#i felt deeply isolated. i went to an ag school in the middle of a midwest state and studied STEM

[blondiest]

going to make my own version of those "that girl" videos that used to go around on tiktok (which were basically aesthetically-styled disordered eating so far as i could tell tbh) but mine will be me eating stuff like hard-boiled eggs slathered with mustard & enjoying it with a degree of enthusiasm that viewers find off-putting. my "that girl" trait will not be yoga or drinking five gallons of water a day or even having nice hair or clear skin, it will simply be my joie de vivre or however it's spelled

[hjellacott]

When I was a teenager, my father passed away from years of chronic illness and I got very depressed

I don't remember much for about a year, other than being in bed, crying. Life paused for a year or two, so that although time went on, my life didn't. Effectively ending it would've merely been a physical affirmation of what was already true: I was dead, at least, inside.

My father and I had a very close relationship. It wasn't like we got to do that many father-daughter things together, but mostly it was just that we were two faces of the same coin; similar enough to understand each other without a need for words, and to feel understood by each other, but different enough not to rub each other off the wrong way. I am far more different from my mother, and yet, the mother-daughter bond being as legendary as it is, we've always been attached to each other's hip and we have a deeply affectionate relationship. But after my father died, I felt abandoned, left out, alone. I felt like the black sheep of the family, the different one, because the one person who got me, who I was like, was gone forever. If only I'd known then what I know now: everybody tends to feel the same way at some point.

It affected my relationship with my father's side of the family. My parents were together until the end, so I'd always spent the most time with his side of the family, which lived near us, rather than my mum's, which lived farther away. My dad had been the best of his family, so I was never particularly close with anyone there except my, by then, very elderly grandparents. Without my dad, I experienced an odd feeling of disconnection; like a cable that's cut in the middle. Like, the thing that united me to them was gone, so was I even one of them any more? And it might seem strange, but actually, the fact that I had my dad's surname there was something I held onto firmly to remind myself I was still part of my family. Still, even a decade later, it's my mother's family I feel more united to.

Losing a parent at a young age was, to me, like being blown away by a bloody tornado when you were just beginning to learn how to walk on your own. And suddenly you're all alone, waking up in unknown turf, standing in the ruins of your family, your home... whatever remains when a chronic illness has been punching everyone where it hurts the most for years and years. And it took me years, and actually leaving my country, to find my footing again and stand strong again.

My point is that, for many years, I was in a deeply vulnerable and fragile mental state. I didn't seek refuge in drugs, but I did start to drink for the first time, even when I've always despised the taste of alcohol. In my late teens, it was trendy to be dark, mysterious, depressed... and none is that more than someone going through the kind of grief and heartbreak you can't make your friends understand. So my sudden drinking (not to drunkenness, but certainly completely out of my normal behaviour), my quietness, my self-isolation, were seen not as warning signs, but as cool behaviour, among my friends.

And then things got weird. I was seventeen, bursting into tears in high school, in front of everyone, because I'd misplaced something my dad had gifted me and couldn't find it. It wasn't even something important, just a pouch where to put money... but it was my dad's gift to me, and I could only find one friend who understood why it mattered to me, and helped me find it even if I was making a huge thing out of a grain of salt. And for a decade, I've been lashing out. A small feeling of discontentment or annoyance suddenly bursts into flames of fury, and I screamed at my mother, even though I'd never done it. I still go from 0 to 100 with tremendous ease; in sadness, in happiness, in anger, in laughter. Every feeling starts dull and is suddenly overwhelming. And so in the middle of these years of grief, I fell in love, went from 0 to a 100 in five minutes, and if I hadn't stopped myself right on time, I would've agreed to marry someone who simply wasn't right for me. Someone who loved me 80%, when I was there 100%. By now I've accepted that everything is always going to feel too much, too suddenly. That tears will burst out of my eyes for no particular reason, but so will laughter from my chest, and love from my heart. It is both a super power and a dangerous thing, but I'm treating it as a super power, and doing my best to control it when I can, without eradicating it.

One of the things I did in my grief was cross-dress as a man. I put on a three-piece suit that didn't really suit me, and cut my hair from long to zero, and even tried to use fake beards.

I wasn't a man. I never identified as such. I was always clear on the fact that I was seventeen and I just wanted to know "what it's like". But deep inside, it was about control. You see, I'd been left shattered, I was scrambling to keep my head above water, I had no control - and I longed for the power of being a man.

I wanted to stand strong as a man. I wanted to be like my late dad. To be a good man in the storm. To fight, to be strong, to be tough, to dress however I wanted, to stop being whistled at and catcalled, to have a man's salary, a man's work opportunities, a man's power.

It was just a period of my life. The closer to thirty I've gotten, the more comfortable I've felt as a woman, the more I've loved being a woman, the more I've remembered my father's happy eyes on me, watching me speechless the first time I put on a dress, make-up and heels, telling me how beautiful I was, taking photos non-stop with his professional camera and making me feel like a gorgeous princess. And damn it, I've never given a shit about male admiration, I've never fancied dressing "to impress", but my dad had such a way of looking at me with eyes full of wonder, not in a sexualised way, but in a "my god, you're a grown-up woman!" way, that I'd happily fight to have that back. This was the same man who, when I first got my period and was in a mood, cracked a smile on my face by grinning at me and saying "you're all grown-up now!", the same man who when I was just born, was the only one who said I was beautiful, and was too afraid of hurting me to even hold me for a wee bit, the same man who, if I was sitting alone with my head on the table going through whatever, would sit next to me and put his head on the table too, without saying anything, just so I wouldn't be alone, and the same man who'd go above and beyond to do things with me and get to know me. I don't look back on my dad as a dad, I look back on my dad as a best friend. I used to want to be just like him - now I just want to be like myself, and see in me the wonders that he saw. Now I stand proud as a woman, the woman I know he would've been stocked to know.

The Cass Report has brought back into the forefront of my mind what a pain it was to be a teenager and a young adult. In my case, it was because of Earth-shattering grief. In my case, I could want to have male things for a bit, and I got to experiment, to cross-dress, to kiss boys and girls, to make mistakes, and to, over the course of a decade, find my way back.

That is what I wish for children to be given back: the space and the time to figure things out without having to deal with more life-changing procedures.

Teens were in a mental health crisis a decade ago and it's only gotten worse since. And if my friends had seen what I was doing in my grief as alarming signs of mental health problems, instead of as a cool, trendy behaviour, then maybe I would've gone to therapy instead of opening a bottle of Vodka. I probably would've taken it wrong to be told I had mental health problems - and I would've rebelled, fought, argued, and in fact I did, the one time my mum insisted I saw somebody. God how I hated psychologists then, and now it's one of my main fields of study. I didn't want to be told I was sick any more than these kids do. But I needed to hear that. I needed my problems validated, even if I didn't want to hear it. I needed to be forced to accept help. I needed to be told grief is one thing, and feeling like you can't possibly go on is another. I NEEDED PROFFESSIONAL HELP.

That is all the Cass Report shows. That children need professional help. That children go through hell and back because they're barely equipped to deal with big shocks to the system, and the world has never been more hostile to them. And that just because alarming behaviour that points to mental health issues can be perceived as "cool" or "trendy", and become fashionable, it doesn't make it less of a mental health problem.

[eldritchsurveys]

1224.

What song reminds you of being in middle school? >> I don't even remember what I was listening to in middle school. Maybe Got The Life by KoRn? I'm pretty sure middle school is when I discovered that song.

What was the first thing you learned how to cook? >> I have no idea.

What does your hair currently look like? >> A buzzcut.

Who’s the worst driver you know? .

What are some wild animals commonly found where you live? >> Squirrels, raccoons, rabbits, various birds.

Does it take a lot to make you cry? >> It really doesn't. I'm definitely that "hey check out how hard I can cry" meme.

If the last dream you had came true, would that be a good or bad thing? >> The last dream I remember was something I interpreted as a representation of various anxieties and paradoxical feelings I was having, so... technically, it already is true. Metaphorically. Have you ever had a lucid dream? >> Once.

How long did your last car ride last? >> About a half-hour.

Isn’t it disgusting when people chew with their mouth open? >> It disgusts me, anyway. I wouldn't infringe upon their right to do it, though. Just won't sit in the same room with them.

What’s your most prominent memory from 2009? >> That was the only year of my life when I lived alone, the year I discovered the VF RP community and made some great friends on there, and the year I went to New Orleans for the first time. Very pivotal year, historically, but the experience of it was mostly just being horribly depressed and physically isolated for months on end.

Do you think there will ever be world peace? >> le shrug

What’s your biggest problem at the moment? >> Financial insecurity and social isolation.

Has anyone ever told you you’re too emotionally needy? >> No one's told me this because I was taught very well at a very young age that my emotions didn't matter and people don't like emotionality, so I got very good at not exposing my internal world to anyone. The truth is that I can indeed be emotionally needy, but no one knows it.

Has an ex ever told you that they want you back? >> It's happened.

Have you ever turned down a job offer? >> I have not.

What’s the longest hospital stay you’ve had? For what? >> A few months, in the psychiatric ward.

Do you know anyone who doesn’t know the basics of using a computer? >> I don't. What was the last snack you ate? >> I don't recall.

What’s something really basic that you’re terrible at? .

Is it just me, or are tv shows/movies getting to be really dumbed down? >> I do not agree with this. There are plenty of multilayered, intense, deeply engaging, clever, "smart" TV shows and movies. Seek and ye shall find.

Do you know any same-sex married couples? >> Well, yeah.

What was the last appointment you scheduled? >> That appointment for BioLife, which ended up being a bust. Are you happy with the person you have become? >> I can be. I can also be very sad and defeatist about it. All depends on the state of the nervous system.

What year were you born? >> 1987.

What does your favorite watch look like? . Did you have one of those Tamagotchi things as a kid? >> I had several. Within a few months I had misplaced all but one of them.

What’s your favorite kind of wine? >> I like a few varieties. I feel like I just answered this question recently so I won't go into depth again.

When was the last time you felt lonely? >> That's my default state. Are your parents still together? .

Have you ever been so broke you didn’t know how you’d keep a roof over your head? >> I have never been able to afford a roof over my head. I still can't, I just married someone who can.

Do you know anyone who believes that vaccines cause autism? >> I doubt it.

What was the last piece of furniture you bought? >> My bed. What’s a new skill you’d like to learn? .

How did you celebrate your last birthday? >> Man, I was still recovering from food poisoning on my last birthday and I will never not be pissed off about that. At least, until my next birthday when either I'll have a better time or a different setback to complain about <3

Do you have any great housecleaning tips? >> I mean, I'm pretty okay at cleaning a house, so I imagine I do know some good tips. But I can't just think of one off the top of my head.

What’s your favorite cocktail? >> Oh man... Manhattan, Old Fashioned, Sazerac, Bloody Maria... I just really like cocktails to be honest. I think they're so fun. Did your favorite movie come out before or after you were born? >> After.

Is there anything you need to do before the end of the day? >> I'll be showering before bed, but other than that there's nothing pressing that needs to be done.

[piratejct]

* 𝐣𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐰𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐲, 𝐦𝐚𝐥𝐞 + 𝐡𝐞 / 𝐡𝐢𝐦 | you know 𝐚𝐝𝐚𝐦 𝐛𝐚𝐮𝐞𝐫, right? they’re 𝐭𝐰𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐲-𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐞, and they’ve lived in irving for, like, 𝐭𝐰𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐲-𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐞 years? well, their spotify wrapped says they listened to 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐣𝐞𝐬𝐮𝐬 by 𝐝𝐞𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐝𝐞 like, a million times this year, which makes sense ‘cause they’ve got that whole 𝐨𝐢𝐥-𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐝 𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐬, 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐦𝐨𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐰𝐚𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐚 𝐬𝐥𝐞𝐞𝐩𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐧𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭, 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐚 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝 thing going on. i just checked and their birthday is 𝐚𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐥 𝟑𝐫𝐝 so they’re an 𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬, which is unsurprising, all things considered.

NAME: adam bauer NICKNAME(S): n/a, but you’re welcome to change that xx D.O.B: april 3rd, 1992 AGE: 29 BIRTH PLACE: san diego, california CURRENTLY RESIDING: irving, north carolina  SEXUALITY: bisexual OCCUPATION: freelance mechanic & bartender at scuba 

BACKSTORY: 

tw: mentions of kidnapping, attempted murder, drugs, overdose, death, drunk driving, car crash, self-loathing. 

