#i also did come out on facebook in like 2016 or so but she didnt pay attention to that at all either.

[orcelito]

For the low, low price of Mom Who Doesn't Care About You, you can get the experience of coming out to her..... twice!

More specifically I came out to her in a letter back in 2020 But Also my sister recently accidentally "outed" me but also not actually because I *already told her* I was gay. But she just forgot

I'm literally so astounded by it that it circles back around to being funny. And she wonders why I dont try to have a relationship with her 😭😭😭😂😂😂

[haemosexuality]

memories i have of being a child and a lesbian:

-first week of 3rd grade, i walked in class and thought "ok i need to pick a boy to have a crush on this year". i thought that was just what you did. picked one bc i thought he had a cool haircut, proceeded to never have a conversation w him

-thinking "girls are naturally so much prettier than boys. this is common knowledge"

-being really jealous of the Cool Girl in my 4th grade class that was One Of The Boys. she played football with them. she sat really relaxed in chairs. she doesnt care about being pretty. isnt that just so cool? starts consciously trying to imitate her. also, even before that i always made sure to INSIST that my favorite color was blue and i did NOT like pink!!!!

-playing barbies with my cool, older cousin (she mustve been like 11? 12? i was around 8). her barbie was a mess because she had just broken up with her other barbie. i was confused. she explained to me what lesbians were (i knew men could be gay, but not women). immediately after that every single doll i had was a lesbian in a relationship. after figuring that it was probably a bit weird i was so obsessed with making my dolls lesbians, i came to the conclusion i would "probably like girls when i grow up". decided to tell my other, deeply religious cousin about this. she went "WHAT" and i went "HAHA JUST KIDDING IT WAS A JOKE" and never thought about it again

-a year later me and the deeply religious cousin were making ever after high dolls fuck. i was the one that came up w that idea (i also didnt know women could have sex at that point, i thought i had invented lesbian sex) and this haunted me for years bc i thought that that cousin had become homophobic after we grew up. recently found out shes also gay, good for her

-being just Really obsessed with marceline from adventure time for some reason. whenever i saw her on tv my heart would beat really really fast. wonder whats up w that 🤔

-being grounded for like, 5 months when i was 10 because my mom found out i was watching youtube videos from a lesbian couple. and also some videos with sex jokes. i wish i remembered that the lesbians channel was so bad

-i also watched lubatv. hes a brazilian youtuber famous for being openly gay. he introduced me to the concept of shipping, because ppl shipped him with another youtuber, t3ddy. he (plus facebook, and the cool older cousin from before) also introduced me to social activism

-asking permission from my parents to put a rainbow filter on my facebook pfp, in support of gay people. i thought i was such a good straight ally. i dont remember what happened but i think something negative mustve bc a lot of ppl were doing that in 2015. wait fuck now that i think about it that mightve actually been in 2016 because of pulse

- (we are still in 2015 im still 10) watching clips from Steven Universe Season 1 Episode 53 Jailbreak on youtube. they were (badly) subtitled bc i didnt speak english yet. i was absolutely shocked and could not believe they would show two girls kissing in a childrens cartoons, not bc i thought that was bad but bc i was like. would cartoon network really allow this??? i proceed to memorize the entire episode (again i didnt even speak english. and i watched it so many times i memorized it anyways lmao)

-being 11, and having my friend introduce to me this cool new thing she had found online, "fanfics". she linked me a college au fanfic of marceline and bubblegum from adventure time. it had a fade to black implied sex scene. i was hypnotized

-i was a very anxious child and every morning before getting to school i would prepare step-by-step what i would do when entering class. one day my internal monologue went "walk in, say good morning to teacher, kiss [previously mentioned girl best friend] on the mouth, say hello to- wait. where did that come from". start wondering if i was really Just A Really Good Straight Ally

-few days later, me and my friend group were discussing gay people. one of them asked "like i wonder if any of us are gonna be gay?". i thought for about 2.5 seconds and said "i think im bi", being the first one on my class to come out. they were all p chill ab it. i am not bi but its the thought that counts

-cutting off 30 inches of my really long hair and shaving one side at 11. my dad was mad at me for a week and he told me "i dont understand why you did this. you're looking like a dyke". originally i had planned to cut all of it really short "boy style" but the hairstylist insisted on at the very least letting half of it be longer. i did think half shaved hair was Cool so i was fine with that

[justsomeantifas]

i grew up in South Florida with my Mom. I was born in Michigan, and around 2000 or so, my dad ending up dying in a pretty messed up way. My mom sent me to live with my grandparents for a while. We lived in New York for a little while, Washington D.C. and finally we moved to Florida. When my mom finally came back to Florida, we lived together till around 2016, and thats when we moved back to Michigan. The whole time i was growing up, my mother never mentioned my dads side of the family, so i never had any contact with them, until we moved back. When i moved back, a few of my aunts, my cousins and my brother started to get in contact with me. I was away from them for over 18 years, and they still remembered me. Because i never had contact with them, i was a little spooked, but i never forgot about them. So around thanksgiving of 2018, i ended up going to jail. I was doing bad things and i ended up turning 21 in jail. My birthday is in January, and i didnt get out until around the beginning of april. When i got out, i came home to find everything that i owned, was sold. My clothes, my T.V.sentimental items, everything. My mom got really bad into drugs and was really abusive, so i decided to leave. I was homeless for about 2 months. During this time, i was volunteering at a local soup kitchen. I started because i was assigned community service hours, but i went everyday to help because i was homeless, so that gave me a hot meal to eat, and it made me feel good also. I actually did alot for that company, they had me as the face of thier Company, and i also was on the raido for it. Well, i also ended up missing two court dates during this time, so even though i was volunteering, i had 2 warrants over my head. While i was going thru this, i was feeling really low. I didnt have a job, i was in a city i wasn’t familiar with, and i was homless and on the run. I felt like i was completely alone, i had nothing and i couldnt lose anything. I started to post some really dark things on my facebook, and thats when my dads side of the family reached out to me again. It was one of my cousins, and he told me he would come and get me for the weekend to stay and get my mind off things. I agreed, and from the moment he picked me up, i never felt love like this before. He tookd me out to Ohio, and introduced me to all my grandmas, my aunts, my uncles, my cousins and my brother. I wasnt alone anymore. So that following week, i decided to turn myself in and get everything over with and out the way, so i could start doing better again. So, i did. By the grace of god, the Judge dismissed all my cases, i only had to do 2 weeks and i was released from probation. Within that same hour, i was on my way to Ohio to start a new life. Ive been here since around October, and ive never been happier. I got a job, i record music everyday and im happy. But this is where i need help. Me and My moms side of the family dont get along very well. I was absent for a very long time, so i dont have contact with them. When we moved back, My great grandma was the only person i still have contact with. Shes 93 and I try to talk to her whenever i can. Well, yesterday i called, and she told me some things. She has very bad vision problems, and a very bad heart. She told me the last 4 days, she was admitted into the hospital because of her heart. The hospital released her, and gave her some medication to take for 30 days until we go back on the 24th, but last night she had another attack at 3am in the middle of the night. Right now she is in Adrain Michigan, i am in Columbus Ohio. I work at a restaurant, so ive been off work for the past 2 weeks or so. I have no money and i dont know what to do. Ive asked everyone i could, and no one can help. 

I hate to ask, but if anyone could please just spare somewhere around 100 so i can pay for a bus ticket there and back, or if someone could get me a bus ticket for there and back. Im at a loss right now and this is my last resort. 

My cashapp is $jayviouswooley my venmo is @jayviouswooley. My # is 419-297-3589 if needed. Thank you.

[unravelling-the-world]

random thoughts related to kagepro (tw for depression?? death?? suicide ?? implied ?? im not sure and idk what else read at ur own risk)

well idk lately ive been thinking a lot and ik ive uh always (? since i can remember?) have been depressed (i mean...it started around age 12...i dont really remember much before that. most of what i remember are bad moments anyways. or very specific scenes. but they dont feel mine. if that makes sense. its like remembering the scene from a movie.  back on track i guess idk well lately ive realized i actually kin some characters and lately ive...been relating a lot to shintaro kisaragi fromkagepro. i mean its ok. there´s always been that specific similarity in us (after all, how many characters in anime are as related to coca cola as shintaro //and me,,im literally a coca cola addict lmao// well anyways. after some days, this lead me to thinking...to a hidden memory within my brain, i guess. I remember introducing my then best friends, to kagepro. one told me haha he´s like u bc the coca cola!! and i think i just laughed and smiled? i truly didn´t see it? i was sad sure, but i couldnt really relate to him. after all, i was the leader of my own little group of 12 year old weebs,right? (i was also 12 btw) i didnt personally dislike shintaro but i didnt rly see myself in him yknow? also i have loved ayano from ever since i have memory so idk like she´s one of my biggest comfort characters and its weird bc if she was ´´real´´ idk if i could date her or anything but im just glad she exists bc it somehow comforts me a lot yeah anyways ayano essay for another time lol. anyways at this age my favorite characters in kagepro were ayano and konoha ( i still love them a lot) thing is, at this point in my life i didnt know/wasnt aware i was transgender but i already kinda liked he/him pronouns so i roleplayed a lot. online. i roleplayed as konoha obviously lmao and actually one of my irl friends related to shintaro ?? and i think we may have roleplayed lmao and stuff.... she even had a facebook account named shin hikkikomori or smth like that. anyways fast forward bc after being 12 a lot of stuff happened obviously. and none of that relates to kagepro until quite some time. i will mention some items that dont really relate to kagepro but marked moments in my friend group that may be relevant later on. Around 2016)? Some of my closest friends changed schools (but we kept contact) yet i still had a big group at school. But it got fragmented along the way. 2017 i went to Japan and formed a new, different friend group with people that even today, are dear to me. When i came back, my friend group fragmented more. I kept contact with other members of the old group but one on one, not as a group anymore. 2018 we graduated, and i broke up my realtionship with one of my former best friends (2016-2018) 2019 was a year of change, and even though i was afraid and shit got weird, i was not doing too bad. i will skip that. Well. Im sure we all know 2020 was a trainwreck, shit happened. i had a villain arc. I lost my shit,definetely. Ups, downs, whatever. 2021 has not been too different. However, even through everything, in early 2020, i kept close relationships with my friend group. as the year moved forward and the restrictions started lifting ( thank you government very cool <3 //ironically obviously, this is the reason this shit wont go away//) some of my friends saw each other irl and stuff, or talked about stuff i didn´t understand/didn´t want to hear while on discord. I felt alienated. I felt empty. I got mad at a friend for the first time, for something he said. I ended up isolating myself. A friend celebrated her birthday. She invited me and never excluded me, asked me a lot of things and asked to virtually include me. But that would just make me feel more alienated, wouldn´t it? I told her it was ok, i didn´t go. Honestly, I felt like a bother. I didn´t want to bother. I wasn´t okay, but i didn´t want to bother anyone, so i isolated myself. I had a very bad breakdown. lasted weeks. When I recovered, it wasn´t the same. It felt like everyone else was closer, while i drifted away. I kind of recconected with some of my friends from Japan after this. In the vacations, i felt like i reconnected with some friends just to drift away again later. However, i never could reconnect with one of my best friends. She never really got mad at me or anything ( i think) but we don´t really talk much anymore. We used to talk daily, be it actual talking, memes, anything. I don´t think we´ve actually talked in weeks. There´s nothing I can do. This year, another friend had a birthday, but I was so disconnected from everyone I didn´t even care. I mean. It´s all broken now, isn´t it? The other day I just started wondering. When did I start relating to Shintaro so much? I had always been like this, hadn´t I? Who am I, actually? Why do I relate so much now? It´s not just about the soda. I had lost friends before, but I never really felt like that. Sometimes I feel like I´ve lost everyone. In a one year span I became a hikkikomori. About a month ago, when I entered classes, I was recognized as Shintaro pfp and I admitted to kinning him to people i´d never talked to before (on chat) // I decided to go apeshit idc anymore about what anyone thinks of me// I had fun. I think I must´ve posted on my stories, because two different people told me they were the ene to my shintaro. I appreciated it. i mean it´s kinda true bc now that i´m only on the pc they do bother me online and try to get me to open up or get better but sometimes the just annoy me lmao but also not bc they all have their own particular lives and they all seem to be doing better than me. Still, my classmates are very nice and inclusive. But it´s not like im close to any of them I guess. I´m just alone now. I´m fucked up man....I don´t feel real anymore. I don´t really know who I am. I guess that´s why I find comfort in seeing a part of myself in Shintaro? But when did i turn out like this? Why didn´t I relate when I was younger? Well, I hadn´t really lost any friends back then. I now know how painful that is. How lonely it is to be alone even when there is people around. idk. and i´ve always been quiet. introverted. shy. a loser. yet now whenever i meet anyone i try to idk connect? but i cant. i wish i could be more evil. maybe it´d just be easier if everyone really, truly hated me. maybe i´d get the strength to actually kill myself then. it´s weird. i really see myself in route xx shintaro. I know that´s fucked up because I know how it ends. but truly, i was trying. I was healing, i think i was going somewhere. and i was trying to keep my newly formed renovated friend group together. I really was trying to. I didn´t mind if we had sub groups on the big group, but we were all there for each other. I tried my best. I felt like i belonged. but now im alone again. and this time there´s nothing i can do. if something, i´ve made it worse. and i keep making it worse. it´s weird. when i first got into kagepro, both shintaro and ayano felt like adults. i thought they were really, really big. im older than them now. now i know theyre not really adults. i get it. i still feel 18. after all, these last two years have been taken away from me. i didnt waste them myself this time.  i feel like a rotten 18 year old...when i listen to lost time memory, i just...get it. i always liked the song. i thought the story was so cool. when it first came out.. i still remember. iwas there. i waited for it. i loved it. i still do, but back then, i just saw it all as some really great and cool song. now i feel like i really, really get it. i love it even more. im hiding away in all my memories. but what is my true heart? what do i really want? i don´t know, i don´t know... If I'm 'wise' then, I can't face forward; I have no reason to so, I'll rot away instead It would be nice if time could be turned back. Years may pass but I'll never die I repeat hopeful words to myself, even though I know I still won't be able to reach you. "It doesn't matter, just die already!" I said as I clutched my wrist, simply cursing it. Unable to do anything, I merely indulged myself in life. "If summer can show me dreams, then let's go to before you were taken away" The days where I hid my embarrassment are illuminating upon the atmosphere and burning my mind. If I'm wishing for a dream that can't come true, then I'll embrace this blurry past and have a dream which I don't wake up from and naturally seclude myself from the outside world. "But that means you can't even see tomorrow?" I don't really care 'bout that, so it's ok I stained my hands in order to kill these boring days I'm choosing "solitude" after all A rotten boy at 18 today too, prayed again while clinging on to your colored smile Underneath the blazing sun Asking "Somehow, please take me away instead of leaving like this!" and my murmuring breath was quietly stopped

I guess i just wish someone could actually help me. take me out of this hole. Maybe some kind of closure would be nice. It´s not the same, though. I don´t have enough bravery in myself to actually kill myself. Mostly because of guilt. I can´t take the guilt of dissapointing everyone. I don´t want my parents to get hurt. I don´t want my bunny to miss me. Yet i wish everyday for it to be over. Lately, half of my dreams have been in Japan, with many friends, some who i met there, some who have never been there. Yet my brain shows me the dreams before it was all taken away. I think one of my favorite parts of the day is dreaming. I like to sleep simply because I dream. And i sleep very few. mayb bc i hate myself? I still barely indulge in life. I do anything to stay distracted. If i think, it all goes to shit. it all does. like now. Heh. it´s funny. I guess no one is truly my ene, because no one actually knows how mentally fucked up i got these past months. No one knows how badly i´ve been treating myself and how badly i´ve been doing. Still, i can´t tell anyone but scream it into the tumblr void. No one has to keep up with my shit. No one has to take care of me. After all, it was I who chose solitude. It was me who kept them away. But I don´t get a second choice. I don´t get a change of routes if things go sour. And i guess I don´t get to get a mentally fucked up friend group where I belong for a second time. Once was good enough, wasn´t it? I.. Even when I wasnt as deep as i am now (again) into kagepro, ive always wanted to die on August 15. It holds meaning to me now as well. Every year I used to ask people to go out with me that day. I know im not brave enough to kill myself. I always hoped for a lil miracle i guess. Last year was the first year...I didn´t do anything. I just... I just hope this year i can make it. I hope the miracle happens this year....I can only hope......its too late for me to be saved, isn´t it? I never thought it´d be like this. I don´t get closure. I don´t get goodbyes. I am left behind on a world that keeps moving. I am nothing.

