#depression for ts

[whisperthatruns]

Having It Out with Melancholy

          If many remedies are prescribed           for an illness, you may be certain           that the illness has no cure.            A. P. CHEKHOV            The Cherry Orchard 1     FROM THE NURSERY When I was born, you waited behind a pile of linen in the nursery, and when we were alone, you lay down on top of me, pressing the bile of desolation into every pore. And from that day on everything under the sun and moon made me sad — even the yellow wooden beads that slid and spun along a spindle on my crib. You taught me to exist without gratitude. You ruined my manners toward God: “We’re here simply to wait for death; the pleasures of earth are overrated.” I only appeared to belong to my mother, to live among blocks and cotton undershirts with snaps; among red tin lunch boxes and report cards in ugly brown slipcases. I was already yours — the anti-urge, the mutilator of souls. 2     BOTTLES Elavil, Ludiomil, Doxepin, Norpramin, Prozac, Lithium, Xanax, Wellbutrin, Parnate, Nardil, Zoloft. The coated ones smell sweet or have no smell; the powdery ones smell like the chemistry lab at school that made me hold my breath. 3     SUGGESTION FROM A FRIEND You wouldn’t be so depressed if you really believed in God. 4     OFTEN Often I go to bed as soon after dinner as seems adult (I mean I try to wait for dark) in order to push away from the massive pain in sleep’s frail wicker coracle. 5     ONCE THERE WAS LIGHT Once, in my early thirties, I saw that I was a speck of light in the great river of light that undulates through time. I was floating with the whole human family. We were all colors—those who are living now, those who have died, those who are not yet born. For a few moments I floated, completely calm, and I no longer hated having to exist. Like a crow who smells hot blood you came flying to pull me out of the glowing stream. “I’ll hold you up. I never let my dear ones drown!” After that, I wept for days. 6     IN AND OUT The dog searches until he finds me upstairs, lies down with a clatter of elbows, puts his head on my foot. Sometimes the sound of his breathing saves my life — in and out, in and out; a pause, a long sigh…. 7     PARDON A piece of burned meat wears my clothes, speaks in my voice, dispatches obligations haltingly, or not at all. It is tired of trying to be stouthearted, tired beyond measure. We move on to the monoamine oxidase inhibitors. Day and night I feel as if I had drunk six cups of coffee, but the pain stops abruptly. With the wonder and bitterness of someone pardoned for a crime she did not commit I come back to marriage and friends, to pink fringed hollyhocks; come back to my desk, books, and chair. 8     CREDO Pharmaceutical wonders are at work but I believe only in this moment of well-being. Unholy ghost, you are certain to come again. Coarse, mean, you’ll put your feet on the coffee table, lean back, and turn me into someone who can’t take the trouble to speak; someone who can’t sleep, or who does nothing but sleep; can’t read, or call for an appointment for help. There is nothing I can do against your coming. When I awake, I am still with thee. 9     WOOD THRUSH High on Nardil and June light I wake at four, waiting greedily for the first note of the wood thrush. Easeful air presses through the screen with the wild, complex song of the bird, and I am overcome by ordinary contentment. What hurt me so terribly all my life until this moment? How I love the small, swiftly beating heart of the bird singing in the great maples; its bright, unequivocal eye.

Jane Kenyon, Constance (Graywolf Press, 1993)

[bejeweltay]

The Tortured Poets Department: Taylor Swift, 2024

Denial, Bargaining, Anger, Depression, Acceptance.

[angelbitezzz]

More skeleton shenanigans (full doodle page under the cut)

[alay-alexander]

No creo que Twenty One Pilots sea consciente de a cuantas personas han salvado con su música.

Yo soy una de ellas.

[dontblamethewitches]

because it's all over now // all out to sea

[bowletta]

happy valentine's day phandrow nation 💘

[chloe-or-sam-or-sophia-or-marcus]

I'm miserable and no one even knows!!! Try and come for my job. © @chloe-sam-or-sophia-or-marcus

[onlybecauseimhappy]

i dream of her soft voice, "im so sorry i wasnt here, baby. let me hold you for a while"

[delimeful]

failed bounties and fresh bonds (3)

G/T July Day 14: Instrument

warnings: dehumanization, mild blood, threats, captivity, child endangerment, lmk if i missed any

-

Roman was in the midst of perusing the brightly-colored wares at a market stall when he overheard the quiet conversation.

He hadn’t actually planned to stay in town for so long, but the innkeeper had mentioned the weekly market and he’d found himself wondering if maybe there were any toys or other entertaining items being sold there.