80% of your life has been all but worth it. are you in the right place? failure, guilt and persistent hollowness occupy your entire being, nibble at the slab of meat inside your head, keeping you up night after night. where did things go wrong? were you destined to be this way? you were born into a middle class household that lasted only a couple of years. you were six, your sister three when the police came knocking on the door. the last time you saw your father was on the tv, the very next day when he had officially become the town’s own boogeyman. later, you learned he’ll spend the rest of his days in prison –– a punishment still not good enough for a kidnapping and two counts of attempted murder. 

frantically, your mother packed the bags and not even a month later, you could officially consider yourself a resident of irving. it was a promising new beginning, until it wasn’t. your mother found a man, an alright man –– or so she had thought at the time. he always remembered to say hi to you, smile in the doorway, so you used to think he was okay, too. after all, he was not locked up in a cell, and that immediately made him better than some. after a year of a seemingly healthy relationship, your mother had the third baby and the thought of a happy family was ever so exciting. but of course, before they could even decide on a name, the man was gone. vanished, with any hopes the now single mother of three had had. 

you grew up faster than most of the other kids in class. you didn’t have a choice. every day, you’d help your mom around the house, and while you wouldn’t realize it, you were her rock. and she? she was your best friend. at one point, your only friend. the kids at school wouldn’t die for you. they thought you were stupid, because whenever you’d read out loud, your voice would shake. you’d get nervous and you’d stutter, which made your voice shake even more and barry with the crooked teeth laugh even harder. they didn’t understand why you couldn’t just read the words, and for the longest time, you didn’t either. not even after the doctor gave it a name: dyslexia. 

but you couldn’t blame it all on a learning disorder. sure, it was difficult, but it’s not like you had the drive to try, despite it. school wasn’t your forte and being book-smart would never be on your resume. even though your grades were known for being just a tad below average, you graduated, but didn’t leave it at that. god, you probably should’ve. but you wanted your mother to be proud. and so, you applied for university in a different town. to everyone’s surprise, they accepted the half-assed application without even acknowledging the numerous spelling errors. your mother hugged you tight, cried into your chest. she told you she loved you and you genuinely believed her. and then like every man in her life, you went off to disappoint her. 

you changed your major twice before dropping out altogether. instead of attending lectures, you started selling drugs around the corner, always keeping yourself sufficiently high, too. it felt like an easy life, until they busted your ass. the student loan was cancelled and you were kicked out of the dorms. for months, you’d go between couch-surfing and sleeping in remote locations, all while doing heavy drugs and calling home every tuesday to tell your mom everything was going just great. then, they found you unconscious in a bathroom stall. accidentally, you had taken one too many. 

after that, you had no choice but to come clean and return back home, where you’d spend months in rehab while wondering if being a person is really your calling. no matter where you went, you just couldn’t fit in. while your siblings were close, you were an outsider, an intruder in your own home and the prime example of what not to do in life. your half-brother was the polar opposite, and every day, you’d watch him succeed, no matter what it was. highest grades, captain of the football team, the perfect boy next door –– the complete package. he knew he was better and you hated him for it. 

he had just started studying business at the local university. he was eighteen, his spirits always high. he was the life of the party, of every party. that night, he had driven himself, taken your mother’s car with the promise of returning it in one piece. the plan was to stay overnight, but due to issues you couldn’t even be bothered to hear about, it wasn’t a possibility. he called around 3 in the morning, drunk and asking if you could be a good brother, just this once, and pick him up. naturally, you were too tired and too bitter to cooperate. “figure it out, buddy.” 

and he did. 

the police said the body was near unrecognizable, the car wrecked, in pieces on the side of the road. you fucked up. you fucked up real bad. and your mother? fuck, she was too nice to you. too supportive. she only blamed you once, wine drunk and miserable. “tell me, adam. where did i go wrong?” and “if you weren’t so awful to people all the time, your brother would still be with us.” in that moment, you wished it would’ve been you. and three years later, you still do. 

PERSONALITY, OR LACK THEREOF: 

+ self-sufficient, loyal, protective  - aloof, stubborn, hotheaded 

x rough around the edges. resting face screaming “permanently pissed off”. favorite party-trick revolves around looking as unapproachable as possible. not a horrible guy, but he is a deeply unhappy person. at this point, however, he’s pretty much used that being the norm. has learned to live with it. 

x has a hard time letting his guard down. tends to isolate himself, doesn’t let people too close because he genuinely seems to believe he’s better off on his own. at the same time, persistent loneliness is what keeps him up at night. can someone please hold him? but.. instead of establishing deep, personal connections, he does tend to sleep with people and not talk to them again. thinks that if he doesn’t let anyone close enough, they won’t be able to fully hate him for who he actually is. 

x can go from being this chill, mellow, i-don’t-care to full blown anger. temperamental, confrontational when provoked, stubborn enough to stick with whatever he believes in. don’t catch him on a bad day. that being said, he’s much gentler around women. guys, on the other hand? piss him off just enough and you’ll get your ass kicked. men can make his soul angry and his dick hard. 

x overall, there is some suppressed softness there but you’re not getting any of it unless you’ve unlocked level 109 friendship. <3 sorry <3 

x because of past experiences, he tends to stay away from heavy drugs. however, he does like to smoke some weed every now and then. (read: everyday, bro.) and even though he doesn’t really deal, if you need a bud or two, you can hit him up and hope for the best. 

x sarcastic and tends to act unbothered, but is actually very protective of these few people he’s actually allowed himself to care about. don’t mess with his folks, folks. 

x chainsmoker. smokes everywhere, even in bed. 

x is currently renting an apartment with one or two other people. works as a freelance mechanic while also bartending at scuba. on the side, he also dabbles in music, mainly synth but he can also play guitar. however, it’s not something he talks about because, um, he’s insecure. :) to be fair, though, he definitely doesn’t suck. 

x his alcohol tolerance is spot-on, so at least he’s got that going for him. he’s also pretty street smart. and despite usually not being one for physical contact, boy actually gives amazing hugs. 

x momma’s boy at heart. king of cool hairstyles by choice. 

x don’t talk about his brother. or do! how much do you need teeth, really? 

WANTED CONNECTIONS: 

everything basic, essential and beyond. give me: 

housemates

best friend

some other close friends

hook-ups

exes (good and bad terms)

enemies. someone to fistfight with!

childhood friends

drug/party buddies

co-workers

and whatever your heart desires x

[zeoia]

I am a warm and loving person. I always have been and always will be.

Growing up, I had to be responsible very early on. I had no choice but to be mature for my age. After all, my mother wasn't there, and we needed a mom. My father was clueless, emotionally detached as an alpha male type. Currently he's not as bad as he used to be, as he finally acknowledges that when I cry, it's not to make him angry. I am crying because I am hurting. And when I am hurting I need comfort.

It used to be about his comfort. He hated seeing the tears. He'd tell us don't you dare start crying. I bottled up emotions. I withheld feelings at home. But they kept coming out during school. I'd isolate myself to cry.

One time I had an extreme outburst to the point of getting violent. I felt unheard. I'd been unheard for so long. People weren't understanding.

I had to separate from my biological mom as a child because she was incapable of taking care of us. This created a sense of longing. There was a hole in my heart and I kept wanting to fill it up somehow.

My father remarried when I was going to middle school. I told him I was fine with it. But honestly I didn't know any better. I was nine, going on ten. How was I supposed to know that I was just saying okay because that's just what I felt dad wanted to hear.

The marriage lasted throughout middle school and fell apart during high school. My stepmom was a scary person. Especially with her son around. She became very controlling. We weren't allowed in her chairs. Not allowed to watch her television. Weren't allowed to eat her foods. She made a mental note of the amount she had left. And anytime something went wrong, despite her son being the one who had always been the one to get into trouble, somehow, my brother and I were shouldering the blame for stuff we didn't do.

We were far from perfect little babies, but the worst we did was stay up past bedtime playing video games. He was a habitual liar. A thief. He was frequently breaking into houses, including our own. The first time I remember interacting with police was because of him. He broke into a girl's house. I was so nervous and I felt small. Because I was. I was so very small.

The divorce process was messy. She wanted to take our house away. Our home. The place that my brother was building bonds in. He frequently went outside spending time with neighbors. Unlike her son, we were still kids. By this time he was approaching adulthood. We couldn't be subjected to that.

We did manage to keep the house somehow. But... Maybe it would have been better to have lost it. To have moved downtown. So my father would stop acting like it was our fault that we stayed out here.

You see, my father has this habit of saying how he wanted to move downtown, closer to where everything is, but would tell us that "you guys wanted to stay here with your friends" in a mocking way. As if a teenager and a preteen know any better. Of course we wouldn't know of what opportunities existed for us downtown. We didn't live our lives in the future. We lived our lives in the moment. Looking at the future just wasn't a thing.

And the only future I COULD think of was the inevitable end. The inescapable fate that every living being shares. Because I wanted it. I wanted it to hurry up and take me so I could stop feeling sadness. the shameful feelings that would make other people uncomfortable.

I had been tired of moving. Tired of leaving people. My childhood involved way more goodbyes than I could deal with. And I continued to be desperate to fill that hole my mother left.

In this home, we finally had a permanent place. Some sort of stability. I didn't want to let go of anything. I couldn't let go of anything. After all, every time my mother visited us, I kept having to let go. I had to let go of the person who was willing to let me cry. I had to let go of the person who frequently told me I love you. this isn't to say that my father was unloving. I still remember every day when we still lived in the apartments, my brother and I would be home alone and we'd hear the door unlocking. And we'd make a mad dash to the door to jump into his arms to be hugged by him.

But this came to an end eventually. Growing up was awkward, and it made me withdraw more. My father expected me to be more ladylike. Despite telling me stuff like "do your best" I often felt like I was failing, even if I wasn't actually failing. Things were hard for me in school. On top of the stress of the divorce, my grades were getting worse. The transition from middle school to high school was uncomfortable. I told myself I was done with goodbyes, so why did I have to say goodbye to my best friends again?

I still remember people I considered my best friends, all the way from third grade. Donna. Jessica. Tina. Martha. Karen. Rae. Megan.

Graduating high school I didn't want to let go. I was tired of letting go. Despite my frequently feeling slightly out of place, I clung to Rae and Megan. We worked the same jobs for years. And then when Rae left for college, it was just me and Megan. Two weird kids with little ability to actually make new friends.

Megan and I did everything together. I went to her house frequently. We even went to the same community college. But as an adult things were getting different. She was very interested in dating, and I was getting more into self discovery. Online, I was making friends with people who liked the things I liked. I got involved with fandoms. She was too, actually.

But our interests didn't always overlap. But in my desperation to keep doing things with my only real life friend, I forced myself to enjoy the things she did. I didn't care for super heroes. Didn't care for being a "Potthead" as they called themselves. I don't know if that's still the term. She liked a lot of things that were very white, euro-centric. I liked things that were. Well they felt different. I liked webcomics and other things I found online, rather than mainstream media. Sometimes I tried to convince her to do something that I liked to do, but she wasn't really having it. If anything she just had a preference for insulting it and making me feel bad for liking things that really weren't her taste.

Honestly I don't remember what started the build up of animosity. I remember that I lost my grandmother on my dad's side and I felt terrible because I never got to really know her. My depression was absolutely awful then and I couldn't bring myself to go to work often. I remember one day when we were looking at our paychecks and she gave me this condescending "well maybe if you didn't call out so much." And I told her "hey how would you feel if your grandfather died? What would you have done huh?" And she got mad at me for making her even think about it. Me, actively in mourning about the death of a loved one, and she's the one mad because I dared to ask her to put herself in my shoes.

The rift was growing so much bigger. But we both still wanted to hold on because we both had nobody. I... Honestly couldn't tell you what it was that was the final nail in the coffin. Maybe it was all the guilt tripping she did. She told me that she was tired of having to go everywhere with me and that it cost money to drive me from place to place, ignoring the fact that I was always going the same place with her. Work. School. We planned it out so it was convenient. And I often bought things for her. I paid for food, gave her gas money, and I even sometimes would splurge on something she had her eye on. Like. A figure or a toy. She had bills and I didn't, so I had the spending money for it. Because I had to make sure that I wasn't going to say goodbye again.

But we did. It was messy. She called me a petty bitch. I don't even remember everything. I just know that I was alone again. Secluded. Isolated. I had nobody. Nine years of friendship and the void was bigger now.

I was desperate to keep finding people. I kept surrounding myself with groups. Getting deeply involved in fandoms in an attempt to connect with people. I leaned heavily on people emotionally, especially if they got closer to me and interacted with me more. People who did anything for me, I would cling to immediately. I wanted to do everything with people who spent time with me. I became addicted to attention.

And that addiction is why I'm in this mess today. It's true that I have managed to surround myself with genuine people who love me, but sometimes something bad lurks about. Especially in a place full of mentally ill people.

