#i am a tar pit my existence is a drain on everything good in this world how am i gonna make up for it

[machinavocis]

despite pretty much all of the evidence from like the entirety of this year so far, i am still choosing to believe that i will

EVENTUALLY

MAYBE

SOMEHOW

manage to brute-force-exposure-therapy myself back into being able to complete one (1) unit of Outside Human Socializing

without coming home afterward feeling like i have made the world some amount worse by having done so.

[poppy-in-the-woods]

Sorry I am so angry lately. I have been promised some things, have had them close enough to touch them with my fingertips only to be taken away from me at the last moment.

I feel like I have been convicted for a crime I didn't commit, and even tough I have been an exemplary convict, I keep getting time added to my sentence for no reason. None that depends on me personally, at least.

Sorry I am so angry lately. I keep struggling with anxiety, depression, and I am pretty sure I have some other mental condition undiagnosed too. I am trying my best, but it seems it's not enough.

I feel like I have my legs up to my knees deep in a tar pit, and despite my best efforts, not only I am not getting free, but I am sinking even deeper. The sole act of existing it's very draining to me right now, and I feel I am in the brink of snapping.

Sorry I am so angry lately. I am almost thirty and I have been through all of this already, multiple times. It's like nothing ever changes. Somewhere in the path I took the wrong turn and now I am lost. The thing is, everything I do to try to find the right path it only makes me more and more lost.

I am tired. I am exhausted, and the worst thing is I cannot say "no more", because with what I am doing now I am helping my family. It is the right thing to do, but I feel that like a burden, like chains that are locked and I don't have the key. I don't have the key to my own life.

Sorry I am so angry lately. So much bad things have been happening in the world it makes hard to see the good things. This July (2021), a group of 12 people beat to death a gay man in my country, screaming slurs while they were doing it. And that's only what happened in my country, the rest of the world is equally fucked. Ask the women in Poland, Texas, or Afghanistan. It feels like we're going backwards.

Sorry I am so angry lately. There's been a pandemic that put all our lives on hold, millions of people around the world died or are dealing with the awful sequels the virus left them with, and yet there are still some people that deny the existence of the virus, that don't comply with the regulations and don't want to get vaccinated. Rat lickers and covidiots, we call them, but seems like public shaming doesn't work anymore.

We have to be regressing or something similar, because I cannot understand how there are so many people on this planet that says the earth is flat, vaccines don't work and so many things alike. I know the school system failed you, Steve, but that badly?

Sorry I am so angry lately. I want to make a better world, but I don't know how, and I feel overwhelmed by all the people that seem to have made their mission to make this planet a living hell for everyone else. I can't take it anymore. I need to sleep for a week or something.

I am screaming. Is anyone listening?

[atlaslain]

@backwaterheroics          /          in response to: x.

          zack fair has grown acclimatised to relying exclusively on himself. the treacherous pits of deepground have wrung the faith from him and assimilated him into their methods of survival: their lifestyle of anticipating the knife in one’s back before an opponent ever decides to place it there. three years of sleeping with one eye open, of waiting on the razor-edge between rage and fear for the next round of experimentation, or drowning in self-hatred whenever they make him fight and he catches sight of the blood crusted under his nails --- three years has taught him pain and solitude like nothing he has ever known. and he has clung to survival anyway, tucking away the decaying glimmer of hope in his chest that this might one day get better. that his friends are still out there.       some of them. not all. not many. angeal, gone. genesis, who knows. sephiroth, gone. cloud, aerith. they’re still somewhere, aren’t they? there is light and life and warmth beyond deepground. he may have forgotten the precise airy smell of the flowers and the exact curve of cloud’s smile but they exist. zack gathers up the tatters of who he is and wraps them tight around that hope, like clinging to an anchor in a storm. 

