#he's a 17 year old mentally ill kid he's not going to think so formally what is WRONG with you | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

gloriamoncada · 6 years ago

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Life with Schizoaffective Disorder and Other Mental Illness Diagnoses

I remember being a kid and laying on a blanket in the backyard on a nice fall day, sitting down indian style taking deep breaths and enjoying the colors of light dancing through my eyelids as I closed my eyes and felt so at peace and attuned with nature. I felt like a child of God and would stare into the green grass looking at insects and everything tiny I could see. Seems like spiritual meditation came instinctively to me and I kept this up on and off till my early 20s. I enjoyed being a kid and my older brother was my main playmate since my older sister only liked being inside. These were pretty good times except for when I was around 4 years old when I fell down a flight of stairs, got knocked out, and started to have chronic nosebleeds after.

My boat didn’t get severely rocked until I was about 7.5 when I witnessed a violent murder at Schwegmann’s Supermarket in the frozen food section back in 1981. I went by myself to go look for some Donald Duck orange juice in the open face freezer bins. A man was attacking an employee who I later found out was an x girlfriend…I saw them and thought they were play fighting at first, looked around me and everyone watching looked frozen. He then reached for his gun that was packed in the back of his pants and shot her twice at close range in the neck...it sounded muffled, not like regular gun shots. Then everything seemed to go into slow motion. The dark red blood poured onto the light aqua walls of the freezer as the lady slowly slumped down to the ground with her eyes open.

Screaming began…the man turned around and looked at me…the next thing I remember was a large African American lady grabbing me by the shoulders and telling me frantically with tears in her eyes, “Baby, you shouldn’t be seeing this!“ I was whisked away in the running crowds looking for a way out of the supermarket. I was pushed into a cold meat locker, got pulled out, then got out through the back warehouse where there was a way out to the parking lot. I saw my mother, who was 7 months pregnant with my younger brother at the time, frantically crying saying my father had been shot. My older brother was standing with her. I told her I saw what happened and that a black lady had been shot. We were outside worried for my father and older sister who were still inside the supermarket. The remainder of the people inside were made to lay on the ground…my sister was worried the man was going to rob our father so she grabbed my father’s wallet and put it in her underwear. After an hour stand off, the police were able to arrest the shooter and we were reunited with my father and sister. The affects of what I saw didn’t hit me immediately…my sister and brother insisted I use seeing the event as justification for our father to take us to see the comedy Caveman with Ringo Starr that evening. The movie did provide us with great comic relief for the tumultuous morning we had.

A short time later, I watched a documentary about Richard Speck on HBO and after watching it, I began having a huge amount of paranoia, sleepwalking, and later the revolving cluster of migraines that lasted for days began to happen. The headaches were so bad, my parent’s were afraid I had a brain tumor. I was checked out and the doctor said I was suffering from stress…my mother’s response was, "How can an 8 year old have stress?” There was no diagnosis for PTSD back then…headaches, bad dreams, sleepwalking, paranoia plagued me for years and from 8 to 15 I was prescribed so many medicines for my headaches since each med would stop working after a certain amount of time. Many of the medicines would make me sleep so I got hooked to sleep being my escape for when I experienced pain. When we switched providers from East Jefferson Hospital to Ochsner, that’s when my new doctor diagnosed me with depression and would not prescribe me any more medicine. She advised me to talk to a Social Worker. Back then, I thought a Social Worker was a person who could take me away from my parents, so I didn’t talk to one.

I told myself…“Well, if I’m depressed, I have to find ways to make myself happy.” That’s when alcohol, drugs, and going out with friends took over my high school life. I’m not going to lie...I had the time of my life having a blast from 1987-1991. I got into New Orleans’ local hardcore, punk, metal, rock, techno, and goth music scene dancing and parting till the sun came up on the weekends years before I made 18. I owe thanks to my older sister who gave me one of the greatest gifts...she gave me her I.D. after she got her official drivers license. That became my golden ticket. New Orleans can be a drunk Disneyland if you want it to be and I got to experience that at a young age. My stomping grounds weren’t Bourbon Street...they were lower Decatur and Frenchmen Street. I thought local music like jazz, 2nd line brass bands, Louis Armstrong and such were for tourists because I heard it all the time growing up so I rejected it during my teen years. I didn’t really get into New Orleans music until I lived in Mississippi and got homesick when my Mississippian classmates would play it. I finally started to really appreciate it.

Things seemed to be mostly ok until I entered my first major relationship in 1993 at 20 when I came home from the summer after 2 years at Mississippi State University. I met a young man at my job, Pizza Roma, and wound up getting involved with someone much more experienced than me who pretty much became my first everything. Me being as naive as I was rushed into sex too fast because he was pressuring it. I got attached very quickly and transferred to the University of New Orleans so I could stay with him. A few months later I got herpes from him. When I got the news from my older male OBGYN, my doctor scolded me. I got very very upset after my visit. I told my friend boy what happened and he said he already knew he had herpes since his x gave it to him but he didn’t bother to tell me. He said he wished his was there to hold me. He would play with my head by telling me that he thought I was the one but couldn’t commit to me because he was afraid. His reason for being afraid was because he said he had been cheated on by the x that gave him herpes but ironically was still good friends her describing her as perfect and she would come into town to visit him occasionally giving him presents. He would flip the script and also say things like, “you’re mine” or “I think I love you” which was all a lie. I wanted to break up with him so bad but since he was my first, I kept returning to him because I felt so attached and I didn’t want to pass herpes to other people which I know now was stupid. I knew in my head that this was a bad scene so I broke up with him on New Years 1994. I should of hurried back to MSU but I didn’t. We still worked together and with having herpes I felt like I didn’t want to pass it to anyone else.

I was still attached to my him, would still see him at work, school, or socially out somewhere...I just couldn’t move on, didn’t sleep with anyone else, and after several months of missing him, I decided to go back to him. When I reunited with him in May 1994, he told me he would stay with me until someone better came along. I felt like I loved him and didn’t want anyone else but what he was saying was wrecking my self esteem. I felt like we communicated the most through sex and I didn’t know how to open up to be more verbally communicative about our actual relationship. We went to Pensacola with friends for a day. We went off alone to a spot...he wanted to have sex. I said no because our friends were around and we have no towels...I don’t want sand up in my crotch. He said, “If you don’t, I’m going to find someone else that will.” I tried to get away from him after that by taking a big trip to see my sister in Wyoming but I kept going back to him. Being that I was raised on Latin soap operas where virgin women thought they belonged to the first man they slept with plagued me…I felt like I had to stay with him even if I knew what he said or did to me was wrong. I started to befriend another male coworker where absolutely no sex was involved but I was really looking for a way out. The man that I really loved that said I wasn’t good enough for him then got jealous and said that I didn’t make him feel secure enough. What did he expect from me after knowingly passing me herpes and making feel insecure for a year? After that, we broke up for good. I still stupidly wanted him back and found ways to be around him for almost another two years.

I even met another man in 1995 who was a European classmate that was perfect for me because he was wonderful and wanted a formal commitment with me. I was still hung up on my x as I was afraid to move on so I rejected him because I couldn’t see him as more than a friend which in hindsight was a very stupid decision on my part. I was going through low self esteem at the time feeling like he was too good for me but I wasn’t good enough for him because I felt ruined. I could of had a new beginning with him but I made my unfortunate choice. He would have been a good partner because he was such an amazingly great person.

I believe I was beginning to experience symptoms of mental illness during this time because I started losing control my emotions and my behavior. Shortly after the absolute final hook up with the x in 1995, I hung out with him and his former roommates one night at a local bar named Mick’s. He left with one of the female housemates back to the apartment complex they lived at. His male roommate asked for a ride home and I obliged. When I parked outside the apartment complex to drop him off, I thought he was reaching over to hug me but instead lowered the seat and got on top of me. He began to grope me and kept saying, “Please, please, please give it to me.” I was like, “No, get off me...stop! Why are you doing this?” He wouldn’t listen. He lifted my dress and I struggled but his weight made me helpless as he had me pinned down. I tried to wriggle away, tried to sit up, tried to push him, but nothing worked so I started to give up the fight. He pulled down his pants and started to try but was so drunk he didn’t have an erection. He got embarrassed and got off me. I was so relieved. I wanted to go with him back into the apartment complex to tell my x what had just happened so instead of driving away I followed the attempted rapist back to their apartment. When I saw my X with the other roommates there I couldn’t immediately talk. My x went into his room closing the door. I knocked on his door because I wanted to tell him what had just happened but he wouldn’t open the door. I then lost my nerve to even say it outside of the door with the other roommates in the living room. I then sat down on the sofa in the same room as my attempted rapist, was quietly waiting for my x to maybe come out so I tried to act calm but I was really sad. After a few minutes I couldn’t stand being in the same room with his creepy roommate that thought was my friend anymore so I left.

I got back into the car and started pounding the steering wheel. I started to feel a black hole feeling in my chest where it felt like a sense of intense anger mixed sadness and doom, like my heart and soul were being sucked away and left me with a helpless sinking feeling. I felt betrayed by someone I thought was a mutual friend and did not expect him to do what he did in my car which I loved. My x didn’t want to talk to me. To my stupidity, I did not know I had the right to report his roommate to authorities for sexual assault because I thought it was reportable if there was penetration. I told one friend a few weeks later but she didn’t suggest reporting him but she was pissed at him for doing what he tried to. I also worked with the attempted rapist too so I still couldn’t get away from him. He would stare at me at work. He pulled me aside one day to confess to knowing what he did was wrong and thanked me for not telling the x. His apology did not help me whatsoever to “get over it.”

A few months later a different incident happened. An older man was staring at me at the checkout line of K&B then followed me out into the parking lot. He propositioned me to give him oral sex. He said he didn’t want any trouble, handed me his business card, and walked away. When I looked at the business card the name was familiar. It was my neighbor from across the street whose wife used to babysit me when I was 3-7 years old that she soon divorced after we moved away from the Broadmoor in 1980. I started to freak out. I cried driving away wondering why this was happening to me. What was I doing to invoke this shit from men that I had known. I failed to report this incident to the police and it took me years to tell anyone. I reunited with his x wife that used to raise me a few years ago and told her too. She even said I should have called the police to report him. I heard recently that he had died and feel like he is finally where he deserves to be.

I was still very upset with the x but didn’t realize what I really needed to do was get away from him. We still worked together. I would get jealous when he’d flaunt his new girlfriends in front of me, and felt bad from the attempted rape by his “good” friend. To help with this feeling, I was told XTC would help and it did the first time I started to feel this way in the summer of 1994...it helped lift that feeling but it didn’t last and then it progressed into other behaviors. Our breakup felt like a sudden death had occurred and I would wake up many times from sleep shivering and crying because I missed him holding me. I didn’t know what to do with myself. Some time later around Mardi Gras 1996, I ran into him at a bar named Molly’s and saw him with one of his new girlfriends, his x girlfriend that gave him herpes, and his roommate that tried to rape me all at the same time. I was already upset because earlier that day, I ran off the interstate into the service road and busted my passenger side tires and rims. Also, I was supposed to hang out with one of my best friends from high school that was in town that night but missed her calls because I was dealing with fixing the car then having to rush off to work to deliver pizza during Mardi Gras traffic so we never got in touch. I just wanted to be at one of my favorite bars because it was Mardi Gras and chill out because I had a rough day. I could not chill because they were there. I drank a shot of tequila and my mood went super south where I couldn’t bottle up my emotions that night. I made a confrontation and almost had enough nerve to bring up the herpes and rape issues but another coworker friend took me aside to the bathroom to do a bump of cocaine and the drug changed my mood where I was able to suppress my emotions and eventually walk out of the bar. The x moved away like I wanted him to because he mentioned that he wanted to live in FL after graduation, was getting into stagnation and trouble in NOLA, and him still being around wasn’t good for me. I couldn’t leave until he did. Overall, I was so angry because things turned out the way they did and had to carry that weight around for a while. I saw his roommates name on my caller id a few months later after the x moved away but I didn’t know if it was my x or his roommate that had called. I cried.

Major issues with anxiety started after I left the Italian Pie while I was working at Lakeside Camera in the summer of 1996. I started getting panic attacks at work. I kept thinking the chemicals were triggering something. I went to Charity Hospital ER and the hindi doctor told me I had something very difficult to treat because it was all in my head. I misunderstood her and went away thinking she meant I was making up symptoms as opposed to knowing I had an illness. I was prescribed Ambien. After 3 years of being in New Orleans, I returned to MSU in the fall of 1996 and focused on finishing my degree. When I returned to Metairie for the summer of 1997, I assisted in opening another Italian Pie in Metairie. A few other friends I had worked with were brought in to help open as well. I met a sweet charismatic 17 year old young man named Drew who was the heart of his Grace King football team. He was one of the delivery drivers. He was very good to talk to and loved going to the same local stand up comedy show I did which was “This is Brown” at Movie Pitchers. We would “play” with each other at work and have fun. I remember one day all the workers saw a big double rainbow outside at work. Most everyone went out to see it. He and I were the only ones still in the building. I started to run out to see the rainbow. He’d run after me, grabbed me, and would kid with me trying to keep me from going outside to see it saying, “you want to see that double rainbow huh?” We went outside at the same time and looked at the rainbows together as we joined everyone else. Drew was my silver lining at work. He brought me joy and all the other workers liked him. Then something happened. He told me he was going on a road trip to Indiana with his best friend who was interested in a University there. Something inside me started to worry and all I could thinking about was the story of James Dean. I asked him if he knew the story about James Dean. I couldn’t elaborate enough but I remember rubbing his shaved head and saying, “have a good trip!” When he went on his trip I felt this dark cloud feeling which made me feel powerless like something was wrong. It lasted a few days. When I went to work, one of my good friends who was my coworker took me aside and had tears in her eyes. I already felt like I knew. I said, “This is about Drew.” She nodded yes and told me Drew had died in a car accident outside of Lumberton, MS. I told her, “I could feel something bad was going to happen to him right before he left then felt worse over the weekend but now I feel terrible...oh God, oh no...not Drew!” We hugged each other as we cried. Drew’s friend had his own parents in the back seat and Drew was in the passengers seat. Everyone fell asleep in the car except the driver. Drew’s friend fell asleep at the wheel around dawn and swerved into the shoulder where there was a parked horse trailer. Drew’s friend was the only survivor with only a scratch on his forehead. Everyone else died on impact. I went to the memorial at St. Clement of Rome. I got into a hippie moment and asked everyone to hold hands. I don’t remember exactly what I said but it was something about how the people who were gone were still with us and how much I loved Drew even though I knew him in a short time. I couldn’t be at Drew’s actual funeral in Cleveland, TN but I found a very special place to talk to him and God on the day of his funeral while I was alone in a place of nature off of Highway 1 between L.A. and San Fran.