[swirlyrobe]

Jul 28, 2015

Details

after that i ended up in a special ed school and thats when i started listening to rap with dipset and stealing yugioh cards for money and robitussin to get high. when i was 16 i only had a couple good friends and everybody else just avoided me caus they were scared i was going to fight them and one of them steve (who’s 3 years younger than me) had me meet his (at the time) ex gf one day and i ended up getting my thing sucked>.> yea for the first time and then we planned to lose our virginity the next week. she brought her friend and we had a threesome tho my drugs caught up with me because i was on probation for beating somebody up on the bus and i kept getting dirty urines for weed so i went to rehab a couple weeks after

i never really had gfs in highschool other than that, there was only 5 girls in my special ed school, i was friends with most of them but they used me for drugs. i went to community college right after highschool and made friends rapping tho immediately got involved in a small crime ring of stealing video games from stores, selling them to gamestop to make a couple hundred daily as well as smoking a lot more weed (while still on probation for another assault) that didnt catch up with me yet tho when i was 19 this girl sabrina added me on facebook and i really liked her, ended up meeting her at the mall it was a really sweet date(we had fun getting physical😄) she wasn’t like everybody else because she didnt try to be normal. i had court coming up though i ended up smoking pcp for the first time and had a psychotic break where i thought this girl was her (who wasnt) and got arrested for unlawful restraint (i thought she was bugging out and i didnt want to leave until i knew what was wrong). i went to jail and got released to rehab again.

when i got out of rehab i went to outpatient rehab (i was 20 now) and met a woman heather who was 33. we dated and she bought a ring for me 3 months after to propose which i accepted because i was desperate and i thought i loved her though she asked if i was attracted to her and i honestly said only her face and not her body so she broke up with me. after that i started smoking again until i started talking to this girl Haley who lived the city over from me, she said she wanted a brother yet i really started liking her when we talked. this is when i really started realizing i liked younger girls and she ended up admitting she had a bf months after and lied to both of us. (i made a lot of songs about her😔😪){&2020 update about haley: we moved on with our lives and had never met though I talked to her a little on Facebook this year and, thankfully I wasn't as enamored and clingy😪}

there's a couple dozen other girls i dated/talked to between that and then there was bella who heard my music on an old social site called PHEED and i thought she was beautiful so i told her that and we talked. she lived in texas but we had intense convos she was really smart, beautiful, funny and we swore we would be together though i had to go to rehab again(this time inpatient in New London where, I lived in a sober house & got a job after) because i violated probation yet i wanted to test if she’d stay with me so i didnt tell her i went. about 4 months later when i was getting out of rehab i talked to her again and she acted like everything was alright and she had moved to NY as well as gotten a license and really had her life together. she said she loved me and was gonna drive to see me in new london so, I waited an hour for her to come until I talked to her and she said because I "played" her she was playing me so, not coming 😢😞(this was in 2014)

So in 2015 I was clean about a year so, I applied & got accepted for McNally Smith college of music (to major in audio production) in st Paul Minnesota where I Was clean for months until (for some reason I forgot but, probably running around fast) I got kicked out of my weightlifting gym out there so I was upset and, found some people @ a park near downtown st Paul smoking weed which I got in on and, ten weeks later I saw someone with dreads buying a dutch in a bodega so, I asked if he knew where to get weed and: It turned out he was a dealer so I ended up buying lot's of weed and trading for studio time for him to record but, I got caught smoking sometimes in my dorm & because I got in arguments with students and staff at college so, they warned me if I got in ANY fight in or, outside of school I would be expelled & I DID get expelled; probably because of the fight where I sent that guy who hit my head with a brick to the hospital (which drew a LOT of attention and PROBABLY was on the news)

Though they said it was because I got in too many arguments and, smoked too much weed in my dorm...

So I moved back with my grandma later in 2015 where I was until she kicked me out for smoking weed and k2 so, I was homeless In which I slept under a blanket near the library and, behind a church in hamden until, the church let me live in their garage when it became winter so I stayed there until early 2016 where, I moved to a spot in Hamden off the bike trail in the woods where I started with a one person tent until I stole a 8 person tent from Walmart and, uused a shopping cart to carry a bed my friend gave away down the bike trail to my spot and late I stole a propane heater plus propane powered stove so I stole an empty propane can outside of krauzers and I kept paying $20 to get it filled at The car wash up the street so I used it to cook ramen and, oatmeal on my stove and power my heater in the winter and I finally got clean in August 2016 while STILL homeless then completed a course to get into CTWORKS which helped me get nice used suits and an interview g for the job I got at Chipotle in December 2016 while, still homeless 😪 I told them I still lived at my grandmas and took showers at my friend's house until I got a la fitness membership with my first paycheck which was actually through the woods near my tent so, I took showers there EVERY morning & worked out there in addition to, at my tent where I still had a barbell set from my grandmas and, then in the spring of 2017 I applied to and, got a landscaping job I saw on the ctworks job search online so I woke up at 5am EVERY morning with a battery powered alarm clock I stole from Walmart and, caught the first Whitney bus that went downtown at 5:30 and, then I took the next train around 5:45 to go to milford where, the landscaping base is so I ran there when I got to Milford around 6am to get there on time by 6:30-45

So I worked there while I was still homeless and, I got approved for shelter plus Care which some people That lived in the woods near me told me about and, I got my apartment with 2 jobs off the post road behind dunkin donuts in West Haven so, I took The bus up the post road to get to BOTH jobs until, I saw a moped for sale from east haven on Craigslist for$200 in mid spring of 2017 which, I rode to my jobs on until, I got a drivers permit (coincidentally on the day I heard my grandma was dying so, I Went to her house and Watched her die 😥

Then I took drivers ed classes;

Then I started getting driving lessons in late spring 2017 until I learned to drive in a couple months so, I took the drivers test in summer 2017 and, then took motorcycle classes at north haven gateway (where I ran into my dr's receptionist Alexandra ai had a crush on (who I even had written and recorded a song about) then, my mom helped me get my 250 ninja from new Haven power sports so: I drove that to my jobs until my crash on August 6th 2019 which, I don't remember but, I woke up at the residential physical rehab hospital Gaylord where : I leave weekly what happened was I hit an suv on mg way to work, had a right brain stroke & broken pelvic also my left side was paralyzed and got contractures (where my left arm, fingers and left got really curled up and difficult to straighten so I'm still working on walking again 😥

(I'm getting botox injections to help my left side straighten and , I'm able to my left leg and arm though, they're really bent and my fingers are too bent for me to move, use,or, hold anything😪

So now I am living at my aunts waiting to get another apartment through my insurance agency while, I still get votox every 2 months unrtil I hopefully gain control and use of my left side😪 &, the ability to walk again...

I went from being REAL STRONG to, being weak (though I'm ljfting more with my right arm with a dumbbell then I used to!)

Either way: I'm a survivor!

💪🏽😁👍🏼

[book-of-ryker]

When the Navy found out I smoked marijuana, I was at a firing range. I had an M-4 and an M-9, one being an automatic rifle, the other a pistol.

They disarmed me immediately, and I remember knowing why they did.

In the twenty seconds it took me to walk over to the disarming barrel, my thoughts were, “Pull the pistol out, put the barrel in your mouth and pull the trigger” for as many times I could mentally repeat before I lost the opportunity. I called my dad while a Chief was on his way to pick me up.

After the phone call, I deleted all of my Facebook messages at the recommendation of my father.

All of my text messages. too. My dad swore the Chief wasn’t my friend, and would screw me over at his first chance and not to tell him anything, at all.

The deleted threads of conversations with people who either didn’t exist anymore, or we had stopped talking.

I must have chain smoked about fifteen cigarettes in the hour and a half it took for this Chief to arrive.

All the while, I had been wishing that I had the courage to just pull that fucking trigger.

That anxiety was unbearable.

I went to a DRB, which is where I stand in front of a bunch of senior enlisted military.

At first, I came in with my shoulders back , military discipline and all. At the end, I was escorted out by a compassionate Master Chief, and I was bawling.

I have wanted to kill myself for as far back as I can remember. I smoked weed because all of my pain in life is unbearable and my mind never shuts the fuck up.

I don’t understand reality the way everyone seems to and it’s isolating, like being in the dimension next door.

"Most everyone who doesn’t know me resents me. Most everyone who knows me tolerates me," I tell myself.

I sat outside and cried, blubbering to these senior enlisted folks.

As a Second Class Petty Officer with all of the skills that I had possessed. I was in the United States Navy for five long years, and nine excruciating months and two awkward days.

I had been to mental health multiple times in my  Naval career. The first psychiatrist that I ever spoke to was at NATTC Pensacola.

It’s not even six months of me getting out of the Navy now...

My present life finds me in this bed at some house in South Carolina, Like a muscle, those words stream across my mind like a teleprompter, “You should have died on that day. You should have fucking killed yourself.”

And for myself, I finally gave myself the courage to tell myself, “No.” "I love you for just who you are. I love the way you think, I love the way you handle thing[s] (most of the time ^.^), I love what you do. You have a very solid and strong mind, you think things through very thoroughly, and you have a very good outward perspective. I don't know if that helps, but that's the best I can come up with while working." Let me tell you what I think happened before I tell you why I think we should reconnect. I'm 26 years old and the one and only thing in my life that I regret, to this day, is what I once said simply to hurt you. I was an awful boyfriend for you. Not all of the time, obviously. But my only regret comes from when I said out of annoyance and irresponsibility, 'I guess you're going to have to celebrate Thanksgiving without your boyfriend or your mom.." You eyes glazed over me. You slumped over. And you sobbed. I walked towards you and hugged you because that sort of rage-to-regret is exactly the kind of Bipolar Disorder that I am used to. It's been my entire life, Nicole. It's all I have ever known. Albeit, the worst of it all is over and I'm just waiting for all of my hopes and dreams to bloom into the flowers I have been cultivating. The night we went to Twin Peaks was the night you said goodbye, even though you never did. You and I both are aware that we would come across each other someday, I think. I don't have any proof for that delusion/hope, but hey, I don't know everything which means I have unfettered access to being totally wrong and totally right, until one of us is deceased. I do remember being in absolute bliss that night we met up and you were drunk with me in the Whataburger drive through and that's about all I have for that. Mike and I moved out of the house because we wouldn't be able to renew the lease before I had to get my new job in the Navy. I moved into an apartment on the second floor and I got a dog named Itachi. I did loads of LSD that I'd gotten and I had a REALLY FUCKING AWFUL TRIP with Hailey Campbell (also tripping) and Rian Nobles (not tripping). I went to my grandmother's funeral in New York with my Dad and Alex. I found out that my photographic memory is real because I reminded my Uncle about the fit my brother went into at the LAST funeral we gathered. Which was Renee's. I lived with Lauren Teston for a long time after that. I started smoking weed because, Nicole, I didn't know what to do.. Everyone has always left me, and I only NOW understand why: me. But I didnt see it like that. It didn't feel like that.. It didn't feel like I had an emotional problem. I didn't know. But in retrospect, Nicole, my emotions felt like a chainsaw to my insides. Our breakup was the healthiest breakup for me, and it was also the worst. (2020 readers, it got way worse) I didn't leave for California until right before October 10, 2016. I was trained to be an Engine Mechanic by the Seabees and I learned a fuck ton about cars. I did more PT than anywhere else in my military career. Every Friday was a 4:30 A.M., seven mile run with the whole school. Really, it was a fourteen mile run, but it makes me sound less of a douche if I say seven, maybe. I came home on leave for Christmas and I smoked even more weed. I came back to California to finish my school. Byy the way, there were two onomatopoeia's in a barracks room together: Petty Officer Quackenbush and Petty officer Miao (this or 'mao' is also the Chinese word for cat") I left Port Hueneme after meeting Johnny Depp in L.A. I drove, for the third time, across the country. I was at Gulfport, Mississippi for a few months, learning combat procedures with the Seabees. I pissed hot in Gulfport. I wrote a poem that I'll attach later about what that was like. I went to some military proceedings, reduced in rank,  lost a lot of money, had to go to two different hospitals for one month. I first went to Garden Park Hospital for a suicide watch that I had been placed under after the military proceedings had broken me down to where I couldn't take it anymore. I bawled my eyes out to men I'd never met because I could no longer believe that people didn't care about me. I was suicidal given the circumstances, but I was suicidal before I ever got caught smoking. The only reason I smoked was because I didn't want to be suicidal. A 51 year old woman tells me at this place that she, "Would be surprised if I never heard of you again. I stayed at Emerald Coast Behavioral Health (This is when I called you in 2017) and I learned an entirely different way of living. I was told that I have Bipolar Disorder I, Major Depressive Disorder, Anxiety, Osteochrondroma in the left knee. I was told a handful of tools to help myself become a better person. I then went to restriction, which is where a person is constantly monitoring me while I do nothing but work and survive. I did that for forty five days which dragged forever. I left. I stayed with my dad and I had a good first month out of the Navy. I was happy. I was excited and nervous and terrified. I smoked SO much more weed. I drank SO much more booze. And cigarettes. I was helping my dad build a deck in the backyard. My car was repossessed about one and one half months after getting out. I had nothing. I started working under the table as a contractor for a few months, but my mom and I got into a fight and I was kicked out of the house for the second and last time of my life. I moved in and slept on a friends floor. He had a bum knee from a recent surgery and so I quasi-morphed into his at-home nurse. Started doing dabs and malt liquor with friends. Eating popcorn for food, drawing outside for five hours, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. I did this for a month until my depression (booze) had become evil. I tried hanging myself on a dog line and I had to leave their house.. I stayed with my dude Sam for a few days and then moved in with my brother for a day. I feel nothing for him anymore, and so I really dont want to elaborate about this because he will always be a peace of shit. I went to a music festival that got shutdown by a hurricane. I got to do LSD/blow/weed for free because I was working security and I have worked with the team before. Hell, the guy in charge personally handed me $275 because of how badass of a watchstander I am. I then migrated to Asheville, North Carolina where my eyes were opened to the world we live in. And how great a thing love is, Nicole Renee Gable. But after this, I really had nowhere to go. That is until I remembered that I knew a guy from when I was in Japan.. We only ever really interacted in the smokepits. After he found out I had been sleeping on the floor of my friends house, he told me that if I was ever in South Carolina that he had a guest bedroom waiting for me. I lived with him and his wife and their son while I got a job as a forklift driver at BMW. I got another car (since been repossessed, not as debilitating for me now). I moved out and lived with a dude that I thought was a friend. He ended up being a real twat of a motherfucker. Before I knew he was a real dullard, I left BMW about two weeks of me living with him. It was too military.A HUGE millitary-industrial complex. He fucked me over so that I had nowhere to go and I didnt have a job. He left. I had the apartment by myself. It was a blur of events past that. Between the weed, the booze and the mental health issues, I am grateful to be writing this. This guy's stripper girlfriend (Her name is Sam and she's nice as well as bananas) came to find me in a fucked up mess of my own doing at the apartment. After I came to, she and I decided that I needed to check myself into a mental health center. With no insurance. I had only a few boxes of stuff (I drove down to Florida at one point to get my shit). After I was in for a week (I know what I'm about and the solutions I need), I got a job working as a cook in a strip club. The BEST job I ever had because I actually made some good money. (30 girls dancing in one night with $5 tips to me is a lot of moolah) However, I didnt make enough money to stay. I only made enough money to leave. I bought two edibles and had a nice relaxing eight hour drive to a friend's house in Pennsacola We had a personal falling out/disagreement. I worked as a line cook at Slimz at the Al Fresco in Pensacola. I saved up money to come out to California. I'm with one of my few best friends, Tymothy. Upon my arrival here, my car was repossessed (I bought in South Carolina, which is fucking crazy that they found me). My life is coming together though, Nicole. I am generally happy in my day to day lifestyle. I'm hoping to be officially retired from working for the rest of my life within this next year. It turns out that there was A HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE scandal in the Navy and I'm going to use my genius mind to collect the disability that I deserve. Monthly, that payment could land anywhere between $800-2900.. For the rest of my life. I have an amazing home loan that I will get to use once the ball has begun rolling. Nicole, I really dont think I love you as much as I should have and that bothers me. Not in a negative way, at all. It makes me feel like I need to write this email to you. Like I owe you more for what you gave me, Nicole Gable. You might not see it, Nicole. The only reason I ever went along with the mental health is so that we could have a healthy relationship together. Whatever that even fucking means as far as the definition goes. Hell, for all I know, you could be seriously dead or worse. You could be dating somebody.. 😝 I havent dated anyone quite seriously. I've been on a couple of dates here and there, but I just didn't/don't care. I hope that all of these women find someone that loves them as much as I know I can love you someday, if you could ever trust me... If you're with someone, I seriously hope they love you as much as space-time can hold matter and energy and light and dark matter. The greatest lesson I have learned since we spoke last is that we will live our lives from the shades of fear and the radiations of love. I love and accept myself now. I love myself exactly how you once loved me. I don't know where on this rock you are, but if you'd like to never have to work again, please reach out to me. I would be honored, if you would ever be willing. It's still going to be a few months, so you can think about this for awhile..? If you ever wanted to live in California with me someday, I mean. Hell, we could be roomates. You could wear chastity belts and Amish outfits all year round . I don't know anything.. I hope that this email finds you well. I hope it has given you smiles. I hope you have a blessed day. [Update]  It is now the year 2020.  I am.  The world is the world. Hell is hell.  We’re all stuck on a rock in the middle of nowhere.  If there’s someone reading this, be aware: you do not exist. This is my spaceship.