          salvation comes in the form of weiss the immaculate. indirectly, anyway. his death. he rots under hojo’s influence and together they begin their reign over the world above, lighting the path out of the darkness and tarring it in blood. it is zack’s opportunity. the instant he crawls into the light he turns on his squadron, squashing what flares of guilt twist his stomach as his blade slides between ribs. ( his deepground-issue katana is lighter than the buster sword, not as hefty but far more adept at neatly cleaving skin. it feels strange in his hands, a desolate hunk of metal that isn’t his. ) sustained injuries are disregarded for now, blood wiped briskly from his face as he removes his helmet and tosses it aside. the streets are a mess; gunshots shatter the night and beasts prowl, dragging innocents into the shadows. and then, as fate would have it:                   a man in a ragged red cloak, faintly familiar. and a young woman --- older now, far older than zack remembers her being, an air of confidence and control about her now. yuffie kisaragi and vincent valentine. it is yuffie who stares at zack as if she’s seen a ghost, yuffie who grabs him as the force of his relief has him swaying on his feet. the first friendly face in years and she’s smacking at his arms, chiding him for vanishing, insisting he prove it’s really him and not some phantom deepground’s summoned up. ( zack reminds her of their treasure-hunting adventures and she gentles, and the world slows. ) he tells them all he knows, and then he succumbs to the loss of consciousness with the fragile hope that vincent will take care of it all. zack fair is exhausted and wounded and finally free.       the slow return of reality is painful: he awakens in an unfamiliar bed, in a room he’s never seen before. his heart slams violently against his ribs. throat tight, he casts about for a weapon. he grasps a heavy book from a shelf and decides at least he can brain someone with it if need be. his legs shake beneath him as he ventures to the doorway, pausing to take in the smell of alcohol and food from somewhere below the staircase beyond. a bar?                 seventh heaven, tifa tells him later, after he’s done hyperventilating and lashing out at her. she avoids his initial smack with the book, hands gentle yet firm on his wrists as she encourages him to look at her, to understand she is not here to hurt him. he is in seventh heaven, in edge. deepground is gone. ( vincent took care of it all. ) zack is safe. it takes him a whole week to entertain the idea. in that time, he rapid-fires questions at tifa: what happened, how long has it been, where is cloud. she answers each carefully --- it’s a long story, three years, away on deliveries right now. you can speak to cloud when he gets back.           the dim hope in zack’s chest grows, warily. perhaps this won’t be taken away from him.                 he doesn’t get to see cloud.         he has so much to say, so much it’s whipped up into a frenzy in his head. does cloud not feel the same urgency? he returned, apparently, and left again. “did you... did you tell him i was here?” zack asks tifa, voice cracking.            “yes,” she says, and the look in her eyes speaks volumes. she hands zack a rag, urges him to help her clean down her bar. she’s been giving him little tasks, as if she knows he needs to stay busy. “you have to understand, he... he isn’t the same as you probably remember. a lot has happened to him.”           and so zack resolves to understand. he pushes his own impatience down, and nurtures the hope that cloud will see him in his own time. ( far more difficult to ignore is the hurt. weren’t they good friends? after everything they went through --- after everything. how can cloud not want to see him? )               two months crawl by. zack works in seventh heaven at first, until the guilt of imposing himself on tifa is too much. he falls into mercenary work then, with a sense of resigned amusement. fighting really is all he’ll ever do. he shops for a new sword, and then another new one when that doesn’t feel right. tifa insists he continue living above the bar, citing the children as reasons he should; they like him, she says. they don’t want him to go. he reads them stories at night and patrols the bar’s vicinity into the early hours. during the day, he spends time with yuffie or works on his new bike or undertakes increasingly dangerous jobs. the fractured feeling in his mind never quite goes away, but he thinks it might ease one day.     when cloud returns again, drifting home like a wayward wind, tifa grabs him and makes him see zack. it’s a quick visit. it’s the sensation of something important slipping between one’s fingers: cloud stiff and unresponsive in his arms, eyes dull, as if zack were less than a stranger. like a static shock, it has zack flinching back, numbness tingling at his fingertips. he stands there, as unacknowledged as a specter, while cloud leaves again.               he doesn’t think you’re really here, tifa explains. we all thought you were dead.        oh.            well then.               that explains it. that barbed-wire feeling cinched round his heart. it’s the cold understanding that life has moved on without him and he is no longer a part of it. the zack fair everyone knew and remembered died riddled with bullets. but i’m alive, i never left! he wants to scream. the sense of being left behind is dizzying. cloud had moved on and now here zack is, tearing old wounds open. guilt batters him, sudden and strange.        he goes to aerith’s church. the flowers are there, yellow as sunshine and pearly-white, suffusing the air with sweetness and life. but aerith is not. she has not been for a long time. the buster sword lays at the head of the pews like a memorial and suddenly it’s all too much. he falls to his knees and chokes on sobs. he stays there for days, murmuring to the flowers as if they might carry his apologies to aerith. eventually, little marlene wallace takes his hand and leads him back to seventh heaven. he follows in a daze and doesn’t notice when he’s led to cloud’s room and told to rest. ( he rests, his heart slowing its frenzied pulse. this feels like safety. )                         he is not ready for cloud to return again. he thought he always would be, but the pain of coming to terms with aerith’s death is too fresh and sleep-deprivation has drained him. he is not prepared for more pain; it might shatter him. and yet here cloud is, slipping shadow-quiet into the room and staring with horror-struck eyes.         “cloud, please,” zack finds himself whispering, praying. he is not aware of reaching out, but he registers how brittle cloud feels: like his violent shaking might rip him apart. nausea rises in zack’s throat. he is doing this. he is hurting cloud with every touch, poisoning him. “look at me,” he sobs anyway, selfish and unable to relinquish the certainty of cloud’s place in his life.            in the end, it’s only more hurt. cloud, pale as a wraith, stumbles away and wails. the sound drives nails into zack’s heart. he gets tifa, because who else would they both rely on to fix their broken souls? the storm breaks, cloud sobs, and zack turns to leave. “i’m sorry, i’m so sorry,” he is vaguely aware of repeating, frantic. “cloud, i’m so sorry.”             he should have died on that cliff. he should’ve died before deepground could ruin him, before he could walk back into a life that didn’t want him anymore.                 “are you giving up that easily?” tifa demands the next morning, as zack shoulders his bag full of meager belongings and tries to give her a hug goodbye. she stares him dead in the eye as he squirms. “you’ve barely tried yet.”         zack doesn’t mean to raise his voice but it comes out in a burst: “yes! yes, i am. me being here only hurts him, i’m taking up space in your bar, there’s no place here for me!” it tastes like a lie. there has been a place, carved out just for him. the beginnings of home here with these people. but not if he’s only spreading hurt. “i can’t watch him scream and cry every time he sees me, tifa. i won’t. i’ll --- i’ll come visit. okay?”           it’s not okay.     he debates saying his farewells to cloud, but recognises it as an awful plan. he leaves his old shinra phone instead, the one he kept as a soldier. it’s fuzzy and barely in working condition these days, but he squirreled it away all these years just for the old pictures in its memory.            “give that to him when he feels... better. okay? you have my new number if you need me.”     he tells nobody where he’s going because he just doesn’t know anymore. it’s a good thing he’s already accustomed to relying only on himself.