I began to have insomnia. A few months later, the good friend that told me about Drew’s passing was almost killed in a car accident when her car flipped over several times on the interstate. I was with her right before and saw her to her car knowing she was tired. She could have died if an emergency tracheotomy wasn’t performed on the scene. Around midnight in 12/26/1997, I was in a severe car accident in Atlanta. 3’s. I was returning from seeing The Titanic on Christmas night in Atlanta, GA. While we were returning to Newnan, I tried to fall asleep but my stomach started to hurt. When I made myself wake up and sit up, I saw a dark car with no lights parked in the middle of the interstate under an overpass. My cousin was about to drive right into it. I yelled, “Para, para!” I propped my right foot on the glove compartment and braced. We crashed. I could see the windshield crackle in front of me. A sharp pain began shooting in my right leg. I clenched my teeth so bad, I could taste blood.

It had been raining and I wiped the window to see a light getting brighter. We were still on the interstate and another car was coming. My cousin got out of the car. My body felt like a ton of bricks and I had trouble opening the door. My cousin open the door, grabbed me by the shoulder, and I hopped out on my left leg. Another car was about to hit us. I hopped backward and could hear all the debris being kicked by the passing car that swerved out of out way. The car we crashed into had a drunk driver in it that passed out on the interstate and his head was bleeding. I sat under the overpass and lit a cigarette. The car accident was very traumatic for me. I felt like something was after me. I developed a stutter, felt like I was on a hallucinogenic, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t read text, had a short fuse, and had to withdraw from MSU for the spring semester. Since I had a compound fracture on my right ankle I had to use crutches. I felt like the angriest person on crutches since it was my first time ever using them. I knew something was wrong with me upstairs so I bought clear glasses to wear to help me feel different.

During the Mardi Gras parade Endymion in 1998, I ran into my x on the street that was in town from FL and he was wearing a bad afro wig. He said “I drove a whole bunch of hours and you’re the first person I run into”. We sat on the sidewalk and he kept talking about himself for about 15 minutes. I got aggravated that he did not once ask how I was doing. I wasn’t looking for sympathy but being on crutches I would think a friend would have at least asked how I was doing. I got annoyed with him getting up quickly saying, “that’s been enough nostalgia for me” and crutched away into the crowds crying. It was always about him. I know maybe he didn’t want to bring up my crutches because maybe he wanted to keep the conversation positive but I was having short fuse moments back then and was very emotional. I never saw him again after that and finally got over him but it took years of dating before I started to have healthier relationships. I’m happy to say I’ve pretty much dated the rainbow, men who were of many different ethnicities. I went back to MSU for the Fall of 1998 and officially graduated in May 2001 with almost 210 credit hours since I was taking some masters courses in undergrad. In October of 2003, I got into another car accident and was later put into Charity Hospital where I was diagnosed with Schizoaffective Disorder. After hearing that diagnosis, I wanted to find out if there was something wrong with my brain so I made a request to see a Neurologist. She did a CAT and MRI and stated to me that I had frontal lobe atrophy.

In November of 2004, I had a bad bicycle accident where I hit my forehead and fractured my right hand that required surgery. I experienced another episode. I lost my boyfriend, my job, and my apartment due to that experience. In late July/early August 2005 while living and teaching in Thailand, I experienced another episode where I felt bad about their tsunami and felt like something bad was going to happen in New Orleans. I was hospitalized then shipped back to New Orleans on 8/8/2005, which was a few weeks before Hurricane Katrina. Days before Hurricane Katrina, my stomach would hurt really bad and kept telling everyone I knew “This one is going to be a really bad one”. The boyfriend that I lost in 2004 wanted me to evacuate with him on 8/27/2005 at the hotel he worked for but I told him this storm was going to be different than the last one and felt safer in Metairie. I seemed to keep it together during and after the storm as I went into Survivor Mode even working almost a year with Salvation Army’s Disaster Recovery Team. I lost the boyfriend that offered me to be with him during the storm for good after Hurricane Katrina when he evacuated to Dallas…I blocked my emotions for him as I knew the reason for his going to Dallas was for someone else that he denied being involved with. In 2009, I made the huge mistake of looking at facebook and saw pictures from their wedding seeing that he did indeed wind up marrying that person. All the blocked feelings came out like a volcano eruption and I had a nervous breakdown in April of 2009 which was due to having so much emotional and even financial instability for several years which triggered my mental illness. I wound up in the hospital again that fall of 2009. I was given the “shotgun method” and was prescribed depakote, seroquel, ambien, congentin, and a monthly injection of rispideral. My body would shake and I didn’t menstruate for two years until I got off depakote.

In February 2011, a good friend that I made back in 1989 passed away. I managed to stay calm. I felt morally obligated to try to be there for his family because he was there for me for a good solid two years after Hurricane Katrina. After being with bonus brother the first time, I guess my Schizoaffective order get activated. I had started to go to churches in the area that had relics of bone from St. Ann. I got a timex watch that I thought my father’s father who died in 1965. The watch was supposed to be a time machine that would help me when walked around the city and things would change. There was some kind of secret pirate story coming out and I was the daughter of a pirate. I got to go inside of Charity Hospital...I was reading Masonic symbols on buildings and communicating with my grandfather who was 33 degree Masonic that I had never met. There was a very special watch store on Common Street next to where I worked where there was a specific watch there that was very important. After I got off work in August of 2011, I was tailed by a young, testosterone fueled crooked St. Bernard police officer while I was trying to get to Angela St. in Arabi. He tailed me from Jackson Barracks and when I turned on Mehle he was on my ass. I pulled over and nothing happened. I didn’t understand what he was doing. When I started to pull away, cop lights turned on. He immediately came out of his car yelling at me. I recited my DL# and he made me exit the vehicle. He arrested me for no valid reason. I remember he pulled my right wrist so hard back behind me and my watch was taken away. He used excessive force by handcuffing my wrists very tight, body slamming face forward to the ground handcuffing my ankles, and he pulled me. I saw another officer 5 feet in front of me and I was crying asking, “Why am I being arrested?” The officer that had tackled me to the ground sprayed me with pepper spray and later lied all over the police report. My shoe had come off and I begged the officer to get it for me. I asked if my parents could pick up my car.

The officer was very nasty with me and wouldn’t let me get my phone numbers off my mobile phone since I didn’t have my family’s numbers memorized. I asked him his name he said “Norsworthy, it’ll be all over the police report!” I said to myself Norsworthy sounds like Not Worthy. He is not worthy!! My judge was Buckley and since my medicines were in a pill box instead a prescription bottles, I got a bunch of schedule Cs and 2 counts of assault on an officer. I was in jail for three days and my parents had to file a missing persons report because I was unable to reach them since I didn’t have their new numbers memorized. I got in touch with an old boss when I remembered her number in cell 3 and she got in touch with my folks. The three days I was in jail I was in 5 different cells and since I was reeling in physical pain and psychological pain from the violent without any medicine I really lost my mind and had many story visions in each sell. My wrists and ankles were swollen, my knees were scabbed, my chest and ribs ached, my whole body hurt, but I really almost thought my right wrist was broken because it was extemely swollen. They put me in stripes and I was put into general population the first night where I was made to sleep on the floor since it was my first night and wasn’t allowed to be on a bunk bed. I spoke to the other inmates. My second cell was shared with one other person. My right wrist was hurting so bad and had visions that my father’s father was with me with a nurse since he was a doctor. I had dove soap and washed my wrist in the toilet. I was told to keep my wrist in the cold toilet water to help with swelling. I wrapped my wrist and then I wrapped myself in a white sheet and rolled underneath the cell bench. I then had visions that was under a pew at church and an angel was writing messages to me in white writing. I had many visions. My third cell I entered a hell zone and two friends were with me in the cell. They were my friend that passed away and bonus brother. They were both sitting by each other but I could tell bonus brother didn’t care and didn’t want to be there. I took off my stripped prison outfit and wrapped myself in the white sheet. I could see many inmates entering the building and looking at me. I wiped the sides of the prison door with water to read messages scratched into the paint that had oxidized and this bright rust orange once the water was over it. My younger brother and Father Seelos came to visit me.

My brother’s whites of his eyes were almost red and he smiled as he looked possessed and Father Seelos was right beside him but behind him unable to speak. My fourth cell I was on my back staring into the light on the ceiling and I couldn’t stop singing. When I flipped over to see the concrete floor, I could see an animated image of Buddha under me smiling. My last cell was light blue cinder block and I was alone and naked. I remember seeing cartons of milk and trays of food out of the bars near the door so I must of been there a while. I kept punching the inside the toilet thinking of the sodomy request bonus brother asked me to perform. I had a huge concrete block as a bed. I wanted someone to save me. I blacked out. My memory skips to being dressed and walking barefoot on hot concrete that felt good holding my 3 year old nephew’s hand on that hot sunny day in August. A female officer looked at me very sad and said, “We should have brought you to the hospital.” After my release, I wound up in 4 hospitals for 3 months on and off. I wrote a huge complaint to St. Bernard Internal Affairs but had no response. Since I had worked at OPD and was trained that I could not judge the indigent and we would provide the best representation, I thought these principles were supposed to be upheld at all Public Defender Practices. I decided to put my trust into Joshua Gordon, the Public Defender in St. Bernard. When I told my attorney that I had Bipolar he said, “Doesn’t that make people rabid like a dog?” I was thrown back and said “No, it doesn’t. I want to plead not guilty.” I should of taken his response as a red flag and sought council elsewhere. My court date came, the two officers did not show up, and all I heard my attorney say is that I was pleading No Contest. It all happened very fast and I wasn’t aloud to speak. Right after I was like what the f#%k just happened??? He would not explain. He wouldn’t return my calls and when we finally spoke he basically said he did me a favor. I was like, “Really? Because I have to get an expungement now! OPD would have not done this!” After that incident, I was awarded SSDI because my mental illnesses were deemed a disability and had many months of recovery to get through the trauma of the arrest.

In October and November of 2013, I had another episode due to stress, insomnia, and it led to several events, with one I can’t fully address because it’s still very difficult but know I initiated. I was in poor frame of mind due to my illness. I must flashback to explain this story. In late spring 2011, I became attracted to the bonus brother of my friend that passed away. From me being around him while being there for the family, I started to get to know him and developed feelings for him. He had a long distance girlfriend I didn’t know about when the feelings started. I found out soon through another source but I didn’t care because my feelings were too strong and made an advance anyway. He broke up with her shortly after. A little while later we were intimate for the first time in July 2011. Things got weird at the end of that event because he closed his eyes like he went to another place and begged me to fist fuck him in the ass. I liked him so much but didn’t want to hurt him so I just punched the area gently without literally penetrating him. He seemed into it. I haven’t explained this before but he also was a veteran and had issues with PTSD, OCD, survivor of child/domestic abuse, and God knows what else...he fell asleep and in the morning he acted more distant to me but a few days later he hugged me very very tight I could feel his heart against mine. I felt bad for obliging his request and it left me with very distraught and torn feelings for him because I felt like I hurt him but after being with him, the attraction intensified. Shortly after, the traumatic arrest happened and by the time I was out of hospitals, he had a reunited with the long distance girlfriend having her move in with him in October 2011. When I heard about that, I felt my heart sink but it seemed justified and what I deserved for hitting on someone that was already taken.

In the summer of 2013, he became free again. We were never in a relationship and I don’t know why I even had the attraction because we were very different and there were things he wasn’t dealing with correctly still burdening him. He also enjoyed shooting cats in the back of the head with an air gun claiming it didn’t hurt them but I told him he needed to stop doing it. I was around him one chilly night in October 2013 drinking and having bipolar, a hyper-sexuality advance came out of me from nowhere. Everything turned into a traumatic rape-like scenario which became highly regrettable. It was the best and worst sex I had ever had if that makes any sense. I did have intense feelings for this person but because I was unwell things got weird on my end. I felt like when I made the advance, it came out of nowhere like I had actually switched into another personality. Shortly after some time the sex started to happen but it wasn’t the romantic sex that I was expecting. He was shaking right before it started and couldn’t control himself. All of the sudden I was turned around with knees hitting the ground and I had a flashback from actually being arrested two years earlier. While it was happening I felt another personality switch on that felt like I didn’t sign myself up for this. I felt like I was a young girl getting raped by Isis. As I laid on my back, I used my hands and feet to break off as I scooted away from him nodding no as I got away. He said, “Come back here”....so I did.

I remember nodding my head no while it continued and then blacked out until close till it ended. I got into it towards the end. He said words and I responded but I can’t share that. When it was over, I remember him saying something about wanting to go to Taco Bell. Me being as nutty as I was, when I heard the word Taco Bell I thought it was code for, “I must leave to go south of the border stat”...I immediately got up to leave and don’t remember the bike ride home or actually getting home...My memory jumped to waking up at a beautiful dawn sky safe home laying on my favorite beach chair in my backyard feeling a bit heavenly as an immense sense of peace and satisfaction rested over me. I saw him a few nights later and I was fine with him. I slept over at his bonus mother’s house and when I used the bathroom, that’s when I saw thong underwear and a baby’s sippy cup side by side on the bathroom sink which I will explain soon was a big trigger that already sent my manic state into a full blown episode. Months later after I found out I contracted HPV from that night in my following OBGYN visit. The OBGYN visit I had before the incident came out normal and hadn’t been with anyone but him before I had the follow up visit so I know I got the virus from him. Everything between us turned out awful and was a huge mistake. I do not blame him for anything because I think he was unwell mourning the loss of his father that he openly hated but knew he longed for a better relationship with him so I think he secretly still loved his dad. He had other issues as well. I did get upset with his lack of empathy. I had to get through the remorse for all the feelings I had for him that came out wrong. I never had a chance for my feelings to come out the way I wanted them to. I had to recognize we were never meant to be together even though our astrological compatibility report said otherwise but that was a bunch of malarkey. I should of believed this man from the get go when he told me we would only have a one way relationship and that there was always going to be someone else for him. He was basically telling me I was insignificant to him. He was telling me the truth and I had to learn the hard way. I had a stubborn and stupid heart along with my even more stupid hormones that got me into this mess.

Along with that, I was feeling stressed out over drama happening in the family of my friend that had passed away in 2011. His family was getting all twisted by the non-stop drama bullshit his youngest half-brother was pulling. I really started to miss my friend that passed and felt really bad for him finally understanding why things were rough for him for many years when he was alive. Seeing his family’s dynamic made see why his problems with alcohol and drugs lasted for over 20 years. Being around his family became intolerable as it turned into a sad reminder of why my friend suffered in silence using substances as a coping mechanism and hid most of his issues by keeping them to himself. When issues did arise, they were often passed off or overlooked by his mother since her major priorities laid elsewhere and because she blamed her son’s problems were because he hung out with the wrong people. Major personal problems were never addressed and he did not get long needed help since his issues were neglected. I say this because once he went on a bender and went missing for 3 days. She called me up to ask me to go to his house to check up on him because she was too busy. I could understand if she was out of town to ask me this but she wasn’t. That was her responsibility as a mother to check up on her own son. If the same situation happened with her youngest she would have been crawling up and down the streets looking for him because that’s “her baby.” There are few more incidents like this that I noticed how treatment with her eldest was different than her youngest.

