#i don't know how to warn against describing myself at a young age

[yanderes-galore]

Scenario in which platonic yandere Bubba Sawyer has a younger sibling who tried to leave the family and start over, but got caught at the last moment, and Bubba is not very happy about them trying to leave.

Poor you is tired of being a cannibal and just wants a normal life... only for your "older brother" to drag you back. Dubious on if you're blood related to them or just kidnapped at a young age since I feel someone blood related may just stay... but I could be wrong! The ending is so... meh... but we all know by now I suck at endings, right?

Bear Trap

Yandere! Platonic! Bubba Sawyer Scenario

Pairing: Platonic

Possible Trigger Warnings: Gender-Neutral Darling, Obsession, Clingy behavior, Overprotective behavior, Kidnapping, Isolation, Violence, Blood, Cannibalism mentioned but this time not graphically described, Forced companionship.

You were getting tired of this life.

Growing up, you never felt you belonged. You were taught to kill, taught to feast... you were taught to behave. However... you never really considered the Sawyers... family.

Not entirely, anyways.

There was only one you really didn't mind. That was the youngest son, Bubba, your older brother. In a way you guessed you... pitied him, often taking most of the family's abuse. You always looked after him, though.

You always checked in... which must be why he enjoyed you.

You were often around Bubba when growing up. He wasn't like the rest of the family, but certainly wasn't innocent either. His... childish demeanor often brought young you comfort. There were times Bubba acted more like a caretaker around the house with you than your other siblings did.

You were never usually away from Bubba, the youngest of your brothers always sticking by your side. Even now, as an adult, he often searched for you. You could never have alone time without the large Sawyer grappling you in a hug.

You felt so isolated here. No matter what your brother's said, you didn't feel... right. You didn't want to eat people, it often made you sick, but it was what you were taught.

You wanted to leave. In fact, ever since you became an adult you've been planning how to leave. The difficult thing as you were never let off the homestead... despite this... you felt it was time to try your luck.

Pulling yourself from your bed and picking your best clothes, you took what you felt you needed (which wasn't much considering where you are) and left your room. The wood of the house creaked under your feet as you pattered your way down the stairs. You flinch at every sound the house makes... but you need to look natural.

You need to look like you're just taking a walk... then pretend to be a victim of your own family.

You pause when you hear rummaging in the kitchen. Such a noise wasn't new, Bubba or Drayton tended to be in the kitchen preparing meat. The sounds made you desperate to be careful, however, as you pushed gently on the outside door.

Then the noises stop and you nearly feel your heart fall to your stomach.

You realize you'll need to play it casual, standing in the open door as you watch the kitchen. As expected, Bubba looks into the hallway with a confused expression. You clear your head... it's Bubba... you can probably sweet talk him....

You see blood stains on his apron and you grimace, his size making him look intimidating. The only reason you can stand your ground is you grew up with him. Towards you... he's a sweetheart... yet still dangerous.

"Hey, Bubba..." You smile sweetly, leaning against the doorframe. "I just wanted to go out into the field for a bit...."

Bubba doesn't seem to believe you, making a noise of protest before stepping closer. You feel a bit panicked yet swallow your fear. No need to make a scene.

"Come on, Bubba...!" You plead, trying to stay light-hearted. "I'm not a little kid anymore... I can handle myself!"

The unfortunate thing with being close to Bubba is one thing... he can read you. As simple minded as Bubba is, he knows you. In fact... you don't doubt he knows about your distaste for the family.

Along with your rebellious nature... you're the most rebellious one there is in the Sawyers.

So, unfortunately, you can tell Bubba doesn't believe your lie again. You feel yourself practically sweating as Bubba comes closer to stand in front of you. You brace yourself... yet your younger brother just offers a pat on the head.

The affection takes you off guard. You don't understand what he's doing before Bubba reaches for your arm, gently tugging you closer before exiting the house. It's then it clicks.

Bubba either believes you're just taking a walk... or just wants to keep an eye on you. Either way you understand your older brother is coming with you. Such a development suddenly makes your plan so much harder.

Reluctantly you allow yourself to be led by Bubba. The large man proceeds to walk you around the homestead and fields... all while you look for a plan. Quietly you plan a distraction, something to get Bubba to look away.

As the walk progresses, you find yourself growing desperate. You try your best to talk sweetly to Bubba... and for the most part he loosens his grip. You're so close... you keep behaving, keep playing nice...

"You know..." You begin, trying to grab his attention enough. Bubba's gaze glances at you, a curious noise leaving him as he watches you carefully. "You were always my favorite...."

Bubba pauses, grip loosening. He makes a pleased and flattered grunt towards you as you flash a smile. Deceiving him makes you feel a bit bad... unfortunately...

You need to leave...

You stop your walk, keeping up the good sibling persona as you raise your arms. Bubba watches you, suddenly excited at what you're implying. A hug.

"I love you..." you smile, but once you're free...

You ditch.

Your sudden dash takes Bubba by surprise. Due to how fond he is of you it was easy to play him for a fool. You hear a distressed yelp from behind you as you make your way to the roadside.

You ignore the slight emotional pain you get for what you did. Instead you focus on your search for the road through the cornfields. Silently you hope the family truck doesn't pull in...

But you learn you have other problems when you hear more distressed sounds from Bubba behind you.

Your escape attempt quickly becomes a hunt as you try to evade Bubba. Unfortunately, Bubba is not only bigger than you... but faster. Especially without the chainsaw.

You try to keep your hope as you run towards the road. You can just barely see the path as you try to push yourself further. You're so close... so close if you can just lose him...

But your escape attempt was dead in the water the moment Bubba saw you.

Big strong arms quickly grapple you. It's familiar yet in this current moment harsh. You squeal as you're tugged back, nearly falling only to collide with a chest.

You freeze, the familiar smell of blood and possible rot making you quiver. You know who this is... and you're scared. Your heart rapidly thumps as you hear irritated yet relieved grunts and groans behind you.

"Hey, Bubba..." You solemnly greet, only for Bubba to tighten his hold and sling you over his shoulder. You've lost your chance... you don't know when you'll have another one... you just hope Bubba doesn't tell your brothers.

You're carried back like you weigh nothing as Bubba carries you. His grip is tight and bruising... like he's scared to let you go. You don't bother explaining yourself.

Bubba wouldn't understand.

You quietly resign yourself to your fate as Bubba reaches the house. It's quiet and tense between you two. You wonder if he'll hold a grudge... if he thinks you hate him.

You don't... not really... but you struggle to explain yourself as he pulls you upstairs and into your room. You hear him grunt and grumble, yet you can also tell his voice is cracking. You just expect him to lock you in your room like a troublesome child...

Yet Bubba just sits on your bed and keeps you in his lap. You don't move when he places his head on yours with soft grunts. You can't tell what he's thinking....

His grip around you is tight, like you're ensnared. You can't struggle against his much stronger hold as he squeezes you against him. You can tell your escape attempt affected him... but he wasn't going to hurt you.

Instead, he acts as a bear trap as he holds you tight...

Treating you like a trapped animal caught trying to run to freedom.

[abrcmswrld]

Only With Your Eyes | Burt Fabelman x Neighbor!Reader

Word Count: 3017

Warnings: smut (18+ MDNI), slight recognized age gap, voyeurism, questionable risqué activities in the window, fingering, squirting (to an extent), general smut stuff, GN reader (no use of she/her) BUT feminine clothing described

Author’s Note: and so i said to myself “what if burt accidentally watched his neighbor change through their window but liked it”,, next thing i knew this was a thing,, i had no idea how to end this and im not totally happy with it and it’s probably ooc but idc ITS SMUTOBER BABY!

I.

Your blood turns ice cold as you glance toward his figure in the window. He's dressed in night clothes. His glasses glare as his eyes lock with yours before he jerks his gaze away.

Shit.

He saw you. There's no doubt. You quickly pull the loose night shirt over your head and close the curtains. You can feel your heart racing. He probably thinks you're a creep. A slut. Just parading your body openly for anyone to see. Didn't you have the decency to consider the lingering male gazes that romped around the neighborhood? Gazes from husbands with wives who would certainly tear into your character had they known their sweethearts' eyes had been glued to your nude body without care.

Did he have a wife? You find yourself wondering. It's a small apartment, you think. You'd never seen a woman enter his unit. You're almost certain he had children. You'd seen the teens and young adults entering the unit before. You'd even heard the laughter coming from his driveway as he embraced them in hugs.

It’s intriguing. It should be horrifying. You just unintentionally flashed your neighbor, you should want to crawl under your soft sheets and never be seen again. But instead, you find yourself wanting to know more about his mundane life.

II.

He's peaked your interest. You're not sure if he'd like to hear that. He's decently older than you. Old enough to have children in their late teens, but it doesn't stop your gaze from falling on him through your bedroom window as he walks to the set of mailboxes outside the complex.

You practically memorized his routine. Not that you meant to. It's just hard not to. It hardly changes. He goes to work at the same time, returns home at the same time, checks his mail at the same time. So after weeks of watching you decide to switch things up for yourself. It wouldn't hurt to visit the mailbox a little later in the day.

So you do. And just as you expected, he did too. It's awkward. He says nothing, only smiles in your direction. You smile back. He's handsome up close. The scent of his cologne tickles your nose in the best way possible. You break the silence, introducing yourself.

"I live in the building unit across the way from yours."

A blush rises to his cheeks. He's flustered and you figure it's because of the incident from weeks ago. But he's polite. He doesn't chastise you and instead acts as if he had no idea of your mistake.

"I'm Burt. It's nice to meet you. I don't normally have time to converse with neighbors."

You stare at your feet. You can't even think of what to say after that. The tension lays thick in the air between you two, but he's a gentleman. Perhaps you should...

"I'm sorry for..."

He swallows thickly.

"Um-I'm sorry for not introducing myself sooner, Burt. It's very nice to finally meet you."

You outstretch a soft hand for him to shake and he does. He has slightly calloused palms and a firm grip that feel so nice against yours.

You don’t keep him long. Better to ease into it, you think. You feel a little giddy as you walk quietly back to your own unit.

III.

It makes your heart race the next time you catch his gaze through the window. You're starting to pull the curtains shut, but his gaze causes you to hesitate and pause briefly, one hand still fisting the coarse fabric of the curtain.

He simply stares up at you. And you're sure he sees you staring right back. Suddenly there's a spark in your stomach that makes you giddy. You leave the gap in the curtains and turn to instead peel your shirt over your head. You face away from him at first. The burning in your cheeks and the flush on the tips of your ears prevents you from meeting his gaze or checking to see if he had even kept watching you.

You pull your skirt and tights down the length of your legs. You're bare with only under garments covering your goose-bumped skin. It's cold in the room. Something inside you longs to feel warm calloused hands rubbing the lengths of your body. Taking care of you.

You turn to face him.

He stares right back at you.

His expression is focused, but in particular you notice that his hand have remained at his sides. As if you were a piece of art in a museum, and he is satisfied to view you from a distance without letting hands wander where they shouldn't.

You can't help but give him a smile as you place a hand on the glass of the window.

You turn to display the way that your fingers work the clasps of your bra open, excited to show off for him but, when you turn you find that he has pulled the curtain shut. You can't find it in yourself to be hurt. Instead you grin and pull your curtain shut as well.

What a gentleman.

IV.

He still doesn't make an effort to speak to you. It's not that you think he doesn't like you or is possibly annoyed by your late night "shenanigans," he just goes about his day as if nothing had happened. Still only a friendly neighbor whom you spot leaving every day work.

He was driving you insane. You had dreams of him lately. Dreams in which he had actually touched you. Dreams in which he had kissed your flesh and caressed you with haste. You'd always wake up feeling sweaty and needy.

So you decide you're done waiting around. You've never been a perfect baker, but the cookies you make are good enough to be given to him, and it gives you an excuse to talk to him. Actually talk to him.

You take a deep breath before you knock on his apartment door. It takes a moment, but he eventually comes to the door. He's still dressed in work clothes: dress pants, a crisp shirt, and nice tie. You swallow sharply before speaking.

"I made cookies. I was wondering if you were busy."

It comes out so fast he looks almost stunned as he tries to decode your intentions. "You...want to come in?" You're practically bouncing on your heels. "Yes! Yeah. I thought it be nice to...get to know each other."

He smiles softly and steps back, letting his front door open a little wider for you to slip into the apartment with him. It's nice. Tidy. Although not thoroughly decorated. He seems to be a logical man, not quite one to put so much thought into the creative expression of interior decorating.

You gently sit the tin of cookies on the table and turn to face him. "I..I hope you're not opposed to chocolate chip." He laughs airy and soft and shakes his head. "Chocolate chip is good."

He pauses for a moment and hesitates before speaking, "It's good to speak to you again." You already feel the flush pulsing into your cheeks and you smile.

"I wanted to speak to you more. I see you a lot. But we never speak."

He raises a brow as he listens to you speak. Oh you see each other. He knows exactly what you're alluding to, but neither one of you can bring it up explicitly. He sits in the chair across from you and gestures for you to do the same.

"You have kids?" You gesture at a photo of Burt and a boy, no older than a teenager. Burt smiles. "Yes. He's my son, Sammy. I have daughters too." You nod and smile. "They seem like good kids. I see them when they come here sometimes. Just from across the yard. They always looks so happy to see you."

He nods. "I sure would hope so. They are good kids." Silence falls between the two of you for a moment. There's an awkward tension. You can see it clearly now, he's not wearing a wedding ring. But the issue still seems like a giant elephant in the room. "And a wife?"

It comes out a low whisper, and he gives a confused look. "I'm sorry, what was that?" You clear your throat and prepare yourself for the potential embarrassment. "Uh...A wife? Do you have a wife?" He raises his brows and his mouth opens slightly. He seems slightly shocked that you had asked, and you can only hope he isn't completely offended at the prying question.

"No. Not anymore."

It's clearly a sore subject for him. You can see it in the way his mouth forms a straight line. You can only whisper. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't pry like that." He shakes his head and places a hand on top of yours where it rests on the tabletop. "It's okay, really."

He's looking right at you and you feel the pressure of his stare immediately. Paired with the warmth and softness of his hand, you almost feel your brain short circuit. But you stare back at him with wide eyes. Suddenly you're thinking of his gaze through the window and the way he had taken in the sight of your body. Your cheeks are burning hot.

"I've not overstepped a boundary these past couple of nights have I?"

You blink at him, shocked that he would even allude to the previous nights. You shake your head slowly and practically gasp in an inhale. "No. Have I?" He chuckles and smiles. You feel his thumb caress the meat of your hand. "Not at all."

You can't even believe that the two of you are speaking about this. A little part inside of you expected you both to ignore it and pretend you can't done anything, especially something so voyeuristic. His hand moves from your hand to your cheek, brushing a small piece of hair out of your face. His touch lights your skin on fire.

You quickly stand from where you had been sitting across from him. He looks stunned, shocked, maybe even nervous. You walk closer to him, closer and closer, filling the space until your shins hit his. "Is everything okay?" You hardly let him get the question out before you're leaning down to kiss him.

You feel almost childish and overly bold. But his skin against yours lit a fire in you where he had already placed a spark through the window days prior. You're thankful that he's quick to kiss you back. Thankful he doesn't push you away.

You place yourself onto his lap, legs dangling off the side of his thigh and an arm wrapped around his shoulders to hold yourself upright. You feel his hands fall onto you hips and you can't help but smile into the kiss.

When you pull away slowly, his eyes are locked onto yours. You can practically see his gears turning as his mouth remains slightly ajar. He says nothing, just continues to grip the meat of your hip. You break the silence,

"I want you to kiss me more. Is that alright?"

As if he received a sudden burst of strength and energy, he raises from his seat, picking you up off his lap and placing you down onto the table in front of the two of you.

He towers over you as he kisses you, feverishly, starved like a man who hasn't felt this sort of affection in years. You let your hands grip his arms as he ravishes you. It's everything you wanted and could've ever imagined. Your kind, reserved neighbor whom you've wanted so bad finally reaching a breaking point in his lust for you.

You smile into the kiss, secretly feeling a bit of accomplishment wash over you. His hand is traveling up, up, up your skirt, caressing your thigh and resting his fingers dangerously close to your aching core. You gasp into his mouth.

"This is okay?"

His inquiry is soft and whispered and his eyes are pleading. You nod your head quickly. He furrows his brows and closes his eyes as his forehead rests against yours, "I need you to tell me. Tell me you want me." It sends lightning bolts of arousal straight to your core. You're sure your underwear are ruined. You nod quickly, "I want you, Burt. Please..."

The last word strains out into a whine from you. You sound pathetic, and you hope he will take mercy on you just this once. His fingers inch closer to your soaked underwear, the pads of his fingers brushing your clit through the fabric. Your nails dig into the wood of the table.

He's staring at you, intense, the slightest bit of intrigue behind his eyes. "There?" His question comes as he makes loose circles around the clothed bud. You squeeze your eyes closed and nod.

He continues his light touches on your clit until you can no longer hold back a choked off moan. It seems to spur something in him as his hands are quick to move to grip the waistband of your underwear at your hips, slowly sliding the soiled fabric down your legs.

He brushes his fingers over your folds, spreading them slightly, as if he's observing the science of it all. "So perfect..." It's a whisper and, it leaves a shiver running down your spine. A finger prods at your entrance. Your eyes squeeze shut and you can't help the whine that escapes your mouth as his finger slides deeper into you.

It doesn't feel real. Even after the absolute show you had put on for him at your window, you could've never imagined having his hands on you in such an intimate way. But you love it. He touches you like it's a totally new experience. Like you're something for him to pick apart and figure out.

The fog of your thoughts clears immediately as his finger curls upwards and into the most sensitive spot inside you. The gasp you let out is pathetic, but you hope the blissed out smile on your face is enough to comfort any worry he may have. "Burt-"

He cuts you off as he works his finger against that spongy tissue, "I'll take care of you. Let me take care of you..." His lips are so close to yours once again, but he holds your face with his free hand. You nod your head, "Yes..."

You can feel that tension deep within you. A rubber band ready to snap at any moment. But you're desperate to hold it back. You haven't even touched him yet. You reach a hand around the back of his neck, reaching up till your finger tangle in short, neat hair. 

"Wanna touch- wanna touch you." It comes out broken with a whine. 