He’d be a poor excuse for an uncle if he didn’t even bring back any gifts for his treasured nephew, after all!

(And maybe if he picked the perfect one, he’d make some actual progress on getting in Virgil’s good graces. Or at least having the kid be even a little less terrified of him!)

It was at least worth looking, he decided, even if such a detour was a bit of a distraction from his journey. He would be in and out, easy as that.

Except one stall had pointed out another, which had led to another and so on, and before he knew it, half the morning had gone by. And he still hadn’t picked out a gift!

Before he could commit one way or the other, hurried whispering from the nearby corner caught his ear. He was a knight, which meant all his senses were keenly trained to pick up trouble. And mutterings about a monster? That most certainly sounded like trouble.

“Pardon me,” he started, cutting into the hushed argument with a dazzling smile. “As a knight of the realm, I’d be happy to help you out with your little monster problem! No bounty hunters necessary.”

“It’s not a little problem,” one of the townsfolk grumbled, while the other eyed Roman speculatively.

“You’ll get rid of it without charging us?” she asked bluntly, earning a glare from her companion.

Roman nodded, used to the question. “Such is the responsibility of a knight of these lands.”

“It’s not something we need to get rid of!” the first stranger interrupted with a scowl. “It’s powerful, it could be devastating on a battlefield. Your king should be buying it from us.”

“Oh, shut it,” the woman snapped. “You can’t get that beast to do anything but growl and hide away, and I want it out of here before the town becomes its next casualty!”

The man wheeled around to face her, his face purpling, but before they could start bickering again, Roman stepped forward.

“Why don’t you take me to where the monster is, first?” he said, patting the hilt of his sword reassuringly. “I won’t be able to decide anything without seeing it.”

The pair subsided with matching grumbles, and before long, they were walking down a small, overgrown path outside of the town, one that slowly curved into the rockier forest area that surrounded it.

It was interesting that he couldn’t find a trace of fear on either of his guides, even as they grew closer to where the alleged beast was. Wariness and irritation, sure, but none of the true terror that so often came with seeing one of the monsters of this land.

Roman didn’t think it was an ambush or trap, either. Perhaps they’d simply caught a particularly large wolfdog and gotten overexcited?

“Here we are,” the man said, his vexed expression fading away in favor of excitement, like a child showing off a new toy.

They’d reached the wide mouth of a cave, one that was squat and shallow, but still deep enough to house something large. There was nothing in sight.

“Are we supposed to venture inside…?” Roman hazarded, not too keen on the idea. His dislike of dark spaces aside, cramped quarters were the worst place for his favored style of combat.

The woman snorted. “Not unless you want to be bitten in half. Just wake it up already.”

The latter sentence was directed at the man, who scowled darkly at her before pulling an engraved bit of metal from his pocket. From a single glance at the intricate symbols and embedded stones, Roman assumed it was an enchanted magical instrument of some kind.

The woman shot him an assessing glance, as though to see if he had any negative response to the item, but he only met her gaze evenly, unperturbed.

His brother had wrangled the magic of his curse into its own kind of witchcraft at ten years old. Roman would be a hypocrite to believe that all forms of enchantment were designed to harm.

He had something of a bad feeling in his gut, though, and it only worsened as he watched the man press a thumb down against the sharp edge of the tool, pricking his finger to activate the device with his blood.

There was a pause as the man waited expectantly, and then frowned, before tightening his grip on the tool and yanking it through the air, as though pulling at an invisible cord.

With a muffled cry, something huge tumbled out of the cave into the light. Roman took a step back, feeling the color drain from his face.

That was not a wolfdog.

His attention caught on the identifying details first— the horns, the scales, the horizontal pupils, the wings— and he knew that this was a dragon, shifted into a more humanoid form (if admittedly one that was still dragon-sized).

In the next moment, Roman’s eyes settled onto the face beneath the mythical features, and his heart dropped like a stone. That was a child’s face, round-cheeked and crumpled up in distress.

Sure, it was a child big enough to grind his bones to a paste in one swat, but that didn’t change the fact that he was seeing a kid in tears. A kid that happened to be awfully similar to his recently acquired nephew.

They were alike in more ways than one, he realized as his gaze dropped down to the thick metal cuffs that were wrapped around all four of the child’s limbs. They had no chains binding them together— or rather, no visible chains. The engravings visible on the metal were telling enough as to just what that enchanted instrument was connected to.

“Where did you get that tool?” he asked, dizzy with the shock of such a scene.

The man preened, mistaking Roman’s alarm for interest. “Impressive, isn’t it? Some idiot sold it to me for cheap.”