[barkadasesh]

"THE TASTE OF HAPPINESS"

In an isolated village near the sea a 19-year-old tall, dark skinned and good-looking guy

with brown hair lives named Nathaniel, despite his appearance the people in his village are

furious because of his bothersome attitude. He is sometimes called “rude-nathan” because of

how he treats other people and how he doesn’t care about anything around him. He lives by

himself because he lost his parents at the age of 12 when they are working in the middle of the

vast sea. He stopped going to school when he was in 4th year Highschool due to financial

problems and because he can’t support his needs properly. People around don&#39;t like him because

of his attitude but they admire the positivity he always shows when the problem is around the

corner. The one thing that he is very good and skilled at is cooking, his passion and love for

cooking is immeasurable where people tend to ask him about food and he answers them but

sometimes in a sarcastic manner. He is a type of guy who is talented but his attitude is in the

opposite way.

One day when Nathaniel was wandering in the white sandy beach near the shore, he saw

a not so tall, brown skinned girl with long straight hair that fell just above her shoulder walking

slowly in the shore, looking in the vast blue sea where her eyes are just like a digital camera,

catching every corner of the sea and every movement of the waves it creates. Nathan was

amazed at how the sea and the girl are immensely beautiful. The beautiful girl notices Nathaniel

and approaches him, when they are now facing each other she extends her hand to offer a

handshake to Nathaniel. A very shy smile appeared on Nathan’s face and immediately reached

out his hand to accept the handshake and Nathan was amazed at how the girl smiled so

beautifully.

“Hi! I’m Callista and you are?”

“Hello! I’m Nathaniel but you can call me Nathan for short” smiled shyly.

Nathan and Callista talked to each other as if they were long lost siblings that they were

comfortable in each other. Callista told Nathan that her father bought a rest house near the

village, to spend the summer vacation since she’s still studying and she was walking to see or be

familiar with the whole place. The village people who saw the two sitting next to each other were

caught off guard because the Nathan they were looking at is not the Nathan who has a bad

attitude. They were thinking that Nathan might be having a hard time since he is alone that’s why

his attitude is his defense mechanism to hide the loneliness that he feels.

“I’m so deeply in love in the sea because of its breathtaking beauty, the cool breeze that soothes

in the skin and the water that sparkled brightly as the warm light hit right through it”. Callista

said as she looked in the sun that soon to set getting ready for the evening sky. Nathan also looks

in the sunset and feels happy that he found a friend that he doesn’t expect they will both share

the same interest and dreams.

After a couple of days Nathan and Callista are now treating each other as siblings where

they are more comfortable than before. They both love cooking and eat a lot of different foods

where they made a promise to each other that one day they will travel and taste the different

cuisines every place could offer. Nathan changed since he met Callista and he sometimes thought

it&#39;s true that “God will let you meet someone who will help you to be a better version of

yourself”. His life is like a food without a taste where you will still eat it because it is made for

you and he compares it to his life that even though he experienced being a worthless person he

still served a purpose in this beautiful world.

The summer vacation is in the corner and Callista told Nathan that she needs to go back

to their house in the City near the village to continue her studies. At first Nathan felt sad because

his closest friend would leave but Callista promised “I will visit here every vacation and let’s

spend time together again. Distance will never break our friendship. I promise you that” Callista

smiled so beautifully while saying it.

Time has passed, Nathan became a diligent kind of person and he is now socializing to

the people in the village. People surrounding him were amazed because of his hidden

personality, a joyful, industrious and a very reliable guy that they didn’t see immediately. The

smile on their faces is like a smile of proud parents to their child when it accomplished

something. Their eyes sparkle as if Nathan is like a gem that was found in the deepest sea. It is

truly remarkable if the person you once hate is now a treasure you want to keep forever. Nathan

became the favorite of the people, he cooked for them, helped in their works and assisted them

when they needed help. They treat him as part of their own family which made Nathan feel an

astounding happiness that he never felt before. Through the help and support of the people he

started his own business a small diner that serves fresh seafoods. Even though he doesn’t finish

studying, he proves that through hardship and a positive mind everything is possible. As his

business slowly grew, Nathan didn’t forget to send a letter to Callista on how he started his

business and how he changed his perspectives in life. He told Callista how the people in the

village love him now and how they support him in achieving what he wants.

“I hope you’ll visit again here someday. I want to show you how I&#39;ve changed into the better

version of myself. I’m sure my parents would be proud of me”. Nathan wrote to his letter as his

eyes filled with joy and positiveness.

Summer is in the doorway and Nathan is excited to meet Callista again. He is also excited

to make his food and cooking skills known as tourists come to the beach where his diner stands.

He wants to be rich in order to fulfil their promise that they will travel and taste a lot of different

foods. One night while he is busy serving the customer a tall, white skinned girl with blonde hair

that shines as the moonlight struck right through it approaches him and yells “Nathan best

friend!” At first Nathan is clueless, his eyebrows curved and a frown registered in his face while

looking at the girl who called him. His mouth widened as he recognized the girl standing right in

front of him and he excitedly shouted “Callista!” a shout that is full of joy and Nathan

immediately hugged Callista like a brother who missed his sister. They go outside and walk on

the shore under the dazzling light coming from the moon. Nathan and Callista sat on the

beautiful white sand excitedly sharing their stories and laughing together.

“I missed this feeling, the cold sea breeze, the wind that’s so fresh and the nostalgic sensation

while looking at the vast sea. The waters are sparkling as the moonlight hits the sea water it feels

like home”. Callista sighed and smiled so beautifully.

After they talk to each other, they both stand up facing the breathtaking beauty of the sea,

Nathan asks Callista if they could start their food travel but after some months so they can both

prepare and fix their personal stuff before going. Callista nodded her head slowly and looked at

Nathan with a big smile on her face and said “Sure let’s fulfill our dream”. The next morning

Callista says goodbye to Nathan because she needs to prepare and ask her father for their

upcoming travel all over the country. Nathan felt a little sadness because they couldn’t spend a

lot of time in the village but Callista cheered him up because they can finally do the things, they

want the most. They hugged each other but Nathan’s sad face can’t deny what he really feels.

“Come on Nathan smile!” Callista stretches out his face and Nathan can’t ignore her that’s why

he smiles so genuinely. “Let’s meet in the bus station outside the village after 2 months”. Nathan

patted Callista’s head and said “Sure I’ll wait for you there”.

Months passed so quickly and Nathan looked in his belongings remembering what he

could forget and after that he went out in his house, bid a goodbye to the village and to the

people who will handle his business for the meantime. One of his trusted friends accompanied

him up to the bus station and they bid goodbye to each other happily. Nathan can’t take off the

smile he’s wearing because of the excitement he feels while waiting for Callista. After some

minute he heard a very familiar voice coming opposite of where he is looking, he smiles so

widely knowing who owns that very joyful voice. He faces the direction where the voice came

from and there, he sees a girl who wears leather boots, skinny denim jeans and an oversized

black shirt that looks really cool and that is Callista waving from the other side of the road. They

look at each other and wave their hands excitedly while shouting “This is it; Let’s go, food is

waiting”.

In our life all the problems will always try to take us down, be strong, positive and learn to find

hope in you and to others. In our darkest night there will always a star that will shine bright and

will give light. - NATHAN

(Descriptive Story by Patrick Ofialda)

[levyfiles]

Hi! I'm still questioning my sexuality, although I most closely relate to pansexual. But I've never really had a decent conversation with someone who also identified as pansexual. I saw that you have it on your bio, and I really wanted to ask the basic question of how did you figure it out and when did you know? Did you always know or was it a process to figuring it out?

Ooh boy, this one is a long one. TW: sexual identity, afab dysphoria, religion mentions

Actually, I think it took me a long time to sort out the feelings and the reality of it. I’ve mentioned often enough on this blog that I grew up in a strict fundamentalist Christian community and went to a heavily religiously focused prep school from grade 7 to graduation. My surroundings were not at all queer-positive and any whispers of someone being not straight were only that; barring one suspicious situation where a guy older than me left school long before graduation after it came to almost everyone’s attention that he’d come out. 

For me, it was as plain as day that gender didn’t seem to be a factor when it came to who I felt an attraction to but I didn’t feel how “abnormal” it was until the subject came up. I didn’t understand that bisexuality existed until I was 13 and by that time I even wondered if my attraction to anyone not male was just cultivated by how close I was to my female friends because any crushes on girls I had was based entirely on how deeply I cared about them and the level of protection and loyalty I wanted to express for them. It definitely didn’t help that any male friends I had had to be a secret because my dad was rigidly against my having any sort of male contact until I finished college. Every sexual/romantic interaction I had was secret going forward basically so it all felt the same in a big way. It left me with a deep sense that attraction was meant to be a quiet thing you could share in secret with someone but it definitely wasn’t a “family” thing. Really messed me up for too long after I’d left home.

I think in some capacity, though, every bi/pan person experiences the isolating stigma of not being certain, of exploring what it means that the feelings for any gender hits you differently depending on where you are and who they are. I think the moment I came to terms with it was a little later. I was 19, literally in the middle of my first same-sex relationship watching my girlfriend struggle through her own identity in the wake of both us coming from the same religious self-loathing background. For me, though, it was a matter of realising that sexuality can be fluid, that some people are just wired a certain way and their personhood is not always dependent on finding the name for it. Reading online at that age the definition made me also realise that my attraction to a person is deeply dependent on who they are uniquely, my respect for them, and how the beauty of their humanity glows through all of it. 

I think what helped me settle in with the pansexual label and the queer label especially was my own relationship with my gender. The frustration of literally just sitting there and feeling a jarring disconnect when someone looked at you in a group of other people and said “Ladies!” and then the following few seconds feeling a vehement love and protection for my unique journey as a woman, esp a multiracial one and then once again wanting to vomit when people wanted to bond with me over a bodily function like bleeding or being a vessel for a fetus that people seem to want more of when society at large can’t even show empathy or active protection/love for the grown children they want so goddamn more of. It’s all a mess and attraction and identity is all a swirl of your experiences and genetic makeup, I feel zero compunction to judge or police others into getting a hold on who they are when at my big age it’s all so much noise to me when I get into the fundamentals of it.

What is important is how you feel when you’re at your happiest. Who you feel it for is secondary and that if you experience feelings for someone or attraction and they expect you to come with all your respective labels intact then they are not being fair to you. Literally, don’t put pressure on yourself while you’re questioning things and don’t let the noise of everyone else telling you where you do or don’t belong in terms of sexual identity let you feel bad for finding your space and then backpedalling when you find another angle of yourself you feel right about.

I hope this helped somehow. I’m often all over the place online but if you ever do want to have a real conversation about it, I am more active on discord if you’d like to reach out.

[seoulsborne123]

This trope or that: embolden your fic/fanfic preferences

Tagged by @tiffotcf . Thanks Tiffo! Tag @eyeliner-vampire @frenchcirce

The fic I write or would write of the choices given.

Slow burn OR love at first sight: don’t really believe in love at first sight. Love develops over time.

Fake dating OR secret dating: for some reason, I always put Mai and Naru in secret dating mode so I guess I have a thing for this. 

Enemies to lovers OR best friends to lovers: Weeeell, if it’s enemies to best friends to lovers, which would it be?

Oh no there’s only one bed OR long-distance with correspondence: I agree with Tiffo, awkwardness is the best.

Hurt/comfort OR amnesia: I am deathly afraid of amnesia. Just the thought of memories being erased and the possibility of never getting the same relationship you had before is the most hurtful thing I can think of. Therefore I’d like to explore that in a story.

Fantasy au OR modern au: I’d be open to either. I love AU for some of my established fandoms because I know the characters very well and could imagine them in other situations. But for example, I cannot read/write BnHA AUs yet because I’m not so deeply into it, it’s weird to see those characters doing other things. 

Mutual pining OR domestic bliss: I would love to get to the point in my Game, Set, and Match story where they’re in domestic bliss. This isn’t spoiler, is it?

Smut OR fluff: I could not write straight out smutt, but I love to read that shit, given they’re not OOC. But for me, I can only write fluff (I mean, I would probably continue to attempt writing smut though)

Canon compliant with missing scene OR fix-it fic: yeah, I’d rather work with canon material and try to fit things in like a puzzle than change things completely

Alternate universe OR future fic: Again, depends on the fandom, otherwise I’m open to both. But I guess in general I prefer future fics. 

One-shot OR multi-chapter: Sometimes I get fatigued with multi-chapter stories so for the sake of my readers, I prefer one-shots. But often when I plan it out, I come up with more things and it doesn’t make sense to put it all in one chapter. 

Kid fic OR roadtrip: Never read a roadtrip fic... so I wouldn’t know how to write it.