He responds quickly and wordlessly, letting his free hand fall to his belt. You close your eyes, the desperation and anticipation becoming too much for you. He moves his hips closer to yours. You let your knees rest on the sides of his hips as he finally pulls his cock free. Its vulgar. In the privacy of his own home, yet displayed for him on his own kitchen table. His eyes are dark with lust, but his hands are careful as they touch you.

You let your hand wrap around his cock. You revel in the gasp he lets out as your skin makes contact. He's soft and warm, and you never want this to end. You're desperate to make him finish before you inevitably give into the lighting strikes his fingers are brining to your core. 

You had been so open through the window, beginning to not care what other's would think if they had saw you, but you find the thought daunting in this moment. Burt and yourself panting over each other on his kitchen table. A divorced father, and a younger neighbor who had so openly given themselves to him. 

It washes away when his lips meet yours again. It's not hurried. Not rushed or sloppy. It's deep, with a sense of care that makes you shiver. He's not some college guy, willing to fuck and immediately kick you out. You're reminding of what had drawn you to Burt in the first place. Older, yes, but with a sense of care for the things that he held close. You could see it in the way that he so graciously greeted his children, and in the way that he kept his house neat even while living alone.

He liked to figure out how things worked. What makes the world tick. You can see it in his eyes as he brushes different spots inside you and glances back to you with a curious eye. You know he gets his satisfaction from understanding the inner working of the things he surrounds himself with. You can see it in his eyes as you gush around his fingers, and the way he gasps with wide eyes as you helplessly drip onto the table and floor. You can’t help the way your legs tremble through your orgasm. You feel pathetic.

You cannot help the blood that rushes to your cheeks. It’s embarrassment. But he doesn’t seem to see it that way as his cock twitches in your hand and spurts hot finish over your knuckles. He leans down to kiss you but can only gasp and groan into your mouth.

You’re already shaking under him. Sticky and damp. Debauched. Fear strikes through you again. This is a not a dream, not a playful glance through a pane of glass. You’re covered in each other.

“I-I’m sorry…”

You half expect him to hastily forgive you, usher you to redress, and push you right out the door, never to speak of it again. But he doesn’t.

Instead he kisses you again. And the way his fingers grip your figure close to his makes you believe this won’t be your last time in this situation. You can’t bring yourself to be ashamed anymore.

[doberbutts]

Thank you for talking about the “able to get to the door but unable to stay inside” thing re:stimulation. My issues are less severe than yours were (creates chronic fatigue instead of severe meltdowns) but it’s kinda the first time I’ve heard anyone discuss them as a legitimate disabling barrier. I still have this “if I just try hard enough” mentality that I’m trying to overcome, and it helps to have someone else go “no, this is a real problem.”

Honestly the brain injury really opened my eyes because I do have ADD and had childhood epilepsy (been seizure-free since I was 8 tho) so we were somewhat conscious about sensory stuff but a lot of it was like. Okay every once in a while you will touch something that is Bad Texture and you will scrub your skin raw about it for the next couple of hours. Annoying repeating sounds fade into the background for you but God Forbid anyone talks while you're concentrating because now they've ruined everything. You'd rather starve than put Tastes Bad into your mouth and have gone to bed with hunger pains many times as a result. etc etc etc for me it wasn't so disabling but largely that was due to my mom knowing how to manage my symptoms and teaching me from a very young age how to cope.

And then with the seizures my major warning sign was a colossal headache that refused to go away which was a sign to go lay down somewhere quiet and dark for a few hours until it passed or else a lightning storm would happen in my skull :D

But the brain injury... that really upset everything. Which is commonly reported, when I was finally able to speak I told my neurologist that I felt like a completely different person and not in a good way and he said that most TBI survivors have said this.

Honestly the best way I can describe it is that. Hmm. Imagine... your TV is too loud. When I say too loud I mean like. It hurts to be in the same room as the TV, it's bordering on the edge of so loud that it makes you physically take a step back. When the TBI first happened, that was any and every stimulus to my senses. My clothes touching my skin was Too Loud. Tasting my food was Too Loud. The ambient light coming from my window was Too Loud. And so on and so forth. Because there was an actual damaged piece of my brain, it was really struggling to parse any more information than "oh, no, ow, make that stop".

I wore blacked out glasses inside because I couldn't stand to keep my eyes open otherwise. I would ask my roommates to whisper several rooms down if they were going to talk to each other or on the phone because even just hearing their footsteps was like someone was taking a hammer to my forehead. I was usually naked because the feel of my shirt against my back would set me off. There's a lot I can't remember from that time but I remember being so frustrated as I hid under my covers from the light and the ambient noise of living with a bunch of people and their pets that "trying harder" and "pushing through" honestly just made everything worse.

It's a lot better now. It'll be 5 years in July. But every once in a while something will still set me off and I will be back in that place, frustrated with myself as I feel my brain hurtling towards a Very Loud Meltdown that I cannot get to stop.

I just don't appreciate being told that it's somehow lesser because my legs work. Especially considering TBIs are so common, and they happen so fast. All it takes is one good knock on the head and then you'll be just like me.

[siblingskissing]

No shade but genuinely what leads a person to do the things you do how do you justify it in your mind

Okay so I think I'm gonna make an FAQ page on here so that people who are curious can find answers to these questions. I have answered this before but I wanna update that response a bit. Now this explanation will have some mentions of my own personal real life trauma so if you can not stomach that please don't harm your own mentality by reading it. I will put a short expo in the replies.

Trigger Warnings for: real life trauma/abuse of a minor

Okay, so first off I wanna address the "what leads a person to do what you do" part. Namely, the "do what you do".

Now, I write fictional content about fictional characters. Yes that content revolves mostly around taboo subjects such as extreme age gaps, incest, and other such topics, and yes, it typically is for my own entertainment. However, I think we need to address exactly what I'm doing.

I'm playing pretend.

As every proshippers has said in response to these questions: I'm simply playing make believe in my head about fake people. That's all characters, books, movie and any and all fictional stories are. Pretend. Luke Skywalker is not real, Bluey is not real, not even the kids on Stranger Things are real. It's all pretend.

My pretend just happens to be different

Now, the why

My reason is not much different from other people's reasonings- a lot of my interest comes from trauma I experienced growing up. I'm not gonna go into full detail- I don't care to share but really unless asked I'm not gonna devulge all my woes to strangers online.

Due to my trauma I've always had a hard time accepting it- I was young when it was occuring and because of this I struggled with accepting it. I put myself into a pit of a lot of bad emotions and became a very upsetting individual.

I threw myself into reading and writing and when I discovered fandoms I read there too, and when I discovered Dead Dove? I was shocked.

I was an anti for so long, I hated that people were using something I went through to tell a story and for so long I was actively against those types of stories.

Then, I talked to a therapist.

When I described that feeling, she asked why I was offended, and when I told her, she asked why I assumed these people were writing about my trauma.

"Well, I went through that, and they're just using it for their own entertainment!"

"Okay, but you're not the only person who has ever experienced this event. It's not about you, it's about them"

And suddenly that was the day I realized that- just because I went though something bad, didn't mean I was the only person who ever had. I can't judge those who use their own coping techniques that- let's be honest, don't hurt anybody. Sure, I may not like certain content, but that's my responsibility to ignore, not someone else's responsibility to cater.

I always try to put tags so people can avoid my content if they don't like it. I use ship tags, I put on every post that I'm a proshippers and I try to make it so that Antis and people who don't like my content never have to interact with it. That doesn't prevent people from searching for it and coming after me, which you know, actually does harm people.

But I'd like to add- just because my content began with trauma, doesn't mean you need trauma to enjoy this sort of content.

Proshippers have said it a million times: "Lots of shippers have trauma and use dark content to cope!" But we ignore that, just because you enjoy dark content doesn't mean you're morally aligned with it. I love horror films, love slasher movies and revenge tales. You don't see me killing people, and you don't see me performing these acts irl. Why? Because it's all a fantasy game

I write about topics that I've both lived through and only ever thought about without experience. And despite what people think- I don't get off to it. The incest and noncon aspects to content are not what intrigue me, it's the emotional pulls. The angst, the heartbreak and dynamic plays.

Sorry if this is rambly- I hope that answers your question of why I believe my content is alright. If you have any further questions please ask!

[kiindr]

Hey I wanted to just kinda share my success story here because I think it's important for people to hear

Trigger warnings for suicidal thoughts, self harm, eating disorder, being young, mild sexual harassment, anti-depressants, anxiety meds, and sedatives, toxic relationships ('romantic' but it was petty and short, so I'd say mostly friendships), and talking about therapy and mental hospitals.

- Just turned 15 recently (Present)

*FIRST YEAR*

- Was 11, in 6th grade, when covid hit hard

- Sister has mild disability in her legs so my family was extremely extremely cautious to not catch the 19 because viruses trigger it

- At this time my thoughts were as follows:

"Emotions make me weak"

"Crying is a sign that I'm not strong and confident"

"If I can just get rid of these god damn emotions I can manipulate and gaslight my way through life and be successful"

- I was so desperate for attention I would seek out negative attention. And not sexual negative attention or doing weird stuff... I mean I would sit in gaming chat rooms and tell people to insult me for hours.

- I didn't know crap about mental health at the time

*SECOND YEAR*

7th grade. 13. My lowest. God, so fucking low.

- Still desperately sought out negative attention. I was the weird girl and the pick-me girl in one. I was convinced that if I just brushed off every insult and wrongdoing to me, I'd be "chill" and "fun"

- Hang out with people that used me as entertainment when they were bored, yelling at me and degrading me and insulting me and the worst part is that I LIKED it because I was just so damn lonely

- Started dating some boy. He was 12 I was 13. We never really talked to each other. We were making out before he ever said he wanted to be my boyfriend.

- Soon he was pushy, and disgusting. He would dry hump me, rut against me, spit into my mouth, squeeze my throat...

- And I never said no. Because I was so scared of losing what I had convinced myself was someone who actually loved me.

- But when I tried to 'lightheartedly' protest, or struggle or try to get out of his grip, he would grab me and pin me down and no matter how much I tried to escape he would just force me not to move and he didn't ever actually penetrate me but dear lord that horny ass 12 year old boy had boners more often than not. I didn't tell anyone bc I was scared that they'd be mad that I didn't tell them sooner.

- Also went through a huge identity crisis. It wasn't because I was trans, it was because I wasn't allowing myself to be me so I didn't feel like ME and so I turned to the easy thing. At one point I was "Demiaro pan genderfluid trigender"... I'm just a cis lesbian though.

- My thoughts at this time are as follows:

"Oh."

"I don't care."

"Eh"

"It is what it is"

"I want to sleep"

"I wish I was sleeping right now"

"I can't be here, I have to go"

*SECOND PART OF SECOND YEAR, WORST TIME OF MY LIFE*

- I hate my body. I dont eat all day long. I don't eat lunch at school and told my friends I prefer to eat at home and at home told them the opposite.

- I can't take it one day and I cut myself with a dull old xacto knife.

-It's addictive. I've been punching myself for ages, but cutting is completely different. It made me feel like everything would be okay... for a few seconds... and then I'd look down and all there would be is blood and a rusty blade and a mark that will never be erased.

- I begin to feel suicidal. I think about how much easier it would be to just not exist. I sleep 24/7 so I dont have to be conscious

- I begin to throw up all my food to try to be skinnier

- I progress, I'm fantasizing about killing myself and I'm writing out 3rd person blurbs of me doing it. I drew it too. It was all that consumed my thoughts. It wasn't long until I couldnt trust myself at all to be alone for a minute.

- Living is just so hard. I couldn't describe it then, and I can't describe it now. There are simply no words that will begin to encompass the sheer delusional, wrenching, miserable agony of what that low low feels like. I am positively amazed at 13 year old me for every day she woke up and lived.

- Im missing 1-2 days of school every week. My grades drop, hard

- We try a new anxiety med with my therapist that is known to potentially cause suicidal thoughts. I see it as my chance

- In a month my parents are checking in with me, making sure I don't feel suicidal

- I kindly inform them that I, in fact, am. Very.

- I sleep in their bed at night. I silently get in and we turn the lights out and we all silently cry ourselves to sleep every night.

- I come foward about everything

- We switch meds, I'm getting treated for not OCD but now depression and the likes

- The biggest thing in my life was recovering. Every day I worked SO fucking hard to recover. Every time I opened my eyes in the morning, or put on clean clothes or went to school or took a shower or said hello to someone or finished my homework or ate something was a MASSIVE battle. It was so tiring. I was SO tired.

*THIRD YEAR*

- Over the summer, I'm able to continue to work on myself without worrying about school, it helps a ton.

-Come the school year I'm 6 months free of self harm, no longer suicidal, and eating healthy and balanced meals. I'm into fitness, as running became my coping mechanism for self harm urges (Because running is horrible 💀). I'm going to school almost all days and I'm dropping friends that were bad for me and open myself to new friends.

- It's still hard, I still struggle with my OCD and severe social anxiety, but the depression is so so much better.

- My birthday comes. I'm turning 14. It was so amazing... I was excited for it.

I was EXCITED FOR IT.

I CARED.

I was excited to see my family and I was excited to have a yummy dinner and I was excited to open Presents! I didn't feel like a burden or like gifts for me was a waste of money and my party a waste of time.

This happens at Christmas too. It's so hopeful for me.

- I dunk back into depression towards the end of the school year but resurface a few weeks into summer even better

- We take month long vacation where me and my lil sis have full access to the city and everything while my parents work in our camper. This was so impactful on my social anxiety. I was empowered by my independence.

*NOW*

- I've learned to set boundaries

- I have a healthy friend group with wonderful communication

- I feel HAPPY at least once every day (!) and I let myself cry and it feels so good to let it out and I let myself be sad or angry or dissapointed

- Im not afraid to ask for what I need (Okay well I'm afraid but I've learned to cope with that fear and do it anyway). People like me BETTER when I just ASK for water when I'm thirsty, or I just ask if I'm allowed to use their TV, or I just ask for some milk because Asian food is too powerful for me (😔).

- I have learned how to NOT give advice and just listen. I can hear someone's problems and not want to fix them.

- I have learned what I can and cannot control

So, in summary, I was just in the PITS and I am in awe of myself for my recovery but I am BETTER now. I feel GOOD.

The biggest piece of advice I have to anyone struggling with suicidal thoughts is to think about how PROUD future you will be of you for every day you hold on. Future you will try to give you hugs and comfort and they cant... not until you reach them. Future you is watching from above and sees your path to recovery but in the thick of it you can't see it. Future you is counting on you. Don't let them down. Just, hold on. They deserve a chance right?

(I'm sure this is littered with typos so I'm sorry about that, I don't have the energy to check right now, it's kinda late and I have to get up early)

♡

i love this!

i am so proud of you!

<3

[whileiamdying]

We Have Our State, out of Golda Meir's "My Life"

If 1946 was difficult, then I can only describe 1947 as the year in which the situation in Palestine got completely out of hand as far as the British were concerned. In the course of that year, the battle against Jewish immigration turned into open warfare, not only against the entire yishuv[1] as such, but also against the refugees themselves. It was as though Ernest Bevin had nothing else whatsoever on his mind except how to keep Jewish refugees out of the Jewish homeland. The fact that we refused to solve this problem for him apparently infuriated him so that he eventually lost control altogether, and I honestly believe that some of the decisions he made regarding Palestine could only have been the result of his intense personal rage against the Jews because they could not and would not accept the judgment of the British foreign secretary as to how or where they should live.

I don't know (nor does it really matter anymore) whether Bevin was a little insane, or just antisemitic, or both. What I do know is that he insisted on pitting the strength of the British Empire against the will of the Jews to live and that by so doing he not only brought great suffering to people who had already suffered enormously, but also forced upon thousands of British soldiers and sailors a role that must have filled them with horror. I remember staring at some of the young Englishmen who guarded the DP detention camps on Cyprus—when I went there myself in 1947and wondering how on earth they managed to reconcile themselves to the fact that not so long ago they were liberating from Nazi camps the very same people whom they now kept penned behind barbed wire on Cyprus only because these people found it impossible to go on living anywhere except Palestine. I looked at those nice young English boys and was filled with pity for them. I couldn't help thinking that they were no less victims of Bevin's obsession than the men, women and children on whom their guns were now trained night and day.

I had gone to Cyprus to see what, if anything, could be done about the hundreds of children who were being kept there. At that point about 40,000 Jews were living in the Cyprus camps.

Each month, with great precision, the British allowed exactly 1,500 Jews to enter Palestine: 750 from the camps of Europe and 750 from Cyprus. The principle under which this policy operated in Cyprus was “first in, first out,” which meant that, inevitably, many small children were doomed to live under very difficult conditions for months. Our doctors in the Cyprus camps were very concerned about this, and one day a delegation of physicians appeared in my office in Jerusalem.

“We can take no further responsibility for the health of the infants if they stay in the camps for one more winter,” they informed me. So, I began to negotiate with the Palestine government. What we suggested was some scheme that would permit DP families with a child under the age of one year to leave Cyprus “out of turn” and then subtract their number from the DPs who left “in turn.” This meant persuading the Palestine government to be both flexible and reasonable—at a time when it was neither and also persuading the DPs themselves to set up a special system of priorities. It took quite a time for me to work something out with the government, but in the end, I managed to do so and even got permission for orphaned children to leave as soon as possible.

The next step was obviously for me to go to Cyprus and talk to the DPs. “They'll never listen to you,” my friends warned me.

“You will only be sticking your neck out and asking for trouble.

The one thing that these people are waiting for is to get out of Cyprus, and now you want to ask them to agree to let some people who may have only been there for a week or two jump to the head of the queue. It won't work!” But I couldn't see it that way. I thought that at least it had to be tried, so I went.

When I got to Cyprus, I immediately reported to the office of the British commandant of the camp, an elderly, tall, thin Englishman who had served for years with the army in India. It was what you might call a courtesy call. I told him briefly who I was and what I wanted and asked whether he had any objection to my touring the camps the next day.

He listened to me very stiffly and then said, “I know all about the families with babies, but I haven't received any instructions about orphans.”

“But that was part of the agreement I made with the chief secretary,” I said.

“Well, I'll have to check it,” he answered rather unpleasantly.

Nonetheless, we went on talking, and after a while he said suddenly, “Oh, very well then. Include the orphans.” I couldn't understand why he had surrendered so quickly, but in the morning I discovered that he had received a telegram from the chief secretariat in Jerusalem that read: BEWARE OF MRS. MEYERSON. SHE IS A FORMIDABLE PERSON! And, I suppose, he decided on the spot to take the advice seriously.

