heels, I would have been jumping all over the dance floor. Everything felt so much easier when I had alcohol in my system. But I hated that that’s what I had to resort to so I could be somewhat of a normal person. Sure, I felt free and fun for the moment, but the next day I was going to absolutely loathe myself and I wouldn’t be able to look anyone in the eyes. This was basically why I never went out. I would have to drink or pop a pill, and then I’d wind up regretting it the following day.

_______

next chapter

[queenofthewaste]

Hi it's 3am (by the time I finished this it was in fact closer to 5am) and I'm so tired and I don't care anymore and this is literally my blog so if I can't be emo here then where? (A diary, I suppose, but shutup)

To preface this, mutuals, whatevs you've seen me go through fandom after fandom and then become a pseudo aesthetic blog so you can handle me angsting a bit. IRLs on the other hand, if you read this I would appreciate you not ever acknowledging this in anyway shape of form bc like. Emotional vulnerability bad (ง'̀-'́)ง

Up until a few months ago I was in a relationship with someone who I cared about very deeply. The relationship itself was not perfect but I was pretty happy, and best I can tell, so was she. Ultimately we broke up because of the fact that she felt she couldn't come out to her family. This wasn't fun for me or anything but its something I was aware of as a possible end so y'know. Whatever.

Unfortunately this break up wasn't even remotely clean. She continued to talk to me, not seeming to get my requests for space and eventually we went back to cuddling and other forms of emotional intimacy that are far oustide of my platonic wheelhouse. At this situation's worst she made some pretty specifically romantic moves towards me, which I would call almost actively callous. Eventually after a few months of going back and forth on whether or not we were talking we (I) actually were firm about it. This was on Halloween, and the following week or so was basically "great" insofar as I didn't have to think about her.

Unfortunately the next week it was my birthday and she turned up on my doorstep after my party upset I had invited some mutual friends, and I helped her with her emotional distress and then walked her home. Then I had no contact. For about a month.

A month later she messaged me on Twitter. Then a week later she turned up somewhere she knew I was going to be (this is somewhat debatable but ultimately I still felt stalked and in a weird way kind of betrayed).

Then nothing until Christmas day when I received an anonymous "I miss you" on this tumblr. Not provable as her like who else misses me lol? (All the creepy men who I keep rejecting but I don't they have my tumblr). Then on NYE she messaged my housemate about me. Then a few days later she does the same.

Ultimately my feeling about all of this are;

I’m sad about the circumstance of the break up. It feels like a waste of something good, but I could probably deal with it better if either of us seemed even remotely happy since it.

I think it’s fucking heartbreaking that someone I cared so deeply for would so quickly become someone I desperately wanted to avoid, the extent to which I want to avoid her is actively depressing in and of itself 

She’s clearly not been doing okay since we broke up (or for a while before we broke up but she’s been more noticeably dysfunctional since we broke up) and it’s so frustrating to watch her feel alienated from her friends (and to an extent have actually alienated her friends) and to engage in self destructive behaviours etc, and have no room, or even right to do anything. 

As an addition to the previous point, I am usually cold to a fault, so I hate how I have been unable to switch off here. I hate that I still care about her the way I do when everything she has done in the past four months has had an active detrimental affect on me.

This is probably the least “valid” feeling to have about the dissolution of the relationship, and I actively consider this to be deeply petty but here we are - I think it’s unfair that she is telling my housemate that she misses me. I think its unfair that she was the one to do romantic things during the messy period post break up. I think it’s unfair that she made a choice and now seems to want to have the sympathy of the person who was “left” or “dumped” or whatever. Fuck you that’s not fair. I haven’t made my feelings about this known. I didn’t message her fucking housemate to tell him I miss her. Of course I fucking miss her but I’m also not a fucking douchebag.

I also feel betrayed by how willing she was to hurt me and mess me around post-break up. She told her friends things she had promised she wouldn’t and generally handled things shittily. Honestly I just want to know why? I didn’t do anything fucking wrong. We didn’t break up even due to shitty behaviour what the fuck did I do to deserve all of this 

I still want to talk to her. I sort of feel like there’s nothing left to say anymore, but I do 

Running concurrently to this is the fact that last year I was voted in to be the president of the Comic Book Society (club) at my university. At the time I was pleased and looked forward to it. One of the people who would be running it with me was a guy I was good friends with. Then he (probably) sexually assaulted me, and (definitely) became super creepy about his feelings for me. I low key told him to fuck off and didn't speak to him for the summer. During which time he got therapy and seemed to improve, and because I didn't want to have to do paperwork I figured I would let him stick around. Of course then he continued to be creepy so I had to tell him to fuck off properly.