[patriotsnet]

Why Are Republicans So Afraid Of Trump

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/why-are-republicans-so-afraid-of-trump/

Why Are Republicans So Afraid Of Trump

Officer Goes From ‘sadness’ To ‘rage’

Why Are Republicans Still So Afraid Of Trump? | The 11th Hour | MSNBC

Sicknicks partner on the Capitol police, Sandra Garza, wrote an essay about the attack and the aftermath in which she said in part, I saw officers being brutalized and beaten, and protesters defying orders to stay back from entering the Capitol. All the while, I kept thinking, Where is the President? Why is it taking so long for the National Guard to arrive? Where is the cavalry!?

She added, As the months passed, my deep sadness turned to outright rage as I watched Republican members of Congress lie on TV and in remarks to reporters and constituents about what happened that day. Over and over they denied the monstrous acts committed by violent protesters.;

For example, when Gosar called the Jan. 6 attackers peaceful patriots.

During the Benghazi hearings, Republicans were laser-focused on trying to place blame on then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. But after four years of investigations, most of them purely partisan affairs, they found no evidence of criminal wrongdoing on her part.

Republicans dont want anything close to that type of scrutiny on the Capitol attacks of Jan. 6. In fact, they dont seem to want any scrutiny at all.

Almost as if they know what will be found.

Almost as if I didnt have to use the word almost.

Reach Montini at .

Trump Is Here To Stay And Republicans Should Be Worried

There are Republican office holders who genuinely embrace Trump. For other leading GOP politicians and strategists, it’s a calculation: placate Trump and his crazy stuff now, win the Congress next year and start to move on.

That’s a fantasy.

The narcissistic former president is incapable of just going away. The Trump brand hardly suffers though it seems every week a new book comes out on his tragic governance and those from people without subpoena power.

Start with the 2020 election, which should be history; Biden won the popular vote handily and the electoral college with several states to spare. That has been validated by Republican state officials, dozens of court cases, Congress and Trump’s own attorney general and vice president. It was more clear-cut than Trump’s victory four years earlier and two other presidential elections in this century.

Time to move on, right? Trump won’t allow it.

Trump is an effective demagogue. Six years ago, he had many Republicans questioning whether Barack ObamaBarack Hussein ObamaWhere is Joe Biden’s ‘red line’?Newsom recall spurs unprecedented turnout campaignBiden is steering America to lose asymmetric warsMORE really was born in the United States, even though Obamas 1961 birth in Hawaii was in the newspaper.;

Actually, the former president could take credit for the rapid development of the extraordinarily effective vaccines but this might help Biden, avoiding which apparently motivates Trump more than the lives he might save.

Todays Republicans Really Hate Democrats And Democracy

1) Trumps supporters have embraced anti-democratic ideas

This chart shows results from a two-part survey, conducted in late 2020 and early 2021, of hardcore Trump supporters. The political scientists behind the survey, Rachel Blum and Christian Parker, identified so-called MAGA voters by their activity on pro-Trump Facebook pages. Their subjects are engaged and committed Republican partisans, disproportionately likely to influence conflicts within the party like primary elections.

These voters, according to Blum and Parker, are hostile to bedrock democratic principles.

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John Kasich Says Republicans Are ‘afraid’ Of Trump

EmbedEmbed

Former Ohio Gov. John Kasich speaks with NPR’s Leila Fadel about the GOP’s unwillingness to stand up to President Trump, who still refuses to accept the results of the presidential election.

LEILA FADEL, HOST:

Last night, President Trump received another loss in court. A federal judge in Pennsylvania dismissed the campaign’s attempts to stop the certification of Pennsylvania’s votes. This is just the latest of more than two dozen failed challenges brought by the Trump campaign to overturn the election results. President Trump refuses to concede, and for the most part, his party has supported his efforts to pursue legal challenges based on false allegations of widespread voter fraud.

Very few high-profile Republicans have publicly acknowledged Joe Biden as the winner, but one of them is John Kasich. He’s the former governor of Ohio and a 2016 Republican presidential candidate, and he joins us now.

Governor Kasich, welcome.

JOHN KASICH: Thanks, Leila. Glad to be with you.

FADEL: So you endorsed President-elect Joe Biden. He won this election. What do you make of President Trump’s attempts to overturn the results?

KASICH: It’s just absurd. The whole thing is – it’s just – it’s ridiculous. I mean, he has clearly won this election. And it is just sort of amazing to me that Republicans just keep sitting on their hands. It makes no sense.

FADEL: That was the former Republican governor of Ohio, John Kasich.

Governor Kasich, thanks for speaking with us.

Republicans Still Scared To Death Of Trump

Trump went on yet another unhinged rant this weekend during a speech to donors in Florida, attacking Mitch McConnell as a “stone cold loser” for refusing to go along with his attempt to steal the election, but you won’t find any profiles in courage in the GOP willing to stand up to him.

Case in point, on this weekend’s Fox News Sunday, South Dakota Republican Sen. John Thune was asked about Trump calling him “weak and inneffective RINO” earlier in the year and saying he might back a primary challenger to Thune. Thune responded telling host Chris Wallace that “I’ve been through wars in South Dakota, political wars, with my own party when I ran the first time, with the Democrats in a couple of hotly contested Senate races, so being afraid of a fight or somebody coming after me is not something that’s going to influence that decision,” but Thune refused to admonish Trump for his rhetoric, and refused to stand up for McConnell when asked about him as well.

Which is pretty much the equivalent of “I support Trump, but I really don’t like the tweeting” that we heard from so many of them over the last five or six years.

As the Fox article discussed, Trump called Thune “Mitch’s boy” when urging Gov. Kristi Noem to challenge Thune in 2022, but no amount of insults are apparently ever breaking point for these jellyfish.

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Why Republicans Are Scared Of Texas New Abortion Ban

For years, conservative legislators have passed increasingly restrictive abortion laws, knowing theyd be struck down by the courts. Now, Republicans are going to have to defend their views at the ballot box. And that might not go well for them.

At a pro-choice rally in Texas in 2013, one sign reads “Republicans, your seats aren’t safe.” | AP Photo/Eric Gay

09/18/2021 08:41 AM EDT

Link Copied

Sarah Isgur is a graduate of Harvard Law School who clerked on the Fifth Circuit. She was Justice Department spokeswoman during the Trump administration and is the host of the legal podcast Advisory Opinions for the Dispatch.

When the Supreme Court allowed Texas 6-week abortion law to stand earlier this month, it was presented asa major victory for anti-abortion conservatives. After all, Republican state legislators in deep red states have long been passing increasingly restrictive abortion laws, only to see many later get struck down in the courts. Finally, one law got through .

Whats going on? When considering the political ramifications of the Texas abortion law, Ian Malcoms famous line from Jurassic Park comes to mind, with a little social-wars twist: Your were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didnt stop to think if they should.

So the more relevant question is whether the abortion issue motivates voters in both political camps and which side it motivates more.

Filed Under:

As Gop Makes It Harder To Vote Few Republicans Dissent

ATLANTA In Arizona, a Republican state senator worried aloud that his partys proposed voter identification requirements might be too cumbersome. But he voted for the bill anyway.

In Iowa, the states Republican elections chief put out a carefully worded statement that didnt say whether he backs his own partys legislation making it more difficult to vote early.

And in Georgia, Republican Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan left the room as Senate Republicans approved a bill to block early voting for all but the GOPs most reliable voting bloc. Duncan instead watched Mondays proceedings from a television in his office to protest.

This is what amounts to dissent as Republican lawmakers push a wave of legislation through statehouses across the nation to make voting more difficult. The bills are fueled by former President Donald Trumps false claims of widespread voter fraud and many are sponsored by his most loyal allies. But support for the effort is much broader than just Trumps hard-right base, and objections from GOP policymakers are so quiet they can be easy to miss.

Its a startling shift for a party whose voters in some states, such as Florida and Arizona, had embraced absentee and mail voting. Several Republican strategists note the party may be passing laws that only box out their own voters.

Read Also: When Did Republicans And Democrats Switch Platforms

An Effort To Investigate Was Blocked In The Senate

Its different with the Jan. 6 insurrection. After Republicans in the Senate blocked a bill to investigate, the House decided to investigate on its own.

This time around, however, all but two Republicans in the House Reps. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois and Liz Cheney of Wyoming voted against setting up a committee to find out what happened on;Jan. 6.

All of Arizonas Republican representatives voted no.;This would include Reps. Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar. You may recall that right-wing political activist Ali Alexander claimed that these two Arizona representatives worked with him to plan pro-Trump rallies, including the one that ended with an attack on the Capitol.

That kind of connection to the Capitol riot seems to be what Republicans are worried about. They;fear the exposure of possible;links between the rioters and Republicans, and the implications that may have for former President Donald Trump.

Gladys Sicknick, the mother of Brian Sicknick, said of the Republicans who voted not to investigate the event, I just dont believe anybody could vote no, it doesnt make sense.

Republicans Can Govern Without Winning A Majority That Threatens Our Democracy

âRepublicans Are Afraid Of Donald Trumpâ Despite Election Loss, Kasie Hunt Says | TODAY

So, lets talk about why Cheney is once again on the chopping block and what that means for the Republican Party moving forward that is, can we finally stop debating whether the GOP is Trumps party now?;

But first: the role of the Big Lie. For a while now, refusing to accept the results of the 2020 election has proven a fealty test of sorts to Trump, and its one Cheney has refused to take. How much of that is responsible for Cheneys current situation versus her politics being increasingly out of step with the rest of the party?

related:Bidens Push For Big Government Solutions Is Popular Now But It Could Backfire Read more. »

nrakich :Its the entire reason for her current situation, Sarah.

Ideologically, Cheney is a faithful conservative at least as conservatism used to be defined. According to DW-Nominate, which uses voting records to quantify the ideology of every member of Congress on a scale from 1 to -1 , she has a score of 0.515.

And according to FiveThirtyEights Trump Score, she voted in line with Trumps position 93 percent of the time. Instead, her main transgression appears to be not going along with the Big Lie .

micah : Yeah, agreed. The idea that Cheneys troubles are about policy the argument that her hawkish foreign policy views or her free-trade-y views are behind her split with the bulk of the GOP is a bit silly?

Americans are living in two different realities right now.

micah: Yeah, agreed.

Thats scary!

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Is The Census Wrong

nrakich: I agree that its circular, Micah. The reason more Republican elites dont criticize Trump is that theyre afraid of his voters punishing them. But what they dont seem to realize is that they themselves also have power to shape those voters opinions! Theres a lot of evidence in political science that elites can shape public opinion.

sarah: Do GOP elites, though? So much of Trumps story in 2016 and 2020 was about the high voter turnout that he was responsible for driving. And although I think we should question how much turnout helped the GOP in 2020, there does seem to be an unspoken fear among GOP elites that these voters arent really Republicans now that is, they wont turn out for anyone other than Trump which is why so many GOP elites are scared to break with Trumps messaging.

micah: What do you all think would happen public opinion-wise if Republicans in Washington came out hard against the Big Lie but Trump and state-level Republicans kept it going?

nrakich: To be clear, it would be a political risk for Republican politicians to come out forcefully against the Big Lie. A solid chunk of the party would likely stand by Trump and continue to think the election was stolen. But it could lead to serious infighting within the GOP. At least, though, our democracy would be on a healthier path.;

But, hey, Im not staring down midterms.

micah: I think they are not long for this world.

I mean, how many are even left?

sarah: Or John Kasich.

Republican Party Faces Rage From Both Pro

By Peter Eisler, Chris Kahn, Tim Reid, Simon Lewis, Jarrett Renshaw

13 Min Read

WASHINGTON – After riots at the U.S. Capitol by President Donald Trumps supporters, the Republican Party is facing defections from two camps of voters it cant afford to lose: those saying Trump and his allies went too far in contesting the election of Democrat Joe Biden – and those saying they didnt go far enough, according to new polling and interviews with two dozen voters.

Paul Foster – a 65-year-old house painter in Ellsworth, Maine – is furious at party leaders for refusing to back the presidents claims that the election was stolen with millions of fraudulent votes. The party is going to be totally broken if it abandons Trump, Foster says, predicting Trump loyalists will spin off into a new third party.

I just wish he would run away with his tail between his legs, Cupelo says.

Though Republicans have now lost control of the White House and both houses of Congress in just four years, Trumps base remains a potent electoral force in the party. That base helped him capture more voters some 74 million than any Republican in history. The vast majority of his supporters, including 70% of Republicans, remain loyal, according to new Reuters/Ipsos polling conducted days after last weeks riot at the Capitol, and many activists say theyre willing to abandon the GOP for any perceived slight against their leader.

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Republicans Are Suddenly Afraid Of Democracy

Were not a democracy, Republican Senator Mike Lee tweeted in the middle of Wednesday nights vice-presidential debate. He was reacting to something hed heard onstage there, in his home state of Utah. Another tweet: The word democracy appears nowhere in the Constitution, perhaps because our form of government is not a democracy. Its a constitutional republic. To me it matters. It should matter to anyone who worries about the excessive accumulation of power in the hands of the few. Hours after the debate Lee was still worrying the thought: Democracy isnt the objective; liberty, peace, and prospefity are. We want the human condition to flourish. Rank democracy can thwart that.

Why did Lee choose this momentless than four weeks before an election in which his party seems likely to suffer defeatto make the familiar, even pedantic, point that we live in a republic rather than a pure democracy? Why did he insist on the point so vehemently that he neglected to mention that power in the American system ultimately lies with the people, which means that our system could also be called a representative democracy? Did he mean rank as in foul, rancid, or outright? If the last, does that mean the tyranny of the majority leading to perverse rule by the few? What did this short, misleading course in Civics 101 have to do with anything?