The only ones skilled enough to get cuffs like these on a dragon shifter were mercenaries, who were known for being demanding barterers. More likely than not, that ‘idiot’ had been pawning off a stolen good, hoping to pass on the consequences of crossing a mercenary guild to an unlucky buyer.

Roman remembered the faded scars on Virgil, and felt a boiling hot fury bubbling up in him. He took a step forward, expression dark, and the kid flinched away and huddled down. The motion was enough to send a shock of horror down his spine, dousing the worst of his impulsive anger.

Right. Get the kid out safe first, deal with scumbags later.

“This is certainly a dangerous creature,” he lied through grit teeth, and then held out a hand. “You were right to take me up on my services. I can take it from here.”

The man recoiled, holding the tool tighter. “I know something valuable when I see it, and clearly, so do you. It would be stupid of me to part with it without getting something for my time.”

Roman turned to look at the child again, trying to repress the hot anger bubbling in his chest. The kid wasn’t even watching them discuss their fate, eyes scrunched up tightly and hands twitching like they would have covered their ears, too, if their wrists weren’t still locked in place.

He had left to avoid inflicting more distress on a traumatized child, and yet here he stood, doing exactly that yet again. Roman grimaced, and then asked himself a question that almost never led him anywhere good: What would Remus do?

Turning slowly, he met the man’s eyes, set a hand on the pommel of his sword, and grinned.

“It would be stupider,” he said, slow and menacing, “to demand anything from me when I’m the one fixing your little problem in the first place.”

The man lost some of his confidence, wavering.

“If you’d prefer to lose a hand along with it, by all means keep hanging on,” Roman added, almost conversationally. “I’m sure even the bite of my blade would feel like tender mercy compared to the wrath that will fall upon you if the mercenaries that caught this beast find out you’re the one who stole that key.”

“Give it to him,” the woman snapped, expression hard and hunted.

Knowing what terror she’d sat by and abided, Roman couldn’t find it in himself to feel bad.

“Fine!” the man spat, throwing the tool at his feet. “Take it and go!”

The woman, keener on the uptake, grabbed him by the crook of his arm the moment the key hit the dirt, and yanked him back down the path from where they’d come.

Roman obviously wasn’t actually going to use the tool to make the kid attack them, for a very large range of reasons, but he wasn’t going to correct the misconception if it got them away from him and the kid quicker.

He leaned down to scoop the key up, grimacing at the glint of blood still visible on it, and then turned to look at the kid.

They quickly shuttered the eye they’d been peeking out of back closed, immediately curling in tighter and bracing themself.

“Dear child,” Roman said, sorrow heavy in his heart. “Can you look at me for a moment?”

There was a pause, the kid twitching in surprise, and then a slow reappearance of those big blue eyes.

“Hello there,” he greeted, keeping his voice soft. “I don’t know you, but I have a nephew that you remind me very much of. I’m sorry for speaking so harshly before, but I’d like to help you, if you’ll let me.”

“Help me?” the kid echoed in a large whisper, and then winced as though waiting for a strike to land.

“Yes,” Roman replied, once he was confident that he’d ironed the last traces of the fury he felt out of his voice. “Do you know how I could remove these cuffs from you?”

The kid’s eyes went impossibly wider. “Really?” they whispered.

Roman nodded firmly. “Really, truly.”

Their bottom lip wobbled, and Roman felt a sense of despair at what was turning out to be a month that proved him extremely inept with children, only for them to blink back the tears and keep speaking in that hushed voice.

“I don’t know how to remove ‘em, but I— I know if you get all the blood off, I can move my hands around normal again," they offered, watching him with an unsettling intensity, eyes lit with the tentative hope of a starved dog.

Roman pulled his canteen from his hip immediately, untwisting the lid with his teeth and promptly dumping the contents over the metal’s surface. The worst of the blood was washed away, and he dragged out a part of his undershirt to wipe off the remaining stain.

He couldn't deny a bit of apprehension, but rather than try and attack him or otherwise lash out, the kid only pulled their hands to their chest and curled over them protectively, the mingled stress and relief so visible on their face that Roman felt his own chest ache in sympathy.

“May I know your name, dear child?” he asked, pushing away his automatic nervousness as they shifted to sit up to their full height.

“Oh!” the child gasped, seemingly shocked that they’d only just recalled their manners despite the situation. “M’name is Patton, nice to meet you!”

“Well, Patton Nicetomeetyou,” Roman responded in jest, relief sweeping over him when the kid smiled, “You may call me Roman.”

He swept into a dramatic bow, adding the silliest flourishes in his repertoire, and Patton laughed, a soft, watery chuckle. The longer they spoke without being punished, the more they uncurled, slowly, like a flower blooming.