The break up I had just gone through, and the fact I had to fire 1/3 of my exec did not make running the society easy, but ultimately neither of those things were the actual problem. 

The problem instead was that my members just. Wouldn't talk. No matter what. I did everything I could. I know I'm often somewhat intimidating but I also know I'm reasonably funny and decent at conversation in general. But over three months these people remained mute and it was infuriating. They wanted a weekly lecture about comics and I'm just not doing that. So I've allowed the society to fold.

Ultimately about this I guess I feel

Sort of betrayed by the guy who was into me, obviously I suppose I shouldn’t have forgiven him after the (possible) sexual abuse, but I was tired and thought maybe it would be fine. But ultimately he was a guy who claimed to care about me/ know me well, and everything he did belied the opposite which is such a fundamental kind of gross that it’s sort of upsetting.

About my society failing? I take on the responsibility personally, even though every piece of evidence suggests there wasn’t much I could really have done to increase turnout, bar become more general interest (Like talk about the movies more) which ultimately defeats the point of the fucking society so. No. Basically, lol, I feel like a total failure for failing to run a society that was clearly doomed to failure from the beginning

ALSO I’m twenty one. Due to issues with my mental and physical health during my A levels I had to spend an additional year in college. I then failed to get the grades I wanted to go the uni I really wanted to go to. As a result of this I came to uni and was a bit “behind” where I wanted to be in life. Then, naturally, of course, I managed to fail a module of my course, meaning I had to resit the whole year. Making me a Twenty One year old First Year. I haven’t told any of my friends about this, meaning I’m consistently lying a bit about what I’m doing. (I did tell my now ex, and am sort of paranoid she may have told someone but whatever) Oh also one of my housemates is resitting his first year, which arguably makes my extended deception worse, because it’s not helped with his self perception. Oh also multiples of my friends are getting engaged now 

I guess the way I feel about this mess of shit is 

Failurex1000

I feel extremely “behind” some idea of where I feel I should be in my life, which is ridiculous because I’ve never had a clear picture of where I want to be and when, so there’s no plan to be behind on 

Failure Failure Failure

I feel somewhat guilty about not informing said housemate bc he’s insecure about resitting, and also insecure about me being arbitrarily “better” than him, but also I have a crippling fear of being seen as weak or stupid and he’s not my fucking responsibility.

Again, the friends all getting engaged thing makes me feel weirdly lagging so. yay

ALSO I live with three boys currently. I say “boys” because despite their status as legal adults, the juvenile term is really more appropriate. One of whom has had a crush on me for a relatively extended period of time now. He claims to be over me, but his behaviours consistently belie that he is not. Another is just generally a bit immature, and screeches down his headset playing shit video games in the middle of the night (this is in fact why I am currently up and writing this) The third is technically fine but he contributes to the general mess and skid marks on the toilet with the seat always fucking up and the hair all over the fucking bathroom dear fucking god 

Summing up this one too;

I have already decided to live alone next year, and have made the arrangements to do so, Though this means I will basically be broke re: disposable money

If I ever see another fucking toilet seat up I’m going to scream

I nearly stabbed my housemate today for waking me up. And now five hours later nearly I have been unable to get any sleep. 

Alot of my complaints about my housemates highlight two specific things for me 

My upbringing required me to be more independent from a younger age. I’m grateful for the relative competence this has provided me earlier on, but also I think I’m becoming resentful, or jealous, of these people who got to be children until even now? I cannot imagine being 19 and behaving the way these boys do (or twenty one and behaving the way my ex does) and I can’t help but wonder about the kind of coddling they must have had relative to my life.

I need my own space. I have had little control of my life and living arrangements for quite some time now (even having spent three months or so technically homeless last summer) and this is potentially my only opportunity to get that so

Finally, Alot of how I’ve reacted to stuff the past few months has made me feel concerned about my mental health? Several years ago I went to a psychologist for an extended period of time (I was forced to lol) and toward the end of the time I was seeing her she mentioned cluster B personality disorders to me. Obviously being a sixteen year old who thought she was fine this made me balk, I started lying to seem neurotypical or whatever the word is now, and then eventually managed to get out of having to go, but now I think there was probably some stock in what she was talking about and am now going to try and pursue this, so I get to dally with the NHS’ adult mental health services.

Summing up

I don’t actually want a diagnosis and on some level think I’m fine but also line up with the DSM of two of the cluster B’s relatively well and am clearly not doing well so my belief that I’m fine is unhelpful

In the end, it is clearly my pride that’s gong to lead to my death. 

Thanks for reading, anonymous internet person or person I know irl stalking my blog/ignoring my request for this to be ignored if you know me irl :I

[sweet-hypocrisy]

I Need to Use This More

Going back and rereading some of these posts have been interesting. 