My friend rode a bicycle for well over a decade when the youngest half-brother was given a brand new pickup truck. My friend wanted to go to Delgado to study to be an Elementary School teacher but that never happened but his 2 younger half-brothers did go to school after high school. He lived on his own in poverty as he struggled for many years afraid of getting legitimate employment. Felt like he got shafted because his mother’s 2nd husband that she had his half-brothers with may have not been as compassionate with him as he could have been because since my friend’s mother did not work, he did not assist him with any support to get a vehicle or to continue his education. His mother enjoyed the life of a pampered housewife dependent on her husband’s income. She had no interest in working well after the sons were grown therefore had no income of her very own to help her first born son. Maybe she did not demand equal treatment for her son to be treated like the other sons. Either way, my friend still got shafted. Yes, maybe it was my friend��s responsibility as an adult to buy his own vehicle and pay for his own education but as I stated, he struggled with jobs getting paid under the table and wasn’t well off by any means. If his half brothers got help, why didn’t he? Another misfortune is that his ties to his natural born father became severed so no support from that side at all. Not blaming his family entirely for his years of not getting ahead but don’t think they helped much either. He got ahead on his own towards the end of his life for a few years finally getting an official job on payroll with benefits and found a loving partner. I thought he was really turning things around before he parted but know he still carried around a few demons. I felt that I had failed him as a friend because there were things he was doing that were bad for him and I wanted to be accepting of him because he confided in me instead of confronting him. My friend had an incredible sense of humor that could lift me out of my doldrums frequently. We would have a lot of fun together going back and forth joking having many great times together. I noticed he would even deliver truths about his life through his joking. He used to say things about how he had a black cocaine mother at Club Gemini. He would tell me more serious stuff and I would be left speechless. Some of those things did bother me but all I could do was give the silent treatment for different spells of time for things he was doing. I witnessed him in bad shape once puking standing up holding himself by hugging a telephone pole saying it was from pills. I looked at horror at him but stupidly never confronted him. I feel like my friend was an expert at masking pain and suffered from addiction.

A confrontation ensued between his mother and I on 10/28/2013 because being around them wasn’t good for me anymore since I was taking their problems personally, and had my mental illness issues. I couldn’t stand all the gossip family members and friends of family were spilling out to me all about the same person. I was also reeling from happened between the bonus brother and me but kept it to myself. I couldn’t stand what was happening with the youngest baby brother and his “pregnant by someone else” girlfriend living with under the same roof as my deceased friend’s parents. She even got the youngest to sign off on papers to claim he was the father of the child so she could give up the little girl once she was born because the real father wouldn’t sign. One night after the family had a bonfire outside on 10/25/2013 and I slept over. The girlfriend left her thong underwear on the bathroom sink next to a baby sippy cup for all to see. The youngest was telling other people that his girlfriend was a prostitute. He was saying it, sister in law was saying it, bonus brother was saying it, family friend’s daughter was saying it...I knew this and when I woke up to use the bathroom and saw her disgusting thong underwear next to her innocent first born son’s sippy cup I snapped. I grabbed a bottle of disinfectant and spayed it on her underwear for ten seconds. I even took pictures of it and videotaped it. When everyone was awake I pulled over baby brother and asked “If this woman is your partner, why are you telling a teenager that is a depressed family friend that your girlfriend is a prostituta?” I said prostitute in Spanish because I thought he would understand but he looked dumbfounded even though he was raised by fluent Spanish TexMex parents. I said, “that word sounds almost the same in English!” He smiled at me and walked away. It was Saturday morning 10/26/2013 and I left and went on a crazy bike ride journey for over 24 hours.

When I returned to there house it was the evening of 10/27/2013. They were all outside on the deck having a bbq. I asked where bonus brother was and bonus Mom asked why and I said, “because today is his birthday ...is this bbq for him?” Bonus Mom said, “Today is his birthday?” Then baby brother’s girlfriend come out of the house and confronts me and says, “baby brother told me what you said and I now Spanish so I know what that word means. I know sister in law said it blah blah blah...”. I went off on her saying in a loud voice saying, “Donyou know where she heard it from and who else is saying it?!?” Bonus Mom interjected and said I needed to stop and go home to go to sleep. I got on my bicycle and said, “I’m getting out of Dysfunction Junction and taking all my good memories of my friend with me.” I got on my bicycle and wound up on Peggy Street,?Amanda Street, then David Drive, then W Napoleon but don’t remember after that when I made it home. I began causing upheaval because she lived in a state of denial and didn’t want to talk about stuff. I texted why I could no longer stand being around them and needed to sever ties. Of course I was spewing out other crazy absurdities over visions and feelings that I was having because I was having mania but she didn’t get that it was my illness coming out because she forgot that I had told her I had a mental illness years earlier plus she couldn’t handle getting all of my manic texts.

After over 2 years of trying to be there for them I had an episode and my fucked up actions got me rewarded with her attempt to get all of her family to sign a restraining order to get back at me because said she was going to have to hit below the belt because was doing it. Ultimately, her attempt at getting it signed got rejected by her family but the damage was done. Her intended action actually did me a favor. It got me to realize this person’s true nature and her immaturity at such an old age. Why waste time on people as petty as this that breeds, enables, accepts, protects, and influences poor character in other family members? Her behavior explained why she had so much internal drama within her own family and why certain family members were stuck in their ruts with a codependency bond with her. She leads by example and unfortunately the weak ones follow. It was time to move on, to focus on my own life, and do what was best for me.

I can’t fix other people, only myself. I can’t live in the past forever. My friend is gone. I can’t make people love me. I did my service and I’m not perfect. I even apologized via email after the fact trying to explain my actions and she called me a cockroach and a backstabber. I loved my friend and did all I could to honor him but I no longer owed his family a second of my time. I spent over two years hearing his family’s problems, doing favors such as giving rides to her youngest to and from work per his mother’s request since her precious baby boy that lost his truck shouldn’t ride his bicycle to work like the eldest did. I babysat many times as a favor for his mother and had to deal with literal shit with one child that was not properly potty trained thus shitting in his underwear. I did more than I had to and it was all for nothing except to please the so I could relieve my sense of obligation. It did not bring me closer to my friend. It only exposed me to drama I really didn’t need in my life from people who didn’t give a shit about me. My friend was not like them. He was my friend and they weren’t. I think there’s much more history with his family but I think I had seen enough and couldn’t stomach any more drama. His mother saw my willingness to be there for them as an opportunity and used it to her full advantage. When that ran out, I became the enemy.

My friend that passed away has been set free into the universe. I am no longer burdened with the angry, anxious, depressed, and possibly repressed guilt energy his mother would exude. I thought it was her mourning process but it remained that way for two years. I don’t have to hear about her personal problems with her husband where she would tell me how she couldn’t leave him because she had no where to go and how she solved her intimacy problems telling me what days of the week she had to reserve for him so they could F*%k. I also got free from hearing her bitching over her sons’ partners or x partners. I believe I am an empath and being around her made me feel really bad which I mistook as feeling pity but no more...that baggage she carries is her problem. Severing ties with her as the ringleader also meant I was free from having to see ��bad news” bonus son that also didn’t care about me again. I hit two birds with one stone...a win win. I know I may be coming off as a super bitch exposing them in my truths this way but it is my way of unloading because I’m still healing. This account is for me...not for them. I doubt they were ever look for me online and find this entry but if they do...oh well. Nothing I have written is a lie. If any of my speculations are incorrect, I am sorry. I purposely used no names in order protect them. The dates only help me chronologize.

I know no family is perfect. There are people in my own family that can act like assholes but they apologize later and let me know they care about me. There’s no point to cater to assholes that show no remorse over wrongs they do to me nor sincerely care about me. Not being close to his family does not mean I lost the closeness I felt to my friend in my heart. My friend always made it a point to tell me that he loved me by saying, “You know I love love you.” Love love isn’t a typo...that was his way of saying that he really meant it. I will always cherish that. I’ve apologized to God and to him for why my relationship with his family did not work out. I did my best but I’m damaged goods therefore imperfect. His memory is safe inside of me where I can celebrate him anytime happily alone.

In September and October 2014, I began clashing with my family and was upset over the LEEP procedure for HPV that was performed in 7/2014 that rehashed all of my anger over getting Herpes. I was very calm during the procedure because I had an all around awesome doctor but I felt very scared and alone because I didn’t tell anyone until after. I unleashed fury on bonus son to make sure he knew he passed it to me although he denied that he had the virus. I’m almost certain he probably got HPV from his last x girlfriend. I had seen a wart on his penis while he was asleep around April/May 2011. When we first had intercourse in 7/2011, I made sure to buy condoms right before. Our second time together happened so fast that no condoms were used. I acted out very badly on him and made him very angry as he was going through a difficult time himself. I started having auditory hallucinations at home as I remember laying on my bed and when I sat up and opened my mouth to breathe out. A sound came outside of me that I didn’t use my vocal chords to make. It was a vivid sound of a very little baby’s voice that travelled through the room and could feel it floating of to heaven. This terrified me because I felt like, “that was a baby’s voice. What just happened, what does this mean...what have I done?”

My parents started to notice I was having symptoms and sent EMS to extract me from my room. They had purple gloves and I talked my way out of it. I asked them how much time do you think I have before my parents get a Coroner’s order...the EMT said, “one hour.” Everyone left the house and I put on Phantogram’s Bill Murray very loud crying and singing, “Wave goodbye to your family and friends...” as I packed my backpack. I got on my bicycle and rode to work. When I got to my job on St. Ann which was my safe place, my boss told me that my mother had called him. What he said caused me to quit my job that day in Jackson Square and I started having very vivid visions right after that started by the Joan of Arc statue. They continued all day and all night. I slept in an empty outdoor restaurant. The next day I asked a coworker if I could sleep at her apartment in the quarter. I couldn’t sleep and kept having very vivid hallucinations where the bathroom changed colors and the glass I washed turned into a handblown glass with a deep engraving in script saying...”Beware of the Snake, save the Earth.” My coworker could see I was having erratic behavior in her living room and asked me to get in touch with my father to take me home. I couldn’t go home but I couldn’t stay there. I wound up at the Salvation Army Shelter on Claiborne for 7 days. When I went home to get a few things from my parents house I biked over Causeway onto Jefferson Highway to get back to the shelter. Cop cars cornered me before I hit the snake on Jefferson. I saw my parents with them in their car. My dad took my bicycle. I don’t remember what facility I wounded up at first. I just remember when I got to my 3rd stop on the Northshore and saw pine trees everywhere. It was more peaceful than the Community Care and Beacon but still felt like a prison. I met an older male patient and he talked about having mental illness ever since he was a child and all the years of medicine and hospitalizations. That was the facility where a very nice female psychiatrist decided I try a new medicine called latuda. I stabilized and was released.

A few months later I learned that bonus son told bonus mom that he was going to put a restraining order on me. Bonus Mom used Facebook to contact one of my best friends to tell me. He said I threatened his life along with his biological mother’s life. I know I was angry with him but don’t remember writing or saying anything like that. I checked all of my manic texts and don’t recall saying anything like that during our phone conversation. If I did, I wasn’t myself I didn’t mean it. Part of thought I got him scared and he made that up the threat to use my illness against me and get rid of me for good. It worked. I just got so angry that I got both STDs by 2 different green eyed redhead men that really didn’t care about me with incidents happening 20 years apart 1993-2013. (I know, TMI and my over analytical parallelism details are linked to my Personality Disorder diagnosis) Felt like lightening had struck twice. There was too much coincidence. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to get it right the second time around or if I was paying off some serious karmic debt not learning from the first time. I cared for both of those men deeply but still don’t understand why because they weren’t good for me. They never made me feel like I was enough. I know this will sound even more messed up, but I would have rather gotten pregnant and be a single parent than to have gotten those STDs…I always wanted to have a kid by someone I cared about to put all of my love into them to take care of my baby fever because I know little ones can bring so much joy and I wanted to be a parent. But that never happened…I had to put up with unwanted STDs. I keep telling myself things happen for a reason but I sometimes think God owes me an apology.

I’ve been episode free for almost 4 years. When I say almost, I mean that I’ve had mini 2-8 hour episodes by myself that happen in a controlled environment that are a result of a reaction to ingesting or inhaling marijuana which I’ve learned my brain can no longer handle due to my illness. I went through years of being in denial of my illness. Back when I was first diagnosed in the early 2000s, I spoke to someone with a similar illness and he told me that I couldn’t tell other people about it because they would definitely judge me and employers wouldn’t hire me. I know there will always be a stigma on people with mental illness. I have been called crazy and have used the word on myself but I know that I just have a condition that I have to manage for the rest of my life since there is no cure for what I have. Many people have a mental illness or disorder, major or minor …so many people go undiagnosed or are in denial so it’s more common than what is known. My last hospitalization in 2014 actually became a blessing because instead of being on 5 different medicines that didn’t seem to really work, I was put on a new one that has minimal side effects and seems to be working very well.

When September through November roll around each year I do get a little afraid that I will relapse because many of my episodes have occurred during that time and my senses seemed to get heightened. I do my best to stay away from stressful people or situations, to get a surplus of healthy amounts of sleep, and to lay low. I wouldn’t wish this illness on anyone. I have a mixture of a few mental illnesses from PTSD, Depression, Anxiety, Schizophrenia, Bipolar…my diagnosis is Schizoaffective Bipolar type with Personality Disorder. I try to read all I can on it, go to support groups, always take my medicine/supplements, have great medical professionals such as a psychiatrist and psychotherapist that I see regularly, have developed an awareness for energy healing through friends that are healers, and feel I’ve been making progress out of the abyss. I am sorry for all the friendships and relationships that were damaged or destroyed by my behavior. Some of my friendships are not the same with others because they don’t know what to think of my illness so it’s been strained.

My actions while I was unwell in the the past were the results of my symptoms. I made a lot of mistakes and understand how my maddening moments scared many away or caused them to react the way they did. If they decided to hurt me back that’s on them but I’m no stranger to the concept that people who are hurting will hurt others. I will not use my illness as an excuse to get out of making the mistakes I’ve made. I take full ownership for them but my illness did promote me to have poor judgement. I have definitely learned from my mistakes. The relationships that were strong enough have lasted but know that I must keep fighting to maintain the stability because those relationships can reach a fragile state as well if communication, mutual respect, peace and balance are not in place.