Time To Reckon With Gop Radicalization

The lies about 2020 and the increasing dedication to destroying democratic institutions in the quest for power are inextricable from one another. As Jay Rosen says, the press is comfortable calling out the former it can be packaged as a fact check.” But being forthright about the latter requires depicting one party as far and away the only primary threat to our democratic stability. Thats accurate, but its uncomfortably adversarial.

Relatedly, describing Republicans as cowards who fear Trump casts their machinations as mere reluctant efforts to cope with externally imposed circumstances theyd prefer not to be dealing with. This lets Republicans off the hook in a very fundamental way. It risks misleading the country about the true depths of GOP radicalization and the real dangers it poses.

Read more:

Also Check: How Many Democrats And Republicans Are In The House

[kawaiibeela]

2017 in review... i guess?

so i guess im gonna do this lol... its not really a review of my year but i will talk about a few major personal things over the past few months that happened to me, LONG LONG LONGGGGG POST UNDER THE CUT

a lot of people complained about 2017 being a shitty year, a continuation for 2016..... and i thought it would be too.... and thats how it started.... i was stuck in a crappy job for 6 years.... i wanted to leave so badly but i was also scared.... scared that what if i couldn’t find anything else? scared in my skills as a graphic designer.... i hated all my work and everything i produced from that job, i got comfortable at this job.... i could come and go as i pleased, i could take any day off i wanted.... but they were toxic people, they judged me very hard for liking the things i did, they were very negative about everything, they forced stuff on me that wasn’t part of my job, they made me feel very awkward, they would make “comments” about my religion when it didn’t fit their needs...it was very uncomfortable at times.... i would just lie to myself and to other people when asked “how’s work going?” i would say “not bad, its pretty good, i’m doing some fun events” but i was slowly drowning inside.... my parents and close friends would always tell me “you need to quit!!! just quit!!! find something better!! you’re better than this place” but i never believed it..... i never believed them..... when i should have been listening to them....

i started to tell myself, this is enough.... i cant deal with this place any more.... i started to work on my portfolio website.... but i hated it..... i hated everything about it..... everything in there just reminded me of my old shitty job that i hated... all this effort put into something that i hated... because i was forced to do what the clients wanted, it was frustrating!!

a few years ago, i went to this graphic design conference that was meant to help people find jobs, i went to a portfolio review and all 3 reviewers told me the same thing, the work i put in seem forced and not my style, they said to add stuff i was passionate about and stuff that i enjoyed and my work would speak for itself, every person that i showed my arashi posters too, said it was my strongest piece.... i should use that piece for sure!!

that helped me get a sense of what i wanted!! i deleted everything from my old portfolio site, except my logo which i actually still love, i kept 1 project from my old job which was the biggest and most challenging one i worked on to show that i have real life experience.

i decided to develop my arashi project into a full campaign, i added more pieces, i designed more stuff, for the fun of it.... every weekend for a while in the spring and summer, my friends and i were meeting up at cafes to help focus on stuff, i got a lottttt done there!!! i wanted to focus on stuff that was important to me, fandoms!! duh!! arashi of course, kiramune which had recently at the time become my new loves, and oldcodex!!! i decided to try and make designs based on them for fun!! i took kirafes 2017′s design and I remade it for myself, i imagined how i wanted the goods to look, i imagined how i wanted the posters to look, the pamphlet, and it took forever, but it was fun, it was frustrating but it was rewarding to come up with something i was proud of!! something i was happy about!! something that when i talked about it, i could explain what i wanted to and why i did certain things. 

for the oldcodex stuff, i made an editorial piece, i wanted to reflect their personalities so i just kept trying different things until i was happy!! in the end it came out really great and i was able to do that piece pretty fast as well too!!

i also kept in my portfolio parts of a magazine that i had worked on.... but i wasnt happy with a lot of parts of that magazine too... so i made my own pages to “add in” about the olympics and they came out really nice!!

i was confident in my portfolio for once.... it took months and months of work.... but i was happy about it... i was proud of it.... i was excited about it.... but...... i was scared..... scared i wasnt ready for the next step.... what if i put all this effort into it and im still not good enough? how will i feel then? i also hate going to interviews because of my anxiety as well too....

but finally around the beginning of September, i was actually able to 100% complete my portfolio, my business cards and resumes were also complete...

and i was scrolling down on facebook... and one of my old friends posted something..... we were really close during college, we took graphic design together but as the semesters went on, we drifted apart as well too... it had been probably like 4-5 years since i’d ever talked to her even.... but she posted “looking for a junior graphic designer for a 3 month contract” and i kinda looked at that for a while... i messaged one of my friends about it and said “hmmmm...... my friend just posted this.... what should i do?” and she told me “just message your friend and apply!!! just do it” she gave me that push because she knew how much i hated my current job too!! 

so i messaged my friend and asked her if she could submit my resume to HR.... and she did.... that was on friday.... i was scared.... and nervous.....but then... on a tuesday after work..... my phone rang and i got a call from the company..... its a photography company here in Toronto that has locations across Canada. they wanted me in for an interview.... a what??? wait what??? an interview???? they said they looked at my portfolio and were interested....... ehhhhh??? i was in shock..... but i was so happy too!! but scared..... the last interview i went on was like 2-3 years ago and it went pretty bad......... so i had no idea how this one would go..... the HR person was really nice though... she had told me that i would be interviewed by herself, the marketing manager and the art director.... i was scared as hell..... she gave me their names so i looked them up.... the art director........ he was so good..... his website was so nice!!! i started to lose confidence again but, its funny.... he was japanese.... i thought “oh crap, what if he tries to read parts of my portfolio?” i had used japanese interviews in my kiramune project but i couldnt find stuff for each member so i just copied and pasted, i thought “hes gonna know im just making stuff up” LOL I just kept thinking of useless thoughts in my head..... but i thought.... whatever.... im just gonna do it...... my interview was on thursday, i had called my old job and told them i couldnt work that day and they said it was fine because it was a really slow time... i obviously didnt tell them i was going for a job interview.... but i went anyways, i got there really early so i just sat somewhere and went over stuff i had planned for my interview, i had written stuff down in my journal and was gonna use that as a guideline for when they asked me questions, they asked some things similar to what i had planned but they asked some different stuff too... they were so nice.... throughout the interview they had kept complimenting my stuff, they said everything flowed very nicely and they really liked me work, they had asked me how i got interested in design and i answered the most face palming thing.... i mentioned anime... and i said i used to watch anime and pokemon as a kid and i dreamt of being an animator in japan and then i was like “oh no.... i didnt just tell them im a weeb did it?” and i was like “oh god, my life is over” haha i felt really embarassed ahaha oops LOL but then they were also really impressed by that answer too.... they asked if i had any retail experience and i told them i had experience working at this amusement park after high school too and it helped me deal with customers and stuff too... this was a job i had from like 10 years ago or something, it wasnt even on my resume any more, is just one of those jobs u get to make money.... like..... i thought nothing of it..... but they were SO EXCITED about it when i told them, they were like “wow!!! thats so great!!” they seemed so intrigued in everything i said!! the HR person was like “you seem very energetic!!” and i was like really happy!! no one really compliments me or my work usually haha XD 

towards the end of the interview, they asked if i had any questions for them and i asked them 2 questions and they seemed really impressed too!! haha they were like “those are great questions” haha 

at the end of the interview, i asked for their business cards so i could email them and thank them for taking time to interview me. they thanked me and the HR person said she’d be in touch the next few days

after the interview, i messaged my friend who had helped send in my resume and she said “just between you and me, they came upstairs and i think they really like you” omggg i felt sooo happy haha

on the way home, i remember getting really lost LOL it took me almost like 3 hours to get home i think XD i ended up finding a small japanese store that i bought a bunch of stuff from ahaha

so... i waited the weekend..... it was monday.... and i didnt hear from them.... tuesday went by and i didnt hear anything, i thought i must not have gotten the job, but then wednesday again, i got an email from the HR person, asking if i could email her 2-3 references... which i had none... so i asked 2 of my old coworkers from different jobs and they replied right away too because they also knew i hated my current job ahah so i sent my references and then on thursday while i was at work... i got a call from the HR person saying “i called both of your refernces and they both said wonderful things about you so we would like to offer you the 3 month contract position” like OMGGGG i almost screamed of joy!!! i was jumping up and down outside the office haha XD 

i told this job that i would need 1 week to give my old job a heads up tho, so i could start on the following wednesday

but then i got scared again, i had to tell my current job i was quitting... i mustered up the courage and just told my one boss first, she was so happy for me, she gave me a hug and she wished me all the best too!! but then i had to tell the owner of the company and his wife, theyre both assholes so i didnt wanna tell them, but my 1 coworker helped me figure out how to tell them.... so i told them and they were unhappy but i told them id help for 1 last event (until the end of october) they appreciated that at least 

so that following tuesday was my last day being in office at that crappy job i hated!!! i literally left there SKIPPING with a HUGGGEEE grin on my face!! i would never have to go back to that horrible place again!!! omg i was soooo happy!!!!

im getting tired of writing all this now LOL so im gonna fast forward a bit, but the new job was amazing, people there loved me and they were so appreciative of me, it was a huge 360 turn!! 

i was working at this new place but then in the evenings id help at my old job by working from home, that was horrible, i couldnt deal.... after that last job at my old work was done, i told them i couldnt help out any more and theyd have to find a new designer.... after 6 years of working there.... 6 FRIKKEN YEARS!!!!!! i told them i was probably going to have my contract extended and i told her i was so excited and she messaged back saying “thats not good for us but anyway congrats” like WTF BITCH!!! I HELPED YOU OUT SO MUCH!! I WAS SO NICE TO YOU!!! GOOD FUCKING RIDDANCE!!! I CANT EVEN WITH YOU!! LIKE OMG!!! i told her id send her files that i worked on and she replied 2 days later that she’ll download them later my last message to her was just “k” i was SO FUCKING DONE!!!! I HATE HER SO MUCH!!!

ANYYYYYYYWAYYYSSSSSSS...... fast forward another few weeks?months? my manager told me that she was able to get me to job full time..... FULL FUCKING TIME........ this was my first EVER full time job that related to my career, the old crappy one was never full time.... this is the first one ive had thats full time and ill get benefits and vacation and everything!! like OH. MY. GOD. i left work SOOOOOO happy!!! i actually CRIEDDDDD tears of joy!!! i couldnt believe it!!! i cant believe it!!! like omg!!! they all congratulated me!!! they were so proud of me!!! i was proud of me!!! i told my parents and i think for the first time in mine and their life, THEY were proud of me!!!! like it was amazinnnnggg!!! its still amazing!!!! we had a work lunch party and my manager was like “id like to take this time to officially tell you all that Nabeela is now full time with us” and they all raised their glasses and cheered to that too!!! like OMGGGG I WAS SO HAPPY!! (also hella embarassed since im still awkward af!!) but SO SO HAPPY!!!!

HONESTLY GUYS...... i am 30 years old now..... 30........ its NEVER too late..... nothing in life is set in stone..... no matter how 1 person does things, doesnt mean you have to be like them too....you can always do things at your own pace!!! sometimes things dont go as you imagine them but things WILL AND DO get better!!! things will be alright in the end!!! thats how i ended my 2017 and started my life as a 30 year old obaa-chan XD 

theres a lot of goals and things id like to work on for 2018 but i hope 2018 will even better for me and all my friends, family and followers!!!

if any of you actually got through all of this, then im so sorry and also thank you so much for reading LOL to all my friends who supported me through this hard moment in my life, thank you very much!! 

if any of you are curious about my portfolio, you can check it out at www.nabeelahamid.com ^__________^ thankssss!!! if any of you guys are designers too, tips or positive criticism is always welcome too!!

to all of my friends and followers who are already in 2018, HAPPY NEW YEAR AND I WISH NOTHING BUT THE BEST FOR ALL OF YOU!!!!! and to those still in 2017 like me, lets bring in the new years together!!!

[onemanzerosquad]

New York Blackbeard Diary Pt. 3

Day 11.......Woke up.....Started my day getting breakfast then headed to my neurologist office to get my form from my job in regards to my restrictions. After, went to the library to print out documents in regards to a situation that led to someone purchasing something from a PayPal. Pretty much someone hacked into my PayPal and purchase a monthly subscription to watch a show smh. As I was heading to work, I thought about all of my problems and have decided to take care of all the problems. Feels like time is not on my side in my opinion and I can no longer deal with the bullshit no longer. As take care of the problems head on, I have no problem dealing with consequence even if my body limitations is at risk cause. I'm alone in this and that's no one fault cause everyone has their own problem to fix.

On on to the side story......2012.......

The new year started and I was in a long distance relationship. Unfortunately, It didnt last long. Obviously, communication was the cause of the problems. From there I was talking to girls got into a relationship but that didnt even last too. Then I saw her. Now I'm not gonna write her government name. So I'm gonna name her HopelessRomantic. Unlike every women I've been with physically, I actually found her online. I didn't expect her to give me a chance but she did. At first, we were back and forth breaking up and making up. Then mid year, she broke up with thru a inbox smh. She was right tho, I wasn't doing anything with my life and she felt I had no ambition. It's crazy because before she broke up with me, I wanted to let her know that I finally got a job lol. During that time til September, I was dating and talking to other women but at the same time trying to get back with HopelessRomantic. Then at one point, HopelessRomantic was going through a tough time. So I took an opportunity to help her out. I was making sure she was okay. Then one day there was a BWA (beach) reunion show and since I told HopelessRomatic about my backyard wrestling career, I invited her to the show. That day was interested as I got to see some of the guys even my first love and by the night, I brought her home and "Netflix and chill" happened lol. It was our first time doing something after 9 months of us knowing eachother. From that moment on we were back together but this time she trusted me and gave me another chance of love again. On to other things,in that year I started wrestling officially in BWA (Bronx). I had a chance to wrestle in RCW but I decided not to go. I knew I wasn't going to be comfortable there and plus the only people I would mostly trust would be the DIW wrestlers that I meant in 2011. Everyone else ehhhhh (the white boys weren't really there lol). BWA (Bronx) hands down was the best time of my backyard wrestling career. Holy Convictions Tag Team with Genocide, 4 aces, matches with Loco, Dixon, Dom The Don, my epic match against Gencocide that open everyone's eyes, and the match of the event of SuperShowDown (their Wrestlenania), against Joker. I had a epic time in the BWA (Bronx). Now back to HopelessRomantic. Our relationship was great. Our families liked us together, I got to see her often, I was working, the sex was great lol, and she even motivated me to actually go to college. The original plan was to go study Criminal Justice. Then December hit and after the hurricane, I came from chilling with a friend and HopelessRomantic send me a message on Facebook breaking up with me. There wasn't a particular reason. She wrote like an essay but it had nothing to do with me. I can only assume she wasn't interested anymore. So the year was heading to its end. So I decided to live it up with Black, Red, Green, and Blue Label with some 40s. Regardless of the break up, I still had good year.

Day 12.......Woke up and started my day with a cup of coffee. Went to my job to pick my check check my app to see how much since I started last week and today was pay week and apparently I got no pay listed on this week. So I can only assume my next check will make up for last week or something. Money is always with no value hard to get by but hey whatever. So went on my morning and TD Bank to fax the people apart of my dispute case and unfortunately the bank printing machine doesn't work doesn't work. So another Negative Nancy in the poison air of New York City. After work, I saw my Autismo crew (J God, Weirdo, and Porn Plug). Chopped it up a little bit and by the way F**K WWE 2K!!!!!

On on to the side story......2013......