The camps themselves were even more depressing than I had expected, in a way worse than the camps for DPs that were being run in Germany by the U.S. authorities. They looked like prison camps, ugly clusters of huts and tents—with a watchtower at each end—set down on the sand, with nothing green or growing anywhere in sight. There wasn't nearly enough water for drinking and even less for bathing, despite the heat. Although the camps were right on the shore, none of the refugees was allowed to go swimming, and they spent their time, for the most part, sitting in those filthy, stifling tents, which, if nothing else, protected them from the glaring sun. As I walked through the camps, the DPs pressed up against the barbed wire fences that surrounded them to welcome me, and at one camp two tiny little children came up with a bouquet of paper flowers for me. I have been given a great many bouquets of flowers since then, but I have never been as moved by any of them as I was by those flowers presented to me in Cyprus by children who had probably forgotten if they ever knew what real flowers looked like and who had been helped in making those pathetic bouquets by nursery school teachers whom we had sent to the camps. Incidentally, one of the Palestinian Jews in Cyprus then though she later escaped—was a girl named Ayan, an attractive young radio operator from a captured Haganah ship who is today a child psychiatrist in Tel Aviv and my daughter-in-law.

At any rate, the first item on the agenda was a meeting at which I explained my mission to the committee representing all the detainees. This was followed by an open-air meeting with most of the detainees themselves. I told them that I was sure that they would not have to remain on Cyprus for long and that eventually everyone would be released; but until this time came, I needed their cooperation in order to save the children. The Irgun Zvai Le'umi sympathizers in the camps objected violently to the agreement I had made with the British. It was all or nothing, they shouted, and there was even an attempt to attack me physically.

But finally, they calmed down, and we made the necessary arrangements.

There was still one problem bothering me. We had asked that “orphans” be allowed to enter Palestine “out of turn,” but what about the children on Cyprus who had only one surviving parent?

When I got back to Jerusalem, I went to see the high commissioner, Sir Alan Cunningham, and thanked him for what he had done. Then I said, “But there is one very tragic aspect of our agreement. It seems terribly unfair that a child whose mother or father was killed in Europe should have to stay on Cyprus when a friend who may have been 'lucky' enough to have lost both parents is able to leave. Is there anything at all that we can do about this?”

Cunningham—who was to be the last British high commissioner to Palestine and who was an extremely kind and decent man— shook his head rather unhappily. Then he heaved a resigned sigh, smiled and said, “Don't worry. I'll take care of that at once, Mrs. Meyerson.”

I used to see him from time to time, and however tense or chaotic the situation in Palestine was, he and I were always able to talk to each other like friends. After Cunningham left Palestine on May 14, 1948, I didn't expect to hear from him ever again. But one day several months after I became prime minister, I got a letter from him. It was written by hand from the country place in England to which he had retired, and its essence was that however great the pressures on us, Israel should not budge from any of the territories we had taken in the Six-Day War, unless and until we were guaranteed secure and defensible borders. I was very touched indeed by his letter.

A less pleasant reminder of those days was the ceremony I attended in Haifa in 1970, when the bodies of 100 children who had died in those dreadful camps were brought to Haifa for reburial in the lovely foothills of Mount Carmel. I tried to shake off the thought, but I couldn't help wondering if the two little girls who had so solemnly handed me those flowers in 1947 were not among them. On the other hand, I often bumped into people who had attended that meeting in Cyprus and remembered it well. About five years ago, for instance, I was visiting a kibbutz in the Negev when a middle-aged woman came up to me very hesitantly. “Excuse me for bothering you,” she said, “but this is the first opportunity I have had in all these years to thank you.”

“For what?” I asked.

“I was on Cyprus with a baby in 1947,” she replied, “and you saved us. Now, I'd like you to meet that baby’” The “baby” was a sturdy, pretty girl of twenty who had just finished her military service and obviously thought I had taken leave of my senses when I gave her a great big kiss in front of everybody—without a word of explanation.

At the Zionist Congress in Basel in 1946 it had been decided that Moshe Sharett should head the Political Department of the Jewish Agency from Washington and that I should remain its head in Jerusalem. But by 1947 living in Jerusalem was like living in a city occupied by an extremely hostile foreign power. The British shut themselves up in what was actually an improvised fortress—a heavily guarded compound (we called it Bevingrad) right in the middle of town sent their tanks rumbling through the streets at the slightest provocation and forbade their troops to have anything to do with the Jews. Whenever the Irgun Zvai Le'umi and the Stern Group took the law into their own hands— which, most unfortunately, they did fairly regularly the British responded with retaliatory actions that were aimed at the entire yishuv, particularly at the Haganah, and hardly a week went by without some sort of crisis arms searches, mass arrests, curfews that lasted for days and paralyzed everyday life and, finally, the deportation of Jews without even a charge, let alone a trial. When the British began flogging members of the Irgun or Sternists whom they caught, the two dissident organizations responded by kidnapping and even executing two British soldiers—and all this while our battle for free immigration and land settlement was in full force.

Looking back at that period, I can see, of course, that almost any other colonial power imposing itself on a rebellious native population (which is how the British saw us) would probably have behaved in an even harsher manner. But the British were harsh enough. It wasn't only their often very cruel punitive, measures that made the situation so intolerable; it was also our knowledge that whenever possible, they aided and abetted the Arabs, not to speak of inciting them against us. On the other hand, the idea of a perpetual bloodbath in Palestine was also not very appealing to Britain least of all in its postwar mood—and in February 1947, Mr. Bevin himself decided that his government was tired of the whole thing and said so in the House of Commons. Let the United Nations deal with the Palestine problem. The British had had enough. I can't imagine that the United Nations was overjoyed at having this responsibility dumped on it, but it couldn't very well refuse to accept it.

The UN Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) arrived in the country in June. According to its terms of reference, it was to report back to the UN General Assembly by September 1, 1947, with some sort of concrete proposal for a solution. The Palestinian Arabs, as usual, refused to cooperate with it in any way, but everyone else did, though a little wearily: the leaders of the yishuv, the Palestine government and later even the leaders of some of the Arab states. I spent a lot of time with the eleven members of the committee and was horrified to discover how little they knew of the history of Palestine or of Zionism, for that matter. But since it was essential that they learn—and as quickly as possible—we began to explain and expound as we had done so often before, and eventually they started to grasp what all the fuss was about and why we were not prepared to give up our right to bring the survivors of the Holocaust to Palestine.

Then, for reasons which will never be understood by me—nor, I suspect, by anyone else just before UNSCOP was scheduled to leave Palestine, the British chose to demonstrate in the most unmistakable way just how brutally and tyrannically they were dealing with us and with the question of Jewish immigration. Before the shocked eyes of the members of UNSCOP they forcibly caged and returned to Germany the 4,500 refugees who had come to Palestine aboard the Haganah ship Exodus 1947, and I think that by so doing, they actually contributed considerably to UNSCOP's final recommendations. If I live to be a hundred, I shall never erase from my mind the gruesome picture of hundreds of British soldiers in full combat dress, bearing and using clubs, pistols and grenades against the wretched refugees on the Exodus, 400 of whom were pregnant women determined to give birth to their babies in Palestine. Nor will I ever be able to forget the revulsion with which I heard that these people were actually going to be shipped back, like animals in their wire cages, to DP camps in the one country that symbolized the graveyard of European Jewry.

Speaking at a meeting of the Va'ad Le'umi only a few days before the passengers of the Exodus left on their grim journey to Hamburg, I tried to express the disgust and grief of the yishuv, as well as its flickering hope that somehow, someone, somewhere would intervene to save the refugees from this new torment:

The British hope that through deportation of the Exodus 1947 they will succeed in frightening the Jews of the DP camps and terrify us. There can be only one answer on our part: this flow of boats will not cease. I am aware that the Jews seeking to immigrate to Palestine and those assisting them now face terrible difficulties, with all the forces of the British Empire concentrated for one purpose: to attack these creaking boats laden with human suffering.

Nevertheless, I believe that there can be only one effective answer: the uninterrupted flow of the “illegal” ships. I have no doubts about the stand of the Jews of the camps; they are ready for all perils in order to leave the camps. The Jewish survivors of many European countries cannot remain where they are.

If we in Palestine, together with American, South African and British Jewry, do not let ourselves be frightened, the boats will continue to come. With much travail, greater than in the past but come they will. I do not, for one moment, disregard what the thousands of these boats will face in the coming days. I know that each one of us would deem himself happy if he could be with them. Each one of us worries over what may happen when the Jews on the Exodus are brought to Germany ... with the British forces completely free to teach these lawbreakers a lesson. There can be no doubt that they will be steadfast, as they have been until now. The question is only whether there is no hope for some lastminute change of heart on the part of the British.

Since we are incapable of despair, we wish at this moment, from this place, once more to address our call to the world, to the nations—to the many who suffered so much during the war, to those on many of whose fronts Jews fought and helped in their liberation. To these nations we issue this lastminute appeal. Is it possible that no voice will be raised, that the British government will not be told: Remove the whip and the rifle from over the heads of the Jews on the Exodus? And to Britain we must say: it is a great illusion to believe us to be weak. Let Great Britain with her mighty fleet and her many guns and planes know that this people is not so weak and that its strength will yet stand it in good stead....

But the fate of the Exodus had already been sealed, and the ship returned to Germany.

The summer of 1947 dragged on and on. Despite the fact that the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem road was increasingly coming under the control of armed Arab bands, who shot at all Jewish transport from the hills above it, there was no alternative other than for me to ferry back and forth between the two cities and rely on the young Haganah guards who accompanied me. What was really at stake was not whether I would be killed or wounded traveling to Tel Aviv and back, but whether the Arabs would succeed in their proclaimed intention of cutting the road altogether and thus starving out the Jews of Jerusalem. And I was certainly not about to help them achieve this aim by refraining from using the one road that connected Jerusalem to the Jewish centers of the country. Once or twice a bullet whizzed through the window of the Jewish Agency car in which I used to travel, and once we took a wrong turn and arrived in an Arab village that I knew to be a nest of cutthroats; but we escaped without a scratch.

Sometimes there were also “adventures” of a different nature.

For instance, one-time British soldiers searched my car for arms just after I had been promised by the chief secretary himself that these searches would end, in view of the growing danger to Jewish traffic on the roads. My protests did no good at all. A gun was found on one of the Haganah escorts and she was promptly arrested.

“Where are you dragging her to?” I asked the officer in charge of this great operation.

“To Majdal,” he said.

Majdal, an Arab town, was certainly no place for a young girl to spend the night, and I told the captain that if she were taken there, I would insist on going with her. By then he knew who I was, and I don't think he looked forward at all to explaining to his superiors why a member of the Jewish Agency Executive had gone to sleep in Majdal, so he changed his mind, and we all went off to a police station in a nearby Jewish town. By then it was midnight, but I still had to get to Tel Aviv—which I duly did, royally escorted by British policemen and the Haganah girl, who was hastily released. Others, however, were not so lucky. The death toll on the roads rose weekly, and by November 1947, the Arabs in full view of the British had begun to lay siege to Jerusalem.

On August 31—only a minute or two before their deadline expired—the eleven gentlemen of UNSCOP[2], convened in Geneva, turned in their report on Palestine. Eight members of the committee recommended—as the Peel Commission had—that the country be partitioned into an Arab state and a Jewish state, plus an international enclave that would take in Jerusalem and its immediate vicinity. The minority (consisting, among others, of the representatives of India, Iran and Yugoslavia all of which had large Moslem populations) suggested a federal Arab-Jewish state.

It was now up to the UN General Assembly to decide. In the meantime, all the parties concerned made their responses known, and I can't say that any surprises awaited the United Nations in this respect. We accepted the plan, of course—without much elation but with great relief. and demanded that the mandate come to an end at once. All the Arabs said that they would have nothing to do with either set of recommendations and threatened war unless all Palestine was made an Arab state. The British made clear that they would not cooperate with the implementation of any partition plan unless both the Jews and the Arabs were enthusiastic about it, and we all knew what that meant. And the Americans and the Russians each published statements in favor of the majority recommendation.

The next day I held a press conference in Jerusalem. In addition to thanking the committee for having worked so rapidly, I stressed that “we could hardly imagine a Jewish state without Jerusalem” and that “we still hoped that this wrong would be rectified by the UN Assembly.” We were also very unhappy, I said, about the exclusion of western Galilee from the Jewish state and assumed that this would be taken up at the Assembly, too. But the most important point I wanted to make was that we were extremely anxious to establish a new and different relationship with the Arabs— of whom; I thought, there would be some 500,000 in the Jewish state. “A Jewish state in this part of the world,” I told the press, “is not only a solution for us. It should and can be a great aid for everyone in the Middle East.” It is heartrending now to think that we were using those words—to no avail—as long ago as 1947!

The voting took place at Lake Success in New York on November 29. Like everyone else in the yishuv, I was glued to the radio, with pencil and paper, writing down the votes as they came through. Finally, at about midnight our time, the results were announced: Thirty-three nations (including the United States and the Soviet Union) were in favor of the partition plan; thirteen, including all the Arab states, opposed it; ten, including Great Britain, abstained. I immediately went to the compound of the Jewish Agency building, which was already jammed with people. It was an incredible sight: hundreds of people, British soldiers among them, holding hands, singing and dancing, with truckloads of more people arriving at the compound all the time. I remember walking up to my office alone, unable to share in the general festivity. The Arabs had turned the plan down and talked only of war. The crowd, drunk with happiness, wanted a speech, and I thought it would be wicked to dampen the mood by refusing. So, from the balcony of my office I spoke for a few minutes.

But it was not really to the mass of people below me that I talked; it was, once again, to the Arabs.

“You have fought your battle against us in the United Nations,” I said. “The United Nations the majority of countries in the world have had their say. The partition plan is a compromise: not what you wanted, not what we wanted. But let us now live in friendship and peace together.” That speech was hardly the solution for our situation. Arab riots broke out all over Palestine the next day (seven Jews were killed in an Arab ambush on a bus) and on December 2 an Arab mob set the Jewish commercial center in Jerusalem on fire, while British police stood by, interfering only when the Haganah tried to take action.

We were of course, totally unprepared for war. That we had managed for so long to hold the local Arabs at bay, more or less, didn't mean that we could cope with regular armies. We needed weapons urgently, if we could find anyone willing to sell them to us; but before we could buy anything, we needed money—not the sort of money which had helped us to afforest the country or bring in refugees, but millions of dollars. And there was only one group of people in the whole world that we had any chance of getting these dollars from: the Jews of America. There was simply nowhere else to go and no one else to go to.

It was, of course, out of the question for Ben-Gurion to leave Palestine then. His role was absolutely central. I think that he himself felt that no one else could possibly raise the kind of money that was being discussed in the series of secret meetings we held in Tel Aviv in December 1947, and the early part of January 1948, and I certainly agreed with him. But he had to stay in the country.

So, who would go? At one of these meetings, I looked around the table at my colleagues, so tired and harassed, and wondered for the first time whether I ought not to volunteer for the mission. After all, I had done some fund raising in the States before, and I spoke English fluently. My services in Palestine could certainly be dispensed with for a few weeks, and though I wasn't used to proposing myself, I began to feel that I should suggest this to Ben-Gurion. At first, he wouldn't hear of it. He was going, he said, and was taking with him Eliezer Kaplan, the treasurer of the Jewish Agency.

“But no one can take your place here,” I argued, “while I may be able to do what you can do in the United States.” He was adamant.

“No. I need you here.”

“Then let's put it to the vote,” I said. He looked at me for a second, then nodded. The vote was in favor of my going.

“But at once,” Ben-Gurion said. “Don't even try to get back to Jerusalem.” So, I flew to the States that day—without any luggage, wearing the dress I had worn to the meeting with a winter coat over it.

The first appearance I made in 1948 before American Jewry was unscheduled, unrehearsed and, of course, unannounced.

Also, I was quite unknown to the people I addressed. It was in Chicago on January 21, at the General Assembly of the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds, which were non-Zionist organizations. Palestine, in fact, was not on the agenda at all. But this was a meeting of professional fund raisers, of the tough experienced men who controlled the Jewish fundraising machinery in the United States and I knew that if I could get through to them, there was some chance of getting the money that was the key to our ability to defend ourselves. I didn't speak for long, but I said everything that was in my heart. I described the situation as it had been the day I left Palestine, and then I said:

The Jewish community in Palestine is going to fight to the very end. If we have arms to fight with, we will fight with them. If not, we will fight with stones in our hands.

I want you to believe me when I say that I came on this special mission to the United States today not to save seven hundred thousand Jews. During the last few years, the Jewish people lost six million Jews, and it would be audacity on our part to worry Jews throughout the world because a few hundred thousand more Jews are in danger.

That is not the issue. The issue is that if these seven hundred thousand Jews in Palestine can remain alive, then the Jewish people as such is alive and Jewish independence assured. If these seven hundred thousand people are killed off, then for centuries we are through with the dream of a Jewish people and a Jewish homeland.

My friends, we are at war. There is no Jew in Palestine who does not believe that finally we will be victorious. That is the spirit of the country... But this valiant spirit alone cannot face rifles and machine guns. Rifles and machine guns without spirit are not worth very much, but spirit without arms can, in time, be broken together with the body.

Our problem is time. ... The question is what can we get immediately. And, when I say immediately, I do not mean next month. I do not mean two months from now. I mean now.

I have come here to try to impress Jews in the United States with the fact that within a very short period, a couple of weeks, we mi 460 in cash between twenty-five and thirty million dollars.

In the next two or three weeks we can establish ourselves. Of that we are convinced.

The Egyptian government can vote a budget to aid our antagonists. The Syrian government can do the same. We have no governments. But we have millions of Jews in the Diaspora, and exactly as we have faith in our youngsters in Palestine so I have faith in the Jews of the United States; I believe that they will realize the peril of our situation and do what they have to do.

I know that we are not asking for something easy. I myself have sometimes been active in various campaigns and fund collections, and I know that collecting at once a sum such as I ask is not simple. But I have seen our people at home. I have seen them come from the offices to the clinics when we called the community to give their blood for a blood bank to treat the wounded. I have seen them lined up for hours, waiting so that some of their blood can be added to this bank. It is blood plus money that is being given in Palestine...