I’m just putting this out there because many people suffer alone in fear of sharing what they have gone through because they’re afraid to be judged, to look weak and defective when that’s not the case. I felt very ashamed to share my diagnoses for many years and really didn’t understand what I had or why it was happening to me. Mental illnesses are very misunderstood by the general public. Mental illnesses are even a bit misunderstood in the law and medical professions. Humans are filled with so many complex emotions and when bad stuff happens, it damages the psyche. Without the right outlet or help it manifests into physical symptoms. I feel like most of the times when I’m having an episode, I’m having a spiritual and emotional conflict and I’m supposed to learn from it. I’ve had visual and auditory hallucinations that are waking dreams…the auditory ones are much more intense. There have been times where I have felt possessed…yes, I know, that’s crazy. I don’t deny that but I can’t explain it either. There was a time I was stuck in the emergency room for many hours in Kenner and had many of my mother’s friends visited me but I couldn’t talk to any of them. I felt like my tongue was twisted and couldn’t make out words. I kept hearing a moaning voice that I thought was my mother’s father who had passed away years ago. His name was Isadoro and the words “Is a door” kept going through my head along with many visions. The sitter in the hospital put a white sheet over me from head to toe in the hospital to keep me calm. Same thing was done me once at Charity hospital ER...they put a white mesh bag over my head.

I’ve heard voices and faint music in mausoleums and graveyards. When the hallucinations last for days I feel like I’ve entered an altered reality that no one else can see and it has a story that I’m taking in to decipher. Visions can change quickly where things look normal but then when I look at it again some kind of symbol appears or something goes missing. I’ve seen shadows that look like people travelling on the walls…so many visions and racing thoughts. Extreme insomnia and stress can play tricks on the mind making one hallucinate. They can be terrifying. It’s also terrifying to have schizoaffective disorder and having sporadic hallucinations happen even when I’ve been sleeping well and not technically experiencing an episode.

During extreme episodes, I’ve seen visions of everything in front of me fragmentizing like the ending scene of Avengers Infinity War. It’s not just the characters pixelating away, the background breaks apart into blackness. I know these visuals are not real after the fact…I know my mania puts my brain into hyperdrive and since I can’t sleep, I believe my subconscious mind and imagination becomes my present consciousness for brief periods of time while I’m experiencing an episode. My sense of time and space gets altered in my mind. I will go through periods of insatiable thurst, feel like I’m freezing, feel like I’m burning, having all sorts of physical symptoms. I sometimes feel like I’m either being touched by aliens, angels, demons, trapped spirits, or loved ones that have passed making me reach out into another dimension. I get filled with extreme panic and anxiety thinking WW3 or the apocalypse is approaching. I will feel an overabundance of energy and feel like a super hero that has to go fight an enemy. I could bicycle ride 20 miles a day and hardly sleep for weeks because I’m so pumped with adrenaline and anxiety while having a crazy trainload of racing thoughts. I know it’s just my mind and my illnesses although there’s a part of me that thinks the hallucinations were partially real and I’m supposed to make changes or take away some sort of message from it.

I believe in Heaven and Hell. I believe in God and Jesus. I have a lot of spiritual faith but I know that alone won’t save me. I have to save myself using internal and external assistance. I believe in communication. My life hasn’t been perfect and I’m not where I dreamed it to be but I’m happy to be alive and know things could be worse. I feel things could have gone better for me in my life if I was only able to open up and communicate better but for some reason I was unable to. I’m proud I started seeking help at MSU’s psychiatry department when I was 18 but wish I could of starting seeing a therapist when I was 8. I have learned that it can sometimes take a while to find the right therapist to consistently see so there’s enough time to establish breakthroughs. I’ve had to learn from my mistakes and still make mistakes. I’m doing my best to stop comparing my life to others. I believe I can be happy with less but not there yet because I still need to liquidate many more possessions.

It’s good to feel like I’ve been getting better. I want to be stable but stability isn’t a given...I have to fight for it but feel I am more stable than I was before and getting back to my old self. I’m grateful for new friendships and old ones that I can count on. Trying my best to maintain a good and healthy bond with my family. They’ve been very patient, vigilant, and forgiving with me. A few other relatives on both sides have mental illness so they are very understanding. I’m very grateful for them. I just want to start believing in myself more to do things I want to do and move forward!!!!!!! I know how beautiful life can be so I must believe there is good out there and not let the bad prevail! I need to give my dreams an eternal chance (not give up). I know I am flawed and consider myself pretty fucked up, but really, no one is perfect and everyone deserves the right to be happy. I know that I’m not the only one with issues. I’ve been so perplexed by all that has happened all these years that I don’t want to hurt anyone. I know that some unfavorable factors are inevitable and that bad things will still happen. Life is a combination of rejection and acceptance, of failure and success, of tragedies and miracles. I have to be mindful of my moods, emotional/physical health, and reactions to what is happening around me. Here’s to giving things another shot...to being calm in the process. Most of all...hoping I’m more mature and much wiser these days!!! If you’ve actually read all this, I salute you as these are just cliff notes of events of my life dealing with my illness that I felt that if I didn’t get to a chance express out loud at least I was able to write about them. Ending with a beautiful phrase that my favorite cuban neighbor/guitar teacher/ friend that lives in heaven now would quote...”Las Palabras Se Las Lleva El Viento Pero Lo Escrito Quedara Por Siempre.”

May peace be with you.

#life #mental illness #stigma #recovery #schizoaffective #ptsd #depression #anxiety #coping #speak your truth

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dissirnulo-blog · 7 years ago

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Hello! I just stumbled on this blog by complete accident, and it's interesting to read your posts about akechi! I'm sorry if this actually comes of rude or ignorant or whatever, but i'm genuinely curious about life in orphanages in japan. Your akechi seems to be awfully not fond of it, and i guess the same with go with canon akechi actually. What are you thoughts?

OH MY GOSH? im really flattered that you found them interesting, and im more flattered that you actually want to hear my thoughts on such a delicate subject. youre not being rude or anything!!

i very well cant give proper opinions on a subject without laying down the facts first, though, and surprisingly, other than passing mentions and links to an article or two, no one really talked about just how awful the system is in japan, and in turn how it affected goro, so let me talk about the system while adding in my own commentary

WARNING: WERE GOING TO SPOILER TOWN HERE.

spoilers and very, very, very, VERY heavy text under the cut. im so sorry mobile users

these are all articles i have bookmarked lolol i suggest yall read them but tldrs aint that bad too

What’s it like to be raised in a Japanese orphanage?

many kids that wind up in orphanages were neglected by their parents or suffered some kind of abuse from their parents. its also not uncommon for parents to leave their kids there simply because theyre too overwhelmed by the job

but even then, some (read: a whole fucking lot) of these parents refuse to let their children be adopted bc of a social stigma involving it. they cant support/cant take care/dont give a fuck for their children but theyre too scared of the shame that comes from getting their kids adopted to let them live in a family that can care for and love them. think about that for a minute.

these kids are sometimes called throw away children by society. goro is a throw away child, you can say.

the kids tend to form a hierarchical society where the oldest or the biggest kid orders all the other kids around. refuse to listen to them, and you get beat up. abuse and bullying is rampant because of this

a child leaves their orphanage at around 15 to 18. once they leave, any kind of support from the government is cut off. gone. nada. youre on your goddamn own.

japan is a country thats held together by connections. you get a job if you have a good network to back up your credibility. basically, without any kind of networks, youre already ruined before you even got outside of that goddamn orphanage you live in

to add: its not uncommon to hear about orphans released from orphanages becoming homeless or unemployed, and without a support network, more often than not they also suffer from mental illnesses such as depression. or theyre also manipulated into committing murder. you know.

im gonna throw my assumption out here that goro most likely was released from whatever orphanage he was in when he was 15. not too long after, he had awaken to his persona, and thats when he approached shido. probably. if that were the case, then it would align with when the mental shutdown cases started: two years before the main game. goro died at 17 years old.

with these facts, we can assume that HE WAS LITERALLY A HOMELESS KID WHEN HE WENT TO SHIDO, AND HE WAS BARELY LEGAL WHEN HE DIED, YOU FUCKING MONKEYS

“When I was growing up in orphanages I sensed the staff was fulfilling their responsibilities but I didn’t feel protected or loved. When I had to leave the orphanage I was all alone. I had no one to turn to.” — Sayuri Watai, 27, founder of a support organization run by and for ‘graduates’ of childhood welfare facilities.

Japan: Children in Institutions Denied Family Life

basically, the foster care system and the alternative care system (aka orphanages) in japan are a fucking trainwreck, but thats the whole point of this post, so its not that surprising.

orphanages are just really fucking bad, theres not enough space, bad facilities, abuses from both staff and fellow children, that kind of shit

its also mentioned here how those who leave the orphanages have no support to help them ease back into society and again brings up the importance of having connections in japan

adoption is rare. by 2011, only 303 kids (out of like, roughly, 30,000) were formally adopted out of the alternative care system. more on Why later

childrens’ best interests are often set aside in favour of letting the parents or family, who put them there in the first place, decide what happens to the kid, which basically means if the parents/family of the kid doesnt want the kid to get adopted, then no, the kid wont be adopted.

basically, the system favours the stupid adults’ opinions over the kids’ wellbeing. as quoted from one of the careworkers mentioned in the article, “In Japan, the interest of the parents is seen as more important than the interests of the child.”

“The Convention on the Rights of the Child states that for the full development of a child’s personality, they ‘should grow up in a family environment, in an atmosphere of happiness, love and understanding.’”

hey so guess which persona 5 character never grew up in a family and ended up screwed up in the personality department and got so lost and confused with what he really wanted so he desperately clung to the flimsy fame he had and the idea of revenge and fake praises from a certain shido masayoshi? yeah i thought so

japan likes to cram all these kids into orphanages that, even though there are caretakers who do want to take very good care of these sad kids, there isnt enough staff to deal with them, and thats when what looks like neglect from the staffs part arises

the article lists testimonies from children and adults who are and were from these institutions. one of them, a one sentence testimony, stood out to me in particular: “I don’t have any dreams for the future.” it sounded so jaded and tired to me, and it makes me think of the last time we saw goro in the game. that really tired smile really hit it home for me. goro had goals, but what about dreams?

lets speak in hypotheticals: if goro managed to inflict his revenge on shido, and he won, what comes after? what will he do? he spoke in the ship about being heralded as the hero who took down shido, sure, but do yalls really think, after everything, he actually plans to get out of that goddamn mess alive? goro made it his life mission to ruin shido. nothing matters but that, not even himself. after all is said and done, it doesnt seem very plausible for goro to keep on wanting to live. theres nothing to live for, after that

Witness: Lack of Support in Japanese Orphanages

“Masashi cared about his appearance – he wore fashionable [ … ] clothes and had styled his hair – but a sense of isolation clung to him.” that sounds familiar but maybe thats just me

studies show that children younger than 3 who grow up in orphanages have the risk of delayed mental, emotional, and even physical development because of the lack of bonds with a proper adult or family. orphanages are also a really poor environment for older children, who most likely already experienced abuse in the hands of their families or severe trauma after losing their parents. either way, orphanages are just a really bad idea for children

the first two articles have mentioned this, and now this article mentions this again: kids who grow up in orphanages are often poorly equipped for the real world because of the lack of support after their release, and yeah yall know how they end up homeless and jobless bc of it

as continuation, sometimes, education for these kids are so poor that they get out of the system barely able to read or solve simple math problems.

children get subsidies now (bc back then they didnt wtf). its around 55,000 yen, or 550 usd. they cant even get a drivers license with it, which also happens to be really good extra points for when applying for a job. another opportunity lost for them

Adoption in Japan Part 1: Why are there so many kids in orphanages?

this article focuses more on why adoption is so rare in japan and also reinstates some things that have been mentioned earlier, namely, childrens’ well being getting set aside in favour of what shitty parents have to say

majority of kids in orphanages have living parents who retain legal custody but are not raising them. because of this, they are not allowed to be adopted, even if the parents dont come back for them

for some reason, japan is really insistent on giving the parents full control on their kids life even though they already abandoned them. this idea is so strictly followed that even a baby found in trash cans or some shit are usually ruled by court as not allowed to be adopted in case the biological parents come looking for them. i know. its full of bullshit.

with that and the stigma of a family letting their kid adopted, it makes me think that maybe its why goro ended up stuck in orphanages and never lasted in foster homes. because despite being a good kid (which i actually think he was), he was never adopted bc his mothers family refused to let him be adopted. its really messed up

apparently, people think orphanages are “the right place for nobody’s children to be raised.” add in the “throwaway children” nickname from one of the earlier articles, i get where goros coming from with his whole “unwanted, cursed child” mentality, and why hes so desperate for anyones attention. spend your entire childhood having the idea that youre a throwaway child, that youre a nobody’s child, that your mother killed herself because youre unwanted planted in your vulnerable mind, and then taste praise for the first time despite it coming from the one person you want to ruin the most, no wonder goro was intoxicated by it.

while there are orphanages with staffs that try their best, sexual and physical abuse are still prevalent, mostly in private orphanages. though they are supposedly monitored by the government, those sent to inspect these private orphanages have little to no training for the job. most of the time, the inspector only comes for tea, then they fucking leave, and the abuses and badly maintained facilities continue to prevail

the article brings up again how children are badly prepared for the real world and are doomed to a life of hardship when they leave. it never stops

in japan, only middle school is compulsory, but most jobs require that you should be at least a high school graduate. only 10% (or lower) of kids from orphanages get to attend high school, because 1) getting into high school is like a super big deal and hard, maybe like getting into college, and normally, middle schoolers attend cram schools to prepare for their entrance tests, 2) these orphans cannot afford cram schools, 3) the government refuses to fund cram schools for these kids bc its also acknowledging that their public education fucking sucks and cant afford to get anyone into a high school

imagine goro burning his fucking eyebrows to be able to get into high school. although, truthfully, i wouldnt be surprised if shido had something to do with goro being able to get into high school, if we still go along with “goro approached shido at 15″ thing. but i stand with the whole “goro is actually smart and intelligent despite being a wack detective” thing bc lets be real, that shit he pulled in saes palace is fucking nuts. you cant deny the kids a genius in his own right

Adoption in Japan Part 2: Attitudes to Adoption

adult adoptions, the kind thats done by adults (duh) for convenience or inheritance etc etc, is a frequent thing in japan, but child adoption, the kind that we all are more familiar with, is apparently kind of a wack concept in japan. its entirely new to them. in fact they only legalised that shit in 1989

koseki likes to make everything complicated. its so fucking hard to describe, but its like a family tree of sorts, except when you (the mother) have a kid out of wedlock, youre not allowed to register your kid to your family tree for some fucking reason; you have to start your own family tree with just you and your kid. if you give up your kid for adoption and they got adopted, their name doesnt get removed from your family tree for some fucking reason, but the fact that they were adopted is noted in your family tree. and this starts the discrimination and stigma that comes from getting your kid adopted, and it makes parents who leave their child to orphanages unwilling to get their kids adopted. its also the source of stigma surrounding single mothers and children born out of wedlock. (hey guys guess whos both a kid born out of wedlock AND an orphan?????) NOTE: this is how i understand the concept of koseki so far, and i may not be 100% right bc that shit confuses the fuck out of me. idk. japan why

so yall know how obsessed goro is with being perfect—perfect grades, perfect public image, perfect everything? as it turns out, theres this stupid idea in japan thats widely accepted that “everything from your taste in food to the language you speak is biologically pre-determined” now that makes a shit ton of sense, considering the kind of person shido is. that fucking asshole. holy fuck.