2013 new year.....still working on and off. Surprisely, me and HopelessRomantic kept in contact regardless of the breakup. One day I brought her over just to chill. She got cozy which didn't bother cause she was single as was I. From what I remember, we were talking and it led to her being emotional and she was crying. So held her tight then boom......we had sex......The next day we were talking and I kinda express to her I wanted to get back together but she didn't want that. I actually cried but accepted and got over it. Probably like a month later, she got into a relationship with someone else which sucked even more. Other than that I signed up for a program that dealt with Digital Media and did well in the program. I was still working but not as much. My birthday but on that day I was sick (for about a week). After I healed, I started this new job that my guy Dirty Sandchez aka Eyevrows from Getaway hook me up with. It was an maintenance job. Did the job and all. July 4th hit and partying up drinking doing my thing. I woke up and got a call from HopelessRomantic letting me know that her Aunt passed. All I had was tears cause her aunt meant a lot The last time I talk to her was Mother's Day so the pain was more. I was mad and I played Dante's Inferno with anger. From morning til night, I beat the game. The one thing I notice alot that day was I had double vision that whole day. I would think that would be gone by the morning but it wasn't. After hanging out with my boy. I started to fall easily and constantly told I looked crossed eyed. By August my left leg felt like I or sprained it. August I finally hit the switch and started college. I was studying Mental Health/Domestic Violence Counseling. First semester went well. All As and 1 B. I even had my own little crew.

SIDE NOTE: One person in that crew ending up being my girlfriend (2016)

During the first semester I was still dealing with my health problems. Things got worse. My hands were so numb that I couldn't write. My double vision was there everyday and I had a hard time walking on my left leg. After going to the emergency room doing MRIs and Catscans and testing my strength with a group of neurologists and constantly hearing that I'm so young (I was 22), I saw a neurologist and he told me that I have Multiple Sclerosis.......

Day 13........Woke up, got ready, and speed walked to the bus stop to get to work. Unfortunately, I got a little late due to the bipolarness of the bus coming on schedule. When. I got to work, I couldn't punch in due to the app I punch in on couldn't connect to the server. After work, I went to see a friend that I haven't seen in quite some time and that was pretty much my day.

On on to the side story......2014.......

2014 came. I finally got my finally treatment after waiting for months for insurance reasons smh. I had to take it every week. I continued college by taking free classes inthe winter semester which was apart of Fall semester. As a result passed both classes with an A. From there my GPA was 3.6. With my education background with a learning disability, D equalivent grades, being in special ed classes, and receiving services due to my learning disability, for a guy with a incurable health condition that pretty much messes with your body depending on the central nervous system state, it was remarkable for something like that to happen. Spring semester hit and once again did my thing in classes, went on dates, and followed the routine of being on grind. Then the summer semester hit and I was offered to take a short summer class and I took it of course since it was free. That morning of first day of the class, I wanted to do the impossible and walked from my home to school (Albemarle and East 19 to Manhattan Beach). It took about 3 hours. Got to class on time and kind sat around or whatever. Some other people got inthe class and informed the professor that they were in the other classroom. For some odd reason I was more aware of a woman saying that then the others. Crazy cause that same woman ended up being my girlfriend by the end of September. We ain't saying government names. So her name for this post is Hermione (she likes Harry Potter). She had tattoos, smart, and she was honest for what I feel most of the time. Eventually the relationship didn't last and ended the same way.......a message. Her reasons made sense I guess (went too fast). Honestly I don't believe time should be a determining factor for a relationship to happen. If you feeling this person then give it a shot but that's just my opinion. Also, in 2014, I officially ended my backyard wrestling career against my friend, my brother, and my on screenplay rival Rodney Banks. It was the perfect ending to the legend that was called Heavy D.

Day 14.......Woke up. Gather some clothes and did some laundry. Sat outside for a little bit and headed back to the shelter and took a power nap. Woke up about 3 and watch One Piece Episode 901. I'm already current with the manga. So I'm basically watching what I already read. That was pretty much my Sunday. Plus I need all the rest for the upcoming days of this week. I gotta say, I'm slowly getting myself together to the point that people inthe shelter are noticing me more as hardworking individual. I'm always on the move and that's being notice and respected by people in the shelter.

On on to the tragic side story......2015

2015 started off okay. Winter semester was a success. I saw Hermione. But I didnt really give her attention after the break up but after we talked, we became friends and that was it nothing more. Spring semester came and I did my thing again and lived the college life but got a job. So now I'm get on my grind and officially had no time for much. Summer was here and my mother was working getting her passport to go back to Jamaica and see her family after years. One time I came from work and as usual expected my mother to be home since she doesn't like to be out late. She nevered came home which was extremely alarming. Call the police and I was informed that she was in the hospital in the city. Got to the hospital and use the phone to locate and she was in the 3rd floor ICU. I didn't know what ICU meant at that time but I knew it was something bad. Got to the ICU and saw my mother........Hospital covered with a bandage on her head as if someone bash a metal bat on her head. Come to find out, she had a seizure and fell on head in the street very hard. I was in tears. All I can remember was that the last time I saw her she told me that she was heading out. My mind was wtf like this ain't real. Called everyone I can call and every got the news that my mother was inthe hospital. She eventually got transfer to a rehab center in Far Rockaway Queens. Things seem to be okay. Then I come home from a hard day at home and I get phone call from a friend informing me that something happened and my younger brother didn't sound okay on the phone. Went to the hospital my mother was sent to. Her eyes was closed. Next couple of days saw her as the machine was helping her breath not responding or reacting inthe room. The doctor spoke to me and younger brother and pretty much said there a very little chance they can help. By October 12th. My younger brother called me and informed me that our mother died........

Day 15......Woke up.....Had to skip gym again. I had to get my mail and sent some emails. After, I went straight to work. After work, I happen to see a face I haven't seen in quite some time and we actually introduce our names after knowing each other for years. It's kind of cool knowing someone and finally just engaging in a conversation (just regularly). Then mailed my my money order to this One Shot Deal that I owe money to unfortunately. While on my way back to the shelter, I started thinking.....now knowing that just about everyone knows that I have Multiple Sclerosis......Hawk's Eye will be on me and my refusals from any assistance will make things a little more tough and edgier. So at this point, I have to be smart on everything I do. But I'm sure I'll get through this someway.

On on to 2016.......

2016 was here. After a hard 2015, I was able to keep the home, still work, made sure my health was good and survived a hard semester. I made the impossible possible. On the other hand, things were different. I started living somewhat a independent free life. I went to school, work, and party on the weekends. I was even going to the strip clubs and bars just living it up with my people. Eventually, I had this feeling like I needed to be what I was and I felt it was time to look for love again and I found it. No government names revealed. So her name was SoReal lol. I knew her since I started college (2013). We kept in contact and eventually we got together in July. It was love again. I haven't felt this type of love since my first relationship. She was smart, hardworking, and very determined to finish college. I was in love. When she felt she needed me, I was ready to help. We went on multiple dates. We talked all the time and we expressed that we loved each other. Other than love, I GRADUATED FROM KINGSBORO WITH AN ASSOCIATES!!!!! By September, I was city bound at City College. By the fall semester thing weren't good between me and SoReal. She distanced herself from me and with that I got less focus on school. Our relationship was so back and forth. When December hit, I got a letter from the landlord informing me that I must pay 3500 dollars in two weeks or I get evicted. So rent is not really being paid by my roommate, I'm barely getting thru college, and my relationship is a mess. As a result, I was still in relationship surprisingly, I pass my classes (barely), and I had to ask for assistance from this service called the One Shot Deal (where your whole rent is paid off but you got to pay back the money that was covered. 2017......would finally bring me to the limit.....

Not everything was meant to be......

Jikai........One Last Time. The Past From The Last View 2017 The Fall Of A Headliner

Mad King Recharging Arc

[paleconda]

blog- 9th february.

i- as an american doing pretty damn well job of pulling off as british- do not like to do american-like things. such having having wet and cringe humour, being unnecessarily loud, being blatantly ignorant on world culture/affairs (no offence), and especially opening myself up. one thing i’ve noticed is that brits always keep to themselves and rarely discuss thier deep feelings and thoughts with other people. they’re not very open to tel you their life story, and i’m the same way.not to say that i’m not down to earth, bc i very much am. i just stay quaint when it comes to public situations. that being said, my journey and story on my sexuality is very personal, deep and complicated, and unfortunately, i feel like i have to go into massive detail on what’s all happened and how it’s impacted me. it’ll make me vulnerable, but easier to understand and empathise with. this is going to be a particularly long read tho.

the date is 07/07/2010. it was the summer before the 7th grade and i had just realised my sexuality only a few months earlier. the worst night of my life. the night my parents found out about my sexuality. i was only 12. but the way the found out was rather quite stupid and embarrassing (no i wasn’t wanking and it wasn’t porn). at the time, i didn't have a phone. and my favourite show would come on at 1 am. but i didn't feel like staying up late, so what i did was borrow my grandmas phone and set an alarm. well in the alarm it had an option for a message. well my dumbass self put “get the hell up you bisexual fucker”. yeah. well, when my grandma went to puerto rico for a funeral, she left her phone bc she wouldn’t have any service over there. and i had forgotten to take off that alarm. so my mom is just going thru the phone (idk why) and she happens to come across it. she calls me downstairs and confronts me about it. after about 10 minutes what seems like an interrogation ( and me not talking, i felt as tho i had no choice but to admit it). they started crying and told me how its never okay even if the world says it is, and they brought up sodom and gomorrah and told me i needed to have a long prayer. my relationship with them hasn't never really been the same since then. so after that, i kinda ignored thinking about my sexuality. i would just go thru my day, occasionally look at gay pictures at night, then go to sleep. then, toward the end of 7th grade, i ended up taking nudes and sending them on http://showyourdick.com (terrible, i know) and they. ended. up. seeing. the. pics. it made things a shit tonne worse. i was still closeted at school, i had been accused of being gay as early as 4th grade, before i even knew i was gay (im actually bi/pan, but lets just use the word gay for now). fast foward to the beginning of 9th grade (late 2012). i had already been stanning nicki for almost a year, but i was still closeted. i also had a tumblr account(not this one). not only did i still kinda feel bad about being gay, but i was terribly insecure as well. i ended up starting to cut myself around late September. but for a while it was only on my thighs bc i didnt want anyone to see. later, in january 2013, i was feeling really depressed one night, and i kinda went on a cutting tirade. (trigger warning) i even cut my arm. i remember feeling the warm blood running down my leg and feeling dizzy, with my ears fogging up and nearly passing out in the bathroom. this next part may sound wierd. maybe its just me, maybe it was the fogging in my ears, idk. but i remember hearing nickis voice, almost aloud, and she said Stop. crazy init.  the next morning, i got really scared, bc my sleeve wouldn't completely cover up the scars. well, one of my teachers saw (i still dont know who) and reported it to the office, and one of the guidance counselors called my parents and told them. another really bad day. the next day, my guidance counselor called me down, even the principle came in the room. they told me they were sending me to a place where i would have therapy. i agreed to it, but i wasnt aware that i would be forced to spend 3 nights there. its called being Baker Acted.  the deputy at my school called my mom and told her where they were taking me but they didn't tell her i was required by law to spend 72 consecutive hours there. so when she came to pick me up that night, thats when she found out. needless to say she was crying. alot. and as if it wasn't bad enough, it just so happened to be her wedding anniversary.  i end up relapsing 2 more times after that whole ordeal. the last time was march 9th, 2013. so things temporarily improve for the summer. i ended up (finally) coming out to my closest friends. but i never made a big deal out of it. like i never made a big post on facebook or IG or anything. I kinda just let people figure it out and have their own assumptions. so september rolls around and i end up getting depressed again (september is always a bad month for me) but i promised myself i wouldnt cut myself again. so i end up overdosing. alot. 7 pills at a time. (it was just vyvanse tho, its not like it was percs or oxycodone.) so my parents went thru my texts and they found out about what i was doing and thats when the trust begins to deterioate again. they would always take away my phone at night. they said its bc of some report they saw on the news where having your phone in your room while your sleeping is unhealthy (which.. they were right. but it’s ovbious that wasn’t the real reason they took it.) it was bloody annoying. but back then, they would only take it on school nights, and sometimes i would sneak it back, and although they got mad, they wouldn't really do anything about it. also, as you could’ve probably guessed, i had downloaded a couple of gay apps because i was curious. the first time i downloaded grindr, i was in the 8th grade. and it wasn't the only app i would download. there was also hornet and jack’d. well, theres this one guy who i ended up talking to. and i end up sending nudes to him on kik. and my parents end up going through my kik. this was in december 2013. my horny self was just tryna hookup. welp. they see the messages. things go downfuckinghill fast. they barge into my room, one second they're yelling at me shoving the screen in my face and then the next thing I know my dad is shoves me down and kicks me multiple times, and my mom ends up calling the police and filing a report. to say it was traumatising is an understatement. but because it's kik, theres not much they can do. this renders me phoneless all the way until june of 2015. and at this point i wanna take a little bit of a detour. bc i almost feel as though my life as a normal teenager has been robbed.

some of you may ask why i didn’t move in with relatives or just file a report to social services.

they wouldn't let me. and bc they're broke and aren't good at finances, that's what they (we’re) doing anyway. my family is living with my grandparents for like the 4th time since i was born. so they change the password in my phone and im only allowed to use it when they say (this is february 2014, roughly) and i have to be in the same room as them. and then in march, something goes wrong with my phone and it wont read the SIM card. so now i can't even call or text.  things just didn’t get better that year. its summer 2014, and now they suddenly change the password to my laptop. (they still won't tell me the password). i started crying and begged them to change it back. so they did. but just a month later, on July 11th, they change it. and its stayed that way. so now its june of 2015. they buy me a new phone, but they said there are "rules for having the phone" and they take it away every night. well, in november, i had downloaded grindr. theres this feature on my phone where i can hide an app, but one day, back in november, i forgot to hide the app. so they saw it. and they didn't even open the app (it was password locked) and i refused to give them the password. so now im phoneless.... again. and this time they wouldn't even let me use it... at all. so i went back to having to use my grandmas phone and computer to log onto Twitter. for the longest time, i could only be on twitter from 4-8pm on weekdays bc thats whenever i had access. fast foward to april 2016 and im taking a college class across town. all of a sudden, my mom hands me my phone, and im shocked. she says im only having it on a "limited basis". so for about a month, im only allowed to use it outside the house, but they eventually let up. every once in a while, we still get into an argument about it.  may 2016: its time for me to choose what college to go to. my mom had made me apply to a christian university about 30 miles away. i didnt wanna go, but the other college i had been looking at had ran into financial trouble, the big public university in my city didn't accept me, and i didn't wanna go to a community college. plus, the christian university (southeastern University) offered me a bunch of money in scholarships. and i honestly felt forced to go. by august of 2016, things start to drastically change. most of it is in a good way, but there are still some things that are... iffy, for lack of a better term. i’m beginning to lose weight and my grades are actually good for once, but my phone is still taken way at night all the way to december, when they finally stop. then in january 2017, i am finally able to buy an iphone. at this point, everything sort of catches up to the previous post. there’s still loads for me to explain but this is enough for now.

on a side note, it’s amazing how different things are for me now after looking back at all that. i still can’t believe that we are in 2019 and that i graduated high school nearly 3 years ago. i’m gobsmacked at how much i have changed since then. it’s a lot to ponder on. and i’m glad to say that i’m currently at the happiest place i’ve been in for years. maybe ever.

end.

[targsdaenerys]

let me tell you all a story. a story of my experience with ouat.

2012.

in fourth grade, i was watching american idol. during commercials, i viewed a promo consisting of a dragon and unicorns. now, at the time, unicorns were my ver y favorite, so of course, i was intrigued. i told my mom that i heard about a show with unicrons, but that i didnt know what it was called. she told me how she had heard of it and wanted to check it out. after watching the season one interviews between red and snow, she believed it was too old for me. i agreed. no unicorns. not what i was expecting.

2013.

a year passes. fifth grade was a blur, and all i know is that we went to disney. i had no idea what would change since then.