Reincarnation OR character death: Actually as I was considering this option, an idea came to me. Just gotta write it down and maybe...

Arranged marriage OR accidental marriage: I’m not sure how you could get accidental marriage, so arranged marriage it is. 

High school romance OR middle-aged romance: I, by far, enjoy writing older characters more

Time travel OR isolated together: I never went time traveling, but my husband and I have been isolated together so there’s more material there for me. Lol.

Neighbours OR roommates:  Neighbors are too removed. Roommates can really get all up in your face and make interesting dynamics.

Sci-fi au OR magic au: I have attempted sci-fi once. We had a science project in high school where we had to write a sci-fi novel and we had our classmates read it and grade it. Stupid really. But my crush ended up reading my story and I felt so embarrassed because it was not my best story. SO I AM WILLING TO TRY AGAIN. Hahahahahaha)

Bodyswap OR genderbend: I like bodyswap, but without the weird pervertedness that goes along with it

Angst OR crack: Definitely crack, but with as little OOC as possible. I love funny.

Apocalyptic OR mundane:  I actually don’t like apocalytpic scenarios that much so definitely slice of life mundane

[kcostanz]

disclaimer: I’m going to be existential & sad before I turn it around

As 2020 wraps, I find myself increasingly absorbed by understanding the practices that I’m newly drawn to. The things I’ve chosen to connect with to get through what has certainly been the most unexpected year of my life, and perhaps that of billions of others. Even making such a grand statement still boggles my mind. Taking a moment to step outside of my life to acknowledge this global reality always gives much needed perspective. Life has been altered in wholly unforeseeable ways for billions of people this year. 

Exactly how our lives and worlds have been reshaped certainly looks different for each and every one of us. Our realities are constructed by so much: where we live, who we live with, what we do each day, our job, or the roles we play in society as a whole. Every life looks different, but the pandemic’s impact on these answers (and many more) is ever-changing and harshly felt. 

Reflecting on my own journey that has been navigating covid-19 and its impact on the world centers upon my age. Being 22 years old right now feels like constantly being stuck at a major life inflection point. In many ways I’m at the height of decision making- important ones at that, that will guide (the beginnings of) the rest of my life. Existential and perhaps a bit dramatic I know, but the pandemic exacerbates these emotions, so throw me a bone. 

I spent the first 21 years of my life on a set path, a regulated track that unknowingly provided an absurd amount of comfort. I went to public school K-12, graduated high school, and attended a 4-year institution, long awaiting the fantastical graduation year that for so long existed as a far-off fantasy: 2020. 

That momentous final semester was different than expected, but I can’t complain. I spent the last 3 months of college with a small handful of my closest friends, attended classes from the comfort of my bed, and graduated in my tiny apartment with two of my closest friends who hung around until the end. 

I procrastinated packing and cleaning my apartment until the last possible moment as my disapproving landlord approached to conduct the final walkthrough. Unsurprisingly, I left with a fraction of the security deposit, and the hard learned lesson that expo marker writing does not always come out of refrigerators (as the All Purpose spray, Oxi-Clean, bleach, hot water, soap, and eventually, shamefully, white paint can attest). 

With a egregiously packed car and zero rear view visibility, I was off. I blasted oldies with a twinge of liberation- I think I recall Born to Run (don’t worry, I am indeed embarrassed). I left all four windows down until I could no longer stand the sound of garbage bags flapping. Five short hours later I pulled into the driveway of my childhood home in Rochester, NY (with a broken mirror in the trunk no less- unsure if I’m superstitious but it felt like bad luck). 

The latter half of 2020- from June until now, has been full of unknowns, decision making in the dark, and hard fought self motivation. Vivid mixes of emotions old and new. 

First the dread of moving back in with parents as a young adult, and the stubborn resistance to fully unpack, so as to not get “too comfortable” at home. I now know such a thing is impossible for many reasons, one being that regardless of the lighting, art, and design, the girly pink walls of my childhood bedroom have proven immutable. 

Following this initial shock were extreme levels of self-induced pressure to find a job, do nothing but apply to jobs, and then bask in dejected feelings of never being able to get a job. While in the process, fully isolating myself from others, because I simultaneously felt I had too much to do, but yet was never really doing a thing. That concept has been fun to sit with. It comes with the realization that the carefree bliss of not having a single thing to do- say for a month long winter break- is officially gone. The list of things you could (and probably should) be doing is endless- welcome to the real world, Kate!

August was a blessed, beautiful month that, at the risk of (again) sounding dramatic, I am eternally grateful for. During this sweltering month I lived out of a car for nearly 3 weeks, camping with two pals throughout Utah and Wyoming. Even hitting a deer at 9pm, in a no-cell service zone, in the middle of a State Forest in Wyoming was a welcomed adventure at this point. A broken transmission, impromptu camping, two-hour tow truck ride, countless insurance calls, hostile car dealership conversations, two rental cars later, and we were back on track. This (incomplete) list of challenges provided beautiful life experience however, imparting lessons I could never fully know until I lived them. 

Returning home was as expected, a difficult transition back to monotony. Did I apply to vineyard jobs vaguely “out west?” Absolutely. Did I have it in me to go through with such a spontaneous life choice? Unfortunately not, though to my credit I did realize important goals that stood in the way of a dreamy vagabond existence. 

The fall has been a blur, and now there’s snow on the ground. I’ve found myself living for the future, and rarely ever for the moment, which is entirely antithetical to my personal philosophy. I have proclaimed my personal soundtrack to 2020 to be the loop of traditional Lebanese music that plays on repeat at my job as a server at Sinbad’s Mediterranean Cuisine (now as a takeout extraordinaire. And yes, despite the lack of in-person customers we are indeed instructed to play the CDs as per usual). This work, or my role as a part-time nanny is far from fulfilling (though the kids are darn cute), but that’s not the point for now. “At least I’m saving!” has been my most reliable source of positive encouragement, nearing personal mantra. 

I write this from my childhood bedroom, sitting at my desk, which was once our kitchen table circa 2002. It is as wobbly as it is sentimental, and I love it. The desk faces a window, the sill littered with glassware and candles because I have a thing against artificial light. I have a total of five notebooks, half opened, each containing swirling levels of thoughts, drawings, organization, calendars and to do lists. An orange caricature of a topless french woman sunbathing sits in front of me, reminding me that “TOUT VA BIEN!” (that everything is fine). And in minutes I will be dancing to the Moana soundtrack or drawing christmas trees and unicorns with 3 and 4 year olds. A snapshot of my life, at 22 years old, in 2020. 

Despite my life not being what I expected, or what I wanted it to look like as I embark on what’s supposed to be the most adventurous, spontaneous, and simply well-lived decade of my life, it is what it is, and as the french lady says, everything is fine. I have two part-time jobs, unforeseen savings, quality family time (both for better and for worse), my mom’s cooking, and a roof over my head. In a world with inconceivably high death tolls, rising unemployment and homelessness rates, and the constant, precarious fear of general loss, I have infinite blessings to count.

Life does feel like a giant waiting game though. How can one strategically plan out what comes next in their individual life when the entire world remains a massive question mark? In a time when we feel trapped, impatiently waiting for opportunities, experiences, and adventures to reopen, waiting feels hopeless. Because it is. If you’re unhappy with the opportunities before you, create your own.

I’m not saying I’m doing a stellar job at this myself- and as you can see I certainly struggle with my fair share of existential pessimism (day in and day out). But doing things has a certain electrifying feel that ignites and empowers you to build a meaningful life. I’m producing a web series with a group of similarly listless 20 somethings who are also doing their best to be creative and productive from the confines of their family homes. I’m practicing yoga and meditation really to cope with my own stress and internal anxieties, but in doing so am creating new habits and mindsets that will certainly outlast the pandemic. I’ve connected with a group of strangers by dancing to shamantic and electronica music in various outdoor locations throughout Rochester. Whoa! Never would I have imagined finding such deeply liberating peace through ecstatic dance of all things, but hey 2020 is full of surprises. 

This position I’m in is both uniquely my own through my personal experiences, and also shared by more people than I could imagine. Maybe only bits and pieces resonate with you, or maybe you are living your best life in the city of your dreams with a fabulous career in a lovely home with the world’s best roommates. But even if that’s you- you’re missing out on something too. The whole world is. We feel disconnected, disjointed, digitally controlled and consumed, and despite who we surround ourselves with- isolated. We’re stuck living in a world of “once this is over I’ll….” and no matter who you are it feels damn weird to spend so much time in your head dreaming of a future rather than living it out in the now. 

So… solutions? As we all know, you only have so much control during a global pandemic (very little to be exact). But what you can control is how you live your life during it. I certainly won’t preach to what works and pretend like I’ve figured it out- that work is no one’s to do but your own. But I do feel that so much comes down to mindset, perspective, mental health and ultimately finding ways to seek inner peace. 

Potential solutions are abundant, and have been explored by more people now than ever before. Though there is no recipe to conquer the inevitable fears, concerns and anxieties that accompany the pandemic and this phase of life, I’m interested in further exploring some of the ones that work for me. How is something as simple as breathing so helpful? 

Finding inner peace is a sought after skill in 2020. I have endless gratitude to all of the incredible humans who have served as a source of learning, and have helped me to tap into positive internal energy. My intention is to look into some of the causes of (my personal) covid-realted inner turmoil and the solutions that have brought some serenity into my life. Though they may not always be long lasting, some answers are better than none. Here’s to writing for no one, and thank you for listening. <3 

[operationwell]

Reflections on Past Institutionalization

Today was the day that I knew would be coming. The day I would have to face, process, and differentiate between my past experiences in psychiatric facilities, and my future stays. I know that all of this doesn’t necessarily happen in one day, but rest assured - it is happening. 

5 years ago, In April of 2015, I entered a hospital in Schaumburg, IL at around 8pm. My Auntie had heard that this hospital offered free psychiatric evaluations, and we had planned to go and have a simple assessment where they could provide insight into which medications were hurting and which were helping my cause. About 6 weeks prior to this, I had been prescribed Celexa as an antidepressant and it caused my depression and anxiety to skyrocket beyond my control, and I became flooded with suicidal ideation. My doctor (the psychiatrist of every student on psych medications throughout my university) insisted that I remain on the medication for 6 weeks. As my symptoms worsened, he prescribed me Trazodone as a sleeping aid and Klonipen to help with my multiple panic attacks daily. As medications were thrown at me, my health worsened. I struggled with sleep disturbances (insomnia, night terrors, inconsistent sleep schedule), I lost weight (food quickly became unappealing on the medications, I had no appetite, I had difficulty eating as I would become nauseous and vomit during and after consuming food) and my health deteriorated. I stopped going to Yoga and working out multiple times a week because I was no longer functional enough to continue. My grades slipped and I received 3 “incomplete”s in my classes and had to finish my work months later for credit. I dropped my commitments to the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, alongside many clubs and school groups. I was closeted from my family and all but 2 friends, I had recently broken up with my partner of 3 years. I was in therapy on my college campus, and nothing seemed to be working... so a free psych evaluation sounded like the right thing to do.

That day, I received an award from Loyola University Chicago School of Communications that I was their top student in the Advocacy and Social Change program. Little did the school staff know that within a few hours I would be Baker Acted. I got dressed up and invited my Auntie and 2 friends to the celebration. Like most days when the world feels like it is crumbling, I laughed and smiled and moved through the motions. Saying goodbye to my friends, I packed a weekend bag to head to the suburbs, this was typical seeing that my Auntie is one of my closet friends and mentors, and I frequently “ran away” to her guest room in order to escape my troubles. We agreed to go to dinner with my uncle and cousin, then go for the free evaluation. I pushed food around on a plate and I drank a Shirley Temple with my then 9 year old cousin, Dylan. 

I entered the hospital with Auntie late in the evening. I put in my headphones to listen to Bon Iver because my anxiety was triggered by the hospital environment. I filled out a form that asked two yes/no questions: 

Within the last 24 hours, have you had thoughts of killing yourself? Yes No

If yes, do you have a plan to kill yourself? Yes No

I circled yes for both.

I told myself that dishonesty was not going to get me the help I needed, so I told the truth. After I handed in that questionnaire, my hands were tied. No matter what I said in the clinical evaluation, they would legally have to keep me under the Baker Act. I tried to explain the ways that the medications I was taking were making it worse, how my anxiety and depression were related to trauma, but they were not interested in that. They were interested in protecting me from the threat of myself. The admissions staff informed me that I would be staying for the next few days in the hospital. When I protested and tried to leave, they threatened to call the police. I looked to my Auntie for guidance and she broke down saying “I am so sorry, I wouldn’t have brought you here if I knew they would take you from me”. My auntie is the light of my life and even though this experience was incredibly trying, I am so glad that she was there with me holding my hand and making sarcastic jokes throughout the process. She was, and continues to be, my rock and my safe space. Thank you, Auntie.