Japan’s Forgotten Children

it says here that about 4,000 children were formally adopted out of the system, as opposed to an earlier article that says 303. i dont know which one is true.

this entire paragraph:

“Last month, a Chukyo Television director who was documenting this problem, asked a high government official why Japan had such a system, as opposed to promoting adoption and foster care like other developed nations. The man, whom I respect for his honesty, basically said that after the war there were many children without parents. At that time, many orphanages were built. So, that became Japan’s system to this day. Let me translate that for you…There are many jobs involved in this system. Plus, we don’t like change.”

orphanages run by the government receive funding based on how much kids they have, so more kids = more money, and that basically is also one of the reasons why no ones making an effort to get these kids out of the system. the kids are their means of getting free fucking money.

the government isnt trying to remedy this problem bc it doesnt want change, at least according to this guy named yamanta tokuji. hes an ex-child welfare worker who wants change, to put it simply.

he also says that living in orphanages for years damages a childs well being and behaviour. some who end up in family environments can develop reactive attachment disorder in which they regress to behaving like a baby.

the government wont tackle the issue “because it doesn’t want to know the truth and thus be forced to change.” yamantas opinion again

look, before anything else, i dont condone what goros done. shits fucked up, kids killed a whole lotta ppl, and he didnt fucking hesitate to pull the damn trigger on akira, but since this is fiction, context is important. if youre one of those people who simply dismissed goros character and went “eh. hes fucking evil with daddy issues” im just….. :(, bc you fucking missed the entire point of his character. its important to note hes the only teenage antagonist in a game where the adults are the Bad Guys™. i dont remember where i read this, but i (sorta) quote: hes a warning of what couldve happened to the phantom thieves, without morgana, without the support system that they had, without the positive influences that made them decide to do what they did. even yusuke acknowledges this, once they come back from shidos palace after Hell™ happened (i would have put a link to a photo, but where the fuck do i even find a pic of it).

i think that people seem to misunderstand goros character simply because of really fucking bad writing atlus COME THE FUCK ON they forget that theyre playing a game based on japan, where culture and society are very different from theirs, and in turn they dont understand the context behind goros backstory and how japans society views orphans and illegitimate children can really fuck with a kid, and okay, just because youre either of the two doesnt mean youll resort to murder, but 1) this is a modern fantasy game, where cats can become buses and fake gods can force a lonely kid who happens to be a wild card into the depths of hell, come on, 2) goro wasnt even the one who came up with the murders, it was shido. he fucking bragged about it in his boss fight you fucking monkeys!!!! i forgot to mention this, but shido also threatens goro if he ever so much expresses doubt

its also because of bad writing. its mostly because of bad writing. god. goro deserves better than this

goro was a vulnerable kid with powers, and that made him a perfect puppet for shido. imagine if he had known about changing hearts sooner, because no one ever told him about it. imagine if he was able to bring his wild card ability to its full potential, and dont even get me started with the fact that he was a wild card user. this post about wild cards and goro really makes you think, but that isnt the point of this post, so

anyway its 2 am im tired Good Night Have A Swell Night Sir

#goro akechi #akechi goro #persona 5 #p5 #spoilers #This Is Really Long I Cried #uughhh i wrote this instead of replies i hope youre happy anon!!#rtrp ooc #( 2/2. )#( ooc. )#( asks. )#anonymous

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gamejumps · 7 years ago

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this has been collecting dust in my drafts for awhile now SO

here’s ~65 headcanons about turbo~ that no one asked for

Body and Appearance

1. Describe the character’s height and build. Are they heavyset, thin, short, rangy?

turbo stands at a whopping 5′0. incredibly tall, i know. as far as canonical height equivalents go, i’ve always imagined him to be around felix’s height, if not an inch or two shorter than him. he’s definitely taller than the sugar rush kids by a long shot, but he’s a munchkin otherwise. turbo’s build is ... something i’ve never been able to tackle with one word. he’s short, with short legs and short arms, which aren’t exactly thin but they’re definitely on the softer side. he has a gut for sure. i’d most likely classify him as a little chubby, with his weight mainly focusing in his stomach area and his waist.

2. How old are they?

plug-in years are arguable, but he is programmed to be physically 18 years old. he has the attitude and mindset of a more haughty 18 year old--and while he treasures his youth, that doesn’t stop him from doing adult things.

3. Describe their posture. Do they carry themselves well or do they slouch?

most of the time, turbo carries himself with a disgusting amount of pride. it oozes off of him in little ways: his back is straight, as if making a point that he wasn’t insecure just because he was on the shorter side. his strides can be long, and he doesn’t usually crumble under pressure. his shoulders are pushed back to prove, somehow, that he wouldn’t take any bullshit--but they’re not tight enough that he’s trying too hard. on the flipside, when he’s relaxed or particularly grouchy, he’s subject to slouch as he crosses his arms over his chest, turning into a hunched ball of brattiness.

4. How is their health? Are they fit or out of shape? Any illnesses or conditions? Any physical disabilities?

turbo’s health is okay. he’s not totally out of shape, but you won’t catch the guy running a marathon. he has some lazy habits but to be a race car driver you have to have to have some kind of endurance. he has a slight speech impediment which causes his lisp, but he’s gotten good at hiding it and ‘correcting’ himself.

5. How do they move? Are they clumsy, graceful, tense, fluid?

pretty fluid. he’s far from graceful, but every little movement is usually painted with practiced, arrogant ease. his movements are often quick and occasionally a smidge twitchy, but only because he’s prone to impatience.

6. How attractive is this character physically? How do they perceive themselves in the mirror?

i mean .... we’re judging a video game character who’s very cartoony, so i don’t think attractiveness is very .. applicable. i would say he’s pretty gross and creepy looking, though: his big eyes with tiny-ass pupils, huge, yellow-tinted teeth, ridiculous dark circles and grey skin don’t do him any favors. he’s definitely not exactly hot: but he sure likes to tell himself he’s the most good-looking thing around. he certainly has the confidence to pull it off, though. somehow.

7. Describe their complexion. Dark, light, clear, scarred?

turbo’s skin is on the light grey side (around this shade), getting more dark/purple around his eyes due to his heavy bags. small nicks and scars coat the palms of his hands mostly, but they’re just scrapes from messing with his car. no biggie.

8. Describe their hair: color, texture, style.

his hair is black, straight and boring: his hairline is high, whereas his hair isn’t exactly thinning, it’s still a bit fine while also having a touch of thickness to it. his haircut isn’t anything noteworthy, cropped short and with a messy fringe. i’m bad at describing hair, so here, have this and this.

9. What color are their eyes?

a bright, glowing yellow. technically his pupils are black, but y’know.

10. Does the character have any other noteworthy features?

just a few! for instance, due to his status as a speed demon, his ears are pointed--i’d like to say it was a pixelation error where the designer added one more pixel to his ear, and instead of getting rid of it, they just kept it because it looked cool. his tongue is an odd, mint/green color, and his eyes glow in the dark.

11. What are their chief tension centers?

his shoulders and his jaw. tension tends to flood straight to his shoulders and it’s pretty evident in his posture, and occasionally it hits him in the jaw, shown by when he clenches is teeth/jaw a lot.

12. What is the character’s wardrobe like? Casual, dressy, utilitarian? Bright colors, pastels, neutrals? Is it varied, or do they have six of the same suit?

turbo’s wardrobe is very casual. more often than not, he wears his iconic red and white jumpsuit. red is his favorite color, so it shows up in whatever he wears most of the time. i imagine he has a track suit like this that he opts out for every now and again just because it looks cool. otherwise his wardrobe is very plain: black and white tee-shirts, dark-wash jeans, a lot of converse, but he usually sticks to his red, a pair of combat boots. i’ve also always been a stickler for the ‘HARDCORE’ obsessed jerk to have a leather jacket.

13. Do their clothes fit well? Do they seem comfortable in them?

i’d say so! turbo isn’t always a skinny-fit guy, but he doesn’t wear baggy clothes to hide anything really. he’s comfortable in just about anything due to his disgustingly large ego.

14. Do they dress the same on the job as they do in their free time? If not, what are the differences?

most of the time, yeah! but he’s not afraid to dress differently off hours and he’s out somewhere. it’s more casual than his tracksuit (which he has no problem walking around in, he believes that his clothing makes the legend), but something he’s rarely without his helmet, as if personifies who he is.

15. You knew it was coming: Boxers, briefs or commando?

boxers. 100%. especially boxers with ridiculous patterns on them. like gold trophies, red t’s, the works.

Speech

16. What does this character’s voice sound like? High-pitched, deep, hoarse?

here’s an audio clip for you! his voice isn’t high nor is it really deep--it’s somewhere in the middle (maybe a little higher than a more gravel-type tone) and a little raspy/scratchy, sounding like it fluctuates a touch. given his age, i'd say it fits.

17. How doe they normally speak? Loud, soft, fast, evenly? Do they talk easily, or do they hesitate?

oh man. turbo speaks loud and proud. he isn’t yelling all the time (ok.... half ol the time, since he usually throws tantrums) and he can talk pretty fast if he’s rambling. he has a bad habit of rambling/yammering which can get exhausting, but he speaks at an even pace because he wants people to listen to him.

18. Does the character have a distinct accent or dialect? Any individual quirks of pronunciation? Any, like, you know, verbal tics?

have you heard turbo talk? he definitely has some kind of dialect/accent. i’ve never been able to pinpoint what kind of accent it is exactly (northeast? chicago? who knows) but he pronounces things with a lot of a’s. it can fluctuate between an a or the proper pronunciation though - of = ‘a, words sometimes being slurred (gonna, wanna, s’why, what’cha, would’ja, etc.), he usually drops the g from the ends of his words, things like that. he does have a lisp, but he does his best to hide it in fear of sounding dorky.

19. What language/s do they speak, and with how much fluency?

english and that’s it. he’s an american-made game and he sees not reason to learn another language. 8′)

20. Do they switch languages or dialects in certain situations?

sometimes he slips up on hiding his lisp, but that’s as far as it goes!

21. Are they a good impromptu speaker, or do they have to think about their words?

turbo?? thinking about his choice of words??? that’s rare. he’s a very off the cuff sorta guy who speaks his mind and doesn’t care about the repercussions. there are scarce moments where he has to let his brain marinate things, but that happens once every blue moon.

22. Are they eloquent or inarticulate? Under what circumstances might this change?

kind of down the middle. he’s good at speaking his mind and yammering on, but he has a very tough time expressing certain feelings about things, which is where he struggles and gets more inarticulate.

Mental and Emotional

23. How intelligent is this character? Are they book-smart or street-smart?

okay i know it’s funny to say, ‘haha rb is a dumbass’ (kind of true) but i’d say he’s pretty smart in terms of mechanics and street-wise things. he enjoys learning about more mechanical things like vehicle-related subjects, or technology in the terms of coding in the future, and he’s skilled at it. he just happens to have poor impulse control and be reckless.

24. Do they think on their feet, or do they need time to deliberate?

think on his feet, 100%. the only time he sits down and thinks is if he’s forced to actually plot and mull things over.

25. Describe the character’s thought process. Are they more logical, or more intuitive? Idealistic or practical?

turbo’s thought process is a rapid fire. it holds a million topics and he can flick through them like rapid fire shells. i would say that he’s more intuitive than anything else, as he’s a very emotionally-charged person who reacts from emotion and is dangerously reckless. on the flip side, he also tends to be practical: rather than leaving his heads in the clouds, he likes to get things done and prove them wrong.

26. What kind of education has the character had?

he’s...... a video game character..... so no formal education to speak of.

27. What are their areas of expertise? What, if anything, are they interested in learning more about?

he loves learning about technical things. mechanics, technology, the works. his favorite subject is any kind of automobile and how those work, and with an interest he’ll eventually learn code.

28. Are they an introvert or an extrovert?

extrovert by far. the guy thrives off of attention and snaps without it. he gets energized by talking to people and seldom needs time to recharge unless a situation is particularly exhausting, which is when he usually buzzes off to go do his own thing. otherwise he feeds off of social interaction and needs it like he needs air.

29. Describe the character’s temperament. Are they even-tempered or do they have mood swings? Cheerful or melancholy? Laid-back or driven?

turbo is a lot of things. he is an a brat above all else, and as a brat, he’s prone to having mood swings. at times, he can be laidback--still an arrogant jerk, but more chill--but for the most part, he’s hot headed and loses his temper easily. it’s not hard to make him huff and snap and showcase what a brat he is. he’s neither cheerful nor melancholy: he believes both attitudes are stupid and annoying. he is however, driven. he loves a good challenge or obstacle and will do anything to complete it and ‘win’.

30. How do they respond to new people or situations? Are they suspicious, relaxed, timid, enthusiastic?

this depends entirely on the situation. for the most part, he breezes into situations by acting like his usual cocky self and talking about ... whatever is at hand. even in situations where he actually is anxious, he pulls up an arrogant front.

31. Are they more likely to act, or to react?

i don’t know if this was meant as react vs respond, but definitely react. he doesn’t consider his word or responses, and usually just goes off of the first emotion he feels.

32. Which is their default: fight or flight?

more often than not, fight. he only runs away in situations where he’s absolutely fucked, but he flirts with danger and death frequently because of his attitude. see: the many times where he would mouth off to some huge monster/cybug and only start to run when he was inches away from being a meal/dead.

33. Describe the character’s sense of humor. Do they appreciate jokes? Puns? Gallows humor? Bathroom humor? Pranks?

his sense of humor is ... weird? he likes pranks (not being the recievee, though, but the one to pull them) and laughs at people he considers ‘losers.’ he gets a kick out of messing people, whether that’s through frustrating or flustering them. puns can be hit or miss, but more often than not he groans at them.