2014.

my friends are suddenly starting to talk about this kid’s eyebrows. how they are “so hot” and “sexy”. she showed me a picture off of robbie kay’s instagram and i laughed. ha, peter pan? whatever.

but then, it started to reoccur each monday, they would talk about it. i actually started to look forward to monday lunch periods. i begged them to discuss what they thought of the episode. once again, i was intrigued. 

so of course, i wanted to see what the fuss was about. whats this big deal with peter pan? and who the hell’s rumple after only a few clips, i suddenly loved snow and charming. i needed more. i needed to watch.

so i tried. desperately.  i only had an ipad, and was unaware it was on netlfix, so i tried to watch the first episode of the series by typing in “once upon a time season 1 episode one online free to any platform.i actually was able to find it and went in excitedly the next day to tell my friends. that was when i learned it was on netflix and thati could not wait to get home and watch it. so i did. but the thing is, i was only there for snow and charming scenes.  i literally only skipped to their scenes. thats how i watched the show.

but then, as i was scrolling around youtube one day looking forsscenes for them, i came across “Emma and Hook Kiss scene” my frirst thought? it was between “ew”and “serioulsy?”

i watched it anyway.

and to behonest, it was kind of just a “okay, that happened” kind of thing. it wasnt until my friend told me after the season 3 finle that emma and hook kissed again before i got alitle excited. not much more, though.

then months pass, and suddenly, scrolling around netflix, i come across the hunger games. i held a grudge against the series since it became big with the popular group in my school that year. but i was thirsty for romance. and i heard it had some.

and thats how i fell in love with everlark. one night. the next morning i started following pages on instagram. i look up the ship on googlge. and tumblr posts pop up. i make a tumblr.

i start to follow pages on there with everlark, but then i start to see things on both platforms. emma and hook. and then, i slowly started to fall in love. not much. i just watch a couple of their scenes during season three, come across their second kiss. getting really, really excitated for the fourth season.

at the point, i had written about two everlark fanfictions. i wanted to write one about emma and hook, but i had no i dea how. or what .

but then tumblr inspired me. to the point where i started to freak out over every episode no matter how small the scenes were. in october of seventh grade, i wrote my first captain swan fanifction. i also drew my first drawing that i never thought i was able to do. sure, it was with a sketchbook my aunt got me in second grade and a #2 pecil, but i believe its still beautiful. it wasnt long after i actually found the name, captain swan, rather than using “kemma” or “killimma”.

2015.

and from there, my obsession sky rocketed. i stayed up until four every night after an episode, despite schol the next morning. i wrote little drabbles that arelong since gone ever since my laptop broke. i drew more drawings, i rewatched every scene until thats all that was in my head.the s4 finale was as hard on me as everyone else, and i tried to write a specualtion fic to the s5 premiere. i neverfinshed. although, looking back at the writing now, i can still feel the pain i was in by it.

and then season five started. again, i freaked out as much as everyone else. every episode. i still remeber the week after the first episode, we lost someone int he fandom. we miss you, love.

and then it was late october.saturday the 22nd, my mom came into my room to ask me if id seen my friend alyssa that day. she was a year older than me, afreshman in highschool. i didnt, so i told her. i didnt ever think what might have been.the following day, i was working at the food pantry when my mom caled me.they had found alyssa. but she wasnt okay.maybe in her mind she may have been the best shes ever been, but to us,she wasnt.

no one else knew, and i had to walk home in silence. i didnt cry because at the time we werent as close as the year before and it didnt hit me.but then my mother’s words repeated in my head. “Alyssa died, sweetie.” it was asentence i never forgot.

im not the best at keeping my emtions with myself. i always think people will judge me and call me selfish if i cry, and i didnt want it to be like that. so i kept it in.i kept the tears in for so, so long, even to the point here i didnt even cry at her wake where she looked like an angel although the scarf around her neck was something shed never wear. and what kept my sanity? once upon a time. it was then when i realized it was my anchor. 

2016.

back in 2015 my mother made me audtion for a vocational school. earlier that year i had found its dance program and wanted to go, but along the way my intrest dwindled. she told me to give it a shot anyway because i had a very low chance of making it in due to my grades at the time. 

i made it in. 

the following months were the worst of my life. every day on the way home from dance wed fight about which high school was better, and although she was right about me going to the vocational one, i wanted to stay in my district. lets just say the only thing that kept me from following alyssa into the darkness was dance competitions. oh, and what else. the damn once upon a time episodes.

she forced me to go to that school, by the way. sure, i enjoy it now, but the people there suck and i still do not like how she went at it.

that fall, i take my friend to our first convention.since i started watching oneupon a time, i wanted others to watch it, and my one friend agreed to. until the end of the neverland arc.  and peter pan died. no more ouat for her. but, since robbie was going to be there, lets go. she got a picture with him, i got a picture with bex. yayay.

2017.

last week, we experienced the best sunday of our life. a wedding we never really thought would happen. it was unbelievable. emma got her happy ending(or beginning) aand we got ours. it was so thrilling that even my friend who stopped watching in season three was excited. but as much as it was unbeliable the night, the following morning was too.

that was the most giddiest i had ever felt for school. every more we have a forty five minute bus ride and the but whole time i listened to the musical on repeat. but then, as i looked down to pause the music as we pulled into school, i saw my friends text. Jen’s facebook post.

i was in a daze all day.

it wasnt until lunch, the last period since it was a half day, where i just broke down. people asked me what was wrong and i explained as best i could, but shitty people have shitty outlooks on things and they didnt understand. it was the loneliest ive ever felt.

my mom kind of comforted me, telling me how she felt the same when parent hood ended and that ill find a new show ill like just the same, but one upon a time is special. no show can replace or even add onto what kind of mark it had left on me. it was what started my career in wririting and drawing. in someways it kept me alive. and what did people do when i told them this? they laughed.

it was tuesday night when i ran down stairs, telling my mom about convention tickets for colin and jen photo op i found on sale. we had them in mind for awhile, but never got them. she told me wed look into it. we missed the sale.

so here we were, here i was, aall i was able to think about was how id never meet the people who played the characters that shaped me and my future. until the next morning, my birthday, where i was given the tickets.

and today,to night, was pretty much the end of the storybook. im not going to go into it because i have it on a post from about an hour ago. but thank you everyone, for helping me be me. and thank you for this blessed oppurtuniy, in which i had never and will never take for granted, to be a part of such a magical communtiy. because of this platform i have aspired my career of writing, drawing, and fulfilling my dreams of being a princess by being able to contact disney about the program.if it wasnt for this damned, beautiful fucking shwow, i would probably bedrastically different. this story we created is timeless, a neverending fairytale in both real life and on screen. the story contiues for ever and ever in our hearts and writing and drawing and all of the incredible talents we all have.

[me-importa-mother-blog]

it FINALLY fucking happened

i have a migraine and awful cramps from this stupid IUD rn but i have to get this out. i have to capture the authenticity of my feelings right now. it finally happened. i could cry happy tears because of how incredible and great i feel in this moment. brendon and darian are back together. i saw a pics of them on instagram w captions about how much they love each other and wanna know what i felt when i saw those pictures? fucking NOTHING. I FINALLY FEEL NOTHING. ok, i feel sad for them but thats honestly truly the only emotion that came up for me. i no longer feel the intense nausea, feeling like i am getting stabbed in the pit on my stomach, rush of emotions pouring over my entire body, ringing in my ears, dissosiation that i felt the first time i heard the words from his lips “i have a girlfriend now”. that feeling that didn’t seem to go away for MONTHS. that feeling that would resurface every time i looked at their social media and saw how fucking happy and perfect they were. it was fucking disgusting. i can finally say i don’t feel those feelings anymore and u know what that means? 

i means i have healed. it means i have moved on. it means I have successfully mended the broken pieces of my heart that he left me with. i did that. with the help of some loving and supportive friends, yes. but it was me. i’m the one that chose to live all those times i wanted to die, and i chose to pretend to be happy to the point that my bones hurt to their core because i was faking it so hard. i chose to move back home to something familiar and stable so i could feel safe, so i could get away from the torment of his memory, from the fear of running into her, or him, or worse the both of them together. 

at one point i felt that i gave everything i had built so hard for the past two years away. my life in california was ruined because of him. the reason i went out there in the first place to get clean back in april of 2014 was because he told me to. my body was deteriorating faster than i could keep track of and i mentioned, maybe i should move back to cali and get clean, and you should too and we can be together. and he told me to go out there so i fucking did. hes the reason, the motivation i had to get clean. everything i did from that point forward was for him or because of him or for us. so WE could live together happily for fucking forever. 

originally we had a plan to go to rehab for a bit then run away together but at some point something switched in me. i think it was god working in my life honestly. but at some point i decided u know what i wanna give this thing a shot. i wanna see what its like to be clean and happy and all that these weird ppl in AA rave about. and then he went down there from fresno and he got clean and holy shit that was the most incredible summer of my life. i wish i had pictures but i deleted probably 98% of them. but i had so many good times w him, riding my bike to the beach while he rode his skateboard. holding hands, going to meetings together. i was so fucking proud to tell everyone he was my boyfriend. i was so goddamn fucking in love. 

and now i’m crying, but not because i want to be with him. no, never. i’m crying because the happiness i felt was so pure and genuine and incredible and indescribable. i wouldnt change it for anything. if i could go back and relive those moments we shared that summer but i would have to relive the heartbreak again then i would probably do it. but i wouldnt change anything. i would relieve the good and the bad but i would want the result to be the same as what it is in this moment. hes with her and i’m with myself on my ellies bed in my parents house with rocky and luna sleeping at my feet. i don’t want to be with him anymore but i don’t regret what we had because it was true love and it was passionate and intense and a type of love i will never feel again. because it was extremely toxic. as intense as the good moments were so were the bad. and it got reeeeaaally bad.

he told me i deserved to be molested when i was 5. he told me this while we were in line for the screamin eagle at disneyland, because i was paying more attention to my phone than to him. he was upset and we got in an argument and thats what he said to me. that a fucking five year old deserved to get some creepy mother fuckers fingers in her asshole. real cute huh? but i’m not a saint. at some point i told him i’m glad his dad left him and that he probably did because he hated him cuz hes useless and that his mom is a slut cuz she has 4 baby daddies. i said some horrible things too that i’m not proud of but in those moments i felt so justified. as the anger wore off tho i felt guilty for saying those things, and so would he. so we would always make up. and thiings would be really good again until the next fight and shit would hit the fan. and then we started calling the cops on each other. he was never physically abusive to me, except one time he pinned me down like a pretzel cuz i was beating the living shit out of him. the position he had me in hurt a lot but he was protecting himself cuz i had lost it. i dont remember what that particular fight was about. the weather maybe? idk dude we would fight over the DUMBEST shit. 

i remember thinking and telling him, “if you act like a bitch u get treated like one”. which means youre a fucking dick to me so i’m a dick right back mother fucker. i ran him over w my car once. he smashed my phone to pieces cuz i searched a guy on facebook. he would go through my phone and find texts from months ago where i said a guy was hot and he would flip out call me a whore tell me nobody is ever gonna love me, and go spread my legs somewhere. he would accuse me of fucking literally EVERYONE. if i was off work 5 minutes late its because i was fucking my manager in the back. if i wasnt texting him back while i was w jenny or kolby its cuz i was fucking them. oh he hated all my friends also. and had no friends of his own. i was his whole world which really bugged me at the time but i lowkey miss that now. i miss feeling that important and special and loved. and i miss having that much power over someone, i’ll admit it. 

but despite all this bad shit there were good times, and they were really fucking good. specifically its the feelings. i felt safe with him. like nothing could ever hurt me or touch me, besides him. but i was addicted to the chaos so i didn’t mind the verbal and emotional abuse and i dished it right back. although lets be real here according to my sponsor, therapist, mentor, friends, anyone w a brain. he was definately the sicker one out of the two of us. we were both so fucking sick but i was a wee bit healthier i would say. there were so many times we would ride around costa mesa on harbor blvd at midnight complaining about how much it sucked to not have a car, or money, or anything. we had NOTHING. he really had nothing when he got there besides like 3 shirts and old pair of vans 2 sizes too small and shorts. i created him. everything he got from that point forward was from me. all of it. and there were weeks at a time where he had no money and he ate because i bought him food. not that he owes me anything or that he ever did, i did those things because i wanted to because i was in love and he was gonna be my life partner. everything i ever wanted i wanted with him or nobody else. anyway, we would be riding through the kmart parking lot on harbor and wilson, he would be coming w me to drop me off at fordham and we would complain about how much it fucking sucked but “one day we would look back on all of this and laugh.” because “one day were gonna make it” we said. we had so many hopes and dreams together. he was supposed to be my fucking husband. i was going to be the mother of all of his children. 

but you know what? it was all a fucking fantasy. a beautiful fantasy but a fantasy nonetheless. and after spending summer 2015 apart because he decided drugs were more important than me, we got back together in september and shit didnt get much better. it was a bit at times but mostly no. same shit. really intense good times. really intense bad times. passionate love, passionate hate. a couple days before new years 2015 going into 2016 we broke up for the last time. this is when he broke my phone cuz i searched jacob berry on fbook. after that i was done. i had been done thousands of times before but i was really done this time. we didn’t talk at all for like a week then i saw him on his birthday january 7th and we decided we were gonna get back together in august when he had a year sober. we werent gonna talk in the meantime but we were for sure getting back together. then one day i added a guy, kyle on facebook and he lost it. again with being called a slut and blah blah blah. and this time we were really done. like FORREAL. i was moving on everything was great blah blah. i dont think i actually thought i had lost him tho. it was gonna be like every other time where we will get back together again. so i wasnt really that sad. i think i was thriving off the anger i felt towards him. like are u seriously gonna be done w me over adding a dude???? how stupid. 

and then one day in late february my world came crashing down in the middle of the target electronics section. hannah texted or called me i cant remember but said she needed to tell me something. i demanded to know immedietally and she hesitated, i knew it was bad. she told me darian and brendon were talking. darian, my former client darian. darian, the girl who I TOLD STORIES ABOUT BRENDON TO WHEN SHE WAS STRUGGLING W HER EX IN HOPES THAT I COULD OFFER HER SOME EXPERIENCE STRENGTH AND HOPE. i was vulnerable w her about him. i was trying to be helpful, i shared stuff w her i dont share w everyone but since her sitution at the time was similar to my realtionship w brendon i opened up to her. how fucking dare she. that fucking stupid bitch. how dare HE. knowing she was my client. i even had considered her a friend up until this point. i had considered moving in with her for christsakes wtf. and that the first time i felt that feeling. that awful awful feeling i no longer felt tonight. and then i felt it again a month later when he told me they were officially together. and again when i learned she met his family. (oh yeah thats another reason i think i stayed as long as i did because i adore his family. )

a bunch of other shit happened in between. him and i started talking again in march briefly when he basically cheated on her w me, then he came back in my life just this past december only to leave again like the coward that he is. but i’m grateful that happened because before i had always wondered what i had done to make him basically leave me for her, or so i felt. because he DID choose her over me. he chose to start a new relationship over mending the one that we had that was supposed to be forever. and i lost my shit. was literally destroyed shell of a human for months. extremely emotionally and mentally unstable. lost a bunch of friends cuz they couldnt handle me. got kicked out of school, lost a scholarship, almost lost a job, attempted suicide, went to the psych ward. it was really really rough for a long time. but today all of that has changed. i no longer feel that deeprooted sadness, devastation, horrid unbearable pain. today i have healed. i feel very sad for the both of them because i know how unstable their relationship is. cuz i was there. i was her. and i HATED her for a long time but i dont anymore because i feel bad she is in love w him and is gonna get hurt and heartbroken like i did. 

but i’m glad he came in my life again this past december because it cleared up a lot of unanswered thoughts i had. A. he still loves me and will always love me as i will him. B. he is thankful for me being in his life and will never forget me, and C. I DIDNT DO ANYTHING WRONG. i fought w every fiber of my being for us to be together and hes the one that threw it all away. hes the one that walked away. i promised him from the moment i knew i was in love w him that as long as we both loved each other we could fix anything. but he wasnt willing to try anymore so at least i know i gave it my all and its his loss cuz he was too weak to try to work together to make things right. or maybe we just werent meant to be. or maybe both.

irregardless, my arm is so mother fucking cramped i can barley type. and i have so much more i could say, i could go on forever. but the point is that the horrid feelings i once felt are no longer there anymore and i am truly 100000% happy today when i once thought i was going to die without him. so i am proof that healing from the most excrusiating heartbreak is possible and its possible to be happier when u lose ppl u cant imagine losing, and when u get a new life that u didnt even want

[trendingnewsb]

‘I dont know how they live with themselves’ artist Nan Goldin takes on the billionaire family behind OxyContin

The photographer became an addict after getting hooked on a prescription opioid. Now clean, she is waging war on the art philanthropists who have profited from the crisis

‘I dont know how they live with themselves’ artist Nan Goldin takes on the billionaire family behind OxyContin

Nan Goldin

‘I dont know how they live with themselves’ artist Nan Goldin takes on the billionaire family behind OxyContin

The photographer became an addict after getting hooked on a prescription opioid. Now clean, she is waging war on the art philanthropists who have profited from the crisis

Joanna Walters

@Joannawalters13

Mon 22 Jan 2018 01.00EST Last modified on Mon 22 Jan 2018 15.43EST

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Nan Goldin: I dont know how the Sackler family live with themselves. Photograph: Nan Goldin

Nan Goldin lights a cigarette and takes a puff. My dealer came here 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I was one of his best customers. She giggles sarcastically. He texted me when I was in rehab saying he was having a sale. He had dropped his prices in the hope of luring her back. She has since deleted his number from her phone and has been out of rehab and drug-free for 10 months.