I was stripped of my clothes, searched, asked to squat and cough. I was brought into the adult ward with nothing besides the clothes I wore in, and a notebook. I was shocked as I finished the evaluation process - it was now the middle of the night. One of the night staff saw me enter my room and was intrigued because “I don’t look like the other patients in here” to which my response was “what should I look like?” we spoke about religion, and what my goals were; I shared with him my purpose - to bring peace to the world through advocacy, conflict resolution, and vulnerability. He was kind. He very well might have been an angel. But I am convinced he was real. He gave me a gift, and I still have it. A book about hope, religion, and peace. Inside the front cover he wrote “Be at peace and know that you are love”. When he left my room less than 30 mins later, I showered and got into my bed, I slept till the techs woke me to take my blood and I never saw that man again.

The next 72 hours consisted of sharing a room with an older woman who insisted on being naked 24/7 and caused plenty of problems in the ward, attending all-day therapy and coping skill development groups, trying to convince the doctors and nurses I was cured and able to leave, attempting to escape my parents worried calls, being constantly poked and prodded by nursing staff, commiserating with other patients (most of whom were much older than me), and coloring in mandalas and calling it “art therapy”.

During this stay, the psychiatrist kept my diagnosis of depression and anxiety and added “You need to watch out for Bipolar”. He immediately started me on Abilify, an antipsychotic, and after 3 days was convinced the Abilify helped enough to discharge me. I went straight to the pharmacy after my stay and found the medication was $116/ pill. The drug was new, did not have a generic at the time, and I could not afford that, so I discontinued the use of the medication. 

By this time, I am deeply concerning my parents and they have bought me a one way flight to South Florida for the summer after my sophomore year. I was planning on working at Boston College for the summer and spending my entire junior year abroad in the Philippines and Vietnam, but the international travel was not brought to fruition. My parents were hurt by my secrecy, terrified, and looking to help alleviate some of my suffering. They helped me to get to a psychiatrist that might be able to help with the medication situation, and he did. I was put on Zyrexa, an antipsychotic, and the next day the sun came out. I stayed on the medication for over 4 years, but it caused grueling side effects including excessive sleeping, sedation, mixed mood episodes, and extreme weight gain to name a few.

After I was institutionalized, I told myself that I would try whatever I could to avoid the trauma, the expense, and the repetition of my experience in the ward. I felt that while I was held there, I was a prisoner, I had no rights, I had no resources, and I had a one person support system. I never wanted to go back.

Now, I am in very different shoes. I have knowledge and information. I have an entire degree dedicated to better understanding mental health and the system, I have years of experience working clinically in the field, and I have an incredible support system. I am currently seeking treatment to titrate off all unnecessary medications, to stabilize my mental and physical health, and to work intensively with clinicians on sustainable coping mechanisms. This is not like before. 

Today I spent most of the day crying and wondering how I could possibly face being stripped of my agency and belongings again, being isolated from my supports again, and being forced to take medications without consent again. The answer that I found in my tears is that I don’t have to face that again. This new situation of seeking residential treatment is dredging up emotions and memories from my experience 5 years ago; but this is different. I am afraid, and I am allowing myself the grace to feel that fear and tend to it. As I care for myself I am also caring for my younger self, my self at 19, and at any other age when I felt alone, afraid, and out of options. Once I have done my tending, I am able to open my eyes and see that in the here and now I am surrounded by support, I am brave, and I am patient with my options. 

I am surrounded by love. I am love. I am at peace.

Here is something I created in 2015 while in the psych ward. All text is quotes of staff and peers during my 3 day stay.

[rebeccacollegeblog]

Reflection One

I really enjoyed the article we read, “Why Can’t Washingtonians Resist Asking Each Other What They Do For A Living?” The article described a church in Washington, DC that discourages it’s congregation from asking others what they do for work. It later went on to describe that in highly professional cities like DC, New York, etc, it is a common “second question” to ask. There are many speculated reasons for why, obviously it varies from person to person. Some include wanting to know what the person can do for you, or if you are politically or socially aligned. 

I have been a student for a very long time. I have had random jobs here and there, mostly as a receptionist for various massage spas. I love this job very much, but it is admittedly not very exciting. I also am constantly shuffling between having a job and not having a job, depending on my school schedule, mental health, and current home. Because of this, where do you work is a very stressful question for me to answer. I lead an incredibly privileged life, to come from an upper-middle class family who cares about me deeply, and allows me to go through my bachelors at my own pace. I am so grateful for that, due to some health struggles and a degree change, I have had to pace myself, meaning I am 24 and still working on my bachelors. When asked what I do by other people my age, it is very hard not to compare myself to them. So what started as a simple conversation starter for them, I now feel very judged and isolated in the conversation.

This makes me think of a few weeks ago, I met this girl at a bar in Richmond. I was sitting alone, waiting for the bartender to get off work so we could hang out, and she came to sit next to me and struck up a conversation. She was very engaged with me, she shared appropriate personal information, and was supportive and interested in my personal information I shared. She didn’t ask me what I did for work until at least 25 minutes into our conversation. By this point, I felt comfortable enough with her to say that I am currently not working and am a student, but also that that made me uncomfortable due to my age. She was very supportive, made me feel safe that she was not judging me, and went on to talk about times when she has felt similarly judged. This may have been a small act about an insecurity that is kind of silly, but to me it was so important. At the time, I was just happy to have found a new friend, but I know now she was displaying a great understanding of the Interpersonal Process Model of Intimacy, and I was doing some self-disclosure, causing me to also employ the Model of Intimacy effectively.

I had a lot of fun taking the Myers-Briggs test, I have wanted to for awhile but never actually done it. I knew I was introverted, but I did think I would be more thinking and less feeling. These tests are hard sometimes because of the generalization in questions. I think that these results do reflect what I am like on a low anxiety day. 

I am unsure how to end this so I will just say I am bummed that classes are all online, because I was really looking forward to meeting my professor in person. However, I can’t say I am not glad to not have to do any in person presentations. I hope everyone is staying safe and staying inside during this beautiful quarantine season. 

[joshuadunshua]

What to do when you’re afraid to leave, but you’re just as afraid to stay?

I was born in the covenant, to a convert father and a Mormon-since-birth mother. I was baptized at eight, like I was supposed to. I had a spiritual crisis in middle school, then found my way back to the church by high school. But I have never felt at ease with the teachings of the church. It has never sat right with me. I figured it was because I wasn’t like the other girls my age, I was geeky, nerdy, entirely unathletic, and for a long time I didn’t even want to be very feminine like them. They avoided me, and I stood upright and alone trying my best anyway. There were certainly some points where I’d not want to go to church at all, but I always attributed it to being outcasted by others. I graduated from YW with barely anything completed in my Personal Progress booklet because I didn’t believe in doing things just to get them done. I moved on to relief society, the only one left my age in the area as all the other girls moved off to start college.

Relief society has always had a fake feeling veneer over it, no matter what ward I was in. All the sisters seem to have fishhooks in the corners of their mouths whenever we’re all together. And I’m not even anywhere close to Utah. I can’t imagine how it might be out there, where there’s the mental health and opioid addiction epidemics. It’s not a mere correlation, I don’t think.

I had a devoted boyfriend who would go on to serve a mission, and before he left I felt that I should also go on a mission too. I think I felt that way because i would have nothing else to do for two years, so why not?

The only spiritual experience with prayer I can remember clearly having was as a middle school youth, and I cannot remember whether I prayed to know if the Book of Mormon was true or that Christ’s teachings were true, or if it was for a testimony of something else entirely. I don’t trust my memory very well. I’ve never felt spirituality during a prayer since. Which means I never got confirmation from the Lord that I should serve a mission. But hey, I never got confirmation from the Lord for anything since middle school, so maybe it was always as I had heard someone say once, that the Lord knows I already know the answer, so He wouldn’t tell me?

So I weaned off the antidepressants I had just begun taking earlier that year and submitted my mission papers. And I was sent to Phoenix, AZ, Spanish speaking. The most exciting part was being able to get endowed just days before my only sibling’s Sealing to his to-be wife. I had been so afraid I wouldn’t get to be there for it, as he is older than I am and you can’t just get endowed if you’re a female. I don’t remember very much of my own endowment, not specifically. I do remember not feeling prepared, and feeling uncomfortable. I did not know what covenants I would be making exactly, but I knew it was the next step I was supposed to take.

So I packed my bags, said goodbye to my best friend, and left for the MTC. I’ve always struggled with routine (hello depression), so to have such a rigid schedule was good for me. I was desperate to become more in tune with God and Christ and the Holy Spirit. I read, listened, learned, and prayed more fervently than I ever had before. I also got sick in week one of six, lost my voice completely, and due to the nature of having to learn a language, was never allowed to fully recover it. Singing has always been the only thing I am great at in my life, and for the entire six weeks I was there, i could not sing. Not even for a visit from an apostle. I begged my teacher for just one day of vocal rest from practicing Spanish, and it was not permitted. I was heartbroken, and I still am. Singing has always been the one way I would say I could feel connected to my spirituality, and I could not access it.

I prayed desperately in the MTC many times over, begging God to let me feel His love. I prayed at night for ten minutes, once even half an hour. I prayed in the Celestial room on Saturdays when we were permitted to do endowment ordinances for the dead. Every week i would cry deeply in that beautiful room. I cried many many times at night. I just wanted to know for sure that God loved me. To feel something, anything, that i could identify. I can’t say I ever did. I figured there must just be something wrong with me and that I should stop asking. I persisted along.

I left the MTC and headed into the field, to Arizona. To Monte Vista, specifically. I had a decent compañera, she was tough, and steadfast, and strong in her convictions. She could seem a little unempathetic and unsympathetic at times, but she was doing her best. But where things had at least been going okay at the MTC, arriving in the field saw my mental health deteriorate. Rapidly. I have a paralyzing fear of role-play and role-play-like situations, and practice teaching is such a situation. I could not do it; I would freeze, panic, and cry. I quickly became more depressed on my mission than I had ever been at home since the eighth grade. Which is to say I was just shy of suicidal. I wanted to die, and be dead, and stop existing, but I was at least not in danger of acting upon it. I lost all sense of self-worth I had managed to build up. I cried everywhere i could without pestering my compañera. In the bathrooms, in the shower, silently at night after she was asleep. I did cry to her also, often during the morning studies. I still did not have my voice back. I was still not permitted a day of vocal rest. I began speaking with my mission president. I set up a time to visit with a family services therapist.

After a session with me, she told me she couldn’t see that there was anything wrong with me. To her, I was fine, because I was clearly not having an emotional breakdown in her office, and was cognizant of the irrationality I was dealing with. I was fine.

I went on splits with an English Sister, and cried to her, poured my soul out to her. She helped me to feel loved, but gave me the same response as everyone else. Pray about it.

Christmas came quickly. I had had thanksgiving in the MTC, after all. It was without a doubt the best thanksgiving I ever had. Not because I felt the spirit, but because it was not with my extended family. Thanksgivings with my extended family often turned into some kind of argument, then. So doing service and spending time with other missionaries was a nice change. While my compañera was Skyping with her family, I knelt in our bedroom alone and prayed. I prayed so hard. I wanted to stay, and yet I knew I might have to leave. I begged for help, and I received an answer for the first time in almost a decade. That I should go home. I Skyped my family, and told them what to expect. It was a very bittersweet Christmas Day. More bitter than sweet. But I felt I had my answer.

So I told my mission president, the priesthood leader presiding over the whole Phoenix, Arizona mission. God wanted me to go home.

“God wouldn’t tell you that.”

It took me over a week after that to make the final decision to go home. There are two things my mission president told me that i will never forget. One, was that, even if I went home and all my problems went away, that I still needed to get help, because it would come back, and it couldn’t come back when I was a new wife, or a new mother, when I had new and difficult responsibilities. The other, “God wouldn’t tell you that.”

I returned home in January. I was released with honor, a real RM in the eyes of the Church, and I went to the doctor for my depression. For a small while, I tried to stick with the habits of a missionary, praying and reading and studying daily. Maybe not the “up at 6am,” part, but much of the rest. But it soon became too painful to bear. Everything reminded me of my mission. Everything seemed to have the word failure on it in hidden inks that only my heart could read. I had to take a step back for my mental health.

I don’t know if my mission president knew what weight his words carried when he told me that. I don’t know if he thought before he spoke them. He justified his words to me. The only spiritual feeling I had felt from prayer since grade school was written off as a feeling I conjured myself. It’s easy for others to say “he abused his priesthood position,” but he learned that idea from somewhere. He’d thought on that idea before. He was immediate in that response, and he maintained it. He was a leader, and if someone like him is able to so simply destroy faith with a single sentence borne in his mind of God, how can I trust what any leader tells me is of God?