We are not a better breed; we are not the best Jews of the Jewish people. It so happened that we are there and you are here. I am certain that if you were in Palestine and we were in the United States, you would be doing what we are doing there, and you would ask us here to do what you will have to do.

I want to close by paraphrasing one of the greatest speeches that was made during the Second World War—the words of Churchill. I am not exaggerating when I say that the yishuv in Palestine will fight in the Negev and will fight in Galilee and will fight on the outskirts of Jerusalem until the very end.

You cannot decide whether we should fight or not. We will. The Jewish community in Palestine will raise no white flag for the mufti. That decision is taken. Nobody can change it. You can only decide one thing: whether we shall be victorious in this fight or whether the mufti will be victorious. That decision American Jews can make. It has to be made quickly, within hours, within days.

And I beg of you—don't be too late. Don't be bitterly sorry three months from now for what you failed to do today. The time is now.

They listened, and they wept, and they pledged money in amounts that no community had ever given before. I stayed in the United States for as long as I could bear to be away from home, for about six weeks, and the Jews all over the country listened, wept and gave money—and, when they had to, took loans from banks in order. to cover their pledges. By the time I came back to Palestine in March I had raised $50,000,000, which was turned over at once for the Haganah's secret purchase of arms in Europe.

But I never deceived myself—not even when upon my return Ben-Gurion said to me, “Someday when history will be written, it will be said that there was a Jewish woman who got the money which made the state possible.” I always knew that these dollars were given not to me, but to Israel.

That journey to the States, however, was only one of the journeys I made that year. In the six months that preceded the establishment of the state, I met twice with King Abdullah of Transjordan, who was King Hussein's grandfather. Although both those talks remained closely guarded secrets for many yearslong after Abdullah's assassination by his Arab enemies (probably the mufti's henchmen) in Jerusalem in 1951—no one knows to this day to what extent rumors about them were responsible for his death.

Assassination is an endemic disease in the Arab world, and one of the first lessons that most Arab rulers learn is the connection between secrecy and longevity. Abdullah's murder made a lasting impression on all subsequent Arab leaders, and I remember that Nasser once said to an intermediary whom we dispatched to Cairo, “If Ben-Gurion came to Egypt to talk to me, he would return home as a conquering hero. But if I went to him, I would be shot when I came back.” And I am afraid that is still the situation.

The first time I met King Abdullah was early in November 1947. He had agreed to meet me—in my capacity as head of the Political Department of the Jewish Agency—in a house at Naharayim (on the Jordan), where the Palestine Electric Corporation ran a hydroelectric power station. I came to Naharayim with one of our Arab experts Eliahu Sasson. We drank the usual ceremonial cups of coffee, and then we began to talk. Abdullah was a small, very poised man with great charm. He soon made the heart of the matter clear: He would not join in any Arab attack on us.

He would always remain our friend, he said, and like us, he wanted peace more than anything else. After all, we had a common foe, the mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin El-Husseini. Not only that, but he suggested that we meet again, after the United Nations vote.

On the way back to Tel Aviv, Ezra Danin, who had met with Abdullah often before, filled me in on the king's general concept of the role of the Jews. It was that Providence had scattered the Jews throughout the Western world in order that they might absorb European culture and bring it back to the Middle East with them, thus reviving the area. As for his reliability, Danin was dubious. It was not, he told me, that Abdullah was a liar, but that he was a Bedouin, and that the Bedouin had their own ideas about truth which they saw as something much less absolute than we did. At any rate, he said, Abdullah was certainly sincere in his expressions of friendship, although they would not necessarily be at all binding on him.

Throughout January and February, we maintained contact with Abdullah, as a rule through the good offices of a mutual friend, through whom I was able to send direct messages to the king. As the weeks passed, my messages became more worried. The air was thick with conjecture, and there were reports that despite his promise to me, Abdullah was about to join the Arab League. Was this indeed so? I asked. The reply from Amman was prompt and negative. King Abdullah was astonished and hurt by my question.

He asked me to remember three things: that he was a Bedouin and therefore a man of honor; that he was a king and therefore doubly an honorable man; and finally, that he would never break a promise made to a woman. So, there could not possibly be any justification for my concern.

But we knew differently. By the first week of May there was no doubt that for all his assurances, Abdullah had, in fact, thrown his lot in with the Arab League. We debated the pros and cons of requesting another meeting before it was too late. Perhaps he could be persuaded to change his mind at the last minute. If not, perhaps we could at least find out from him just how deeply he had committed himself and his British-trained and officered Arab Legion to the war against us. A great deal hung in the balance: Not only was the legion by far the best Arab army in the area, but there was also another vital consideration. If, by some miracle, Transjordan stayed out of the war, it would be much harder for the Iraqi army to cross over into Palestine and join in the attack on us. Ben-Gurion was of the opinion that we could lose nothing by trying again, so I requested a second meeting, and asked Ezra Danin to accompany me.

This time, however, Abdullah refused to come to Naharayim. It was too dangerous, he told us through his emissary. If I wanted to see him, I would have to come to Amman, and the risk would have to be entirely mine. He could not be expected, he informed us, to alert the legion to the fact that he awaited Jewish guests from Palestine, and he would take no responsibility for anything that might happen to us en route. The first problem was to get to Tel Aviv, which at that point was almost as difficult as getting to Amman itself. I waited in Jerusalem from early in the morning until 7 p.m. for a plane to arrive from Tel Aviv, and when it finally turned up, it was so windy that we could hardly take off. Under normal conditions I would have tried to postpone the trip for another day, but there were no days left. It was already May 10 and the Jewish state would be proclaimed on May 14. This was our very last chance to talk to Abdullah. So, I insisted that we try to reach Tel Aviv even in that Piper Cub, which looked as though it would collapse even in a strong breeze, let alone a gale. After we left, a message arrived at the airstrip in Jerusalem to say that the weather was far too bad for us to attempt the flight, but we were already on our way by then.

The next morning, I set out by car for Haifa, where Ezra and I were to meet. It had already been decided that he would not disguise himself other than by wearing traditional Arab headgear.

He spoke fluent Arabic, was familiar with Arab customs and could easily be taken for an Arab. As for me, I would travel in the traditional dark and voluminous robes of an Arab woman. I spoke no Arabic at all, but as a Moslem wife accompanying her husband, it was most unlikely that I would be called on to say anything to anyone. The Arab dress and veils I needed had already been ordered and Ezra explained the route to me. We would change several times, he said, in order to be sure that we were not followed, and at a given point that night someone would turn up not far from the king's palace to lead us to Abdullah. The major problem was to avoid arousing the suspicions of the Arab legionnaires at the various check posts we had to past before we got to the place, where our guide was to meet us.

It was a long, long series of rides through the night. First into one car, then out of it, and into another for a few more miles and then, at Naharayim into a third car. We didn't talk to each other at all during the journey. I had perfect faith in Ezra's ability to get us through the enemy lines safely, and I was much too concerned with the outcome of our mission to think about what would happen if, God forbid, we were caught. Luckily, although we had to identify ourselves several times, we got to our appointed meeting place on time and undetected. The man who was to take us to Abdullah was one of his most trusted associates, a Bedouin whom the king had adopted and reared since childhood and who was used to running perilous errands for his master.

In his car, its windows covered with heavy black material, he drove Ezra and myself to his house. While we waited for Abdullah to appear, I talked to our guide's attractive and intelligent wife, who came from a well-to-do Turkish family and complained to me bitterly about the terrible monotony of her life in Transjordan. I remember thinking that I could have done with some monotony myself at that point, but I only nodded my head sympathetically.

Then Abdullah entered the room. He was very pale and seemed under great strain. Ezra interpreted for us, and we talked for about an hour. I started the conversation by coming to the point at once. “Have you broken your promise to me, after all?” I asked him.

He didn't answer my question directly. Instead, he said, “When I made that promise, I thought I was in control of my own destiny and could do what I thought right, but since then I have learned otherwise.” Then he went on to say that before he had been alone, but now, “I am one of five,” the other four, we gathered, being Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq. Still, he thought war could be averted.

“Why are you in such a hurry to proclaim your state?” he asked me. “What is the rush? You are so impatient!” I told him that I didn't think that a people who had waited 2,000 years should be described as being “in a hurry,” and he seemed to accept that.

“Don't you understand,” I said, “that we are your only allies in this region? The others are all your enemies.”

“Yes,” he said. “I know that. But what can I do? It is not up to me.”

So, then I said to him, “You must know that if war is forced upon us, we will fight and we will win.”

He sighed and again said, “Yes. I know that. It is your duty to fight. But why don't you wait a few years? Drop your demands for free immigration. I will take over the whole country and you will be represented in my parliament. I will treat you very well, and there will be no war.”

I tried to explain to him that this plan was impossible. “You know all that we have done and how hard we have worked,” I said. “Do you think we did all that just to be represented in a foreign parliament? You know what we want and to what we aspire.

If you can offer us nothing more than you have just done, then there will be a war and we will win it. But perhaps we can meet again—after the war and after there is a Jewish state.”

“You place much too much reliance on your tanks,” Danin said.

“You have no real friends in the Arab world, and we will smash your tanks as the Maginot Line was smashed.” They were very brave words, particularly since Danin knew exactly what the state of our armor was. But Abdullah looked even graver and said again that he knew that we had to do our duty. He also added, unhappily I thought, that events would just have to run their course.

All of us would know eventually what fate had in store for us.

There was obviously no more to say. I wanted to leave, but Danin and Abdullah had begun a new conversation.

“I hope we will stay in touch even after the war starts,” Danin said.

“Of course,” Abdullah answered. “You must come to see me.”

“But how will I be able to get to you?” asked Danin.

“Oh, I trust you to find a way,” Abdullah said with a smile.

Then Danin chided him for not taking adequate precautions.

“You worship at the mosque,” he said to Abdullah, “and permit your subjects to kiss the hem of your garments. One day some evildoer will harm you. The time has come for you to forbid the custom, for safety's sake.”

Abdullah was visibly shocked. “I shall never become the prisoner of my own guards,” he said very sternly to Danin. “I was born a Sedouin, a free man, and I shall remain free. Let those who wish to kill me try to do so. I will not put myself in chains.” Then he bid farewell and left.

Our host's wife invited us to eat. At one end of the room there is an enormous table laden with food. I wasn't at all hungry, but be represented in my parliament. I will treat you very well, and there will be no war.”

I tried to explain to him that this plan was impossible. “You know all that we have done and how hard we have worked,” I said. “Do you think we did all that just to be represented in a foreign parliament? You know what we want and to what we aspire.

If you can offer us nothing more than you have just done, then there will be a war and we will win it. But perhaps we can meet again—after the war and after there is a Jewish state.”

“You place much too much reliance on your tanks,” Danin said.

“You have no real friends in the Arab world, and we will smash your tanks as the Maginot Line was smashed.” They were very brave words, particularly since Danin knew exactly what the state of our armor was. But Abdullah looked even graver and said again that he knew that we had to do our duty. He also added, unhappily I thought, that events would just have to run their course.

All of us would know eventually what fate had in store for us.

There was obviously no more to say. I wanted to leave, but Danin and Abdullah had begun a new conversation.

“I hope we will stay in touch even after the war starts,” Danin said.

“Of course,” Abdullah answered. “You must come to see me.”

“But how will I be able to get to you?” asked Danin.

“Oh, I trust you to find a way,” Abdullah said with a smile.

Then Danin chided him for not taking adequate precautions.

“You worship at the mosque,” he said to Abdullah, “and permit your subjects to kiss the hem of your garments. One day some evildoer will harm you. The time has come for you to forbid the custom, for safety's sake.”

Abdullah was visibly shocked. “I shall never become the prisoner of my own guards,” he said very sternly to Danin. “I was born a Bedouin, a free man, and I shall remain free. Let those who wish to kill me try to do so. I will not put myself in chains.” Then he bid us farewell and left.

Our host's wife invited us to eat. At one end of the room there was an enormous table laden with food. I wasn't at all hungry, but Danin told me that I must fill my plate—whether I ate or not— because otherwise it would appear that I was abstaining from accepting Arab hospitality. So, I heaped the plate but only toyed with the food. There was no doubt left in my mind that Abdullah would wage war against us. And for all of Danin's bravado, I knew that the legion's tanks were no joke, and my heart sank at the thought of the news I would have to bring back to Tel Aviv. It was now nearly midnight. We still had a long and dangerous trip ahead of us—and this time we wouldn't be bolstered by any false hopes.

After a few minutes we took our leave and departed. It was a very dark night, and the Arab driver who was to take us back to Naharayim (from there we would drive to Haifa) was terrified each time the car was stopped at a legion check post. In the end he made us get out some distance before we reached the power station. By now it was two or three o'clock in the morning, and we were faced with having to find our way back alone. Neither of us was armed, and I must admit that I was very frightened, as well as very depressed. From the windows of the car, we had seen the Iraqi forces massing at Camp Mafraq and had talked in whispers of what would happen on May 14. I remember my heart pounding when Danin said, “If we are lucky—and victorious—we will only lose ten thousand men. If we are unlucky, we may have up to fifty thousand casualties.” I was so upset by this that by common consent we changed the subject, and for the rest of the trip we talked about Moslem tradition and Arab cuisine. But stumbling around in the dark, we couldn't talk at all. In fact, we didn't even dare breathe too loudly. I was badly hampered by the clothes I was wearing, not at all sure that we were going in the right direction and unable to shake off my depression and sense of failure about the talk with Abdullah.

I suppose Danin and I must have been walking for about half an hour when the young Haganah member from Naharayim who had been waiting for us in a fever of anxiety all night—suddenly spotted us. I couldn't see his face in the dark, but I don't think I ever held onto anyone's hand so tightly or with such relief.

Anyhow, he led us effortlessly over the hills and across the wadis to Naharayim. I saw him again only a few years ago when a middle-aged man came up to me in the lobby of a Jerusalem hotel.

“Mrs. Meir,” he said, “don't you recognize me?” I searched my mind but couldn't place him at all until he grinned at me very sweetly and said, “It was I who showed you the way back to Naharayim that night.”

But I never saw Abdullah again, although after the War of Independence there were prolonged negotiations with him. Later I was told that he said about me, “If any one person was responsible for the war, it was she, because she was too proud to accept the offer I made her.” I must say that when I think of what would have befallen us as a “protected” minority in the kingdom of an Arab ruler who was himself murdered by Arabs within just over two years, I can't bring myself to regret the fact that I disappointed Abdullah so much that night. But I wish that he had been brave enough to stay out of the war. It would have been so much better for him—and for us—if he had been a little prouder.

At all events, from Naharayim, I was driven straight back to Tel Aviv. The next morning there was to be a meeting at the headquarters of the Mapaial most incessant rounds of meetings were going on, of course, all that week—and I knew that Ben-Gurion would be there. When I entered the room, he lifted his head, looked at me and said, “Nu?” I sat down and scribbled a note. “It didn't work,” I wrote. “There will be war. From Mafraq Ezra and I saw the troop concentrations and the lights.” I could hardly bear to watch Ben-Gurion's face as he read the note, but thank God, he didn't change his mind—or ours.

Within two days the final decision had to be taken: Should a Jewish state be proclaimed or not? After I had reported on my conversation with Abdullah, a number of people on the Minhelet Haam (literally the People's Administration), made up of members of the Jewish Agency, the Vaad Leumi and various small parties and groups which later became the provisional government of Israel, pressed Ben-Gurion for one last evaluation of the situation. They wanted to know what the Haganah's assessment was at zero hour. So, Ben-Gurion called in two men: Yigael Yadin, who was the Haganah's chief of operations, and Yisrael Galili, who was its de facto commander in chief. Their answers were virtually identical—and terrifying. We could be sure of only two things, they said: The British would pull out, and the Arabs would invade. And then? They were both silent. But after a minute Yadin said, “The best we can tell you is that we have a fifty-fifty chance. We are as likely to win as we are to be defeated.” So it was on that bright note that the final decision was made.

On Friday, May 14, 1948 (the fifth of Iyar, 5708, according to the Hebrew calendar), the Jewish state would come into being, its population numbering 650,000, its chance of surviving its birth depending on whether or not the yishuv could possibly meet the assault of five regular Arab armies actively aided by Palestine's 1,000,000 Arabs.

According to the original plan, I was to return to Jerusalem on Thursday and remain there for the duration. Needless to say, I very much wanted to stay in Tel Aviv, at least for long enough to attend the proclamation ceremony the time and place of which were being kept secret (except for the 200odd invitees) until about an hour before the event. All day Wednesday I hoped against hope that Ben-Gurion would relent, but he was adamant.

“You must go back to Jerusalem,” he said. So, on Thursday, May 13, I was back in that little Piper Cub again. The pilot's orders were to take me to Jerusalem and return to Tel Aviv at once with Yitzhak Gruenbaum, who was to be the minister of interior in the provisional government. But as soon as we got past the coastal plain and reached the Judean Hills, the engine began to act up in the most alarming way. I was sitting next to the pilot (those tiny planes, which we affectionately called Primuses, boasted only two seats), and I could see that even he was very nervous. The engine began to sound as though it were about to break away from the plane altogether, and I wasn't really surprised when the pilot said, apologetically, “I'm awfully sorry, but I don't think I can clear the hills. I'll have to go back.” He turned the plane around; but the engine went on making dreadful sounds, and I noticed that the pilot was looking around below. I didn't say a word, yet after a while the engine picked up a bit and he asked me, “Do you know what is happening?”

“Yes,” I replied.

“I was looking,” he said, “for the most likely Arab village where we could land.” This was on May 13, mind you. Then he added, “But now I think I can put down in Ben Shemen.” At that point, the engine improved a bit more. “No,” he said, “I think we can make it back to Tel Aviv.”

So, I was able to attend the ceremony after all, and poor Yitzhak Gruenbaum had to stay in Jerusalem and couldn't sign the Declaration of Independence until after the first ceasefire.

On the morning of May 14, I participated in a meeting of the People's Council at which we were to decide on the name of the state and on the final formulation of the declaration. The name was less of a problem than the declaration because there was a lastminute argument about the inclusion of a reference to God.

Actually, the issue had been brought up the day before. The very last sentence, as finally submitted to the small subcommittee charged with producing the final version of the proclamation, began with the words “With trust in the Rock of Israel, we set our hands in witness to this Proclamation. ...” Ben-Gurion had hoped that the phrase “Rock of Israel” was sufficiently ambiguous to satisfy those Jews for whom it was inconceivable that the document which established the Jewish state should not contain any reference to God, as well as those who were certain to object strenuously to even the least hint of clericalism in the proclamation.