34. Does the character have any diagnosable mental disorders? If yes, how do they deal with them?

OH BOY, ME, A PSYCH MAJOR, GETTING HYPED FOR THIS QUESTION.

short answer: yes.

long answer: turbo, without a doubt, has Narcissistic Personality Disorder. it was also brought to my attention that he may have Oppositional Defiant Disorder, along with slight paranoia. he refuses to acknowledge any of these things, citing that that sort of thing is for losers and people who are weak, and has no coping mechanisms whatsoever. if anything, he wouldn’t see a problem with his behavior (ore so with his NPD, because in his mind, why wouldn’t he love himself?) and would continue on as one does.

35. What moments in this character’s life have defined them as a person?

roadblasters. without a doubt, simply learning the fact of their existence and what it would mean defined how he could be a paranoid, jealous, attention-hungry mess. being on top also defined them as a person, as being the most popular game in his arcade has only made his arrogant streak worse and blown his ego up by a thousand.

36. What do they fear?

being alone, forgotten, and abandoned.

37. What are their hopes or aspirations?

to be the greatest racer ever, and to go down in history as a legend.

38. What is something they don’t want anyone to find out about them?

lmao...... a lot. more so his fears and worries, as he hates vulnerability and showing any side of himself that could possibly be ‘weak’ or anything.

Relationships

39. Describe this character’s relationship with their parents.

going off of rps with mombotastic from years ago that i hold dear to my heart, his relationship with his programmed npc mom is weird. she doesnt take what he does seriously and nags him, while turbo is often disgusted by her tales of debauchery and behavior. they tend to argue and turbo ends up being smacked with a purse more than he’d like, but ma at least tries?

40. Does the character have any siblings? What is/was their relationship like?

i mean if you count the twins as his brothers...???? then he doesn’t get along with them at all: there’s a mutual feeling of resentment. with turbo often insulting them, humiliating them, and generally just being an awful bastard to them. (this tends to roll into a yelling match or a fist fight. what a great relationship.)

41. Are there other blood relatives to whom they are close? Are there ones they can’t stand?

nope!

42. Are there other, unrelated people whom they considers part of their family? What are their relationships with them?

turbo????? with familial like relationships???? the only one i can think of is vanellope, who he’s subconsciously like an obnoxious older brother to. they’re similar enough to where they can snark and banter at each other, and they’re both competitive brats who like to race and play pranks on each other. while he can find her to be a total pain in the neck, it’s probably one of his more wholesome relationships. (which is somehow a miracle.)

43. Do they make friends easily, or do they have trouble getting along with people?

lmao..... no. he has trouble getting along with people because he’s an argumentative brat with a huge ego, so it makes him difficult to connect positively with someone. that’s not to say he can’t nor has he not had friends, but that he’s a lot to handle and he can be hard to tolerate alone, so he doesn’t make friends easily. regardless, he likes to say he has a lot of friends.

44. Which do they consider more important: family or friends?

himself, first and foremost. but between those two alone? considering his bad family ties, i would say friends, unless it was in a certain context.

45. Is the character single, married, divorced, widowed? Have they been married more than once?

single, and he intends to stay that way. romantic relationships aren’t exactly his style: the guy has pretty bad commitment issues.

46. Are they currently in a romantic relationship with someone other than a spouse?

nope.

47. Who was their first crush? Who is their latest?

turbo isn’t one to get crushes on others. he’s more used to people crushing on him, and him getting all smug about it because of course another person loves him. he’s more likely to be physically attracted to someone from the get go, but that’s more related to lust than it is to love.

48. What do they look for in a romantic partner?

if he had to look for something in them, it would have to be someone who he can share his passions with. who he can talk to about this and that and actually, you know, enjoy himself? it would have to be someone who gives him a challenge, someone who he can trust, who he knows won’t abandon him. and most of all? someone who can actually keep the guy focused on them and them alone.

49. Does the character have children? Grandchildren? If yes, how do they relate to them? If no, do they want any?

no and no he doesn’t want any, he doesn’t like most kids and he feels as if they would slow him down.

50. Do they have any rivals or enemies?

YES AND YES, TOO MANY. his biggest rivals would be vanellope (especially in terms of racing) and azura, and he has so many enemies that i can’t count them all on my fingers.

51. What is the character’s sexual orientation? Where do they fall on the Kinsey scale?

turbo identifies as straight as a ruler, typically attracted to female-identifying people. i’d say he’d fall as a zero or a one on the scale.

52. How do they feel about sex? How important is it to them?

oh boy.

NSFW WARNING?

sex is a game to him. he has no feelings and no emotions during it other than pure lust. he wants sex with no strings attached, and just because he sleeps with you doesn’t mean he gives a single fuck about you--and he’s sure to let you know about that. he sees it as a “conquest” (ew), something to fuel his ego and his drive for it, just to make him feel good. it’s important in the realms of his ego and his desires, but nothing more.

53. What are their turn-ons? Turn-offs? Weird bedroom habits?

TURBO’S KINKS/TURN ONS ARE NASTY AND THIS CHARACTER SHEET DOESN’T DESERVE THEM. honestly if you really want to know i can put them in a separate post but they’re pretty gross. it’s nothing outlandish and wild, but it’s .... turbo.

his turn offs are simple enough. romance during sex turns him off hard during flings, as well as any mentions of commitment. an attitude (and not the kind he likes, more so a whiny attitude/someone who complains too much) turns him off pretty bad, too.

it’s turbo. everything he does in the bedroom is weird.

Beliefs

54. Do you know your character’s astrological (zodiac of choice) sign? How well do their fit type?

yes! he’s a scorpio and he’s a pretty textbook one at that, fitting a lot of the negative traits (possessive, resentful, aggressive, jealous, manipulative, etc.) and the positive traits (charismatic, ambitious, intense, cunning, competitive, etc.) to a T.

55. Is this character religious, spiritual, both, or neither? How important are these elements in their life?

neither. religion is not important to him at all, often taking whatever power (eg, Pong)’s name in vain a lot of the time and belittling Programmers (seeing as some characters view them as God). he isn’t fond of it, going as far as to even mock more religious sprites (i recall him once rolling his eyes and making fun of a Felix for it), probably because he doesn’t like the idea of anything being ‘above’ him.

56. Does this character have a personal code of morals or ethics? If so, how did that begin? What would it take to compromise it?

kind of? at the canon point i tend to take him from, he sort of sits on a slippery moral slope. he can do some fucked up things at times, but he has his limits -- for instance, murder is kind of up there. for one thing, his Hero Coding exists to at least give him a kick in the pants to do something morally decent, much to his chagrin and hatred of it.

57. How do they regard beliefs that differ from theirs? Are they tolerant, intolerant, curious, indifferent?

it depends? i’d think he’d definitely scoff about how people are ‘wrong’, but he’s indifferent about it unless one is vocal about some opposing view: that’s where he becomes more intolerant, typically mocking them at most. otherwise, if it doesn’t nvolve him? he doesn’t give two fucks.

58. What prejudices do they hold? Are they irrational or do they have a good reason for them?

oof. he’s definitely prejudiced against other racing games for sure, especially if they’re anything like roadblasters, have a higher pixelation count, or just ... exist. he thinks they’re all beneath him and not as good as turbo time, and he’s extremely vocal in terms of trash talking, insisting how his game is better than theirs will ever be, how he can outrace them, etc. all that good stuff.

i would say like a good chunk of other characters in the film, he has a slight prejudice against villain characters, with him technically being a ‘hero.’ it’s more so just him poking fun and mocking them, with things like, ‘bad guys don’t win medals’ and things of that nature.

Daily Life

59. What is the character’s financial situation? Are they rich, poor, comfortable, in debt?

well, he’s a video game character so he doesn’t really earn money, unless you either count quarter income or high scores on consoles as money? in a more realistic scenario, he’s well off, as professional racers tend to earn millions/billions.

60. What is their social status? Has this changed over time, and if so, how has the change affected them?

this would be more applicable to a human turbo (who went from low class to middle/upper middle) but if i had to pick for his game verse, he’d be middle/upper middle.

61. Where do they live? House, apartment, trailer? Are their home their castle or just a place to crash? What condition is it in? Do they share it with others?

A WHITE TRASH TRAILER. that’s right. he loves that thing and he wouldn’t live anywhere else: it definitely looks dingy and trashy, but he spruces it up on the inside and decks it out with too much racing stuff to possibly bear. he doesn’t share too well (when does he ever?) and will let friends or flings come over, but he doesn’t like anyone overstaying their welcome.

62. Besides the basic necessities, what do they spend their money on?

car related things are a biggie. you can catch him picking up tools, car parts, oil, car magazines, what have you. it’s his life, and he loves sprucing up and tinkering with his kart. beyond that, i don’t think he would spend on too much besides drinks at Tapper’s, takeout food, trashy 80′s stuff like music and movies, and cigarettes. he’s pretty handy with cash, at least.

63. What do they do for a living? Are they good at it? Do they enjoy it, or would they rather be doing something else?

teeechnically being the star of his video game is his job, but racing is his profession. he loves it more than anything, he wouldn’t change it if given the oppurtunity, and without it, the guy would snap. he needs to race.

64. What are their interests or hobbies? How do they spend their free time?

as far as hobbies go, racing is his biggest hobby. he loves to race off of work hours and even do his tracks alone if he wants to remain in top shape. he also enjoys tinkering and sprucing up his car--but that was a given. other hobbies include social drinking, playing pranks on others (that’s a hobby, okay) and a little gamejumping and causing trouble. he likes going into games and screwing with things, whether that be street racing, graffiti, what have you. he’s a little punk.

65. What are their eating habits? Do they skip meals, eat out, drink alcohol, avoid certain foods?

he’s kind of a glutton and loves to eat.. even if he’s had 3 meals, he loves to snack and nibble on things. it’s seldom that he skips a meal: the only times i can see it s if he was forced to by the demands of a situation or out of stress, which would roll into him whining and complaining because he’s hungry. he loves to eat out (the man cannot cook for his life, he microwaves things at best) as it’s a social thing and all he eats is junk food. particularly american junk food. he doesn’t touch healthy stuff all too much (you won’t see him eating a salad, for example) and he avoids bitter things like the plague. like many other sprites, he obviously indulges in the routinely booze at tapper’s.

#i wrote this randomly at 2 am one night so some of it probs doesnt make sense #blastedposts #no proofreading we die like men

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eilowyn · 7 years ago

Note

(for the ship ask meme) NEJIHTENNNNNZ

oh lord ok you didn’t specify a number so i’m just gonna do.. all 45 of them, which are under the cut

1. Who's the one who's reckless and always getting into trouble while the other gotta pull em out

they’re vers in that scenario, neji is mostly docile but he can tend to get snappy at the weirdest times and tenten has to put him back in his place, whereas tenten has more of a temper and neji (tentatively) tries to calm her down

2. Who's the one to send the other "I love my gf/bf" memes

tenten! she’s all about that cheesy, mushy stuff

3. Who's the one who listens to a music genre the other doesn't like and how does the other react

tenten has a secret admiration for country music.. she’ll show it to neji, and he’ll just be like

4. Which one spoils the other more and do they ever get competitive to show the other more love

tbh neji spoils her with more love because of her temperamental tendencies, but when tenten responds it gets exhausting for him and he revels in all the love she showers him with

5. How many years did it take to get married or was it just not for them

tenten’s more radical so she kinda wanted to wait a while to get married whereas neji was like “NO LET’S GET MARRIED AS SOON AS POSSIBLE AND MAKE CUTE BABIES”

but they eventually did get married and it was beautiful

6. What was their wedding like

all their friends and family showed up! hinata was the (teary) maid of honor because of her relationship to neji and lee was the best man. it was great

7. Is their friends/family supportive

of course! literally all of their generation had been side-eyeing them for years, wondering when they would finally get together

8. How does one comfort the other when the other is in distress/having a panic attack/crying

tenten wraps her arms around him from behind when he has an episode and waits it out, while neji’s method is to give her small and slow kisses all over her face while she tries not to cry. it works 99% of the time

9. Which one dissociates

neji’s always attentive and focused at the task at hand, same with lee, so when tenten is around both of them she tends to space out because of their frequent bickering over certain things. definitely not when she’s alone with neji though

10. Which one stares at the other's booty like "damn" and how does the other react when catching them

tenten to neji. always.

and neji just blushes, stutters, and walks away

11. When they live together what kinda place do they live in? What does their home look like?

their home is simple, always clean, but stocked full of weapons, the way tenten likes it. neji occasionally brings up the idea of installing a storage unit to just stuff all of her things inside of it but tenten just sticks her tongue out at him and plays with them in front of him to spite him

12. What do their dates look like

neji was really nervous about where to take tenten on their first date so, it was like just a simple walk in the park with a complex history on the entire hyuga clan. tenten really wanted to stay awake throughout the entire thing because of how much she loves his voice but it was tough. later dates as they got older became more romantic, and spicy 👀

13. How does each act when getting drunk

tenten is really loud and giggly when she’s drunk and neji gets a bit more bold with his desires, like, here’s a scenario:

tenten: WOOO I’M HAVING SUCH A GOOD TIME RIGHT NOW AHAHA

neji: hey, tenten.. c-can we.. move to the bedroom

tenten: huh? buh i’m not tired

it’s usually like that

14. Which one rolls over in the morning to wake up the other one just to give them kisses

they’re vers with this also, but it’s almost always neji because kissing tenten, to him, is one of the greatest things in the world

15. Have they saved each other's lives before

I SURE AS HECK THINK SO, but i can’t think of any specific scenarios atm

16. Does one have an interest the other think is weird but wants to listen to it regardless

tenten has stories about how she almost became a professional weapon juggler in her youth since she didn’t have the common sense handed to her by any sort of guardian. she would go on and on about the kinds of weapons she would try to master and neji would always pay rapt attention

17. Which one uses cropped hentai as reaction images

neji did it once and milk came out of tenten’s nose

18. Does one of them kinkshame the other

neji’s actually a kinky-ass fucker and tenten calls him out for it but then apologizes when he performs it on her and she’s completely satisfied

19. Is one of them self conscious about their body? If so how does the other comfort them

neji complains that he’s too pale and skinny but tenten always manages to cheer him up with some lovin’

20. Say they were cuddling on the bed while listening to record player playing the background. Which song is playing?

“It’s Dark It’s Cold It’s Winter” by sleepmakeswaves

21. What is their song? Like the song that gives them overwhelming feelings?

“Crazy” by Patsy Cline and The Jordinaires, because they heard it playing on a jukebox in an old diner they decided to hit for a late-night snack and some drinks, and it stuck with them

22. What song do they listen to while going on a joyride

“Catch the Wind” by High Highs

23. What kinda joyrides do they go on? Relaxing ones or wild ones?

tenten makes them wild when she drives but it’s all meditation-mode when neji’s behind the wheel