I pushed myself through the rest of the time my then boyfriend was out on his mission. I was faithful to him— it was easy, as I loved him so much and am asexual, so I had no concern that I would find myself in a position where I wouldn’t be able to “control myself.” I felt at that time that we were foreordained to marry, that when he returned home he would save for a ring and we would soon be engaged. That was always our plan.

Then he came home in late December of 2016. I tried to jump back into what we had had, but physically it was difficult as I had physically been isolated for two years. I told him I would need time to warm up to the more serious bits. Instead of trying to communicate boundaries and asking permission to move forward with anything, he grew cold. Any physical contact, I had to initiate. Kissing him felt like kissing a brick wall. He talked to me less— he never opened up more than surface level, an issue we had never had. He began to treat me like a monster, began to grow upset if I knew more than him about anything, and instead of talking to a 21 year old returned missionary, I felt like I was constantly speaking with an immature 17 year old high schooler. He was the perfect mormon boy, if you look at him objectively. He never missed a day of scripture reading or prayer, and he loved his mission, or so he said. He broke a lot of rules near the end, jumping into pop culture and watching anime and music videos on his P-days. He did not come back a man at all. He came back a depressed, worn down boy in denial of his own health.

Eventually I got him on skype with me (he lived an hour away), six months into the new year, four years of dating now behind us, and we broke it all down. I explained everything I felt was wrong, that I wanted to make it work, that I wanted both of us to be better. He explained how he was feeling, and that the feeling was mutual, that he wanted to see us succeed. So we agreed to take a break to focus on other things, our mental health and our next steps in life, and come back in a few months.

And then he told me he cheated on me months before. Kissing the sister who brought him to institute every week. I was heartbroken, devastated, angry. I could never trust him again, how could I? I had been faithful without him for two years, and he returns and is going at someone else after a mere three months.

I stopped talking to him under the premise of taking the aforementioned break. I needed time to think. Eventually I wrote him a breakup letter, too broken and angry to say anything to his face. A mutual friend meant to deliver it to his new address, which I didn’t know, but sent it to the wrong one. Before I could bring myself to write another letter, he texted me for my new address. I discovered he intended to break up with me through our mutual friend. I told him to screw off. The next day he was dating the same girl he had cheated on me with. He got engaged to her the day before what would have been our fifth year anniversary. He recently got sealed to her in the temple. They have been together for less than a year, and he is more committed to her than he had ever been to me. But I am still broken. I am still hurting. I do not miss him, but at one point he said that God had confirmed for him that we were right for each other, that he’d had a vision of our future family. I trusted him when he said that. I believed him. He had the priesthood, after all. He was the perfect member.

It has been around three years since I returned from my mission early— 12 weeks, by the way, was how long I had been out— and I still think about everything every day. I have been struggling with my faith every day. And as I grow, as I learn, as I have tried again and again to jumpstart my faith once more, to read and to pray and attending church like a good girl, the less convinced I am that I’m in the right place. I believe in God, but beyond that, I’m no longer sure. There’s so much dissonance with the concept of the God I feel from reading scripture and the concept of the God the church teaches about.

I can’t conceive of a God who makes some of His children gay, and then condemns them for it. I can’t conceive of a God who makes half of his Children to be Lesser than the other half, and commands them to know their place and covenant to maintain submission to the other Children’s authorities.

I cannot in good faith follow a leadership that ignores the teen suicide epidemic in Utah that disproportionately affects LGBTQ+ LDS youth. I cannot in good faith follow a leadership that in finally addressing mental illness, fails to address rampant spousal abuse.

But I’ve made these covenants, up to and including my endowment. I am filled with doubt of the truth I’ve been raised in, and am filled with fear that I cannot be truly happy if I stay. And I am also filled with fear that if it is true, and i should leave, then I am condemned, and am a disappointment to my parents who love this gospel so much.

I only hope that something somewhere got lost in translation, that God’s truth is still perverted in many aspects due to the folly of men, of patriarchal society, of homophobia and transphobia. I hope that this Church that I have been raised in, that i feel could still be the most correct, will yet change.

It’s a pessimistic hope.

I’m afraid to stay. I’m equally afraid to leave.

I’m unsure what I should do.

[la-liga-zine]

A Country Named Mother

I wasn’t very conscious of my ancestry until around middle school and I wasn’t really interested until college. While some kids wanted the new Samsung Sidekick, I wanted blue eyes and a French sounding name (and the Sidekick too, honestly). I can’t say it’s for lack of representation - no, there aren’t any Cuban Disney princesses - but I was raised in Miami where quinceñeras are a weekly event and that’s pretty damn close.

Every year I’d get the same question that only reinforced disinterest in my ancestry. Teachers asked “what makes you special?” and “where are you from?” In an age of misguided philosophies on confidence building, asking me to share my background was supposed to make me feel special; instead it felt like a popularity contest where I got front row seats to watch the interest fade from my classmates faces as I started to pronounce “Cuban.” My conflicted feelings over my ancestry created a blockade to self acceptance. While these issues might seem trivial now, as a middle schooler, they were a memorable source of shame over identity (or lack thereof).

Up to that point in my life, I never felt tied to my identity in any meaningful way, Cuban culture was practically an all-encompassing part of my daily life -- if scientists ever want to study the effect of daily cafecitos and pan Cubano, I’m the first volunteer. I could imagine the small homes, barely able to contain their inhabitants; the hot sun that you were told to hide from lest you grow too dark. It was through shared memories that I spent a small part of my own childhood in my mother’s past; sharing her childhood home, joining her walks to school, briefly inhabiting a different life than my own. I had never visited her birth country, but it was simultaneously as real and imaginary as any other fairy tale. The bedtime stories I grew up on were not only of sleepy Germanic princesses, but of kids growing up on an isolated isla communista.

There were people in my family stories that lived only in memories recalled. Family members that I knew existed, but had never seen nor spoken to I became curious about mis raíces. Reaching a level of security within myself gave me permission to dive into my own history. I wanted to know what my own personal link to my heritage was, something that couldn’t be measured and deemed common. With my upcoming trip to Cuba, suddenly all the stories my family had told me became possibilities. Where were they now? Could I meet them?

The day of my flight, I anxiously rushed into the airport, doing that belabored half jog, half crumble-under-the-weight-of-my-suitcase gait. All wasted energy as Havana Air left an hour and a half late. Nobody seemed to care though, we were on Cuban time now. I had taken many trips before to countries whose entire population is only a fraction of my city’s, countries that were 12-hours-in-the-same-chair away, yet the anxiety I felt about this trip wasn’t related to the traveling itself, but because I would be meeting family who until just a few weeks earlier, were cemented in my mind as historical figures of the past. I had only glimpsed a few pictures of the family members I’d be staying with; pixelated 300x300 Facebook photos, the type that makes you question the validity of a profile. This family and this country that existed only in my mother’s recollections of her youth were now real and they’d be picking me up when I landed.I walked out of the airport worried I wouldn’t recognize my relatives, but they were already in front of me. They’d picked me out of the crowd like they’d seen me every day for years.

Riding from the airport in one of the iconic vintage cars Cuba is known for, I noticed a little bump of emotion building up inside me. Every direction I looked in, Cuba looked back. Giant trees let a hot sun stream through their leaves and onto my face, buildings begged for my attention in blends of color that looked like ice cream, bright and summer-y. We headed for La Habana Vieja, where my family lived. A small 1 bedroom apartment shared between 3 people and sometimes 4 when abuela visited, now shared with 5 since the addition of myself. No A/C, just a rotating standing fan that became an alter I was more dedicated to worshipping than any religious deity prior.

Sitting in a humid living room while the heavy equatorial sun cooked the building, conversation floating in and out like the flies we mindlessly swatted at - just 5 strangers who were family. The idea of family evolved to me now, as I stood in the center of this radical experiment. I observed my new family, and tried to soak up years in the few days I had. My tía’s dark, gentle eyes brimmed with a power to calm through just her gaze. She resembled my mother, like the result of an alternate storyline where my she didn’t leave Cuba. A tired yet determined look marked her—the look of a woman playing the role of two parents. You could tell she depended on herself alone, and bore the weight of sustaining her entire family. Her daughter was melting candy; pure sugar and stuck to me at every chance. She had long, thick and wavy black hair, like Rapunzel da La Habana. All my family had much darker skin than me and my new abuela was the first to point it out, almost excited by our differences. Her own skin was a rich reddish brown, a tone that almost radiated back the hot sun it had soaked up.

Though my mother was born in the city of Guantanamo and my abuela is from the rural town of Mayari, I am Cuban-American and my primo (who was my age) showed me the weight that hyphen carries. He had been sitting on the couch, with a level of tension boiling in him that could be felt from every part of the tiny room we were in. Four people sharing a one-bedroom apartment with no air conditioner and no running water in the summer is a challenge by any standard and I could feel their shame in knowing what was normal for them was rough for me.(some countries lack A/C because they experience a mild climate, others are simply lacking; Cuba is the latter). I was about to take a shower and my tía asked if I wanted her to heat the water in the bucket I’d be using. I declined, partially out of politeness and partially out of being covered in sweat

My primo jumped up and went on a tirade. He angrily reminded the family that I was not like them. That I wasn’t used to this situation. I wanted to melt into the couch under the weight of this searing shame he must’ve been quietly carrying since I arrived. He continued, wondering aloud why the family wouldn’t get it through their heads, “where she’s from there’s air conditioning and the water comes out of the shower head.” He shouted a last time, “Somos animals aquí. Compared to what she’s used to, we’re animals.” The intense frustration and bitter resentment born out of a stagnant present and a stillborn future is sharp and current, like a wound in reverse. While my mother’s Cuba lacked TVs and even a magazine was a treasured luxury, Cuba today has TV, magazines and even WiFi access in certain places. Of course he felt this way. Cuba was an island, not a cell block, as some might have you believe.

On the living room TV, my primos were watching the same high materialism, low substance music videos that I try to forget exist in the US. No one flaunts wealth quite like someone who never had it so Cuban hip hop is an arms race of boasting. While I can brush the ugliness of consumerism off from the comfort of the US, it’s not so easy to identify the futility of materialism when your food is rationed and your mattress is sweat stained. Yet who is more vulnerable to the poisonous sense of emptiness that chasing happiness via consumerism infects you with than one who’s never even been allowed to participate?

Most of my time in Cuba was spent chasing and consuming every piece of familial history in any form it might take: stories, photos, standing in old buildings and plazas where my own mother and her mother had stood decades before me. I almost want to ask the buildings I saw if they remembered my mother. Did they remember my abuela, who walked on this cobbled path for decades? Silent pieces of concrete, soaking up bits of all the lives around them and selfishly locking these memories into themselves. It was never the buildings I wanted to see so much as the air I wanted to feel. What did it feel like 40 years ago at this exact moment as my mother walked through this plaza?

Traveling to a country when you’re part of its diaspora is more of a journey and less of a vacation. The souvenirs you bring back are in the form of emotional connections that weigh far heavier than any checked bag of keepsakes. Out of the stories of my tía Marta’s cigarette smoking and late night dancing, I found her best friend, who she was unable to contact for over 13 years. Out of the stories of my abuela taking two planes while smuggling a box stuffed with a live chicken meant to feed her hijas, I found her niece, who used to care for those daughters while my abuela struggled to support them. Out of the stories of my mother and her prima who entertained her as a child with an old guitar, I found my tia, who welcomed me into her (now guitar-less) home. I existed in the middle of this surreal web of family ties, aged and stretched almost slightly beyond recognition.

My trip to Cuba revealed a long line of women who were full of life, strong despite the harshest circumstances, deeply rooted trees sustaining all around them. My tía Marta (less formally known as Yaya), came from Cuba, with its slow pace and state of constant lacking, straight into New York City, as a political exile. She’s now one of the most independent women I know with a mouth of candela who maintains herself as a sought after tarot card reader. My grandmother left everything she owned, her friends and even her husband behind, to raise 3 successful daughters as a single mother who spoke no English in the US. My own mother, who had to leave behind her father and integrate herself in a foreign and often hostile country at the confusing age of 15, completed a master’s degree in her second language and now teaches that adopted language to kids born and raised in this country.  