But the compromise was not so easily accepted. The spokesman of the religious parties, Rabbi Fishman Maimon, demanded that the reference to God be unequivocal and said that he would approve of the “Rock of Israel” only if the words “and its Redeemer” were added, while Aaron Zisling of the left wing of the Labor Party was just as determined in the opposite direction. “I cannot sign a document referring in any way to a God in whom I do not believe,” he said. It took Ben-Gurion most of the morning to persuade Maimon and Zisling that the meaning of the “Rock of Israel” was actually twofold: While it signified “God” for a great many.

Jews, perhaps for most, it could also be considered a symbolic and secular reference to the “strength of the Jewish people.” In the end Maimon agreed that the word “Redeemer” should be left out of the text, though, funnily enough, the first English language translation of the proclamation, released for publication abroad that day, contained no reference at all to the “Rock of Israel” since the military censor had struck out the entire last paragraph as a security precaution because it mentioned the time and place of the ceremony.

The argument itself, however, although it was perhaps not exactly what one would have expected a prime minister designate to be spending his time on only a few hours before proclaiming the independence of a new state particularly one threatened by immediate invasion was far from being just an argument about terminology. We were all deeply aware of the fact that the proclamation not only spelled the formal end to 2,000 years of Jewish homelessness, but also gave expression to the most fundamental principles of the State of Israel. For this reason, each and every word mattered greatly. Incidentally, my good friend Zeev Sharef, the first secretary of the government to-be (who laid the foundations for the machinery of government), even found time to see to it that the scroll we were about to sign that afternoon should be rushed to the vaults of the Anglo Palestine Bank after the ceremony, so that it could at least be preserved for posterity even if the state and we ourselves did not survive for very long.

At about 2 P.M. I went back to my hotel on the seashore, washed my hair and changed into my best black dress. Then I sat down for a few minutes, partly to catch my breath, partly to think for the first time in the past two or three days—about the children.

Menachem was in the United States then—a student at the Manhattan School of Music. I knew that he would come back now that war was inevitable, and I wondered when and how we would meet again. Sarah was in Revivim, and although not so very far away, as the crow flies, we were quite cut off from each other. Months ago, gangs of Palestinian Arabs and armed infiltrators from Egypt had blocked the road that connected the Negev to the rest of the country and were still systematically blowing up or cutting most of the pipelines that brought water to the twenty-seven Jewish settlements that then dotted the Negev. The Haganah had done its best to break the siege. It had opened a dirt track, parallel to the main road, on which convoys managed, now and then, to bring food and water to the 1,000odd settlers in the south. But who knew what would happen to Revivim or any other of the small, ill-armed ill-equipped Negev settlements when the full-scale Egyptian invasion of Israel began, as it almost certainly would, within only a few hours? Both Sarah and her Zechariah were wireless operators in Revivim, and I had been able to keep in touch with them up till then. But I hadn't heard about or from either of them for several days, and I was extremely worried. It was on youngsters like them, their spirit and their courage, that the future of the Negev and, therefore, of Israel depended, and I shuddered at the thought of their having to face the invading troops of the Egyptian army.

I was so lost in my thoughts about the children that I can remember being momentarily surprised when the phone rang in my room and I was told that a car was waiting to take me to the museum. It had been decided to hold the ceremony at the Tel Aviv museum on Rothschild Boulevard, not because it was such an imposing building (which it wasn't), but because it was small enough to be easily guarded. One of the oldest buildings in Tel Aviv, it had originally belonged to the city's first mayor, who had willed it to the citizens of Tel Aviv for use as an art museum. The grand total of about $200 had been allocated for decorating it suitably for the ceremony; the floors had been scrubbed, the nude paintings on the walls modestly draped, the windows blacked out in case of an air raid and a large picture of Theodor Herzl hung behind the table at which the thirteen members of the provisional government were to sit. Although supposedly only the 200odd people who had been invited to participate knew the details, a large crowd was already waiting outside the museum by the time I arrived there.

A few minutes later, at exactly 4 P.M., the ceremony began.

Ben-Gurion, wearing a dark suit and tie, stood up and rapped a gavel. According to the plan, this was to be the signal for the orchestra, tucked away in a second-floor gallery, to play “Hatikvah.” But something went wrong, and there was no music. Spontaneously, we rose to our feet and sang our national anthem. Then Ben-Gurion cleared his throat and said quietly, “I shall now read the Scroll of Independence.” It took him only a quarter of an hour to read the entire proclamation. He read it slowly and very clearly, and I remember his voice changing and rising a little as he came to the eleventh paragraph:

Accordingly we, the members of the National Council, representing the Jewish people in the Land of Israel and the Zionist movement, have assembled on the day of the termination of the British mandate for Palestine, and, by virtue of our natural and historic right and of the resolution of the General Assembly of the United Nations, do hereby proclaim the establishment of a Jewish state in the Land of Israel the State of Israel.

The State of Israel! My eyes filled with tears, and my hands shook. We had done it. We had brought the Jewish state into existence—and I, Golda Mabovitch Meyerson, had lived to see the day. Whatever happened now, whatever price any of us would have to pay for it, we had recreated the Jewish national home. The long. exile was over. From this day on we would no longer live on sufferance in the land of our forefathers. Now we were a nation like other nations, master—for the first time in twenty centuries of our own destiny. The dream had come true—too late to save those who had perished in the Holocaust, but not too late for the generations to come. Almost exactly fifty years ago, at the close of the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Theodor Herzl had written in his diary: “At Basel, I founded the Jewish state. If I were to say this today, I would be greeted with laughter. In five years perhaps, and certainly in fifty, everyone will see it.” And so, it had come to pass.

As Ben-Gurion read, I thought again about my children and the children that they would have, how different their lives would be from mine and how different my own life would be from what it had been in the past, and I thought about my colleagues in besieged Jerusalem, gathered in the offices of the Jewish Agency, listening to the ceremony through static on the radio, while I, by sheer accident, was in the museum itself. It seemed to me that no Jew on earth had ever been more privileged than I was that Friday afternoon.

Then, as though a signal had been given, we rose to our feet, crying and clapping, while Ben-Gurion, his voice breaking for the only time, read: “The State of Israel will be open to Jewish immigration and the ingathering of exiles.” This was the very heart of the proclamation, the reason for the state and the point of it all. I remember sobbing out loud when I heard those words spoken in that hot, packed little hall. But Ben-Gurion just rapped his gavel again for order and went on reading:

“Even amidst the violent attacks launched against us for months past, we call upon the sons of the Arab people dwelling in Israel to keep the peace and to play their part in building the state on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its institutions, provisional and permanent.”

And: “We extend the hand of peace and good neighborliness to all the states around us and to their peoples, and we call upon them to cooperate in mutual helpfulness with the independent Jewish nation in its land. The State of Israel is prepared to make its contribution in a concerted effort for the advancement of the entire Middle East.”

When he finished reading the 979 Hebrew words of the proclamation, he asked us to stand and “adopt the scroll establishing the Jewish state,” so once again we rose to our feet. Then, something quite unscheduled and very moving happened. All of a sudden Rabbi Fishman Maimon stood up and, in a trembling voice, pronounced the traditional Hebrew prayer of thanksgiving. “Blessed be Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who has kept us alive and made us endure and brought us to this day. Amen.” It was a prayer that I had heard often, but it had never held such meaning for me as it did that day.

Before we came up, each in turn, in alphabetical order, to sign the proclamation, there was one other point of “business” that required our attention. Ben-Gurion read the first decrees of the new state. The White Paper was declared null and void, while, to avoid a legal vacuum, all the other mandatory rules and regulations were declared valid and in temporary effect. Then the signing began. As I got up from my seat to sign my name to the scroll, I caught sight of Ada Golomb, standing not far away. I wanted to go over to her, take her in my arms and tell her that I knew that Eliahu and Dov should have been there in my place, but I couldn't hold up the line of the signatories, so I walked straight to the middle of the table, where Ben-Gurion and Sharett sat with the scroll between them. All I recall about my actual signing of the proclamation is that I was crying openly, not able even to wipe the tears from my face, and I remember that as Sharett held the scroll in place for me, a man called David Zvi Pincus, who belonged to the religious Mizrachi Party, came over to try and calm me. “Why do you weep so much, Golda?” he asked me.

“Because it breaks my heart to think of all those who should have been here today and are not,” I replied, but I still couldn't stop crying.

Only twenty-five members of the People's Council signed the proclamation on May 14. Eleven others were in Jerusalem, and one was in the States. The last to sign was Moshe Sharett. He looked very controlled and calm compared to me—as though he were merely performing a standard duty. Later, when once we talked about that day, he told me that when he wrote his name on the scroll, he felt as though he were standing on a cliff with a gale blowing up all around him and nothing to hold on to except his determination not to be blown over into the raging sea below— but none of this showed at the time.

After the Palestine Philharmonic Orchestra played “Hatikvah,” Ben-Gurion rapped his gavel for the third time. “The State of Israel is established. This meeting is ended.” We all shook hands and embraced each other. The ceremony was over. Israel was a reality.

Not unexpectedly, the evening was filled with suspense. I stayed in the hotel, talking to friends. Someone opened a bottle of wine, and we drank a toast to the state. A few of the guests and their young Haganah escorts sang and danced, and we heard people laughing and singing in the street. But we knew that at midnight the mandate would terminate, the British high commissioner would sail away, the last British soldier would leave Palestine, and we were certain that the Arab armies would march across the borders of the state we had just founded. We were independent now, but in a few hours, we would be at war. Not only was I not gay, but I was very frightened—and with good reason. Still, there is a great difference between being frightened and lacking faith, and although the entire Jewish population of the reborn state numbered only 650,000, I knew for certain that night that we had dug in and that no one would be able to disperse or displace us ever again.

But I think it was only on the following day that I really grasped what had happened in the Tel Aviv Museum. Three separate but very closely linked events brought the truth home to me as nothing else could have done, and I realized, perhaps for the first time, that nothing would ever be the same again. Not for me, not for the Jewish people, not for the Middle East. To begin with, just before dawn on Saturday, I saw for myself through the windows of my room what might be called the formal start of the War of Independence: four Egyptian Spitfires zooming across the city on their way to bomb Tel Aviv's power station and airport in what was the first air raid of the war. Then, a little later, I watched the first boatload of Jewish immigrants—no longer “illegals” enter the port of Tel Aviv, freely and proudly. No one hunted them down anymore or chased them or punished them for coming home. The shameful era of the “certificates” and the human arithmetic had ended, and as I stood there in the sun, my eyes fixed on that ship (an old Greek vessel called the SS Teti), I felt that no price demanded of us for this gift could possibly be too high. The first legal immigrant to land in the State of Israel was a tired, shabby old man called Samuel Brand, a survivor of Buchenwald. In his hand he clutched a crumpled slip of paper. It said only, “The right to settle in Israel is hereby given;” but it was signed by the “Immigration Department” of the state, and it was the first visa we ever issued.

And then, of course, there was the wonderful moment of our formal entry into the family of nations. A few minutes after midnight on the night of May 14, my phone rang. It had been ringing all evening, and as I ran to answer it, I wondered what bad news I would hear now. But the voice at the other end of the phone sounded jubilant. “Golda? Are you listening? Truman has recognized us!” I can't remember what I said or did, but I remember how I felt. It was like a miracle coming at the time of our greatest vulnerability, on the eve of the invasion, and I was filled with joy and relief. In a way, although all Israel rejoiced and gave thanks, I think that what President Truman did that night may have meant more to me than to most of my colleagues because I was the

“American” among us, the one who knew most about the United States, its history and its people, the only one who had grown up in that great democracy. And although I was as astonished as everyone else by the speed of the recognition, I was not at all surprised by the generous and good impulse that had brought it about. In retrospect, I think that like most miracles, this one was probably triggered by two very simple things: the fact that Harry Truman understood and respected our drive for independence because he was the sort of man who, under different circumstances, might well have been one of us himself, and the profound impression made on him by Chaim Weizmann, whom he had received in Washington and who had pleaded our cause and explained our situation in a way that no one had ever done in the White House before. Weizmann's work was of incalculable value.

American recognition was the greatest thing that could have happened to us that night.

As for the Soviet recognition of Israel, which followed the American recognition, that had other roots. There is now no doubt in my mind that the primary Soviet consideration was to get the British out of the Middle East. But all through the debates that had taken place at the United Nations in the autumn of 1947, it had seemed to me that the Soviet bloc was supporting us also because of the terrible toll that the Russians themselves had paid in the world war and their resultantly deep feeling that the Jews, who had also suffered so bitterly at the hands of the Nazis, deserved to have their state. However radically the Soviet attitude has changed in the intervening two and a half decades, I cannot now falsify the picture as I saw it then. Had it not been for the arms and ammunition that we were able to buy in Czechoslovakia and transport through Yugoslavia and other Balkan countries in those dark days at the start of the war, I do not know whether we actually could have held out until the tide changed, as it did by June 1948. For the first six weeks of the War of Independence, we relied largely (though not, of course, entirely) on the shells, machine guns, bullets—and even planes—that the Haganah had been able to purchase in Eastern Europe at a time when even the United States had declared an embargo on the sale or shipment of arms to the Middle East. One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present, and the fact remains that although the Soviet Union was to turn so savagely against and upon us in the years to come, the Soviet recognition of the State of Israel on May 18 was of immense significance for us.

It meant that the two greatest powers in the world had come together, for the first time since World War II, to back the Jewish state, and although we were still in deadly danger, we knew, at last, that we were not alone. It was in that knowledge combined with sheer necessity—that we found the spiritual, if not the material, strength that was to lead us to victory.

Also, while I am on this subject, let me say—for the record— that the second state to offer recognition to Israel on the day of its birth was little Guatemala, whose ambassador to the United Nations, Jorge García Granados, had been one of the most active members of UNSCOP.

So now we were an accepted fact. The only question that remained—and, incredibly enough, remains to this very day—was how we would stay alive. Not “if,” but “how.” By the morning of May 15 Israel was already under armed attack by the Egyptians from the south, the Syrian and Lebanese from the north and the northeast, the Jordanians and the Iraqis from the east. On paper it seemed that week as though there might be some grounds for the Arab boast that within ten days Israel would be crushed.

The most relentless advance was that of the Egyptians—though of all the invading armies, the Egyptians certainly had least to gain. Abdullah had a reason. It was a bad one; but it was there, and he was able to define it: He wanted the whole country and especially Jerusalem. Lebanon and Syria also had a reason: They hoped to be able to divide up the Galilee between themselves. Iraq wanted to participate in the bloodletting and—as a fringe benefit—acquire an outlet to the Mediterranean, through Jordan if necessary. But Egypt had no real war aim at all—except to loot and destroy whatever the Jews had built. As a matter of fact, it has never ceased to astonish me that the Arab states have been so eager to go to war against us. Almost from the very beginning of Zionist settlement until today they have been consumed by hatred for us. The only possible explanation—and it is a ridiculous one— is that they simply cannot bear our presence or forgive us for existing, and I find it hard to believe that the leaders of all the Arab states are and always have been so hopelessly primitive in their thinking.

On the other hand, what have we ever done to threaten the Arab states? True, we have not stood in line to return territory we won in wars they started, but territory, after all, has never ever been what Arab aggression is all about—and in 1948 it was certainly not a need for more land that drove the Egyptians northward in the hope of reaching and destroying Tel Aviv and Jewish Jerusalem. So, what was it? An overpowering irrational urge to eliminate us physically? Fear of the progress we might introduce in the Middle East? A distaste for Western civilization? Who knows? Whatever it was, it has lasted—but then so have we—and the solution will probably not be found for many years, although I have no doubt at all that the time will come when the Arab states will accept us—as we are and for what we are. In a nutshell, peace is—and always has been dependent entirely on only one thing:

The Arab leaders must acquiesce in our being here.

In 1948, however, it was understandable that the Arab states— given in any case to chronic flights of fancy—saw themselves as racing through what was now Israel in a matter of days. To begin with, they had begun the war, which gave them great tactical superiority. Secondly, they had easy, not to say effortless, overland access to Palestine, with its Arab population, which had been incited against the Jews for years. Thirdly, the Arabs could move without any problems from one part of the country to the other.

Fourthly, the Arabs controlled most of the hilly regions of Palestine from which our lowland settlements could be attacked without much difficulty. Finally, the Arabs had an absolute superiority of manpower and arms and had been given considerable help by the British in various ways, both direct and indirect.

And what did we have? Not much of anything—and even that is an exaggeration. A few thousand rifles, a few hundred machine guns, an assortment of other firearms, but on May 14, 1948, not a single cannon or tank, although we had all of nine planes (never mind that only one had two engines!). The machinery for making arms had been bought abroad—thanks to Ben-Gurion's amazing foresight—but couldn't be brought into Israel until the British had left, and then it had to be assembled and run in. Our trained manpower situation was also very unimpressive, as far as statistics were concerned. There were about 45,000 men, women and teenagers in the Haganah, a few thousand members of the two dissident underground organizations and a few hundred recent arrivals who had been given some training with wooden rifles and dummy bullets—in the DP camps of Germany and the detention camps of Cyprus and after independence, another few thousand Jewish and non-Jewish volunteers from abroad. That was all. But we couldn't afford the luxury of pessimism either, so we made an altogether different kind of calculation based on the fact that the 650,000 of us were more highly motivated to stay alive than anyone outside Israel could be expected to understand and that the only option available to us, if we didn't want to be pushed into the sea, was to win the war. So, we won it. But it wasn't easy, it wasn't quick, and it wasn't cheap. From the day that the UN resolution to partition Palestine was passed (November 29, 1947) until the day that the first armistice agreement was signed by Israel and Egypt (February 24, 1949) 6,000 young Israelis were killed, 1 percent of our entire population, and although we couldn't have known it then, we hadn't even bought peace with all those lives.

For me to have had to leave Israel the moment the state was established was more difficult than I can say. The very last thing I wanted to do was to go abroad, but on Sunday, May 16, a cable came from Henry Montor, vice-president of the United Jewish Appeal. American Jewry had been profoundly moved by what had happened. There were no limits to its excitement or its pride.