24. Where would they vacation for a honeymoon

somewhere in the east, not too close to home but in that general vicinity. super romantic

25. Do people ever get annoyed of their pda

nah, ‘cause they’re pretty humble as a couple but watch out when they’re drunk LOL

26. Would they live in the city or the country

the country, i think, would be more their style

27. Which ones the red which ones the blue

tenten’s red and neji’s blue

28. Are either of them mentally ill, if so how do they help one another cope

neji has both depression and intermittent explosive disorder, which gives him episodes of both extreme sadness and extreme anger, so tenten patiently rides all of his turbulent emotions out with him and offers to spar with him so he can blow off all that steam

29. Does one have a spot on them where they would melt when the other kisses them there

either the forest or, the park where they had their first date as young teenagers. never fails to make both of them emotional and they kiss really, really passionately

30. Do they dance together

sometimes, though neji insists he’s not much of a dancer but tenten manages to get him to step up anyway

31. Do they sing together

neji’s actually really good at singing, and tenten tries when she feels like jamming out, but it makes neji cringe though he always smiles and laughs while she does

32. Which one is better at cooking than the other and makes most the dinners

neji’s the cook between the two, and he’s currently teaching her at an intermediate level since she’s a fast learner

34. Are they a reckless couple or safe

in public? safe. at home? vers. during missions? safe as heck but tenten can get a bit impulsive and beg him to like, take her against a tree or something in the middle of the night instead of focusing on staying awake on patrol fhsdfgsghh

35. What be they kinks and do they try each other's kinks

tenten’s into bondage and neji’s actually kind of a sub, so they switch it up pretty frequently and never fail to be amazed with each other

36. What would their valentines gifts be to each other

neji to tenten: weapon polishertenten to neji: chocolates, or something generic like that

37. Do they get into fights often? If so what do they fight over and how do they make up?

they don’t necessarily fight but they have a lot of disagreeing opinions that can get a little loud. tenten’s petty enough to pretend to hold grudges against him until he comes over like a pouty little shit and kisses her neck to ask her forgiveness

she’s always secretly smiling

38. Which ones top, bottom, verse

they’re total verses, but neji has a tendency to want to bottom and tenten has no qualms about taking care of him

39. What kinda sex they be having (gentle rough whatever)

40. Who would fight in honor for the other if someone would insult them

neji cares so much about honor so if anyone talks smack about tenten, you know he’ll 64 palm their ass to the next dimension

41. Which one has a favorite movie that they have the other watch with them again and again

neji’s favorite is Tangled, so they watch it a lot

42. How would one react if the other was to die

okay you know what

in canon, when lee cradled neji’s dead body in his arms but there was no exclusive reaction from tenten/?? like what to fuck??

and if tenten were to die, i think neji would be really close to pulling an obito of sorts

so.. don’t

43. Who dies first

44. Do they want kids

sure! neji jumps at the idea of having babbies but he’s really formal with the way he puts it, but tenten knows that in his mind he’s constantly imagining what their, like, probably three kids would look like

45. How would they spend their last moments together

i’m going to assume that they’re both extremely old and having had lived long, happy lives together so they’re about to die hand-in-hand with smiles on their faces, passing on to the afterlife to continue their beautiful relationship for all of eternity instead of the likely ANGST THAT IS MEANT BY THIS QUESTION

tears and smiles, that’s all i’m gonna say

THANK YOU FOR THIS BABE I HAD FUN DOING IT

#thank you for the ask!#love ya #nejiten #neji hyuga #tenten #asiantwinkies

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wisteriafield · 8 years ago

Note

All of them

IF YOU ASK…

Also I almost completed this but then shit happened and I had to do EVERYTHING all over again so shit’s fucked.

1: Do you have a crush at the moment?

On my girlfriend lol.

2: Have you ever been deeply in love?

I’m deeply in love with my gf!

When I was younger, it was more like extreme infatuation.

3: Longest relationship you’ve ever been in?

Current one with my girlfriend!

4: Have you ever changed for someone?

Yep! For the better. It was as much for myself as it was for my girlfriend.

5: How is your relationship with your ex?

I’ve only been in a relationship with one person.

6: Have you ever been cheated on?

Nope!

7: Have you ever cheated?

Also nope!

8: Would you date someone who’s well known for cheating?

Depends on how much I know them, but I probably could just go in with low expectations.

9: What’s the most important part of a relationship?

Feeling comfortable with each other and a good foundation of communication.

10: Do you like to be in serious relationships or just flings?

I like to be in serious relationships, yeah!

11: When you are dating someone do you believe in going on “breaks”?

It happens.

12: How many people have you ever hooked up with?

Just my current girlfriend!

13: What’s one thing you regret saying/doing in a previous relationship?

When I speak without thinking too much about what I’m saying and it upsets my girlfriend.

14: What age do you think is appropriate for kids to start having sex?

If sex ed was actually a thing here in America, it’d be fine because there’d probably be less mystique surrounding it and using it as a rite of passage. It’d probably be done more safely. Otherwise I’d say around the 20s is a safe number.

15: Do you believe in the phrase “age is just a number”?

If you mean, “You can still find love no matter how old you are,” then yes!

If you mean, “I, a 30 year old, should not feel ashamed for wanting to be in a relationship with this 18 year old,” or something like that, then no.

They’re very different things, I assure you.

16: Do you believe in “love at first sight”?

You know, I don’t know how I feel about this myself.

17: Do you believe it’s possible to fall in love on the internet?

sweats

But in all seriousness, yes.

18: What do you consider a deal breaker?

If you take interest in me but belittle all of my interests. If you don’t play video games. If me being Asian is particularly important to you. And lastly, if you belittle the LGBT movement. If you have criticisms, that’s one thing that’s valid, but to put it down entirely is something else.

19: How do you know it’s time to end a relationship?

If I woke up feeling nervous about how talking to them would be like, I think that’s a good indicator.

I’ve never felt it before, but I think that’s how I would start feeling.

20: Are you currently in a relationship?

Yep!

21: Do you think people who have dated can stay friends?

Yeah.

22: Do you think people should date their friends?

Depends largely on the two individuals in question more than it does for any other question.

23: How many relationships have you had?

Just this one.

24: Do you think love can last forever?

Yeah!

25: Do you believe love can conquer all things?

As naive as it sounds, yes! Love, by itself, isn’t the all-conqueror, but it can be the main force.

26: Would you break up with someone your parents didn’t approve of?

No.

27: If you could go back in time and give yourself one piece of advice about dating what would it be?

It’s alright if you haven’t dated anyone by the time you graduate high school. You aren’t mature enough to be in one anyways.

28: Do you think long distance relationships can work?

It can be tough, but I think so.

29: What do you notice first about another person?

If online, their speech patterns. Otherwise, their face, as generic of a response as that sounds.

30: Are you straight, bi, gay or pansexual?

Pan!

31: Would it bother you if your partner suffered from any mental illness?

Only if I don’t know how to respond to it, which would be my own fault.

32: Have you ever been in an abusive relationship?

Not a romantic one, but yes, both emotionally and mentally.

33: Do you want to get married one day?

Yeah!

34: What do you think about getting your partner’s name tattooed?

I don’t think I could get a tattoo in general orz

35: Could you be in a relationship without sex?

Hell no lol. I can only masturbate so much, toys or no toys.

36: Are you still a virgin?

Physically, sure.

37: What’s more important: Looks or personality?

Personality. Looks matter a bit, but if I’m favored to their personality then I will find them more beautiful no matter what standard of beauty they are subjected to.

38: Do you enjoy love films?

Generally, I think so.

39: Have you ever given anyone/received roses?

Nope.

40: Have you ever had a valentine?

I might have, I don’t think it ended well though.

41: What’s your imagination of a “perfect date”?

Eating together, cuddling, watching each other play video games or playing together.

42: Have you ever read “Romeo & Juliet”?

Yeah. I even got to watch the masterpiece that is the modernized adaptation “Romeo + Juliet”

43: What’s more important: Your partner or your friends?

Hopefully my partner is among my friends, but if my partner made me choose, I’d say my friends, and my partner if my friends made me choose.

44: Would you consider yourself “romantic”?

Yeah, I used to consider myself a hopeless romantic, but now I’m just a romantic slut lol.

45: Could you imagine to date one of your current friends?

lol

46: Have you ever been “friendzoned”?

I thought I was, turns out I was just being creepy.

I didn’t get to amend it, but to be fair I didn’t really deserve to anyways.

47: Which “famous couple” is your favorite?

Uhh…

48: What’s your favorite love song?

Hmm…

Hmm…….

Oh! Here we go! [x]

49: Have you ever broken someone’s heart?

Probably, yeah.

50: If you’re single, why do you think you are?

51: Would you rather date someone who’s rich but a douchebag or someone who’s poor but a nice guy?

I can’t stand someone who’s insufferable towards others even if he was nice to me.

52: Are you good at giving other people advices regarding dating/ relationships?

I think I’m the last person that should be giving relationship advice tbh.

53: Are you jealous of couples when you’re single?

Yeah.

54: How important is it to make a relationship official (p.e. on facebook)?

Formality doesn’t really matter to me too much, but I like saying how much I love my girlfriend if she’s comfortable with it.

55: Would you consider yourself “clingy”, “overly attached” or “jealous”?

No. I enjoy my girlfriend’s presence a lot, and want to spend much time with her, but not so much that I’m watching who she spends time with and want her all to myself.

56: Have you ever “destroyed” a relationship?

No.

57: Do you think it’s silly to consider suicide because of a broken heart?

Not silly, manipulative.

58: Are you the “dominant” or the “submissive” part in a relationship?

Submissive.

59: Have you ever forgotten important dates like your partner’s birthday or your anniversary?

Not yet, better stay that way.

60: What’s your opinion on open relationships?

I know someone who was in one. It’s complicated stuff. But I won’t judge any part of it.

61: Who’s more important: Your partner or your family?

My partner. The circumstances of my identity make it difficult for me to value my family over them, as much as I love my family.

62: How do you define “cheating”?

Betraying your partner’s trust. I feel like that’s all that needs to be said.

63: Is watching porn while being in a relationship inappropriate?

Depends on the terms of the relationship that should be set before this kind of thing occurs. For me, I don’t care, if it gives them new ideas that’s neat.

64: Do you think Valentine’s Day is overrated?

Nah, I’m okay with PDA and find it cute (I’m allowed to find it cute and be jealous of it too if I’m single)

Personally, I find American chocolate has too much bitterness or too much sweetness and not a good balance, but chocolate is good in general.

65: Would you consider yourself a “cuddler”?

YES

#fuck having to write this twice when I was so close to finishing it the first time god damn #Anonymous #long post

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gaiatheorist · 6 years ago

Text

Choices, behaviours, consequences.

The latest stop on my voyage around the NHS Mental Health service has wiped me out. I’ve dumped myself into one of my self-judgemental phases, and I need to haul myself out, because it’s making me physically ill, when I’m already emotionally fragile. I don’t have the capacity to deal with both-at-once, on top of all the pre-existing conditions. I’m allowing myself one rabbit-hole, then I’ll either ‘post’ or ‘close.’

Choice- I have the choice to ruminate in fragmented snatches about the therapeutic pathway I’m being allocated onto, or purge it all in one go, and ‘close the box’.

Behaviours- I’ve had a couple of days (my concept of day/night is as skewed as everything else) of having intrusive snatches of “That’s not MY fault!” and “That’s a useful behaviour, I want to keep that bit.” It’s not productive, but ‘blocking’ emotional responses is what I need to work on. (Badly phrased, I need to work on stopping-blocking, and learn to do the whole ‘mindful/in the moment’ thing. I can’t do that on my own, that’s what the therapy is going to teach me to do.)

Consequences- A fair old chunk of self-loathing, and a few spikes of “I’m not changing THAT!” I’ll ‘make this worse before I make it better’ by typing this, but, for now, rules/routine are my least-harmful coping strategy. My pretend-rule of ‘once I type it, it is done’ might well be a strategy the therapist advises, or not, the old ‘diarising/mood-journal’ thing, for now, it’s all I have.

The choices/behaviour/consequence tag is borrowed from a behaviour policy implemented at the school I used to work in. “If you choose to continue with behaviour ‘x’, you are choosing consequence ‘y’.” Logical, linear, rational, which worked with the students who understood the concept, but not the students who didn’t feel that their behaviour was a choice. That’s where I find myself, like a twelve-year-old having a screaming meltdown in a maths class because everything-is-awful, and now there’s algebra in it as well.

That’s a difficult admission. When I’m focused on something, it doesn’t happen, when my mind is engaged, there’s less capacity for the disjointed thinking, and disordered behaviours. When I’m ‘in the zone’ I can be phenomenal, I haven’t had a zone of late. I’ve had two years of drifting, ironically, having ‘won’ my disability benefit, and now having the capacity to address my physical and emotional health is in-part responsible for the drift. 17 months of that two years were spent engaged in a battle with DWP. Pyrrhic victory? Possibly, I’ll need to do it all again in nine months. I’ll still have brain injuries, but I might have had some therapy for the Mental Health side of things. (Externalising, raging against the machine, there. The systems are atrocious, though.) This distracted-drifting phase isn’t good for me, and there’s only so much of it I can fill with free OU courses.

There are two prongs to that difficult admission. I ‘caught myself’ showing off yesterday, that’s one of my behaviours. I was plodding through an OU course on juvenile delinquency, and my notes for section 3.3 turned out to be a more condensed version of section 3.4. Look at me, aren’t I clever? No, not especially, it was an introductory level course on a subject I already have some broad awareness of. I was almost-but-not-quite that gobby kid in the classroom, who kicks off with “We’ve already done this!” during a revision class. Slightly more self-aware than I was when I was at school, I chose to expand-out on my knowledge, rather than dismiss it as baby-work. (I very clearly remember the Special Needs teacher assessing me when I moved schools, “Miss, I’ve finished.” “Well done, now turn over the page and do the next sheet.” “Miss, I’ve done all of the sheets.” That was repeated with last year’s neuro-psych assessment, but in reverse. “I don’t know.” “Would you like me to repeat the question.” “No, repeating the question won’t help, I still won’t be able to calculate the answer, the numbers are 3, 8, and 4, I just don’t know how to move them around.”)

That one is a learned behaviour, the educational system taught me that ‘being intelligent’ was rewarded, taught me to crow-when-I-know, and I’ve built that into my weird defensive mechanisms, trying to ‘prove’ I’m clever. Sometimes I’m unkind with it, my delusions of grandeur are going to have to go. Sometimes I’ll argue for the sake of it, not so much now, because I expose myself to fewer people to argue with. Sometimes, I’ll get an idea into my head, and refuse to back down, my patented tactic of “Other people will eventually agree, just to get me to shut up.”