I almost didnt leave this house for three years, she says. Goldin looks around the living room in her elegant Brooklyn apartment, paintings and photographs dotted around the walls, though none of her own, and Larry the stuffed coyote fixed in a permanent howl by the window.

Her most recent drug experience was very different to the old days, when she became one of the worlds most famous art photographers, capturing herself and those around her getting high, having sex and hanging out in downtrodden homes in the 70s and 80s.

This second experience began with a doctor in Berlin, where she has a second home. In 2014, Goldin was prescribed the potent narcotic OxyContin for painful tendonitis in her left wrist. She promptly became addicted, despite taking the pills exactly as prescribed.

The first time I got a scrip it was 40 milligrams and it was too strong for me; they made me nauseated and dulled. By the end, I was on 450mg a day, she says. Eventually she was crushing and snorting them. When, back in New York, doctors refused to supply her any more, she turned to the black market, and to cheaper hard street drugs whenever she ran out of money.

Emerging from a rehab facility in Massachusetts last March, she began reading about OxyContin and realised the branded medicine was prime suspect in the opioid crisis that has ripped through the US over the past 20 years. The epidemic has killed more than 200,000 people so far. Now she is declaring war against members of the secretive US family behind the invention of OxyContin, and behind the ingenious marketing strategy that was used to convince doctors it was harmless and patients that they needed it.

I dont know how they live with themselves, she says. Synthetic opioids mimic the effects of natural opioid drugs (which include opium and heroin), and their use, on prescription, is spreading in the UK and beyond, causing alarm among health experts. (The makers of OxyContin have subsidiary firms in Europe, Asia and Latin America.)

The name Sackler may ring a bell if youve walked across the new forecourt at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, or noticed the arrival of the Sackler Gallery at the Serpentine in 2013. Or if youve visited the ancient Egyptian Temple of Dendur in the Sackler Wing of the Metropolitan Museum in New York, seen the Sackler Centre for Arts Education at the Guggenheim or a host of other arts institutions around the world with galleries or wings named after the family.

Dope on my rug, New York, 2016. Photograph: Nan Goldin

With charitable foundations on both sides of the Atlantic, the Sacklers, who are based in New York, have donated millions to the arts and sponsored faculties at Yale and many other universities. In each case, the familys name is displayed prominently as the benefactor. Forbes listed the collective estimated worth of the 20 core family members at $14bn (10bn) in 2015, partly derived from $35bn in sales revenue from OxyContin between 1995 and 2015.

But few know their wealth comes from Purdue Pharma, a private Connecticut company the family developed and wholly owns. In 1995, the company revolutionised the prescription painkiller market with the invention of OxyContin, a drug that is a legal, concentrated, chemical version of morphine or heroin. It was designed to be safe; when it first came to market, its slow-release formula was unique. After winning government approval it was hailed as a medical breakthrough, which Goldin now refers to as magical thinking.

It was aggressively marketed to doctors many of whom were taken on lavish junkets, given misleading information and paid to give talks on the drug while patients were wrongly told the pills were a reliable long-term solution to chronic pain, and in some cases offered coupons for a months free sample.

Goldin, 64, is incensed that no one in the Sackler family is being held to account. She has created a campaign to try to shame the family into paying for rehab and overdose antidotes instead of patios in art museums. Im not asking the museums to give the money back, she says, but I dont want them to take any more from the Sacklers, and I want them to put out statements in solidarity with my campaign.

A group of friends and activists have been meeting weekly in her apartment in a Brooklyn brownstone, brainstorming ideas for a forthcoming direct-action campaign. She first publicly revealed that she was recovering from opioid addiction last autumn, when she gave a talk in Brazil; then, in December, she wrote about it for the US periodical Artforum, saying of the Sacklers: To get their ear we will target their philanthropy. They have washed their blood money through the halls of museums and universities around the world.

In a New Yorker expos of the family ties last year, Allen Frances, the former chair of psychiatry at Duke University school of medicine, told the magazine: Their name has been pushed forward as the epitome of good works and of the fruits of the capitalist system. But, when it comes down to it, theyve earned this fortune at the expense of millions of people who are addicted. Its shocking how they have gotten away with it.

Goldin is now hurrying through a modern activist learning curve. First I wanted to go out with signs and picket a Sackler wing of something, because thats what we did in the Vietnam war and thats what we did with Act Up in the Aids crisis, she says. But she recently discovered social media I went on Instagram for the first time three weeks ago, she says and realised that petitions are online these days, so has set about organising one, which will be presented in due course to those Sackler family members on Purdue Pharmas board of directors. She is also now on Twitter, so there is a hashtag campaign, #ShameOnSackler, while her campaign overall is called Prescription Addiction Intervention Now (Pain).

Self-portrait. Photograph: Nan Goldin

Goldin believes that aside from the prestige of supporting high culture, rather than addressing the stigma of addiction the family isnt directing philanthropy to recovery and prevention because it would be tantamount to accepting culpability.

Three Purdue Pharma executives pleaded guilty in 2007 to federal criminal charges that they misled regulators, doctors and patients about OxyContins risk of addiction and its potential to be abused. The company settled for a record $600m. But no members of the Sackler family were charged or mentioned.

In 2010, after the showdown with regulators and many civil lawsuit settlements and with the original patent on OxyContin due to expire Purdue tweaked its product to make it harder to snort and was more explicit in its marketing about the risks of addiction.

There are rival drugs on the market, but OxyContin is widely considered to be ground zero in the US opioid epidemic. The federal agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, reported in 2017 that 91 people are dying every day in the US from drug overdoses, 60% of which involve opioids. Deaths from prescription opioids have quadrupled since 1999.

In the past five years, as prescriptions for opioids fell in response to the crisis, Americans didnt shake the habit or seek rehab; they turned to heroin instead. Four out of five people in the US who try heroin today started with prescription painkillers, according to the American Society of Addiction Medicine. Then street heroin started being secretly cut with the dangerous synthetic opioid fentanyl.

An overdose of fentanyl killed Prince in 2016, but last year medical documents showed that he had first become dependent on prescription opioids they mentioned oxycodone, the generic version and main active ingredient of the branded pill OxyContin. The family of Tom Petty revealed at the weekend that the singers death last October was caused by an accidental overdose with a cocktail of prescription drugs and pain pills, including oxycodone and fentanyl.

People are dropping like flies. I overdosed on fentanyl, but survived, Goldin says. She eventually sought help from a doctor she knew from the first time she got clean from hard drugs, in 1989. Before going into rehab this time, she detoxed at home. As she notes, there are many different types of rehab, and the care and therapy you receive after detoxing from the actual substance is just as important.

They look at the persons underlying problems, says Goldin. Potent opioids created a generation of addicts, with mass overprescribing in the US healthcare system. But many old-school street-drug addicts, as Goldin once was, turned to drugs originally as an escape from childhood trauma, loneliness, depression or poverty. She speaks of the doctors and therapists who helped her overcome her addiction as kind.

Goldin in Sweden. Photograph: Nan Goldin

In rehab last year, she also had to shake a long-term dependence on benzodiazepines one of the most well-known brand names for such sedatives is Valium. The company that became Purdue Pharma was started in 1892, but then expanded by three brothers, Arthur, Mortimer and Raymond Sackler, in the 1950s. All three are dead now. Arthur died in 1987, before OxyContin was invented, but he had once been responsible for brilliant advertising and marketing campaigns for drugs owned by other companies most notably Valium that focused on selling doctors and the public on using such wonder drugs for an inordinate variety of ailments.

Goldin herself was put on Valium when I was 19 because I was anxious, she says. Thats how widely it was prescribed.

After Goldins article in Art Forum, Arthurs daughter, Elizabeth Sackler, wrote a letter to the periodical, which will go online on 1 February, noting that her fathers one-third stake in Purdue was sold by his estate to his brothers shortly after his death and that neither she nor her children have benefited in any way from it, or from the sale of OxyContin. She calls Purdue Pharmas role in the opioid crisis morally abhorrent.

But although Goldin admires the Elizabeth A Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, she notes that it was the marketing prowess of Elizabeths father, in his approach to Valium, that provided a model for Purdues pushing of OxyContin. Shes not off the hook, says Goldin.

The 10 months since she left rehab have been hard. But I cant go back [on drugs], Ill die. Im staying clean for my doctor, for myself, for activism and the sake of other addicts. I feel that in my soul, it would be devastating if I relapsed. When I first went to treatment in 1989, I was motivated by the fact that Lou Reed and Dennis Hopper had gotten clean.

As a former drug abuser, Goldin in particular should not have been prescribed OxyContin as she was in a known high-risk group. The brain remembers, she says.

Her campaign is a call to arms, to fans of Prince, fans of mine, directors of art museums, doctors, anyone who has lost someone to opioids or knows someone who is struggling, which includes most people in America now, musicians and artists, a call for solidarity.

Goldin has not been taking many pictures recently, although she took some self-portraits while she was addicted to OxyContin, and some pictures of her drug gear. She has been drawing and painting, and in a small room next to the living room is a self-portrait, with her distinctive auburn curly hair and flinty look, but with the mouth sewn shut. I painted that over the new year, it was how I felt at the time. I was lonely, she says. She is looking forward to making a documentary on the opioid crisis. The project is in its earliest stages, but she says she got into photography originally, as a teen, because she wanted to make films. The closest she got at her creative peak was her many slideshows, most famously The Ballad of Sexual Dependency.

She is also known for photo-graphing the drag queens she lived with for three years in the 70s. They were so vivid, so beautiful, so funny. The humour ran riot. I think humour is one of lifes survival mechanisms; it was another level and I was in love with them, and I didnt analyse, I was just living, she says. And snapping. She has always said that her camera was merely an extension of her arm, although the undeniable craft in her framing, and the raw intensity, elevates it from documentary to art.

She captured such intimacy sometimes awful intimacy around the sex, the highs, rows, domestic violence and half-naked hanging out that was a way of life for her and her friends, many of whom she has now outlived by decades. But she points out that she would show her subjects their pictures and they could ask her not to publish them if they didnt like them. Integrity, integrity, integrity, she says. That word brings her back to the opioid crisis.

Purdue Pharma has no integrity, its the opposite, the evil manipulation of vulnerable people. Its disgusting, she says.

Goldin lights another cigarette and takes a swig of ginger ale. Her oil painting may have its mouth sewn shut, but the flesh and blood Nan Goldin will be heard.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/jan/22/nan-goldin-interview-us-opioid-epidemic-heroin-addict-oxycontin-sackler-family

from Viral News HQ http://ift.tt/2FRZIVk via Viral News HQ

[swirlyrobe]

Jul 28, 2015

Details:

I got kicked out of middle school for almost throwing a chair at someone because I got jealous when I saw the girl I liked kiss some guy so,

after that i ended up in a special ed school and thats when i started listening to rap with dipset and stealing yugioh cards for money and robitussin to get high. when i was 16 i only had a couple good friends and everybody else just avoided me caus they were scared i was going to fight them and one of them steve (who’s 3 years younger than me) had me meet his (at the time) ex gf one day and i ended up getting my thing sucked>.> yea for the first time and then we planned to lose our virginity the next week. she brought her friend and we had a threesome tho my drugs caught up with me because i was on probation for beating somebody up on the bus and i kept getting dirty urines for weed so i went to rehab a couple weeks after

i never really had gfs in highschool other than that, there was only 5 girls in my special ed school, i was friends with most of them but they used me for drugs. i went to community college right after highschool and made friends rapping tho immediately got involved in a small crime ring of stealing video games from stores, selling them to gamestop to make a couple hundred daily as well as smoking a lot more weed (while still on probation for another assault) that didnt catch up with me yet tho when i was 19 this girl sabrina added me on facebook and i really liked her, ended up meeting her at the mall it was a really sweet date(we had fun getting physical😄) she wasn’t like everybody else because she didnt try to be normal. i had court coming up though i ended up smoking pcp for the first time and had a psychotic break where i thought this girl was her (who wasnt) and got arrested for unlawful restraint (i thought she was bugging out and i didnt want to leave until i knew what was wrong). i went to jail and got released to rehab again.

when i got out of rehab i went to outpatient rehab (i was 20 now) and met a woman heather who was 33. we dated and she bought a ring for me 3 months after to propose which i accepted because i was desperate and i thought i loved her though she asked if i was attracted to her and i honestly said only her face and not her body so she broke up with me. after that i started smoking again until i started talking to this girl Haley who lived the city over from me, she said she wanted a brother yet i really started liking her when we talked. this is when i really started realizing i liked younger girls and she ended up admitting she had a bf months after and lied to both of us. (i made a lot of songs about her😔😪){&2020 update about haley: we moved on with our lives and had never met though I talked to her a little on Facebook this year and, thankfully I wasn't as enamored and clingy😪}

there's a couple dozen other girls i dated/talked to between that and then there was bella who heard my music on an old social site called PHEED and i thought she was beautiful so i told her that and we talked. she lived in texas but we had intense convos she was really smart, beautiful, funny and we swore we would be together though i had to go to rehab again(this time inpatient in New London where, I lived in a sober house & got a job after) because i violated probation yet i wanted to test if she’d stay with me so i didnt tell her i went. about 4 months later when i was getting out of rehab i talked to her again and she acted like everything was alright and she had moved to NY as well as gotten a license and really had her life together. she said she loved me and was gonna drive to see me in new london so, I waited an hour for her to come until I talked to her and she said because I "played" her she was playing me so, not coming 😢😞(this was in 2014)

So in 2015 I was clean about a year so, I applied & got accepted for McNally Smith college of music (to major in audio production) in st Paul Minnesota where I Was clean for months until (for some reason I forgot but, probably running around fast) I got kicked out of my weightlifting gym out there so I was upset and, found some people @ a park near downtown st Paul smoking weed which I got in on and, ten weeks later I saw someone with dreads buying a dutch in a bodega so, I asked if he knew where to get weed and: It turned out he was a dealer so I ended up buying lot's of weed and trading for studio time for him to record but, I got caught smoking sometimes in my dorm & because I got in arguments with students and staff at college so, they warned me if I got in ANY fight in or, outside of school I would be expelled & I DID get expelled; probably because of the fight where I sent that guy who hit my head with a brick to the hospital (which drew a LOT of attention and PROBABLY was on the news)

Though they said it was because I got in too many arguments and, smoked too much weed in my dorm...