If I came back, even for a short tour, he thought we might raise another $50,000,000. No one knew better than I what that kind of money would mean to Israel, how desperately we needed the arms it would buy or how much it would cost to move and settle the 30,000 Jews penned up in Cyprus, who had waited so long to come to Israel. My heart sank at the thought of tearing myself away from the country, but there was no real choice at all. After discussing the matter with Ben-Gurion, I cabled back at once that I would leave on the first plane. Luckily, there were no preparations to make for the trip. My clothes, such as they were, were all in Jerusalem, as out of reach as though they were on the moon, so all I had to “pack” was a hairbrush, a toothbrush and a clean blouse, though when I got to New York, I discovered that the veil I had worn to Amman was still in my bag! I managed to speak to Sarah briefly and tell her that I would be back in a month at the very most and to receive a hastily produced laissez-passer, which was, in fact, the first travel document to be given any citizen of the State of Israel. Then I left on the very first plane that was available.

In the States I was greeted as though I were the personification of Israel. Over and over again I told the story of the proclamation, of the beginning of the war, of the continuing siege of Jerusalem, and over and over again I assured the Jews of America that with their help Israel would prevail. I spoke in city after city throughout the States, at UJA lunches, dinners and teas and at parlor meetings in people's homes. Whenever I felt overwhelmed by fatigue—which was often—all I had to do was to remind myself that I was now talking as an emissary of a Jewish state, and my tiredness. simply drained away. It even took me weeks to accustom myself to the sound of the word “Israel” and to the fact that I now had a new nationality. But the purpose of my journey was not in the least sentimental. I had come to raise money, as much money as possible, as quickly as possible, and my message was as blunt in May as it had been in January. The State of Israel, I told Jews all over America, could not survive on applause. The war would not be won by speeches or declarations or even tears of happiness.

And time was of the essence, or there would be nothing to applaud.

“We cannot go on without your help,” I said in dozens of public and private appearances. “What we ask of you is that you share in our responsibility, with everything that this implies— difficulties, problems, hardships and joys. Surely what is happening in the Jewish world today is so important, so vital that you, too, can change your way of life for a year, or two, or three until together we have put Israel on its feet. Make up your minds and give me your answers.”

They answered me with unprecedented generosity and speed, with their whole hearts and souls. Nothing was too much or too good, and by their response they reaffirmed their sense of partnership with us, as I had hoped they would. Although there was as yet no separate drive for Israel, and although less than 50 percent of the $150,000,000 raised for the UJA in 1948 actually went to Israel (the rest was turned over to the Joint Distribution Committee for aid to Jews in European countries), that 50 percent unquestionably helped us win the war. It also taught us that the involvement of American Jewry in the State of Israel was a factor on which we could count.

As I traveled, I met many people who were themselves later to become “spokesmen” of the state, men who had not been intimately involved in the Zionist effort before 1948, but who now were moved to make Israel their life's work—and who were to be my close associates in the founding of the Israel Bond Organization in 1950. In the past, whenever I had come to the United States, it had been on missions for the Histadrut, and I had spent my time almost entirely with Labor Zionists. But in 1948 I met a new kind of American Jew—well-to-do, super-efficient and totally committed. In the first instance there was, of course, Henry Montor himself, brusque, gifted and deeply concerned with Israel, a slave driver who mercilessly drove himself as well as others in the attempt to raise ever larger sums of money. But there were also businessmen, hardheaded, experienced industrialists like Bill Rosenwald, Sam Rothberg, Lou Boyar and Harold Goldenberg, to name just a few of the men with whom I found time to talk hurriedly on that whirlwind tour about the possibility of selling bonds for Israel, as well as making appeals for philanthropy.

But all the time I waited anxiously for the moment when I could return home, although I already knew that the newly created Foreign Office, particularly the new foreign minister, Moshe Sharett, had other plans for me. The day before I left for the States, Sharett and I had met in my hotel, and he had spoken to me of the problems of manning the embassies and consulates that Israel would have to establish in those countries that had either already recognized it or were likely to do so within a few weeks.

“I have no one for Moscow,” he said in a very worried voice.

“Well, thank God, you can't offer it to me,” I replied. “My Russian is almost nonexistent.”

“As a matter of fact, that isn't what matters,” he answered. But he didn't pursue the topic and I tried to dismiss it as a good joke.

Although I sometimes thought about that conversation when I was flying from one place to another in the States, I fervently hoped that Sharett himself had forgotten all about it.

One day, however, a cable came from Tel Aviv. I glanced at the signature before I read the text to make sure that it wasn't about Sarah or Menachem (already with his brigade and in combat). But when I saw the name Moshe, I knew that it was about Moscow, and I had to steel myself to read the message. The state was not even a month old. The war was not over. The children were not yet safe. I had a family and dear friends in Israel, and it seemed to me that it was grossly unfair to ask me to pack my bags again so soon and take off for such a remote and essentially unknown post.

“Why is it always me?” I thought, in a burst of self-pity. There were plenty of other people who could do the job as well, better in fact. And Russia of all places, the country I had left as a little girl and of which I had not a single pleasant memory. At least in America I was doing something real, concrete and practical, but what did I know or care about diplomacy? Of all my comrades, I thought, I was surely the least suited to diplomatic life. But I also knew that Sharett must have secured Ben-Gurion's consent to the appointment, and Ben-Gurion was certainly not likely to be swayed by any personal appeals. And then there was the matter of discipline. Who was I to disobey or even demur at a time when each day brought news of fresh casualties? One's duty was one's duty—and it had nothing to do with justice. So, what if I longed to be in Israel? Other people longed for their children to be alive or whole again. So, after a few more cables and telephone calls, I answered Sharett's cable, not very enthusiastically but affirmatively.

“When I get back to Israel, I will try to persuade Moshe and Ben-Gurion that they have made a mistake,” I promised myself.

At the end of the first week of June, however, my appointment as Israel's minister to Moscow was made public.

I took a day off to see old friends in New York and say goodbye to new ones. I was determined to visit Fanny and Jacob Goodman before I left. Neither the children nor I had ever lost touch with them, and I thought it would cheer me up to spend an hour or two with them, telling them about Sarah and Zechariah and Sheyna's children, whom they hadn't seen for so long. But I never got to their house. On the way to Brooklyn a car crashed into my cab, and the next thing I knew I had a badly fractured leg enveloped in a gigantic plaster cast and my address for the next few weeks was neither Moscow nor Tel Aviv, but the New York Hospital for Joint Diseases! Looking back at the times and at my mood, I think that nothing including the blessing of the phlebitis and blood clots I developed) could have kept me in that hospital had it not been for the fact that on June 11, the fighting had temporarily ended in Israel.

By June 11, the progress of the Arab invasion had been halted.

The Egyptian attempt to conquer Tel Aviv and Jerusalem had failed, although the Jordanians were still battering away at Jerusalem from the east and the north, and the Jewish Quarter of the Old City had fallen to Abdullah's Arab Legion. The Syrians, although their advance in the north had been stopped, still held a bridgehead on the Jordan River, and the Iraqis were still poised against the narrowest part of the country in Samaria. The United Nations had been trying for weeks to impose a truce, but as long as they had some hope of defeating Israel, the Arabs were not at all interested. However, as soon as it became quite clear to them, as well as to us, that this was not about to happen, they agreed to a ceasefire—to the first truce, which was to last for twenty-eight days and gave us a chance to rest, rally and plan the major offensives that in July removed the last threats to Tel Aviv and the coastal plain, lifted the siege on Jerusalem and destroyed all the major Arab bases in the Galilee.

So, in theory, pain or no pain, I might have caught my breath a bit in the hospital—both physically and emotionally—but actually I was under enormous pressure there all the time. To begin with, there were the television cameras and the newspapermen. A woman minister to Moscow would have been a novelty in any case in 1948, but a woman minister to Moscow who represented the tiny embattled State of Israel and who was totally immobilized in New York must have been a real bargain. I suppose I could have refused to be interviewed—and today, of course, that is just what I would do under such circumstances. But at that time, I thought it would be good for Israel if we got a lot of publicity, and I felt that I mustn't turn down a single request from the press although the various members of the family, especially Clara, were absolutely appalled by the three-ring circus going on in my room.

What was much worse, though, was the pressure I was under to get to Moscow. I was literally bombarded with cables from Israel.

WHEN CAN YOU LEAVE NEW YORK? WHEN CAN YOU TAKE OVER? HOW DO YOU FEEL? Rumors had spread in Israel that this was a “diplomatic” illness and that nothing was really wrong with me except that I didn't want to go to Russia. But as if this disgusting whispering campaign was not bad enough, there were also indications that the Soviet government was offended by my supposed “malingering,” which was “actually” a tactic designed to delay the exchange of ministers so that the U.S. ambassador to Israel could arrive first and thus become dean of the diplomatic corps. All this was something I had to take very seriously, regardless of my state of health. So, there was nothing I could do except start tormenting my doctors for permission to leave the hospital. It was, need I say, the wrong thing to have done. I should have remained in New York until I was completely well. Both our Foreign Office and the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs would have survived without me for a few more weeks and I would have spared myself a great deal of misery and at least one operation later on. But one of the penalties of public office is that one loses one's sense of proportion in certain respects, and I was convinced that there would be some kind of terrible crisis unless I turned up in Moscow as soon as possible.

I did make one attempt, when I got back to Israel, to talk Sharett out of the whole thing, but by then it wasn't a very wholehearted attempt. One day I heard an interesting story that cheered me up: Ehud Avriel, one of the Haganah men who had done most to secure arms for us in Czechoslovakia and who later became Israel's first minister to Prague, had been invited for a talk with the Soviet ambassador in that city. In the course of the conversation the Russian said to Avriel, “I suppose your people are looking around for someone to send to Moscow. Don't feel that it has to be a person whose Russian is fluent or who is an expert on Marxism and Leninism. Neither of these qualifications is important.” Then, after a while, as though à propos of nothing, he said to Avriel, “By the way, what is happening to Mrs. Meyerson? Is she going to stay in Israel or does she have other plans?” From this my friends including Sharett gathered that the Russians had more or less asked for me, in their own way, and I began to feel differently about going.

Also, one of the few pleasant things that had occurred while I was in the hospital was that one morning I got a cable from Tel Aviv: DO YOU HAVE ANY OBJECTION TO APPOINTMENT OF SARAH AND ZECHARIAH AS RADIO OPERATORS IN MOSCOW EMBASSY? I was very touched—and grateful. To have Sarah and Zechariah with me in Russia was almost worth the exile from Israel. One of my first projects when I came back to Tel Aviv was to ask Sheyna if Sarah and Zechariah could be married in the small house which Shamai and she had bought years ago. We decided it would be a real family wedding, with only a few “outside” guests. My father had died in 1946—another of the people who were most dear to me and who had not lived to see the state and my mother, poor soul, had been incapacitated for several years, her memory gone, her eyesight bad, her personality quite faded away, leaving almost not race of the critical, energetic, peppery woman she had been. But Morris was there, as gentle as ever and beaming with pride, and so were Zechariah's parents. His father had come to Palestine from Yemen when the Turks still ruled the country. He was very poor, very religious and not formally educated, except in the Torah, but he had brought up a wonderful and loving family though Zechariah himself by now was quite removed from Yemenite customs and traditions.

I settled in again at the hotel on the seashore. Sarah flew from Revivim to Tel Aviv and moved in with me for a few days, and Zechariah, who had been very ill and in a hospital near Tel Aviv for weeks, was finally discharged. Of our immediate family, only Clara and Menachem were missing at the wedding in Sheyna's garden. I couldn't help thinking how different my own wedding had been under what different circumstances it had taken place and how differently Morris and I had started out on life together.

There was no point to wondering now who had been to blame or why our marriage had fallen apart, but I felt (and rightly it turned out) that Sarah and Zechariah, although they were the same age that we had been when we stood under that bridal canopy in Milwaukee, were more mature and better suited to each other and that they would succeed where Morris and I had failed.

In between rushing around to party meetings, being briefed on the Soviet Union and making plans for our departure, I concentrated on thinking about the kind of representation that Israel should have in the Soviet Union. How did we want to show ourselves abroad? What did we want the world in general and the USSR in particular to think about Israel? What sort of state were we in the process of creating, and how could we best reflect its quality? The more I thought about it, the less I thought that our legations should mimic those of other countries. Israel was small, poor and still at war. Its government was still a provisional government (the first elections to the Knesset took place only in January 1949), but the majority of its members would certainly represent the labor movement. The face we turned to the world, I was convinced, needed no makeup at all. We had established a pioneering state in a sorely beleaguered country, devoid of natural resources or any wealth, a state to which hundreds of thousands of DPs—who also had nothing were already streaming in the hope of making a new life for themselves. If we wanted to be understood and respected by other states, we would have to be abroad what we were at home. Lavish entertaining, grand apartments, conspicuous consumption of any kind were not for us.

Austerity, modesty and a sense of our own worth and purpose were what we had to offer, and anything else would be false.

There was something at the back of my mind all the time that I was thinking along these lines, and then one day I found it. The legation in Moscow would be run in the most typically Israeli style I knew: like a kibbutz. We would work together, eat together, get the same amount of pocket money and take turns doing whatever chores had to be done. As in Merhavia or Revivim, people would do the work that they were trained for and suited to in the opinion of our Foreign Office but the spirit of the legation, its atmosphere and flavor would be that of a collective settlement—which, apart from any other consideration, ought, I believed, to be especially attractive to the Russians (not that their own brand of collectivism was or is anything to write home about). We were to be twenty-six people in all, including Sarah, Zechariah and myself, and the legation's counselor, Mordechai Namir, a widower who brought his fifteen-year-old daughter, Yael, with him. (Namir afterward served as Israel's ambassador to the USSR, then as minister of labor and, for ten years, as mayor of Tel Aviv.) As my personal assistant I chose a most charming woman, Eiga Shapiro, who not only spoke Russian, but also knew much more about the niceties of life than I did and who could be entrusted, I was sure, with such (to me terrifying) missions as deciding what furniture and clothing legation personnel and the minister would need.

Even before I returned to Tel Aviv, I wrote to Eiga to ask her to join me, if and when I indeed went to Moscow and to my delight she agreed at once. One of the notes she sent to New York at the end of June is before me now, and it tells something, I think, of what was involved in sending a woman to a top diplomatic post—particularly a woman like myself who was so determined to live in Russia in much the same way she lived at home. She wrote:

I have had a talk with Ehud. He tells me that we shall have to be very comme il faut. So please, Golda, what about a fur coat for yourself? It is very cold in the place to which you are traveling, and most people there wear fur coats in the winter. You need not buy yourself mink, but a good Persian lamb will be very serviceable... You will also need a few evening dresses, and buy yourself woollies—warm nightgowns, woolen stockings and woolen underwear. And please get yourself a pair of good snowshoes.

The question of dress was obviously not uppermost in my mind, but for a while I regretted that we had no national costume which would have solved at least one problem for me, as it did for Mrs. Pandit, the only other woman diplomat in Moscow, who wore her sari, of course, on all ceremonial occasions. In the end Eiga and I agreed that when I presented my credentials, I would wear a long black dress sewn for me in Tel Aviv and that, when necessary, I would wear a small black velvet turban with it. As far as furnishing the legation was concerned, Eiga undertook to do that in Scandinavia as soon as we found permanent accommodation in Moscow. In the interim, we would establish our “kibbutz” in a hotel. There was also the question of finding and taking with us to Russia someone whose French was absolutely perfect, since it had been decided that French would be Israel's diplomatic language. Eiga introduced me to a bright, amusing, painfully thin young woman called Lou Kaddar, who was born in Paris, whose French was beyond reproach and who had lived in Jerusalem all through the siege and had been badly wounded. I liked her the moment I set eyes on her—and it was just as well that I did, because for the better part of the next twenty-seven years Lou was my close friend, my indispensable assistant and, more often than not, my travel companion. At all events, she agreed to go with us to Russia.

I stayed in Israel long enough that summer to welcome the first U.S. ambassador to Israel, that delightfully frank and warm gentleman James G. McDonald, whom I had met before, and to meet the Russian minister, Pavel I. Yershov. It was typical of the newness of the state and of its lack of proper housing that the American and Soviet missions in Tel Aviv made their first home in the same hotel, not far from mine, and I never quite got used to seeing the stars and stripes fly from one end of the hotel roof and the hammer and sickle from the other. There were all sorts of “incidents” during the first weeks of this “coexistence.” I remember, for instance, a gala performance of the Israel National Opera at which the orchestra opened with first “Hatikvah” and then, in McDonald's honor, “The Star-Spangled Banner,” but not the “Internationale,” though Yershov's counselor was present—at least until the intermission, when he and his party rather noisily walked out. Everyone in our Foreign Office was reduced to trembling in his boots until Yershov himself agreed to accept our explanation that had he been there, the Soviet anthem would have certainly been played. Today these minor disasters seem funny, but at the time we all took them very seriously. Nothing ever appeared unimportant to us, and Sharett, by nature, was both exacting and sensitive to a remarkable degree and felt—as did the Russians themselves, by the way—that protocol was of the utmost importance, although I could never see why it mattered so much.

A second truce began on July 19, signaling the start of a long, painful round of negotiations over the Negev, which Count Folke Bernadotte, the Swedish UN mediator, recommended be handed over to the Arabs. Considering the fact that he was really a referee, his position was amazingly lacking in neutrality, and he became extremely unpopular particularly when he added insult to injury by advocating also that Jerusalem be torn away from the Jewish state and that the UN supervise Israel's air and seaports.

God knows that these recommendations were unacceptable and that they proved only that Bernadotte really never understood what the State of Israel was all about. But it is certainly no crime to be obtuse, and I was horrified when, on September 17, only two weeks after I arrived in Moscow, I learned that Bernadotte had been shot to death on a quiet street in Jerusalem. Although his assailants were never identified, we knew it would be assumed that they were Jews. I thought the end of the world had come, and I would have given anything to have been able to fly home and be there during the ensuing crisis, but by then I was already deeply involved in a totally new and very demanding way of life.

Works Cited

Meir, G. (1975). My Life. New York, NY, United States of America: Putnam.

[1] Yishuv (ישוב) denote the body of Jewish residents in Palestine prior to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.

[2] United Nations Special Committee on Palestine.