I’d uncovered a line of incredible women spanning across generations, recalling the matriarchal Taino societies buried under colonialism, but not quite buried deeply enough. These women and their relentless and determined personalities left me in awe. I’d found a new love for my Cuban heritage when I realized that the value in my identity was not in its uniqueness or in how other people viewed it. The love for my ancestry is born out of the incredible experiences of the family members who made me the person I am. They are my ancestry. My mother’s passion, my abuela’s independence, my tia’s boldness, my primo’s ambition; this is my heritage, something so much more personal and valuable than I could understand as  a child. Something that flows from a much deeper place than any hollow nationalistic slogan could convey.

My trip ended like all my previous trips: a ride to the airport and lots of waiting. My new-found family stayed with me until the last minute. It turns out family is a kind of magic word - a word that can conjure a genuine love born of nothing more than shared genetic material.  What I keep with me isn’t the effort my family made trying to provide the food and comfort they could barely secure for themselves, but rather what they expended no effort over at all. It was only when the time came to turn my back to them and walk away that I realized how final this moment was. As I lifted my arm to wave goodbye, the simple thought that I’d never experience this particular moment again wouldn’t leave my head. With the volatility of the American-Cuban political relationship, so much could change before I returned. Most goodbyes are not truly goodbye, but more of a see you later; it feels different. This was goodbye.

The difficult part about following the thread of your ancestry out of the diaspora and into the motherland are the ghosts you bring back, more detailed and louder than the sparse figments you had previously only dreamed up based on a patchwork of family stories. The weight of a history extended and imbued with real breathing life: something you would never wish to be without, but always carrying with it new complexities. Even now, as I sit writing in a city and state I’ve never seen, the most assumed parts of my identity are pulled out for display. There’s nothing like leaving home to make you realize how much of your home is twisted up, inseparable from the person you are.Through the acceptance and love my family showed me, I was finally able to pick up my ancestry and, like a missing button, sewed it back on my dress and felt whole after so many years.

Salomé Luna Gemme writes about life and how to live your best one at LunaGemme.com. A Cuban-American nacida y criada en Miami. Orgullosa as hell. She’s shy but you shouldn’t be; find her @salomegemme basically everywhere.

[theintuitivewildflower]

How to embrace your authentic self:

An Intuitive Wildflower’s Story of Becoming

April 2018, will mark a big life event for me; my one year anniversary of the beginning of this Blog! It has been a life changing endeavor for me and I’ve been asked to share some of my story.   Upon giving some thought to how I learned to embrace and love my authentic self, unconditionally I came up with a list; this made me realize how much work I’ve done on my own self over the past two years. This blog has  helped hold me accountable to my personal development goals. I am so very thankful and proud that I didn’t let anyone talk me out of this dream because I made it a reality. It’s empowering to be able to say that I went against the grain and didn’t give up.   Here I am, at 41, still growing; and while starting to write my story recently, I discovered that there are 10 main ways that I was able to embrace being myself. This is my story.

A lot of family members, obviously unsure of where I was going with this ‘blog thing’, as many of them call it, wanted to know just how I had determined that I am, in fact, a Wildflower. “What’s this Wildflower stuff all about?” they’d ask. I think a few even phoned my mother about it, possibly hoping she might shut it down; I’m guessing they were worried about how it might reflect on the family. However, mom, knowing me best, knew that would only fuel the fire.  When I started this blog, I was smack dab in the middle of my awakening to purpose, the fire was already burning hot!  

Sadly but gladly, I have learned that family isn’t always the most inspiring support team. I’ve discovered that sometimes family is who you need to prove wrong, declutter from your life and if often who you needs to be inspired the most. If it weren’t for my mother’s unconditional love I probably would have quit blogging within the first month. However, her acceptance of me is what allowed me to push forward when I wanted to quit; when it was scary and uncomfortable to be putting myself out there. The lack of understanding and support from others caused me to really put some thought into the following questions:

“How long have I been this intuitive wildflower?” I wondered.

When I consciously try to think back into my childhood and try to remember as far back as I can; I ask myself “how long have I  been  feeling this way; feeling like I  understand most human being’s; often more than they know or understand of themselves but to personally feel very misunderstood by most  people.

“When and where did I first begin to notice that in a field full of pink roses; I was a Wildflower?”

I blended well with the roses and fit in just fine socially but there was something just a little different about myself; I noticed this as early as first and second grade. I always wondered why my classmates didn’t care so deeply about things like me. I would ask questions and they would ask me why I cared or why it mattered to me. I couldn’t answer that; I just knew that everything mattered to me.

When thinking of myself as a child and how I was perceived by those around me these are the thoughts that come to mind.  I was the youngest child, a daughter with an older brother, a daddy’s girl, a tom-boy, an athlete, inquisitive, bright and full of energy.  That would be me, as a kid, described in a nutshell. However, when I try to think as far back as I can about my own perception of myself as a child, I remember much more.  This is some of what I remember:

…..you could find me as a school-age child, outside, climbing trees with the neighborhood kids on my block in Grandview, Missouri.  I could usually be found playing kickball, collecting bugs, having lemonade stands or playing cops and robbers! You might also find me playing Barbie or using my imagination to play games such as; “teacher”, featuring myself playing teacher to my Strawberry Shortcake figurines (my class). I vividly remember that I liked to delegate tasks and tell people what to do, my friends usually. I feel this was because I was the youngest child and was usually the one being delegated to and bossed around at home.  I was also competitive from the jump with my cousins and friends; I remember being very fond of contests and competitions and not just in sports or school.  Where ever my friends and I were headed I would be the first to say “let’s race”….and off we’d go.  If we were doing cartwheels, I was challenging everyone to see who can do the MOST; if jumping rope, I was announcing that we were timing who jumped the longest. I feel this competitive edge was something conditioned in me early on by my families traditions, beliefs and high focus on competitive sports. This brings me to the start of my list of ways I embraced my authentic self.

1. I realized that this very characteristic, being “bossy”, that might have been annoying to others when I was younger, is now, the very thing that allows me to help others find their own purpose.  Learning to encourage and coach rather than boss and delegate has allowed me to be an accountability partner to others.  It is precisely the way in which I am able to inspire, empower and push others to their personal limits while being true to who they are. This gift was always there it just takes time to sharpen our skills and gifts sometimes.  I was aligned with my purpose before anyone ever had an opinion; I believe this to be true for us all.

For much of my childhood and into my awkward adolescent years, then, through high school and into college; I was playing some kind of sport, competitively. There were times, growing up, when I felt like my value to the family was directly related to my performance or achievements in competitive sports. I was a good kid and I did what I thought all kids did; obey your parents. However, even though I could play several sports very well, my favorite thing to do as a child, teen, young adult was to write. Still to this day, my favorite past time is to creatively write. As a young girl, I carried pens, pencils, notepaper, coloring books, markers and loose leaf paper with me almost everywhere; to church, to visit family and in the car on trips. Writing is what I was doing on a rainy, boring Saturday; poetry, song lyrics, lists, brainstorming, practicing my signature or writing a story of some kind. Creative writing was “my thing” but I wasn’t really encouraged to do it; but it was allowed. Any chance I got to put the glove, bat, balls, cleats or kicks away and replace them with some poetry, a story or a picture to give someone else; I took it.

2. I kept this love for writing from childhood to now and it has been my life line more than once. When I found myself in a toxic relationship after a divorce, writing was what kept me sane. As isolated as I was, writing kept me grounded somehow.  It seemed to keep me tethered to my soul even when the tether rope seemed more like a frayed tiny thread about to break; it kept me hanging on; proving to me again that writing is aligned with my purpose.

After my son Noah was born in 1998, I was blessed to be a stay-at-home mom. This is when I discovered my passion for gardening; more specifically wildflowers.  I wanted to have my own field to let wildflower’s grow wild on. When Noah was 5 years old, we bought a five and a half acre, mini farm and transplanted all my plants from Grandview to the farm yard and watched over the years as they spread by seed, becoming larger patches of color in the yard each year.  I was amazed to learn how wildflower’s spread by seed and each year there are more to enjoy or share. I have this obsession with daisies, cosmos, primroses, sunflowers and just about any perennial plant. I love seeing a field next to a highway that has been taken over by wildflower’s during the Spring or early Summer, in Missouri. That is truly a beautiful sight to me; I will drive around on a lazy Sunday just to find some to admire!  As I have gotten older it has been so cool to visit friends and family that got starts from my first house years ago and they can now, years later, give me starts back to begin in a new yard. When I got divorced and was starting over I was able to go get starts from friends who had started their own patches of wildflower’s from starts I had given them!  It is residual beauty; proof that planting one seed can start a whole garden and then many more gardens; even more amazing is that, one wildflower can spread many seeds!

3. I never wanted the perfect potted plants lined up neatly. I wanted the messy, colorful wildflowers in my garden.   I liken Wildflowers to people.  I don’t want to know people just like me; that think like me, dress like me and share opinions with me.  I see beauty in diversity and always have. I do no not understand judgment of others. I believe one of the best ways to learn who we are, is to know and have relationships with people that are different from us. Again, it became clear to me that Wildflower’s don’t care where they grow and that this too shows I am aligned with my purpose.

In 2006, my daughter Abi was born and she is my miracle baby. Her father and I experienced 5 miscarriages between our two children. When she arrived we were so happy to have a healthy baby girl. She is my baby wildflower, no doubt. She is opinionated and inquisitive like her mother. She amazes me with the way she thinks every day!  Late one winter night, when she was sick, we watched my favorite Disney movie, Alice in Wonderland.  Anyone remember the snotty roses that were whispering and judging Alice for being different?  "Do you suppose she is a Wildflower?” they said.  The wildflower connection resonated with me again!  I realized, I’m Alice, so-to-speak. It was here I really started to embrace that was a human wildflower. I had been through some painful experiences and those seem to make you a little more empowered to be true to yourself.  You start realizing that you have been your very own best friend a lot; you start to appreciate yourself for it.  

WHO WANTS TO BE IN THE STUFFY THORNY ROSE GARDEN TIED UP TO POSTS OR A TRELLIS AND CONDITIONED IN HOW AND WHERE TO GO?? NOT I!

I prefer to grow old being wild, free, still learning and raising hell when I want to. I try to always stay mindful about being aligned with my purpose, helping others; I can do that just about anywhere.  I’m about as battered and bruised from the strong winds of change that one wildflower could be but apparently God made me super resilient. I’ve loved hard, gotten hurt; even caused some pain of my own. I had to learn to let go of my own guilt and shame that I was carrying and then, forgive myself. Only then, could I forgive anyone else.  Finally releasing negativity that I’d been holding inside until it was toxicity flowing through my veins,  allowed me to move forward and feel worthy of fulfilling my purpose. The negative self-talk had to go for me to get where I needed to go.  

4. Learning from our past rather than living in it, is one of the best ways to apply lessons we learn along the way to our authentic self. I had to forgive myself before I could truly forgive anyone else.

I always loved music from my parent’s generation.  As a teen, I felt they wasted their lives by missing Woodstock. They shake their heads when I mention this, as that is so not their style. If reincarnation happens I am pretty sure I was there dancing somewhere in the crowd with a sundress and tambourine. I have always done things differently than my family has. I have no problem thinking outside the box especially now that I have embraced my authentic self.  Wildflower would have been my hippie name at Woodstock and for that reason and the others that I am sharing with you today, it became  my social media name for my blog as well.  

Today I am 40. I still don’t fit in but I don’t want to.  I kind cringe at the thought of it now. I’m not one to worry a lot about what people think of me because I’m usually worrying about someone else. New people I meet do not know what to think of me. I think much deeper into things than most; typical of an INFJ personality type. Less than two percent of the population are INFJ, which explains why we feel so misunderstood all the time.  We try to see every side and angle and for an INFJ personality type there are at least 8 sides to everything; INFJ’s will entertain each and every one.

5. When no one seems to understand me or where I’m coming from, music always does. I love and express gratitude for it on a daily basis. Music has kept me going when no one else cared or even knew I had a need. Music has a healing power to it and I have always related to various artists and genres. Just like people, my taste in music is diverse. Music connects people, music touches the soul, speaks in frequency and word; MUSIC HEALS!

At 40, I discovered I am an empath after being in a relationship with a narcissistic personality type. I finally understood why strangers want to tell me their life stories and why my intuitions are so strong and annoyingly accurate. I can often feel a person’s vibe right away; their pain, sorrow, joy and love. When there is hate in the room I can feel that too; it has a strong energy. A lot of folks just need someone to be there and the empath friend is usually that person. We get drained carrying our energy around plus yours and whoever else we walk by at Wal-Mart or church or anywhere else. However, once I began to see it for the gift that it is I began to express gratitude for it and I began to use it to fulfill my purpose. When I discovered this about myself I also became a sponge for information about this gift and what it means to have it.