“If I may?” Roman asked, reaching a hand out.

He thought for a moment that the child would refuse— Virgil certainly refused any and all direct contact with him— but Patton only hesitated for a moment before slowly reaching out, hovering their considerably larger hand in front of him.

“For you,” he vowed, and set the instrument on Patton’s fingertips. “Until we find a way to get those accursed cuffs off, you should be the only one to possess that device.”

Patton’s fingers drew back the moment they recognized the tool, inhaling sharply as they curled their fist around it. They sniffled slightly, but they were smiling again, as though they couldn’t help the surprised delight, so Roman didn’t feel entirely useless.

“My brother, Remus, knows much more about magecraft than I do. I would be honored if you would accompany me to his home. He may be strange,” Roman paused, and then emphasized, “very, very strange, but he’ll do what he can to help.”

Patton was nodding almost before he’d finished speaking, eyes still red-rimmed. “I can’t go home until I know nobody can make me hurt anyone,” they said firmly. “I wanna meet your weird brother, please.”

Now there was a sentence he almost never heard. With any luck, Remus would know what to do, or even Virgil, though Roman would be loath to ask anything that reminded his nephew of whatever horrors lurked in his past.

“Then meet him you shall! I’ll retrieve my horse from town, and we can be off!” Roman replied heartily, his own spirits lifted by Patton’s determination.

He wouldn’t have time to pick up a gift for Virgil, but that was alright. Roman got the feeling that his current endeavor was something his nephew would have valued more, anyhow.

[emiko-fan-2podcasterin]

May I present the Batboys as Taylor songs in my humble opinion:

You’re on your own kid - Dick

The lucky one - Dick

I can do it with a broken heart - Dick

Who’s afraid of little old me - Jason

Peter - Jason

Anti-Hero - Jason

Mastermind - Tim

My Tears Ricochet - Tim

The Archer - Tim

Cardigan - Damian

Marjorie - Damian

The black dog - Damian

Bonus: Robin - for all of them

[tommysm0ondust]

SOFIA THE FIRST NATION, SPECIFICALLY CEDRIC FANS PLS

this is. from the OFFICIAL. Disney Junior TikTok page

I love this so much

THE SONG NAMES AND EVERYTHING

the tormented sorcerers department 💔

who hurt him?

[lavenderstain]

taylor swift making the tortured poets department

[paradife-loft]

(much less immediately-devastating consequences, but while I'm talking about assholes and policy implementation. can I just be real goddamn cranky for a second about how for some ?? fucking?? reason?? Oregon actually rejected state-level ranked choice voting yesterday - and despite the insufferable whining around here that ~oh it's too hard it's too confusing, we have to deal with it now in pdx and we're seeing how awful it is, wah wah I have to actually engage my brain, you better bet we're going to be vetoing that for state races !!!~ --- pdx was literally one of the three and a half counties to actually break in favor of statewide rcv? when everyone else turned it down? so sure, tell me more about how people won't like it if they have to deal with it bc it's just too hard.)

(ngl this really nothing to do with anything else and relatively speaking it's small potatoes to be unhappy about right now, but. ugh.)

[lunar-years]

this narrative going around that she broke up with Joe because he was "too depressed" is sooo reductive and actively gross when it's used to paint her as this person who's dismissive of a partner's mental health struggles. particularly when the entire album is dripping with the crushing reality and weight of her own mental health struggles and turmoil! and confessing to her own mental collapse as a major propeller of the breakup! i don't typically like to comment much on her personal relationships and infer what occurred in them, but to me it has been made pretty explicitly clear by Taylor herself that they were engaged in a catastrophically unhealthy cycle of depression olympics in which both partners were deeply struggling and pulling each other down further and further into that hole, basically daring the other to sink them lower. that's what she's mad about (and he'd allowed to be mad, too, btw). she completely did understand what he was going through because she was going through it too, albeit in a different shade. and i think that's part of what made it so damn hard for her to leave. but you can understand someone's depression and care about their struggles without having to dismiss when they've hurt you because of it. Their mental health issues became a method of mutual manipulation until they eventually imploded. two graves one gun. she's allowed to be upset about that.

[formlessvoidbeast]

good to know that the impeccable self-control that is the failsafe against my craptaculous brain is still going strong

I'm almost 40 godsdamned years old and I'm an old hand at this shitty rodeo

I would regret it later, when the brain chemicals have rebalanced, if I destroyed my digital presence and vanished into the ether

I'm HERE dammit. I exist. I will keep existing like a fucking cockroach just you watch