[avillainousmagician]

I wonder that would happen if I insisted on Lee. I prefer it, it's gender neutral, my parents and people they know all call me it. I have nothing against the name Lauren and it's stimmingly nicer to write in my signature because it's longer and my full name has a good rhythm (which matches Dylan's which I always think is cool. That and us only being born ten days apart.) I like the name Lauren and it definitely Is My Name. However, I get exactly the same amount of recognition looking at Lee as I do Lauren.

As a child I was pretty convinced I was a boy for a very long time and once puberty started I was super freaked out by my body changing. I wanted to someone shave off my hips because, they looked like - y'know in The Producers, during Springtime for Hitler, the ladies coming down the stairs showcasing German things have like tables on each hip? That's what it looked like and felt like. I'd look at my naked body in the mirror (alone, I was pubescent and about 11) and I did not like the way the hips jutted out from my waist not did I like the 'cleft of Venus'. It all felt so fucking wrong.

I was a bit neither here not there about breasts. I remember doing a lot of that kind of P5/P6 girl conversation about excitement about puberty during one to one sleepovers with one of my best pals. But once it arrived I was less pleased. I needed bras before most pals (but I was the second oldest in my class) and for some reason they laughed at them but I needed something to combat the discomfort of going down all the stairs repeatedly every day in our primary because our classroom was on the top floor and a lot of up and down was required. (Playground, dining hall and cloakroom on the ground floor, gym, music room and computer suite on the first floor and my classroom and library on the second floor.)

I also remember resenting not being allowed to shave my legs because you could see the hairs through my tights and it was like a wolf girl trying to be normal. But considering the fact that now I don't EVER shave and haven't for YEARS I'm sure that was a socialisation thing. I in many ways am immune to that kind of socialisation and peer pressure but the hair thing was a different matter. Only for the legs though at that point.

I've spent my whole life, to my parents, as being neither their daughter nor their son and I still feel like that. At the age of 11/12 I did hunners of soul searching and comparing myself to other girls (mind you, I did that my whole life because many girls perplexed me - at one point I asked my mum if I should want a baby doll because other wee girls liked playing mum and baby? This wasn't because I wanted one, I wondered if I should. Various things happened like that.) and the conclusion I came to was that I was androgynous on the inside but a girl on the outside (keep in mind this was 03/04, my whole internet experience was Neopets, Harry Potter Quizzes, the WB Harry Potter site, IMBd, Sims and Petz downloads and watching music videos on iFilm.) Which nowadays would translate to nb, feminine presenting, I think. Though I like to dress up in a waistcoat and tailcoat with my hair gelled back on occasion too and it feels SO CORRECT. But so does dresses and blouses and long hair.

I put my difficulty with puberty down to autism and problems with change. I also put my inbetween personality due to autism and the fact that forces me to see masculine and feminine socialisation as a lot of bullshit (a long with a lot of other standard NT society. I've always been weirded out by WHY nts do things when it would be easier for them to just not - ie not saying what they mean, life seems so full of complication to the usual population).

I know I do a we gender intospection every now and again but Dylan and I were talking about it on the bus home from Edinburgh yesterday so it was fresh in my mind. I'd like more people to call me Lee because it's been my name for almost as long as Lauren is and I have my reasons for liking Lee. But I think Lauren is a nice name too and it's not like I'd change to Larry or anything.

But yeah, I feel my gender identity is directly related to my being autistic.

[robert-de-niro-only-fans]

Uncle Jimmy

Jimmy Conway x Reader

TW: smut!, light alcohol drinking, Daddy kink, age gap

Word count: 3.2k

"Fuck!" you shout as Tommy sends drink glasses flying, all for the punchline of another one is his jokes. You're at the bar in the restaurant you hung out in every week with all your favorite wise guys; you and your crime family practically own the joint at this point.

As you're using a napkin to dry up some of the champagne that had gotten on your cute black bodycon dress, when you suddenly feel a tall presence behind you, "Watch your mouth, young lady. Good girls don't curse."

Jimmy.

You look at him nonchalantly over your shoulder, "You know I'm 21 now, just like Tommy and Henry, you don't have to take care of me any more..." In fact, Jimmy is well aware that you're 21 now, and it isn't lost on you how all over you he's been.

His hands slide over your sides, pulling you close to him, as he whispers in your ear, "I know you're a grown woman now, but Uncle Jimmy still wants to care of his girl..." He'd never done anything like this before, and it sent shivers down your spine right to your center. Your eyes widen in shock, both at his comment and how your body responded to it.

You quickly push his hands off of you, turning around to face him, "Order me a drink then, if you wanna take care of me so bad." It came out of your mouth before you could even think, and you weren't completely sure what you meant by it, but Jimmy hails the bartender and places an order for something he knows you'd like: the first drink you ever had, a Cherrys Sour.

Back when you were still in high school, Jimmy made it for you one night when you were staying with him, saying how he wanted to "be there for your first drink, your first REAL drink, because I'm the uncle that'll let you get away with it."

When the bartender drops your drink off, Jimmy picks it up and holds it a few inches from your face. He plucks the cherry off the rim, and although he's tempted to steal it, he places it gently against your lips, appreciating the way the bright red fruit looks against your pouty bottom lip and the way your tongue flicks out to pull it into your mouth and popping it off its stem.

After that, he couldn't help himself. He places a hand on your cheek and the glass to your lips, making you take a sip of your drink. You close your eyes, nose wrinkling a bit as the liquid coats your taste buds.

"Just like the first time..." Jimmy reminisces, "How's that for being taken care of, darlin'?" You slip the drink out of Jimmy's hand and simply give him a look, trying to be pouty, but the man could tell you liked it.

Jimmy ordered himself the same drink; he just loves cherries, and he leaves you for a little while to go greet a few people, including your dad...

But he isn't gone for long, before he saunters up behind you again, setting his empty glass and placing his hands on the bar on either side of you, trapping you in.

"Jimmy..." you whine, looking down at the bar, but he can't see the smile on your face.

"(Y/N)..." he mimics you. He gently and slowly touches his chest to your back, and combs your hair away from your neck, placing a few soft kisses there.

"Jimmy," you breath heavily, "my dad is here..."

"Well then we better get out of here before he sees us," he leaves a little kiss on the shell of your ear, as he presses the beginnings of his arousal against your backside.

"Ooo-ooooh!!! Looks like Uncle Jimmy noticed our little (Y/N) is all grown up!" Henry hollers down the bar.

"Maybe he wants to be her Daddy Jimmy now! God knows he's old enough to be!" Tommy cuts in.

The place is filled with laughter, and simultaneously, you and Jimmy cut looks that could kill at Tommy and Henry. Jimmy makes a move to storm over to them but you grab his hand, holding him back. "You're just jealous Uncle Jimmy never loved you as much as he loves me," you throw over your shoulder as you drag Jimmy out of the restaurant, laughing as soon as the cool night air hits your faces.

Through his laughter, Jimmy unlocks the passenger door of his car, pushing you in and sliding in after you. With you at the wheel, he cranks up the car and says, "Why don't you take us somewhere, baby girl?"

Things go quiet for a moment, then a big smile spreads across your face. You don't get to drive much, and he knows how much you love to.

"You aren't drunk or anything, are you?" he whispers, always checking on you.

"No, I just had the one drink you got me," you answer.

"Good good, you know I couldn't live with myself if anything happened to you," he kisses your cheek and pats your thigh, indicating that you should drive now.

You weren't sure where to go, so you just drove to this little park that took up just a block. There are some swings and a jungle gym, but also some trees and grass and benches. You didn't know what Jimmy would think but you thought it might be romantic.

He chuckles as you stop the car, "You want Uncle Jimmy to take you to the park?"

"Hmmm, I think you meant 'Daddy'" you say, mocking Tommy.

He lets out a little grunt and places a hand on your cheek, wiping his thumb across your bottom lip, "Watch your mouth, I'm warning you..."

"But... That's not even a curse word," you say, but then it clicks in your head. You decide to store that information away for later, and you both get out the car.

You quickly discover the fence to the park is locked, but that kind of thing never stopped you and Jimmy before. You slip off your heels, handing them to the man next to you, and start climbing the fence.

"Hey! Be careful!!" He shouts, but you were already over the other side before he could stop you... and he wasn't really sure how you climbed the fence in a dress that tight.

He takes your shoes over to the car, tossing them in the back seat and pulling out a blanket, probably there so he could wrap a body if he needed to, but he figured you could use it to sit on the grass.

He throws it over the fence to you before fumbling over the thing himself; he was much more graceful about it when he had a cop after him.

Inside the park, you stroll around for a while, getting used to Jimmy being all sweet on you like this. You liked it, but he had always been your Uncle Jimmy, so it's a little weird at first.

You walk over to the swings, plopping down in one. Jimmy stands behind you, gently pushing and pulling the chains back and forth. You look back at him and you both share a giggle as he starts pushing you harder, really getting the swing to go. Your giggles grow into hysterical laughter as you fly through the air.

Jimmy leaves you to your own devices to swing as long as you'd like, while he sits on the swing next to yours and pulls out a cigarette, smiling from ear to ear as he watches you.

As your swing slows down, you pluck the cigarette from his fingers, taking a drag on it. He quickly gets it back, saying, "Hey! That's not good for you, baby," in a serious tone.

"It's not good for you either..." you say as your swing comes to a halt.

"Yeah, well. Do as I say, not as I do." Jimmy says, pulling your swing over to his. There's a pause for a moment before he changes the subject, "I'm gonna kiss you now. Are you gonna let me?"

"Why don't you try it and see?" you tease him.

With that, he pulls you off of your swing and onto his lap, holding your waist as his lips meet yours in an open mouthed kiss that can only be described as electric. Jimmy didn't do anything half-assed, especially kissing you. One of his hands tangles in your hair, and you hold his cheeks in your hands as you make out.

He sucks his bottom lip into your mouth, giving it a delightful little nibble that makes you squirm. Your hands move to squeeze at his sides while you desperately kiss one another, both realizing you'd wanted each other much longer than you thought. His hands grab your hips and lift you up so he can stand and wrap your legs around his waist; his lips never leaving yours. He walks a few steps over to the grass and sinks to his knees, laying you down in the damp but soft grass. He grips at your thigh, hard; it'll probably leave little bruises where his fingertips are.

You let out a little whine and he realizes he's hurting you, "I'm sorry, honey."

"It's okay..." you breathe out, "Daddy..."

You watch as he gets a lust blown look in his eyes from your use of that word, and his lips slam back into yours. He starts grinding his hardness against you, "Say it again," he mumbles through attacking your lips.

"Mmm!" you push him of you a little, making him stop and look in your eyes, "Daddy."

His eyes are practically begging you, for what you aren't sure, but he lowers his head and softly kisses at your decolletage. Your fingers grace over his head, threatening to mess up his gelled hair. As his lips give attention to the top of your breasts, Jimmy's voice pipes up, "(Y/N)," his eyes look up at you, "Let me make love to you."

"Jimmy..."

His hand creeps up, intertwining your fingers with his and pinning your hand to the ground. His face meets yours with another fiery kiss.

"Jimmy," you moan against his lips, "What if we get caught?"

"Well, it could be kind of exciting if we get caught," he presses a kiss to your earlobe.

"I mean, by the cops... What if we get in trouble?"

"Listen to yourself, princess, when did you ever care about getting in trouble? Besides, fuck the cops," Jimmy argues still kissing at your neck, and he does have a point.

You push Jimmy up and he sits back on his knees. You get up and sit in front of Jimmy, except you turn your back to him, then you brush your hair to one side to the front side of your shoulder.

"Okay," you say.

"Hm?" Jimmy asks.

"James Conway, unzip my dress right now, or I swear to God, you won't get another chance to for the rest of your life!"

Zip! You feel your dress loosen immediately. His hands roam your back as he scoots closer to you. His fingertips glide over your silky smooth skin while sliding the little dress straps off your shoulders.

"When a pretty lady like you talks, I listen," his voice is lower than it was before.

You chuckle and lean back into him as the top part of your dress falls around your waist and Jimmy's hands explore your bra. You hear his breathing get a little heavier just from looking at you without a top on.

You turn around and start to lay back down on the grass. "Wait-" Jimmy starts, "Let me go grab that blanket."

"You afraid of getting a little dirty, Daddy?" you say in your sexiest voice. It's funny how you can visually see Jimmy short circuit a for minute every time you call him that. He snaps back to reality and jumps up, "I'll be right back!"

He quickly returns to lay the blanket on the ground for you, before grabbing you and gently laying you down with it. You slide your dress off your legs, and Jimmy can hardly think straight seeing you in your lacy black underwear.

"Are you just gonna stand there, big man? A little girl like me got your wires all crossed?" you joke at him.

Jimmy simply responds by taking off his jacket and tie, and getting on his knees between your legs again. You sit up and unbutton his shirt, quickly discarding it and finally feeling the warm skin of his torso. You look up and give him a teasing look before unlatching his belt, sloooowly. He's completely breathless at the way you've taken charge of the situation; you'd always been a little girl in his eyes.

Almost as if you'd been reading his mind, you say, "If I'm gonna call you Daddy, you better start acting like one, hm?" You raise your eyebrows at the last part as if you were expecting something of him.

He exhales and crawls on top of you, "You're so right... God damn it, you just look so good!" He roughly kisses you and pins your wrists down to the ground above your head, "But now I'm gonna make you mine."

You're left gasping as Jimmy moved to your neck, leaving his mark on you. Everyone would know he had had you when they see those hickies on your neck, and that thought- that thought drove Jimmy wild.

He releases your hands as he works his way down your body with his kisses and sucks on every inch of your skin. He pops back up on his knees and works his pants off, and he looks around to make sure no one is walking by around the park. "Want me to lose these, baby doll?" he asks, hooking his thumbs in the waistband of his boxer briefs.

"You know I do," you giggle at him.

He groans happily, "You sure you're ready to see your Uncle Jimmy naked?"

You sit up and stroke his hard length as it strains against the fabric, "I thought you were my Daddy now... You must not want me to call you that if you keep forgetting..." You pretend to pout at him.

He takes you by surprise, grabbing your throat and shaking you a bit, "Daddy didn't forget."

You give him an excited smile, and he removes his underwear, stroking himself for you. He grabs your legs and shoves them straight up in the air, giving your ass a solid smack before pulling your panties down.

"Oh, baby," he lays himself on top of you, rubbing his hardness against your clit, "You look beautiful, and you're already so wet without me even touching you... You think you're ready to take me?"

You nod your head, "Mhmm."

"Say it," he demands.

"Say what?"

"You know what I want, princess. Now, say it."

You look up at him with doe eyes, appreciating his muscles as he towers over you, "I want you, Daddy... Take me please, Daddy, I'm ready!"

"Mmmm, God, baby girl, you beg so good," he praises as he presses the head of his cock into you.

You let out a soft, breathy groan as you feel him fill you up. The noises Jimmy makes as he starts to move in you--it's as if he feels relief mixed with absolute pleasure. He moves slowly at first, rocking his whole body gently back and forth, as he kisses the side of your face.

Your little breaths mixed with moans and gasps only turns Jimmy on further; he wants to make you make more of those noises. He shifts his weight onto one elbow, and with his free hand, grabs your hand to bring it to his face. He stares deeply into your eyes as he kisses your knuckles.

Jimmy enjoys your fingers playing with his hair, and he really enjoys it when you give it a harsh tug as he hits a sweet spot inside you. You inhale sharply, "Daddy!!!"

"Yeah, baby? Is that the spot?"

"Uh-huhhh," you whine loudly. You reach down to play with yourself, but your hand is met with a sudden slap.

"No. That's Daddy's job." Jimmy quickly replaces your hand with his, rubbing circles on your clit. His hip movements speed up, and he only takes his hand off of you to pull your bra down off your shoulders before forcefully ripping it and throwing it aside. As his hand returns to your clit, his mouth explores your breasts, sucking on your nipples and leaving more love bites.

How he could do three things at once is beyond you, but it is leading you to your orgasm. When you reach your end, Jimmy shoves two fingers deep in your mouth, muffling the loud noises you would've made. He wouldn't want anyone to hear after all...

Wasting no time, he sits up and pulls your legs up again, hooking them on his shoulders as he fucks into your as fast as he can. You still hadn't fully come down from your orgasm, so your legs shake violently as he slams your g-spot.

"(Y/N)..." Jimmy says weakly, eyes closed tightly in pleasure. He's close.

"Cum for me, Daddy."

"Fuck!" he groans as his hips grow erratic.

"Daddyyy... Cum for me," you beg.

You can hardly finish your sentence before he pulls out, stroking himself as his seed spurts in ribbons across your belly, yet again marking you as belonging to him. His breathing comes out in the form of needy moans as he finishes.

He takes a moment to collect himself as he shakes his member, making sure he got every drop onto you. "You look good with Daddy's cum on you," he pants, grabbing the blanket to wipe it off before it gets sticky in the cool night breeze, "You're 𝘮𝘺 girl now. All mine." He lays next to you, pulling you into him for cuddles.

"Yes sir, Daddy," you look up, rubbing your hands on his chest.

"Good girl; you're such a good girl," he whispers the next part, "and you mean so much to me." He gives a series of soft, sweet kisses.

"Hey! What do you two think you're doing?!" You hear someone shout from outside the park fence. A cop.

Jimmy pops his head up and scopes the guy out, "Fred?" One of the cops Jimmy pays off.

"Jimmy? Is that you?"

"Yeah, what are you doing working nights?"

"Oh, uh, my wife and I have a baby on the way and the force doesn't pay that well. I picked up more hours. But you two go on with whatever you're doing, I didn't see a thing, Mr. Conway," the cop saunters off, leaving your alone.

"That's the other reason I wasn't worried about the cops," Jimmy chuckles to you.

After that, you found yourself in Jimmy's bed as often as possible, and that cop found himself at home with his wife more often, having a much needed pay raise.

[mrs-cavill-wife]

Forbidden Witch (3/?)

Pairing: Charles Brandon x Female Reader (Cassandra of Boudicca)

Warning: Fantasy. Language. Forbidden Love. Tell me if I miss something.

Author's Note: Yay, our sorceress is back! I'm so so so sorry for taking so long to back to this Fanfic. I've been sick, my mind got "blocked" and stuff but I'm back to it and sorry if this one is short. yes, I decided she'll have purple eyes. Hope you guys enjoy it, if you do, like, reblog and/or comment. I'm all ears to feedback.