So I moved back with my grandma later in 2015 where I was until she kicked me out for smoking weed and k2 so, I was homeless In which I slept under a blanket near the library and, behind a church in hamden until, the church let me live in their garage when it became winter so I stayed there until early 2016 where, I moved to a spot in Hamden off the bike trail in the woods where I started with a one person tent until I stole a 8 person tent from Walmart and, uused a shopping cart to carry a bed my friend gave away down the bike trail to my spot and late I stole a propane heater plus propane powered stove so I stole an empty propane can outside of krauzers and I kept paying $20 to get it filled at The car wash up the street so I used it to cook ramen and, oatmeal on my stove and power my heater in the winter and I finally got clean in August 2016 while STILL homeless then completed a course to get into CTWORKS which helped me get nice used suits and an interview g for the job I got at Chipotle in December 2016 while, still homeless 😪 I told them I still lived at my grandmas and took showers at my friend's house until I got a la fitness membership with my first paycheck which was actually through the woods near my tent so, I took showers there EVERY morning & worked out there in addition to, at my tent where I still had a barbell set from my grandmas and, then in the spring of 2017 I applied to and, got a landscaping job I saw on the ctworks job search online so I woke up at 5am EVERY morning with a battery powered alarm clock I stole from Walmart and, caught the first Whitney bus that went downtown at 5:30 and, then I took the next train around 5:45 to go to milford where, the landscaping base is so I ran there when I got to Milford around 6am to get there on time by 6:30-45

So I worked there while I was still homeless and, I got approved for shelter plus Care which some people That lived in the woods near me told me about and, I got my apartment with 2 jobs off the post road behind dunkin donuts in West Haven so, I took The bus up the post road to get to BOTH jobs until, I saw a moped for sale from east haven on Craigslist for$200 in mid spring of 2017 which, I rode to my jobs on until, I got a drivers permit (coincidentally on the day I heard my grandma was dying so, I Went to her house and Watched her die 😥

Then I took drivers ed classes;

Then I started getting driving lessons in late spring 2017 until I learned to drive in a couple months so, I took the drivers test in summer 2017 and, then took motorcycle classes at north haven gateway (where I ran into my dr's receptionist Alexandra ai had a crush on (who I even had written and recorded a song about) then, my mom helped me get my 250 ninja from new Haven power sports so: I drove that to my jobs until my crash on August 6th 2019 which, I don't remember but, I woke up at the residential physical rehab hospital Gaylord where : I leave weekly what happened was I hit an suv on mg way to work, had a right brain stroke & broken pelvic also my left side was paralyzed and got contractures (where my left arm, fingers and left got really curled up and difficult to straighten so I'm still working on walking again 😥

(I'm getting botox injections to help my left side straighten and , I'm able to my left leg and arm though, they're really bent and my fingers are too bent for me to move, use,or, hold anything😪

So now I am living at my aunts waiting to get another apartment through my insurance agency while, I still get votox every 2 months unrtil I hopefully gain control and use of my left side😪 &, the ability to walk again...

I went from being REAL STRONG to, being weak (though I'm ljfting more with my right arm with a dumbbell then I used to!)

Either way: I'm a survivor!

💪🏽😁👍🏼

[writingguide003-blog]

Troll Busters helps protect women writers from online bullies

New Post has been published on https://writingguideto.com/must-see/troll-busters-helps-protect-women-writers-from-online-bullies/

Troll Busters helps protect women writers from online bullies

During a reception for Womens History Month hosted by President Barack Obama on Wednesday, he spoke before a room of some of the most powerful women alive. In his remarks, Obama addressed the imminent threat of online harassment for women, shining a light on its importance.

And while she wasnt present at the White House gathering, Michelle Ferrier understands what its like to be harassed better than mostand thats why she decided to do something about it.

1. At @WhiteHouse Women’s History Month event, @POTUS talks about #onlineharassment

Katherine Clark (@RepKClark) March 16, 2016

2. @POTUS: The internet is interwoven in our lives – women deserve to exist freely & w/out fear on the internet #onlineharrasment

Katherine Clark (@RepKClark) March 16, 2016

3. @POTUS: Men must also speak up & demand better from their sons, coworkers, friends #onlineharassment

Katherine Clark (@RepKClark) March 16, 2016

At the Women’s Media Foundation hackathon for women news entrepreneurs in January 2015, Ferrier, the associate dean for innovation, research, creative activity, and graduate studies at Ohio University, came up with the idea for Troll Busters. Its an online service meant to help women, mainly writers and journalists, combat the so-called online trolls who attack, harass, and threaten them on a regular basis.

If a woman writer is experiencing harassment on Twitter, she can head to the Troll Busters site and report the incident. Volunteers or staff will typically respond to incident within an hour or so by firing a warning shot, as Ferrier told the Daily Dot. This means tweeting something at the person who reported the incident to let her know the Troll Busters are there and ready to look out for her.

Troll Busters is funded by a $35,000 grant awarded by the Knight Prototype Fund. A mixture of paid staff and volunteers keep things running basically 24/7, because you never know when a troll might strike.

It wasnt originally Ferriers first idea, but Gamergatean organized backlash by male gamers against female gamers and journalistswas in full swing at that time. She realized that was her hook.

Here I am watching all this Gamergate stuff on my Facebook feed, and it started triggering my own emotions about what happened to me, Ferrier said. And in the same anonymous way it happened to me, it was driving womens voices out of journalism. So I proposed the anti-Gamergate solution.

Ferriers experience with harassment didnt happen online like so many other women, but she acutely understands the terror of receiving violent threats.

Ferrier is a former journalist who lived in fear for many years. As a writer for a newspaper in a predominately white area in Florida, Ferrier made a splash as its first African-American columnist. She and the other columnists were the only staffers to have their photos featured in print, which opened them to the ire of the masses. Theyd routinely receive physical hatemail at the office or home, but Ferrier became one persons specific target.

Troll Busters

Somebody started writing me, I brushed it off the first time. I got another letter, brushed it off that time. But the letters continued to strike a very violent, racist tone, and there were other things about the letters that I received that were really disturbing, she said.

But after taking a closer look at the letters she repeatedly received, it dawned on her that this wasnt a lone, disturbed man. She found that not only the language and threats, but also that the letters themselves made me believe this person was part of an organized hate group and that this was something an organized hate group was doing to to put me in fear and intimidate me enough to stop writing.

For three or so years, the threats continued to roll in. She tried to involve local law enforcement. The police said they were investigating, but there was no evidence of an investigation, Ferrier said.

Because of law enforcements inaction, she was forced to do her own investigating, began disguising herself, taking different routes to work, and even learned to shoot a gun. In the absence of knowing who or what she was fighting, she had to be ready for anything. But in 2010, she received what would be the last letter from her harasser, and she finally had enough.

My students thought we were in post-racial America.

I called my husband and said ‘I just cant do this anymore,’ she said. She packed up her family, moved to North Carolina, and started teaching at a small private university in an attempt to move on from the previous years horrors. However, a racist incident on the mostly white campuswhich involved a car full of men shouting the N-word at a black female student and attempting to hit her with the vehiclereminded her that trolls and bullies exist in every pocket of the world, and looking the other way would do nothing to assuage it.

Thats when she decided to share her past with her students.

My students thought we were in post-racial America, Ferrier said. By the time I finished telling my story and what happened to me, half the class class was in tears. But she wanted to make sure that a broader point was being made, and that it was not just an isolated experience of someone the students respected. This is not about me. I want you to think about how you can make a difference and what we can do as bystanders and targets, she told them.

Ferrier would eventually end up in Ohio where she resides. And at the hackathon, she once again drew on her painful past to make a broader point and impact a wider audience.

Troll Busters

This service has no impact on the trolls themselves, other than them seeing that an arbitrator is involved. The Troll Busters never respond to the harassers comments, no matter how vitriolic, and instead focus on providing support for the target of abuse. Theyll send inspirational quotes, safety tips for dealing with harassment, and general words of encouragement to remind women in the public eye who speaks their minds that they shouldnt be ashamed and theyre not alone.

Ferriers experience shaped this approach to conflict mitigation. During the dark days in Florida, one of her faithful female readers could tell from her writing that something was up. The two ended up speaking, and her reader offered up her own familys home as a safehouse for Ferrier, her husband, and children.

It was a twist, that I was wasnt going to try and track down who did this stuff. I wanted to come up with something that supports the target. Ferrier said. What can we do to support targets and keep them online?

Other resources have popped up, of late, to make women or anyone oppressed online feel more safe. The Womens Media Center launched its Speech Project in February, spearheaded by Soraya Chemaly and Ashley Judd. Chemaly, a writer and activist, and Judd, the well-known actress, both experienced cyberbullying. Their project aims to put a name to the type of harassment a person is experiencing which has shown to help combat it.

Anita Sarkeesian, one of the focal targets of Gamergate, and activists Renee Bracey Sherman and Jaclyn Friedman created a safety guide called Speak Up & Stay Safe in December. Their extensive experience with trolls made them the perfect people to provide guidance.

“Every day, women of all ages and all backgrounds and walks of life are speaking out,” President Obama said at the reception on Wednesday, as Cecile Richards, Nancy Pelosi listened. “And by telling their stories, by you telling your stories, women are lifting others out of the shadows and raising our collective consciousness about a problem that affects all of us.”

Illustration by Jason Reed

Read more: http://www.dailydot.com/

[arediscoveryofself]

I'm glad, I'm finally fully present

Living in the most expensive city in the world, with governments setting out 10 years, 20 years plan for the nation, its hard for the citizens to feel fully present. We constantly work hard, for lofty dreams and ambitions and we justify our actions with a concept termed “Delayed gratitude”.  We worked hard, so we can enjoy the fruits of our labour in old age. So we’re always encourage to plan, because if we fail to plan, we plan to fail. But maybe sometimes, we all should stop planning, and learn to be fully present. So that our mind, soul and body can enjoy what is happening around us while propelling us to move in a direction that we have set for ourselves.

Today, as I made my way back home from school, the taxi made its left turn into AYE(ECP), and my memory got transported back to the beginning of 2017,  the darkest period in my very short-lived life thus far.

I’ve always thought that I’ve put down those dark days behind me, but I guess I can never lay it down completely, for it did affect my thoughts, speech and actions for a long period of time.

Nobody starts off a new year wanting to feel lost, especially when I had an extremely good 2016. That year, I juggled my part time internship alongside with my OCIP and school work, and received good reports from all sides. So I expected 2017 to continue in similar fashion. But I guess when your soul is not anchored properly,  its easy to be swayed in different directions. When you care too much about how other people look at you, its easy to alter your behaviour and cast doubt on yourself.

Since young, I prided myself as a high-achiever, prided myself as an individual that is capable of juggling multiple things at once, and excelling in different arenas. But I guess, if you had never listen to yourself carefully, then its easy to imitate others and get distracted, and eventually getting pulled in multiple directions.

As 2017 started, I continued my 2016 routine.  I told my mum that I’m going to continue my part time internship, continue my involvement in my OCIP and I’m going to excel in my studies. But I was wrong. Thoroughly wrong.  Those things that I used to take pride in, was tearing me down in 2017.

I can’t explain why, but in the first half of 2017, I simply lost control of my life  I was running late for my lectures and was absent half the time.  I had to rely on my friends to send me lecture recordings and remind me of the assignments that were due. I was distracted in my internship, felt lost and performed poorly. I lost interest in my PR internship, I didnt know if this internship would be useful and relevant for me. In short, I lost interest and hope in everything that I once prided myself in.

In 28 Feb 2017,  I drove into Utown, and reversed into the same parking lot that I’ve always been using. As I alighted my friend who was going to the same lecture as me, I told her, “Eh you go up ah. I’m not going.” She was dumbfounded and I didnt bother to offer any form of explanation. How. How do I explain my actions to a friend when I didnt even know what was happening to me. I simply lost interest in everything. Yes, everything.

Only through the passage of time and the benefit of hindsight did I realise that my loss of control was due to an innate fear within me. The fear of not attaining success that the world had defined.  I’ve always thought I’m a strong individual that is capable enough to deviate from the norm, fervent enough to pursue my own passion without worrying about anything else. Only in 2017 did it strike me that, nope, I’m equally afraid. Afraid of losing out in this materialistic world that we’re all living in.  I lost confidence in the degree that i was pursuing adamantly – can this degree really feed me, provide me with the life that I’ve always wanted. Do all these social work really make a difference in people’s lives and my own life trajectory. I started asking questions that were too huge to be answered. My soul was screaming, but i didn’t know who was listening. I decided that maybe I ought to take charge of my own life again, so I quit my internship, the only thing that I still have an autonomy over. I thought my life would pick up from there, but nope. I sauntered through my year 2 sem 2 , until I joined the competition that lifted myself out of the miry clay and boosted my self esteem. I only started to build up my own self-esteem and reattained my passion in history after exchange. When you realise that the knowledge of history allows you to engage with strangers on a much deeper level. When you can actually talk about the civil wars and the failure of UN that Ivorians had experienced and seen in their life time. That you can actually discussed about the impact of British colonialism to a Kenyan who has been affected by imperialism and the list goes on.

The second half of 2017 was so good for me, that it felt like an extended dream. I was so scared of waking up, so scared of realising that all these would eventually end.  So I dreaded coming back to Singapore. I dreaded the fact that I have to leave my group of friends whom I’ve built over the course of 6 months and dread the loss of memories that we know, we will all experience as time passes by.

But taking LOA for an internship in AXA was prolly the best decision in 2018. It gave me the space to breath and the time to think. I realised my worth again. I realised I can do things beyond history discipline and I found a passion and a cause that i’m interested in, which was marketing for social enterprise. So I learnt whatever marketing skills/knowledge that I can, I treat each given task seriously and cherish each opportunity that came by.  6 months flew by, and I’m back at the point whereby I have to head back to school. Head back to the place where I was in a deep abyss.   I remember lying down on my bed the night before school start,  with my heart palpitating and thoughts rummaging through my mind.

“Will history repeat itself again?” “Will I feel lost and never get back up again?”

There were just too many questions and too much apprehension. It felt like I’ve but also havent move on.

But just 2 nights ago, it suddenly dawned upon me that I’m now finally fully present. I still joined many different activities, but when your objective is clear, you’re only pulled in one and not many directions.  You can be juggling multiple things, but you’re heading only towards one direction, and that is me right now.

I’m no longer disillusioned in my major, in fact, I grew to appreciate that my discipline gives me the context needed to understand the greater scheme of things. I overload my semester with 6 modules, but I know the purpose of everything that I’m studying. I’m actively involved in a few social enterprises because i know that would lay the foundation needed for me, as I start one in the near future.

I laid awake at 2am, on my bed, with my eyes fixated on the ceiling ; I’m now fully present.

Wow, just wow.

And I write this article with a heart full of gratitude. Dedicating this post to friends who accompanied through the darkest period of my life, to friends who lent me their lecture notes without hesitation, to friends who hang out with me when I needed company, and to friends who celebrate my success and tolerate my failures.

And most importantly, dedicating this post to God, who sailed me through the roughest storms.

And to other readers that happen to be feeling lost, I’m no expert in this, but may this post encourage you that as long as you keep moving, one day, you’ll find out why you do what you do, why you go where you’re going. One day, all dots would connect, and everything would make sense.

Find rest our souls, in Christ alone. P.S. I've actually posted this on my wordpress and wanted to share on facebook to encourage people who are going through the dark days. But I guess this is just too intimate to share, so i think this shall just remain on my tumblr and people who still rmb my wordpress haha.