2018 was a bit of an eye opener for me. I learned that hell, I do actually have BPD. Ironic, considering I wrote a post bitching about how my mother tried to label me as such to absolve any responsibility for her shit ability to be an emotionally nurturing parenting. Kicker: I have BPD because of my parents. However, they’re not going to fix me. I need to let go of my anger toward them. My resentment. They’re never going to accept responsibility. My mom will make comments at times. Like when I went over there and broke down in a moment of weakness and went to her freaking out when I found the diagnosis. She told me she knows she’s not the greatest mother and she wasn’t very friendly and warm. She blamed her own childhood. Which from the bits and pieces I’ve gathered over 30 years, I don’t disagree. But it’s always felt more of an opportunity for me to comfort her for her parenting. I wonder if I do the same thing.

I’ve been struggling to cope with the fact that I more than likely have a personality disorder. Mainly, the stigma attached to it. There are times where I go on places like the BPD subreddit, hear how awful Lina is with her BPD, and think that’s not me. No, it is. I have just learned to internalize more and have gotten consequences for not doing so.

I seek validation too often, and I often feel like I manipulate or guilt trip to get that. I feel like an emotional abuser. I cling too hard. People don’t know it, but I make everyone responsible for my mood. Or I blame people for my mood. I’m responsible for that. Nobody else. I can’t control my unstable emotions. My emotions change at the drop of a hat. Yesterday I woke up feeling refreshed, motivated, ready. I organized the house. Took Fiona on a 3 mile walk. Felt accomplished. Then the toilet started leaking all over, into the basement. And I spiralled. So far this morning I have cried twice over minor inconveniences and I just feel so alone and angry. So far for that this morning I have blamed my best friend and husband. Why? Because the composter I was promised would be built is still not (we’ve been busy, had house guests for a week, and I can also build it my fucking self), and is now missing parts and it feels like the responsibility to return and fix my own Christmas gift is on me. Which, I guess it should be. He just bought it. Why does he have to do everything for it? My best friend is texting me to vent about her roommate/best friend she likely has replaced me with, mentioned wanting to plan a surprise party for him. I already feel replaced, and I’m feeling the huge pangs of loss, jealousy. Because she hasn’t done that for me ever (granted, I don’t think I’ve done it for her, either). I do now remember her getting a “surprise” dinner together with Dan when I left Petsmart. She does send me occasional surprise gifts and cards. I need to remember that. My original statement wasn’t fair to make. Again, with assuming the worst of people.  I guess my feelings are coming from feeling distanced from her. Literally, and figuratively. She moved just far enough away to deter the will to drive to and from each other as much as we used to. She started a new job (which she loves, which makes me happy) where she works nights and weekends, which directly conflicts with mine. So that’s two strikes against us. Yet, I spent 12 days off texting her every day over Christmas break and only managed to spend an hour with her. I feel like I make the effort far more than she does. I’m not sure if she does that with everyone, or if it’s just me. I always ask to hang out. I often text her first. Part of me worries she is depressed. She promises me she’s fine. I asked her if there was something wrong with us. She promises we’re fine. Yet, why don’t I believe her? Is it because there is something there, of is it my fucking fear of abandonment? We also have way different...lifestyles, I guess. Well, kind of. As much as she stays in bed and goes to bed at 9pm as I do, she also goes clubbing and bar hopping until 4am. That shit is so far in my past, with the exception of maybe a few nights a year. I’m sure for the most part, all of her other friends would find me incredibly grandma-like and lame. Which is probably fair, lol.