Tag List: @lexyvaldez26 @thereisa8ella @natura1phenomenon @mrsavery @number1chonie @themanfromu @littlefreya @legendarywizarddetective @lovingbearherringhairdo @zealoushound @deangal-101 @everydaymultifandom @rmtndew @summersong69 @jgtfvhsg @tellingyouastory @sillyrabbit81 @nuggsmum @pussyverson @oh-for-fic-sake @foodieforthoughts @fanficlover91 @r-t-doll @its--fandom--darling @poledancingdinos @hlkwrites

Cassandra's POV

Soft knocks woke me up from my messy dreams. I blinked my eyes a few times getting used to the light. I sat up in bed and stretched my body looking around a little confused. Sometimes I have dreams so messed up that I forget where I really am, but within seconds, everything was fresh in my memory. Days ago, I saved a child, a boy, who was swimming in a river in the middle of the night. On the way back to his house, I found out that he is a prince, from the kingdom of Aluma, and since then, out of gratitude, I have been here, in a beautiful large and comfortable room, in the castle.

"Come in"

I got out of bed and Lady Juliette entered my room, just like every morning. I should have stayed only one day, two at the most, but the hospitality, the politeness, the ambient, the treatment of the King and Queen, the happiness of that little runaway, I couldn't refuse to stay any longer.

I smiled at Juliette, watching her open the curtains and the huge windows that looked out onto a beautiful balcony. Then she approached the bed and I stood up as she bowed slightly.

"Good morning, Lady Cassandra. did you sleep well?"

I tilted my face playfully looking at her with mock disapproval and she smiled shyly.

"Oh Juliette, I've told you that we don't need cordiality. How long have i been here? A few weeks, probably months, we're confidants, already friends and I have no title."

She's still shy and started to make my bed and I helped her with the pillows.

"I know, my la.. Cassandra.. It's the orders, I'm just a lady-in-waiting, a helper, I must respect whoever is above me."

I got closer to her after we make the bed and held one of her hands.

"I'm not above anyone else, we're equal inside and I consider you my friend and I want you to act as such, do we agree?"

When I arrived, I was a little unsure, but in front of so many good people, I had nothing to fear. And to make things better, Juliette and I got closer over time. I never had great friends, I guess I never really cared. Since from my childhood in Boudicca, to Aretuza and then to whatever path fate takes me, it's always been me and Atlas, but at the moment, I'm very happy to have someone, who really responds when I speak, at least with words, and not neighs. Juliette smiled happily and went to the bathroom to prepare my bath.

I went to the balcony, the view was just incredible, the birds sang, the sun shone and burned against my skin, on the horizon, I could see part of the Kingdom, the village, but in the distance, mountains. I took a deep breath, basking in the morning scent, eyes hooded, just concentrating on the sounds, until Juliette informed me that the bath was ready.

As soon as I walked in, she left so I could take off my nightgown. We're friends but I still don't feel good about exposing myself like that.

After a relaxing bath with warm water, rose petals and sparkling foam. I put on a robe and found a tray on my bed with my breakfast. It had fruit, bread and juice. Normally, the king and queen would like me to join them at the dinner table, but today was different.

"The kitchen is quite busy, the king is having an old friend today. He is very excited, asked them to prepare the best dishes."

A couple of days ago, I heard some buzz in the hallways. A friend of the king was coming to visit him and it seemed he was creating a commotion around the servants. Maybe it's my imagination, but the ladies looked as fervent as a pan of boiling oil. At a dinner, the king said he would love to introduce me to one of his great friends, I just nodded.

That same night, the queen visited me in my room with a woman. A middle-aged seamstress, a few strands of gray, the queen said she was one of her favorite seamstresses and the most sought after in the kingdom and among her royal friends. She asked the woman and me to talk, and agree on nice clothes for me. I had been wearing dresses loaned to the queen for a while and she knew I didn't feel very comfortable so she contacted her seamstress.

Since today is a big day for the king, I had several options above my bed, my hair was already done with a simple braid. Time passed and I couldn't make up my mind. Juliette was nervous about my lateness, soon the king's friend would be there. For some reason, I felt more indecisive than ever, I almost didn't recognize myself.

But after so much choosing, he manages to make a decision. I looked in the mirror, admiring my necklace and my dress.

"Not that bad"

I walked downstairs with Juliette behind me on our way to the throne room. Madeline played with her son's blond strands while King Alexander chatted with some guards. The castle was cheerful, everyone seemed to want to give the guest the best reception.

As soon as she was seen by little Eric, he smiled and ran to me. I bent down a little and we hugged. Eric and I have bonded, he's an amazing kid with a thirst for adventure.

"Oh dear, look at you"

The queen approached me, looking me up and down and smiling as if I were blood of her blood. Her cheerful voice caught the attention of her husband, who approached, he took my hand and twirled me around making me feel a little shy.

"Cassandra, with all due respect, you look beautiful today."

Madeline and Juliette both chuckled softly at my blush, which also made the queen elbow her husband lightly, scolding him playfully.

Noises echoed in the distance, some voices, horses and carriages

The big door opened, one of the servants reported that the duke had arrived. The king released him, taking his queen's hand on his arm and inviting me to meet his friend at the castle entrance. I walked behind the royal couple with the little prince beside me, chattering about something I didn't hear, my hands sweating with every step I took.

When we arrived at the entrance, I could see two carriages. One loaded with suitcases, so I assumed the guest was in the other. The door of the second carriage opened and a man was the first to exit and suddenly, it was like everything had frozen around me.

The birds stopped singing, the wind got warmer, the sun didn't burn my skin, which was now chilled, my feet felt numb and my heart didn't slosh with blood. A brief deja vu flooded my mind, the memory of my imagination, every detail I imagined came alive and was right in front of me.

Tall man, defined body, strong, noble, fair skin, blue eyes.. like the sky in a spring morning, dark short hair like the night, lips that held perfect white tooth.. I am dreaming or..?

"Charles"

The king shouted happy. The handsome man bowed to the king but quickly the two of them ignored the formalities and embraced.

"How long?"

Charles. It's a good name. And his voice.. only two words left his mouth but that sound, it was like i heard a fire, hot, warming my frozen heart... but with some air of danger, like an unexpected fire that leaves you anchored. He complimented the queen and her son then took back his attention to the king that respectfully, put his hand on my back, approaching me to your friend.

"Charles, I want you to meet someone."

Alexander talked and Charles approached, finally he noticing me and our eyes crossed.

"That's Cassandra of Boudicca, the sorceress."

Charles eyes got wided while showed his beautiful smile, he delicately held my hand and softy pecked my knuckles without taking his eyes from my face.

"My lady."

He said directly at me and I could feel the air leaving my lungs.

"I am Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk"

I bent slightly, still looking at the being that came from my dreams.

"Wow daddy, she has purple eyes"

My body woke up to reality with a sweet childish voice. I looked down and beside Charles, there was a little girl, blue and curious eyes just like her father..

Wait a minute? Father? Did she really say.. daddy?

"Yes darlin, but it's not polite to look at people like that and point."

A beautiful young woman exits the carriage and stands beside Charles and the little girl, bowing towards the King and Queen.

"I've never met a sorceress before. It's a pleasure to meet you, Cassandra, and I'm sorry for my little curious daughter behavior"

Daughter..? So she and Charles..?

"I am Phoebe, Duchess of Suffolk, Charles wife and MacKenzie's mother."

Yes, they are..

A few seconds ago, I found myself in some kind of.. dream? and now, it felt like the beginning of a nightmare. It's actually quite real, just like the shiny ring on her finger.

Charles Brandon POV

As soon as I arrived, I was greeted by the king and his wife, and their little son. I greeted them, I missed them, Aluma, the castle, the memories at each place.

After the greetings, Alexander wanted to introduce me to someone I hadn't noticed at first. A beautiful woman, with a gorgeous dress, braid hair, her aura was mysterious, especially with those bright lavender color eyes, her expression looked frozen. I was able to confirm that that wasn't just what was cold, as soon as I touched her delicate hand, I felt her fingers tremble, her palm was sweaty.

I cordially kissed her knuckles with my eyes still locked on her colorful eyes, I never saw something so pretty, so magical. Magic could be the right word to describe her, after all, she is a sorceress.

"This wonderful young lady saved our Eric."

Madeline said and my cheeks burned instantly. Charles laughed and ruffled the boy's hair.

"Still getting in trouble, Eric? You need to stop running away."

The king and I had a brief conversation, until Alexander invited us inside. We both decided to go riding, to remember the old days in battle. So I went up to mine and Phoebe's room to get ready as soon as the servants told us the bags were already there. We went upstairs and left Mackenzie and Eric running together.

Cassandra's POV

As soon as the King and Charles were getting ready to ride, I excused myself from the Queen and went to my room, without running, but walking as fast as I could.

I walked into my room and slammed the door, then leaning my back against it and laying my head back as my breathing was uneven.

How was someone I imagined, now, here? Face to face. There are many people with these features, but everything about it seemed so perfect, like when it turns a short story into a play, bringing people and events to life. He was a dream, but a dream I couldn't dream.

I jumped in fright feeling them knock on the door. I took a few deep breaths, trying not to look crazy, tried to look decent and slowly opened the door to find one of the servants.

"Yes?"

"My lady Cassandra. Your Majesty requests your presence in the stables. He would like you to join him and the duke to ride."

Oh great.. I don't think it would be polite to deny it so I nodded my head smiling a little uncomfortably.

"Tell him I'll be there in a few"

The servant bowed and left. I closed the door again and ran my hands through my face.

I'm not feeling myself anymore, feels like this man has awakened something in me, something difficult to control and I think I'll have to learn because I can't seem to get away from him and these confused sensations.

[mlqcconfessions]

Can I request for how each of the guys reacts to/takes care of an MC who's showing symptoms of an eating disorder? Like she's been too careful of what she eats, is obsessed with calories and has been restrincting her intake so that she can have an all out cheat day once a week? She's at a normal weight, so they don't notice right away, but something she says or does at some point worries them? You don't have to do this if you don't want to,of course, or you think it might trigger some people.ty♡

I based this headcanon on a potentially anorexic MC, because it seemed the closest to the symptoms you described. 

Enjoy!

MLQC Headcanon - Just the way you are

Victor

He noticed you weren’t eating as much as before

You hadn’t even asked him to make pudding lately

He figured it was one of your diets (when you eat 2 portions instead of 3)

It’ll go away after a while (he’s never been more wrong)

It’s been a month since the last time you asked for pudding

Now he’s just worried

He takes you out to dinner (in hopes of making you want to eat more)

But you just order some appetizers, not entrees

He orders for you (and doesn’t leave room for compromise)

You double check the calories with the waiter (you panic when the numbers are higher than expected)

Of course, this doesn’t get by Victor’s watchful eyes (he’s been observing you for such a long time, after all)

After dinner at the restaurant, he brings you to his house

Normally, he would’ve brought out some pudding in front of you (he always stocks up on them but he’s such a tsun-tsun, he doesn’t tell you)

He has you sit down on the sofa, and sits down next to you right after

“Victor? Is there anything wrong?” (you peer at his eyes, staring back at you with frustration)

He doesn’t say anything, but just grabs your wrist instead

Not just your wrist, but your entire body is being scanned by him

You’re confused as to why he’s doing this (you’re unaware of your own warning symptoms)

“Victor....wh—”

“You dummy...!” (you look up at him, startled at his sudden raise in voice)

He releases his grip on your wrist to cup your face

Is he....crying?

In your many years of being by his side, you’ve never seen his eyes water before

“Why....just WHY? Why are you doing this..!”

“....what...?”

“Why are you starving yourself....Is it something you can’t tell me about?”

“I...I’m just preparing for a cheat day tomorrow—”

“You don’t NEED a cheat day, MC! Why..! What can I do to make you understand that....” (he rests his head on your shoulders, hands holding onto your arms)

“I only wanted to...be someone who can stand next to you....the media...likes pointing that out” (Victor sighs, and lets go of your arms)

“Do you really think I care about what the media says?”

“N...no..?”

“Do you prioritize the media over me, then?”

“No! Of course not!”

“Then do you even need to worry about that?”

“....I suppose not...”

He unfurls his eyebrows, gives you a quick “dummy”, and gets up from the sofa

“Victor?” (he sets something down on the kitchen table)

“Well? Aren’t you going to eat?” 

You glance over the table, and notice a small glazed ramekin filled with pudding (you look at his smirking face, and laugh)

“Make that 2!”

Kiro

One of his favorite activities is feeding you delicious food

But lately you’ve been rejecting every one of his offers

“It’s okay, I’m not hungry”

“No thanks. You eat it, Kiro!”

“I’ll have it later”

Sunshine boy is thinking (big brain time)

He knows it’s not like you to give up on food

He brings up the subject to your attention first

“MC, are you on a diet?” (no Kiro that’s not how you ask)

“No? Why do you ask?”

“Because you haven’t been eating much lately. I’m worried”

“Really? But I never noticed”

But in reality, you did notice (and it was intentional)

You’re restricting yourself when it comes to indulging on your favorite foods

You’re eating less than before, even against your desires

It’s not like you weren’t hungry, you just didn’t feel like eating

There was always a lingering feel whenever Kiro had shoots with other celebrities

The perfect guy with the perfect girl....nothing like me

Was it jealousy? No...not quite

You couldn’t really explain why you’re pushing yourself to this extent (even in front of Kiro)

It was when you nearly fainted that he realized something else was wrong

“MC!”

“It’s okay, Kiro. I’m fine. Just a light headache, that’s all.”

“No...you’re NOT okay!” (he scoots a chair for you to sit in)

“Really, I’m perfectly healthy”

He kneels in front of you, taking your hands in his

“MC, I know when you’re hiding something. Please be honest with me”

You can’t lie to those bright eyes, even if you wanted to

“It’s just that...I feel like I need to change myself”

“And why’s that?”

“.....because I’m not like all those models and idols”

He goes speechless for a bit, then begins to laugh uncontrollably

“Wh..what” (this wasn’t the reaction you were expecting)

“Haha! Miss Chips! You don’t need to worry about that kind of thing!”

He suddenly gets up from the ground, and calls Savin over (he comes over with a bag full of food Savin just sighs)

“You don’t need to start dieting for me, nor do I want you to”

“Kiro....”

“That’s why I want you to help me finish sampling these from the new bakery! I can’t finish this by myself, and Savin keeps running away from me!” (he pouts like a baby, prompting you to giggle)

“Then....which one should we open first?”

Lucien

Like always, nothing gets by Lu Lu

He noticed you started showing symptoms of an eating disorder

Particularly speaking, anorexia

He figured you had your reasons for eating less (that doesn’t mean he would let you continue)

If anything, he’ll actively try to help

He started adding superfoods as ingredients in his cooking (so as to prevent malnutrition)

He was so smooth about it, too?

“Hey, I think your cooking has gotten better!”

“Really? I’m flattered” (cheeky cheeky)

But even if the food was delicious, it didn’t make you stop eating less than before

You halved your portions when he wasn’t looking

Bold of you to assume he doesn’t have 50 eyes

But he didn’t want to pressure you into changing your mind about dieting

He would have to figure out another way

He figured making you flustered would be a good method (you wouldn’t be able to stay sane at his sneak attacks, anyways)

He realized being blunt about it would work the best

Spoon-feeding, let’s goooo

“MC, say ahh”

You open your mouth on instinct (if the alpha male orders it, you just have to follow)

You don’t even have time to process what you just did before Lucien scoops some food into your mouth (and it’s delicious!)

You haven’t had food this amazing in your life

Seriously, this guy can do anything!

“How is it? It’s a new menu I’ve been trying”

“It’s....passable” (you can’t stop looking at the plate)

An idea plays in his head, and he takes the plate away

“You haven’t had much of an appetite, lately. As much as I want you to finish this, it’ll bother your stomach if you suddenly eat too much”

You’re brought back to your senses as he goes back to the kitchen

“Wha— wait!”

He smiles before turning around to face you, now desperately eyeing that plate

“...yes? Is there something you’d like to tell me?” (he can’t hide the amusement in his face)

You pause for a moment, embarrassed at your own desperation

You cough and straighten your posture (your tone changes for some reason, too)

“I....I would like to finish eating that......if you don’t mind”

“But your system wouldn’t take it well”

“Ah..well...hmm....that’s...”

He chuckles, and goes in to kiss your cheek (now you’re just RED)

“So why don’t we finish it together?”

Gavin

You feel your body sometimes failing you, despite your young age

You decide to cut back on portions and eat less

If there’s anyone who shouldn’t tell you to eat healthier, it’s Mr. Instant Ramen

He says it’s different in his case

When missions come, he only has limited time in between (3 minutes to prepare the ramen, apparently)

But you’re not having any of that

“Besides, I’m doing this to be healthy!” (although eating less doesn’t really help in that field)

He just sighs, knowing that whatever he says won’t get through to you

“Alright, but promise me you won’t take things too far”

“Of course I won’t take it too far!”

You took things too far

You got lightheaded and fainted during work, in which Minor had to carry you to a nearby bench

When you came to, Gavin was there (you were resting your head on his lap)

You notice he took off his jacket and gave it to you as a blanket (you hide your face with his jacket)

He’s going to be mad, isn’t he?

Some time passes, but he isn’t saying anything (that’s scarier)

You peek out from his jacket and meet his eyes 

They’re staring back at you, as if he’s trying to tell you something with his eyes

You look away from him (you can’t stand to see him so worried)

He sighs, and helps you get up

“....Gavin” (he doesn’t say anything, but just looks back at you)

“...I’m sorry, Gavin...I shouldn’t have been so careless”

He reaches out to pull you into his embrace, stroking your hair gently

“It’s okay if you want to be healthier....but please don’t force yourself to”

He tightens his arms around your waist (he takes notice of how smaller your stature has become)

“....I promise...”

You were about to fall asleep in his warm chest, listening to the steady heartbeat ringing in your ears

Wait.

“Gavin....!” (he’s slightly startled he was about to kiss your forehead smh)

“Yes?”

“I want to work out with you!” (he’s surprised at your offer, but quickly concludes it’s better than leaving you to starve yourself)

“Alright, sounds good. Do you want to start tomorrow?”

--------BONUS---------

Birdcop regrets this decision immediately

You look so amazing in your workout clothes?

He has to stop everyone in the gym from gawking

Poor birdcop

I don’t know why, but it’s always angst with Victor

and always heated with Lucien