The MH assessment was horrible on many fronts, I think that the one that has hit hardest is acknowledging that I’m not as intelligent as I like to project. “Did you use any of the strategies your last counsellor gave you?” “Not really, they were strategies I already knew, from being a Learning Mentor. I didn’t think that the sort of thing I’d teach a 13-year-old was appropriate.” (I bloody hate worksheets, long-standing issue with generic strategies for individual issues.) “Maybe that foundation level is where you need to start from.” She might as well have punched me in the guts, that winded-wounded me, but she’s right, ‘knowing’ something is not the same as ‘doing’ it, I’ve been ‘acting clever’ for most of my life. I was acutely aware of my tendency to ‘shout out the answer’ during the group-work I had to do to access further intervention. (Now chuckling at the time I whacked myself in the face with a rolling-pin after my brother’s ex and I imposed a rule that only the person holding the rolling-pin could speak, we were both babblers.) I wasn’t fully engaged with the course, because I was consciously suppressing my urge to act-up, show-off, be-clever.

My Dad told me I was stupid, ugly, weak. My ex compounded that, by belittling me at every opportunity. I stopped speaking to them both, because I’m Little-Miss-Can’t-Be-Wrong, but now a qualified mental health doctor has very gently pointed out that I’m not-all-that. I am undone. (I did have a really unpleasant period of wondering whether there was any point existing if I couldn’t be ‘that’, but, if I can’t be ‘that’, I’ll just have to be something else.)

Cognitive Analytic Therapy. A sixteen-session course of relational therapy, 1:1 with a therapist, where we’ll pick apart my disordered thinking, and work on re-routing it. Learned behaviours can be un-learned, right? I’ve had my two days of don’t-want-to stompy tantrum, and accepted that I cannot be a smart-arse about this. I need to go in with an open mind, and not roll my eyes when the crayons come out. (There will be crayons, there’s a ‘mapping’ exercise, which ISN’T the same as the one I did in RE in secondary school, thank you very much, dismissive-superiority-complex head.) I’ve always had disordered thinking, and now I have a damaged brain as well, I could ‘cope’ with the cognitive tangents when my brain was intact, with a variety of maladaptive strategies. It’s going to be a case of taking guidance on what I need to let go of, Marie Kondo for my mind. I need to not obsessively cling to my security blanket of weird, the therapist is not going to ‘take’ the fundamental essence of me away, they’re going to help me to make it more functional.

I don’t ‘have to’ be an Instagram-Stepford-wife, nobody is going to force me to take up kitten-plaiting and cake-decorating, but I will have to relinquish some of my control-behaviours. I will have to accept that parrot-repeating a theory is not the same as understanding and applying it, and that I can’t continue deflecting intense emotions with my bizarre tool-kit of avoidance tactics. I give lip-service to the notion of recognise-reflect-respond, but tend to skip the ‘reflect’ stage, and ‘respond’ by putting the emotion on the ‘things to deal with later’ pile. They’re not going to try to make me into something I’m not, some of my coping mechanisms are acceptable, and you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

Onwards. I have the referral for the CAT, which I acknowledge that I need. I have a referral to the MH social prescribing team, which will probably come through first, a holding-strategy of day-centres that probably smell funny, and ‘little bits of voluntary work.’ I’ve also requested a formal diagnosis, I need an official name for ‘this’, apparently I shouldn’t use ‘Complex PTSD’ due to the absence of flashbacks and nightmares about the original abuse, I was too tired to mention the panic attacks and nightmares I have about the more-recent compounding factors. I’m moving forwards, and I have to seek-and-follow, because I can’t untangle this mess on my own. Every time I’ve tried to put myself back together, I’ve followed my usual DIY practice of deciding not to put ALL the screws back in, because it’ll be easier to access the next time it breaks. It’s not going to be a quick fix, but at least it’s not medication, I was able to articulate that the ‘Prozac fog’ on top of the brain injuries posed a risk of self-neglect. (Smirking, that my adorable GP knows me well enough to keep prescribing enough medication to kill a small horse, he knows I’m going nowhere along the overdose route.)

I don’t know whether the therapy or diagnosis will happen before my disability benefit comes up for review. I do suspect that DWP will attempt to declare me fit-for-work regardless of whether anything has changed, so I’ll just have to deal with that when it happens, and not rabbit-hole myself about how the punitive-scrutiny of the DWP systems and processes are part of the reason I need help. I was damaged before the brain haemorrhage, before the separation from the ex, before the kid going away to uni, before I lost my job, and had to throw myself on the mercy of state benefits, it’s the cumulative toll of all-of-it that’s tipped me. Saying “That happened, accept it and move on.” isn’t actually accepting, it’s deflecting, and I can’t keep doing that.

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kacydeneen · 6 years ago

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National Issues Loom Large in Key House Race Near DC

Warner Workman has met his Virginia congresswoman several times at local events and says he's "always dumbfounded when she actually remembers my name."

Rep. Barbara Comstock's social media pages are filled with photos of her thanking local first responders at 9/11 memorials, posing with families at county fairs, attending Boy Scout events and opening new police stations in Virginia's 10th Congressional District.

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The Republican congresswoman is "always out there … getting to know people," Workman said.

Her approach worked in 2016, when she won re-election even as the district voted for Democrat Hillary Clinton by 10 percentage points. But the 2018 midterm election could spell the end of Comstock's tenure in Congress and nearly four decades of Republican control of the district, which stretches along Virginia's northern border from the progressive suburbs of Washington, D.C., into the Blue Ridge Mountains.

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Comstock is running against Democratic state Sen. Jennifer Wexton, a former prosecutor from Loudoun County, which experts see as a crucial part of the district. The wealthy and increasingly diverse county has started swinging toward Democrats, as has the state overall.

Comstock, who lives closer to D.C. in neighboring Fairfax County, faces two strong headwinds: the district's burgeoning Democratic bent and those voters' opposition to the leader of her party, President Donald Trump.

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Experts say people are looking beyond the boundaries of their own district to inform how they vote in this election, and that makes Comstock one of the most vulnerable Republicans up for re-election.

After the two contentious years that followed Trump becoming president, "the Trump agenda is very important to voters," George Mason University political science professor Toni-Michelle Travis said.

This article, part 3 in a series, examines one of the key battleground races for control of the House of Representatives in the Nov. 6 midterm elections. Carried by grassroots momentum, Democrats must take 23 seats from Republicans to win the balance of power. They are contending with Republicans' experience and organization, and an outspoken but polarizing president.

Comstock has distanced herself from Trump on some key issues like health care — she voted against the American Health Care Act, which would have repealed "Obamacare" — and imposing sanctions on Russia. At a televised roundtable with Trump in February, she told Trump a government shutdown was a bad idea for her constituents, some of whom work for the federal government.

"This election is about results versus the resistance," Comstock said at a late-September debate with Wexton, where she touted her support of the Republican tax cut plan and "a booming economy."

But she's voted in line with Trump's agenda 97.8 percent of the time, putting her among the most consistently pro-Trump members of Congress, according to a tally kept by news outlet FiveThirtyEight. (By contrast, only a few Democrats voted along with Trump 50 percent of the time or more.)

Wexton's campaign has zeroed in on Comstock's voting record, recently running attack ads that call her "Barbara Trumpstock." This week, The Washington Post endorsed Wexton after backing Comstock in 2016, calling the Republican an "often unquestioning foot soldier in the president's ranks of Republican loyalists."

In the debate, Wexton hit back at Comstock's resistance remark, saying the Trump administration "is constantly assaulting many of the values that Americans hold dear."

Travis, the George Mason University professor, said Trump's agenda has been "so disheartening" that many voters don't see a candidate with Comstock's voting record as the best person to represent them in Congress.

"Comstock's cred has just gone down," Travis said.

Comstock campaign manager Susan Falconer argued in an email that Comstock is a bipartisan and independent leader who's deeply engaged in the district and "will stand up for what's right for the district, regardless of party." She pushed back on the reliability of the Trump agenda tracker, contending that 82 percent of votes Comstock took had support from some Democrats.

"She trusts the independent minded men and women of her district who know how important it is to have bipartisan leadership for the region in order to get these important victories," Falconer wrote, referring to the congressional delegation representing the D.C. area — all the others are Democrats.

But public polling indicates that Wexton is running ahead of Comstock. One poll from the Post this month put Wexton's lead at 12 points. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates the race as lean Democrat. Travis argued it would be "very hard" for Comstock to pull ahead, unless something "weird" happens.

"But Wexton needs to still work at it," Travis added, saying the other party "can always win if you underestimate your opponent."

Think Nationally, Act Locally Tina Stevens-Culbreath, a Democrat from the city of Winchester, west of D.C. in the Shenandoah Valley, is concerned about a "culture of hate" in the country that stems from the 2016 election.

People "feel they are allowed to do and say basically anything that they want without consequence," Stevens-Culbreath said.

She and her husband are looking to Wexton to be a unifier, someone "we're going to need to bring this country together," as Rodney Culbreath put it. The couple founded the I'm Just Me Movement, a mentorship nonprofit that aims to promote diversity and inclusion among kids in the area.

To win, Wexton may need a strong performance in suburbs like Winchester that are further from D.C., as well as in crucial Loudon County, which is more diverse and more likely to vote Democrat, according to John J. McGlennon, a government and public policy professor at The College of William & Mary.

Voters in the area are especially attuned to national issues, he said, partly because of their proximity to D.C., which affects their livelihood.

Seventeen-year-old Ainsley Rucker said that it's become a "moral obligation" to vote in the midterms to "put the Trump administration on check," even if she can't yet cast her own ballot.

Women's rights, LGBTQ rights and education are among the issues fueling Rucker's political passion. She is the president of the Winchester Young Democrats coalition, which has expanded to every local high school since its inception earlier this year, Rucker said.

"Since we can't have our voices directly heard through voting, we feel like the only thing we can do to make ourselves heard is ... get other people to understand what we think as young people and influence the people around us," Rucker said.

Casey Turben, a longtime Winchester resident and local historian, said that Trump's election has sparked local-level activism, and it will be "the lasting story of 2016."

Rucker also pushed back on the notion that Comstock is deeply involved in the district, saying she was "refusing to answer questions" from her constituents by not holding formal town hall meetings.

Asked by NBC, Comstock's campaign manager didn't say when Comstock last held a town hall meeting. But Falconer said the congresswoman attended a recent forum on the opioid crisis in Loudon County and emphasized her many visits with local civic, religious and ethnic organizations.

Workman, the Comstock supporter, argued she just "does things a little differently" in regards to meeting with her voters, saying "she goes to the people instead of having the people come to her."

Comstock still has support in Winchester, too, a city that was nearly evenly split between Clinton and Trump in 2016.

Robert Starkey, a local electrician, said she "just seems to care for Virginia and supports guns."

And as a small business owner, Starkey said he wants a representative who will help him be successful and keep the economy strong.

"I think Comstock is for helping us with taxes," he said.

'Common-Sense Gun Laws' Gun rights is one national issue that animates the supporters of both candidates who spoke to NBC.

Workman, the Comstock supporter, said he's looking to her to protect his Second Amendment rights. A retired CIA technical intelligence officer who owns Minuteman Arms in Lovettsville, in Loudon County, Workman said he respects people who don't want to carry guns or have them on their property.

He said always will "respect the private property rights of others" and leave his gun in his car, for example, if a person or private business doesn't want firearms on their property.

Workman worries that so-called "common-sense gun laws" could lead to it becoming more difficult overall to purchase firearms, a right he deeply believes in and which he depends on to keep his shop running. Workman said he donates his store profits to veterans groups and Little League baseball in the area.

Comstock has an "A" rating from the NRA and is one of the top recipients of the group's political contributions. She has supported bills that address mental illness treatment, which she has said is one of the issues at the heart of gun violence, along with increased funding for school safety and security and strengthening the national gun background check system.

According to her campaign, she also supports banning "bump stocks," a device used in last year's Las Vegas massacre that increases the rate of fire on semi-automatic rifles, and "red flag" laws that provide a way to take weapons from people who are a harm to themselves or others.

Rucker and Winchester Young Democrats vice president Niko Christen, 15, are looking to Wexton for her plans to take on gun violence. They were in high school during a year that saw mass shootings at several U.S. schools, including Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, where 17 people died, and Santa Fe High School in Texas, where 10 died.

The students said they want "common-sense gun laws that could prevent people who shouldn't have them from getting them," which could include "red flag" laws and a slower process for purchasing firearms.

Wexton spokesman Ray Rieling said "common-sense" gun legislation is one of the candidate's top priorities, along with affordable and accessible health care and fighting political corruption.

Wexton most strongly supports universal background checks, a "great first step for tightening up our gun violence prevention measures," Rieling said. The Democrat also supports banning military-style assault weapons and allowing the federal government to study gun violence as a public health issue, according to her campaign website.

"We may not be able to stop all the school shootings, but shouldn't we at least try to stop some?" Wexton asked the state's General Assembly in February.

The district has a large population of the kind of voters who recently have turned away from the NRA — college-educated, white-collar workers — and the issue could be what helps tip the balance for Wexton. According to a recent NBC News poll, Americans in suburbs who had a negative view of the NRA increased from 36 percent in April 2017 to 40 percent after the Parkland shooting.

Can Comstock Come Back? Comstock's campaign manager said that the Republican "has never lost a race and always overperforms expectations," noting that Comstock's district was rated as a "toss-up" in 2016 before she won by 6 percentage points.

While recent public polls put Wexton in front by at least 6 percentage points, a recent internal poll gives Comstock a slight lead, though within the margin of error.

But Turben, the Winchester historian, said the tides are changing in Virginia's 10th District. He said a Wexton victory would come with "a slump of sure GOP votes in the western boundaries of the district," adding that it would be a "loud and clear" message to Congress that the expectations rural voters have for Washington are shifting.

William & Mary professor McGlennon said that educated, affluent Loudon County represents a political shift happening in suburbs across the country.

"Suburbia has become a lot more diverse, and suburban voters have been moving strongly towards Democrats, and that has the potential to transform not just the politics of Virginia, but much of the country," he said.

While Comstock appears to be "in a very deep hole," McGlennon said, she could still win by finding a way to convince voters that she won't regularly support Trump, that "she will be an independent voice" and more attuned to her voters on social issues than a typical Republican.

"And I think that's a very tall order," he added.

It's an issue that the Wexton campaign is latching on to.

Trump is "certainly part of the conversation about everything," Rieling said, and Wexton's plans for "holding this administration accountable is an enormous issue for voters."

NBC's Sierra Jackson contributed to this report.

This story uses functionality that may not work in our app. Click here to open the story in your web browser. National Issues Loom Large in Key House Race Near DC published first on Miami News

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