Anyway, back to this toilet situation that somehow ruins my life. My fucked up thought process: blame my husband..sort of. More his job, which he chooses to be employed at. He was supposed to be home Friday. So..somehow the toilet leaking Saturday night is his fault. Like he deliberately made it leak for me to deal with. Of course not. But I tried to find help. Nobody around willing to help. To be fair, he did video chat me and we found the solution, just don’t have the parts to do it. Reality: I’m frustrated with the fact that these things tend to happen when I am alone and I hate feeling out of control by the fact that I do not have the knowledge and skills to fix it myself. So it comes out as anger. It comes out as anger when I feel upset by the fact that I don’t feel like I can depend on people to come help me. Dan’s dad is up North (not that I’m angry at him about it). Jason said he’d come over today, and while he doesn’t often flake in situations like this, he does flake on other things just enough for the seed of doubt to be planted. At the same time I feel guilty he was asked, because I feel like this family treats him as the bitch and errand boy and I feel bad. I literally never ask my parents to help me with a Goddamn thing, and I’m not sure what to expect when they said they’d be over at “some point” to help me. Dan being gone automatically made everything his fault. He is my scapegoat. It’s not fair, and I feel like a terrible wife. When I realize I’m doing this, all I want to do is throw myself off of a bridge. He tried helping me from where he was. Why isn’t that good enough? Like..the only acceptable thing would have been to drop everything, hop on a plane, and come home in 5 minutes and just fix it. That’s not realistic. It’s not even reasonable. He called his dad. He called Jason. He video chatted me. He showed me what to do. Why wasn’t that enough at the time? I remember telling him how it wasn’t fair because there is NEVER a time where he physically was stuck doing something and I wasn’t there to support him. Maybe I’m still resentful because of the miscarriage. Driving myself to the emergency room. Sitting in a room by myself as they delivered the news that I was no longer pregnant when I didn’t even know I was to begin with. When they told me, alone, that our child was estimated 6-8 weeks based on hormone levels and tissue they found remaining in ultrasound. The horrible procedure of removing what was left. Coming home and being stuck wearing diaper pads while I bled. I know it was hard on him. I know he wanted to be there. But he wasn’t. I need to let it go. It’s just made me more afraid to be here alone. What next huge thing is he going to have to miss? He is always here for me. He’s a phone call away. A text away. But he can’t always answer his phone. I just..want him to stay the fuck home. I don’t care if we are stuck in this house for the rest of our lives and he takes a huge pay cut. I can’t take it anymore. I think it’s the one thing that’s going to break us, if there is one. That or my psychotic being will become too much for him. Surprise it hasn’t yet. Maybe it is. Maybe I’ll be the very last to know. I don’t know. 

I get so resentful and frustrated when he’s gone. Naturally I have to take on more of the burden when he’s home. All of the cleaning, cooking, appointments, caring for the pets, any minor inconvenience is on me. And I make it all his fault. Like he personally fucking enjoys staying in a shitty hotel room away from home while his wife does everything. He tells me he wouldn’t care if I literally did nothing and he came home to a sink full of dishes. Maybe I do it all because I know I’d be fucking irritated if I came home from a 2 week business trip to a total fucking mess waiting for me (and truthfully feel like I would come home to. Not sure if it’s accounting for my husband’s lack of urgency or attention to detail or me being an asshole and assuming the worst). I do it for him so he can come home and feel like he can relax without an immediate to-do list waiting for him. Yet I do it because I like to provide for him, while at the same time resent him for having to do everything. What the fuck, Nicole. I think some of this is not liking to be by myself. It’s not even just the fact that I’m alone, physically. Being alone gets me stuck in my own head. And if you hate yourself, why would you want to be with yourself, 24 hours a day? It’s always the weekends that get bad for me when he’s gone. Mainly, it’s because as I near my 30′s and people get busy, I can’t get anybody to fucking hang out with me. I’m on my own. During the week I have 10 hours of work to distract me, and then I enjoy coming home for a few hours and then going to bed. Weekends are 48 hours of solitude. And I almost feel guilty for like..having fun and doing stuff without him. Which is 100% on me. I don’t need to do that. But he often will tell me to do wait to do things (like around the house), etc. for when he gets home. And then weeks and weeks pass. Sidevent, I’m so tired of being the motivator and scheduler for these things. Like...our bathroom is still not done. I keep mentioning what needs to get done (aka him to do) and it doesn’t get done. Our front door still isn’t fucking installed and we bought in September. His fucking job gets in the way of everything. It sucks all of his time, energy, and motivation. But they keep throwing money at him so it’s fine. It’s not. He tells me all of the time he’s just content to sit at home doing nothing during our free time because of his long hours and travel. I don’t have either and never get to leave this fucking town, so all I want to do is do so. I want to see the world. People. Dive into other cultures and learn. I feel like he wants anything but. It makes me feel trapped. Tethered. Leashed. Maybe I need to learn to just go and do these on my own. But again, I do so much by myself and alone already...why do I need to add another thing? I do so much alone. Grocery shopping, cleaning, hanging out, visiting our friends. Now I have to travel alone?

So much of my life I thought a lot of my thought processes were an account of my upbringing. Which, I guess it still is. Or was me being humble, modest. I have always assumed the worst of people (in ways such as people promising to do something for me and I will immediately and plan accordingly and assume they will never fulfill that promise because I’m not important enough to keep a promise for or be cared about). I always make myself the point of blame and scapegoat myself in situations. Reality: it’s actually pretty fucking selfish. Not everything is about me. Someone can be upset by something entirely outside of me, dumbass. I am not the cause of everything horrible. I will always convince myself that people don’t like me. Don’t love me. Don’t care about me. Don’t want to be around me. It’s incredibly lonely. I don’t know how to make it stop.