6. I’ve been able to gain strength in knowing that my purpose it to help people. I have just had to learn the hard way that you cannot push a rope uphill. You are no help to someone who rejects your help, won’t help themselves, meet you halfway or is focused on what they can TAKE from you. I have had to face the fact that I am NOT Jesus and everyone is not meant to be saved by me.

Another reason it seemed natural to refer to myself as a Wildflower in my blog or to write as #theintuitivewildflower is that I have been saying since about 1995 that I belong among the Wildflower’s thanks to a Tom Petty song, Wildflowers.  It just touched my soul in a way that I don’t think any song ever had before or has again to this very day.  I always felt just like the song says, still do

“You belong among the wildflowers,

you belong in a boat out at sea.

Sail away, kill off the hours;

you belong somewhere you feel free….”

It resonated very deeply with me as a Senior in High School,  I was making big decisions about my future, my career and my life within my own head. Meanwhile, my folks were also making their own plans for me. Eighteen is that age when you are ready to execute your independence and leave home but you are still a little uncertain about your ability and the opinions of those who love you most, still play a big part in your decision making.  

7. I wanted to declare at 18, that I knew who I was but I hadn’t yet embraced my authentic self. I also realize if I had, that I wouldn’t have been ready to fulfill my purpose the way I am meant to.  I would not have had the many life lessons that prepared me for my calling. My purpose was literally born from my pain, mistakes and hurt.  Therefore, when I finally mustered up the strength and courage to start sharing my story at 40, I had to get really comfortable with being uncomfortable.   When I realized that my message, my story and my pain were all part of my purpose; amazing things began to happen in my life! Empowerment came to me when I embraced the fact that there was a purpose to my pain and so I began to write about it and my healing process.

 The original blog title was  ‘Where the Wildflower’s Grow’ and was started partly to hold myself accountable to my personal growth after ending a toxic relationship; to keep my promise to myself that I would not go backwards in my life anymore!  It was a way for me to help heal myself, to get my voice back, to stay no contact with the ex and to help other women in similar situations begin to heal too. I had been held down emotionally for several years. I recognized the fact that I was in no way a model, public persona or public speaker. I knew  that everyone was going to see me at my worst if I chose to move forward with this and thankfully, the empowered me, dove in head first; knowing it was now or never!  I’ve discovered that the more I write and meet people through my blog; there are so many people in need of empowerment, inspiration, love and healing. They have a variety of hurts that I want to help or encourage to heal, then, find and fulfill their purpose. I can’t limit it to just one group or one type of trauma; I just know my purpose is to help people when needed in some kind of way and that is my “WHY” for continuing my Adventures of a Wildflower blog.

8.  Self-belief and recognizing that my story mattered was the result of choosing to focus on personal growth and healing!  I stopped noticing my flaws and noticed this new empowered woman I had become.  When I decided other people and their healing were more important than my frizzy hair, adult acne, crow’s feet and past; I evolved. I got closer to my authentic self and I started to shine!  I knew  that everyone was going to see me at my worst if I chose to move forward with this and the empowered me dove in, head first; knowing it was now or never!  This started to empower others.

It was the most major and empowering milestone move of personal growth, the day I started this blog experience! What I realize now, at 41 years of age, is this; growing up, it wasn’t that I was so different in anyone else’s eyes, I was the average, active, sporty type and participated in the usual activities youth are usually offered to choose from. I felt different within myself because I was always thinking so deeply and feeling so deeply everything around me. I asked questions about everything and remember thinking, as young as 8 or 9 years old, that my friends were just plain wrong for thinking “I don’t know” was an acceptable answer to anything I wanted to learn more about. I wondered why things that mattered to me didn’t seem to matter to anyone else. I was pretty confident and I’ll praise my parents for that. I wasn’t really an introvert early on, I was fairly outgoing and often comical if comfortable enough in the crowd around me.

9. KNOW THYSELF- C.G. JUNG…. To be committed to learning and knowing who I am was the best advice I ever took. A good friend told me to do this the year we both turned 40, as we discussed our birthdays and the feeling that there was something that changed for us both then; we felt as if we wanted to chase whatever was missing! He recommended I take the Meyer’s-Briggs personality test to begin the process.  Now, knowing I am an intuitive empath and an INFJ, the rarest of personality types; it all makes sense! I now understand why I grew up feeling like the black sheep of the family or the big yellow daisy in the middle of all the dainty pink roses. Had I not discovered these traits about myself I may have mistaken them for anxiety or OCD or another mental health issue. On the contrary, I learned that I had been gifted these traits and they were directly aligned with my purpose and calling! I would never want to numb them.  

Lastly, my blog was created to prevent suicide and raise awareness for the need of empathy, compassion, understanding and acceptance regarding Mental Health Issues and Disabilities; to provide education, inspiration and a place to discuss these topics peacefully.

On my facebook page, you will see that I offer my time. I know what it feels like to feel different, misunderstood, judged or taken for granted, to be mentally drained from feeling so deeply and caring so much; also to fail more than once.  My time is for you: the other wildflowers that are always out there spreading sunshine and planting seeds of love in a hateful world. You are so strong but on weak day there is no one to give you sunshine or water to grow. It’s not because they do not love you. They don’t understand the depth of your love and kindness.  So whether you are drained empath in need of boost or an empath unaware that just read this and thought, maybe I’m an empath too. Maybe you are an eccentric free-spirited Wildflower in need of some sun; if you feel alone come here. You are always welcome and I promise to have something posted up to uplift, motivate, encourage or empower you to keep going every time you visit.

10. Putting a plan to purpose! It doesn’t matter how or where you start putting a plan to your purpose. Once you discover it, you will feel obligated to start practicing things towards fulfilling it. That’s just what you see me doing here!  I know what it is like to be so strong that no one would believe you could be weak! I know you need the kind of friend for YOU that you are to everyone else. I feel you friend, I do. If you need to reach out and just don’t know where to go…….come here! If my shoulder or words are not enough I will personally assist you in finding a resource that provides just what you need!

In the blog, I discuss the importance of positivity, self-development, business, healing, mental health and the healing power of music. As an amazon affiliate I share this link with you and you can find some of my very favorite resources, books and music pertaining to topics such as this! https://amzn.to/2DQKVc2my  

I hope you will follow along with me on these Adventures of a Wildflower as I just totally put myself out there in hopes to find some other wildflowers that need a garden​ to grow in; a safe place to come and recharge or relax so you can remember:

YOU ARE A BEAUTIFUL, UNIQUE AND YOU HAVE A PURPOSE JUST AS SPECIAL; IN FACT, YOU WERE MADE FOR IT!  

Peace, good vibes and One Love,

Karyn Dee     #theintuitivewildflower

Dedicated in honor of John Michael Dutcher

who was, without a doubt, a very strong and most beautiful wildflower with the most precious soul!

#theintuitivewildflower :  tumblr, pinterest, G+, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and linkedin

#theintuitivewildflower FEED YOUR HEAD!! (with help from Amazon)

In my blog, Adventures of a Wildflower, I discuss often the lack of readers we have in the world today. As an adult, I have had people say they haven’t opened a book since high school. That needs to change. Rediscover something good for you today. Feed your head with Amazon’s kindleunlimited package. https://amzn.to/2DQKVc2my

[blackleatherjacketz]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Law & Order: SVU Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Dominick "Sonny" Carisi Jr./Amanda Rollins Characters: Amanda Rollins, Dominick "Sonny" Carisi Jr. Additional Tags: Angst, Depression, Forehead Kisses, Single Parents, Wine Summary:

Amanda tells Sonny how she’s been holding up.

@skittle479 @mrbarbacarisi @sonnshineandrainbows

Amanda pours the five-dollar wine she bought into two glasses. She double-checks the video monitor on the counter, and watches as Jesse sleeps soundly. She pushes her bangs behind her ear before picking them up and walking over to the sofa.

Sonny takes one of them off her hands as she sits down next to him, starting the next episode of Bloodline on Netflix.

”Thanks for staying after Jesse went to sleep.” She starts, taking a sip of the cheap but delicious white wine.

”Anytime, Rollins, you know that.” He clinks his glass with hers only to find out it was made of plastic. “Really? Plastic wine glasses?” His lips smirk.

”Jesse is two, and she is getting into EVERYTHING lately. Before I know it she’ll be climbing on the countertops trying to get into my wine glasses.”

“Yeah my niece was always getting into stuff at that age. My sister had to put baby gates up all over the apartment. She even had to put locks on the stove dials.” He takes a sip of wine. “Good call on the glasses.”

His sister, his niece; his parenting advice always seemed to come second hand. As grateful as she is for Sonny’s help and companionship, she wished that just for one day, he could actually walk in her shoes. She wished that instead of handing Jesse back to her as she fell asleep, he had to put her in her crib. She wished that he had to wake up every couple of hours when she had a nightmare or wet diaper. She wished he actually understood what it was like to be a parent... and not just the fun uncle.

Sometimes she even wished that Nick were still here. At least he would have understood her obligation to her child. He wouldn’t keep forgetting about her parental status, and ask her to go out or do things that excluded children. He wouldn’t complain about being tired after she only got three and a half hours of sleep.

”Thanks.” She whispers, watching the show for a bit.

”Hey, what’s wrong?” He leans in to her.

What’s wrong? What’s WRONG?! Where does she start? “Nothing, it’s... you wouldn’t understand.” She gulps down the rest of her wine and sets it on the coffee table.

As often as she resented Sonny for his ignorance, she knew that it wasn’t his fault. She knew she couldn’t snap at him for being in a different stage in his life than she was. His compassion and optimism made him a great detective, and an even better friend. He was there for her when no one else was. He was there to hold her hand in the hospital, to make her dinner after tough cases, and to just... be there.

Sonny shoots her a look that says he knows better. He turns to face her on the couch, cupping his glass with both hands.

”Hey, don’t be like that...” he lets go of the glass and takes her hand.

”It’s just that... I feel so isolated.” She starts.

Sonny raises his eyebrows. He’s genuinely surprised. “Isolated?”

”Yeah, isolated. I feel like... no matter how early I go to bed, I’ll still never get enough sleep. I feel like an outcast... both at work and at the playground.” She lets out a deep sigh. “Jesse needs me more than ever right now, and sometimes, I feel like I’m a bad momma for wanting to be like everyone else.”

”You’re not a bad mother, okay? Don’t you ever say that.” His eyes darken.

”I’m not so sure.” She fingers the plastic wine glass.

”Rollins, where is this coming from?”

”I’ve always thought it... I’ve always felt it. Some days are better than others. When I’m at work, I actually feel like my old self again. I feel like nothing has changed, and that for hose ten hours I can actually be a person again.”

”A person?” His blonde eyebrows knit in the middle of his forehead.

”I feel like I’ve lost who am with Jesse... that motherhood has consumed so much of me that there’s nothing left. And people like you and Barba are going out all the time with your pictures on Instagram, and I’m... stuck.

”I’m stuck here with Jesse in my arms for the rest of my life. I’ve tried to embrace my new role when I’m not at work, but I can’t relate to any of the other mothers in my neighborhood. They are all married, or in relationships, and I can feel them looking down on me.”

”They look down on you? What do they say? Do I need to come over there and pretend to be your boyfriend and...”

She puts a hand up. “That’s it. It’s all pretend. ‘Let me pretend to be your boyfriend’ let me pretend not to be bothered by being alone. I’ve been pretending to be happy for the past few years, and I don’t know how much longer I can do it. I don’t know how many more smiles I can paint on my face everyday.”

Sonny frowns and looks at the ground.

”None of my single friends have children, and none of my mom friends are single. I’m alone in this, and it’s getting clearer and clearer everyday. I feel like an alien, for God’s sake. I don’t fit into either mold, and it’s becoming exhausting.”

”What about Liv? She’s a single mom.”

”She’s also our commanding officer. And she has enough to deal with with Noah and his grandma. I don’t want to bother her with all this.”

Amanda takes both of their glasses and fills them up again. She sits back down in front of Sonny and sips her spirit.

”Yeah, maybe.” He takes his glass from her. “But maybe not. Maybe she’s just as lost as you.”

Amanda rolls her eyes and takes a big swig.

”Look, clearly, I don’t know exactly what you’re going through. But I want you to be able to talk to me like this... all the time. I don’t want you to let it build up for two years before you let me know how bad it is.”

”I didn’t want to bother you.” She takes another sip. “You were in law school, and I kind of resented your freedom to do that. I wanted to study for the Sergeant’s exam and then I got pregnant, and... it just wasn’t in the cards for me anymore.” A sad smile crosses her lips as she finishes her wine.

”Rollins... Amanda... you’re my best friend. I don’t ever want you to resent me. If I have to come over every night and make my mom’s lasagna for you guys, I will.” He takes her hands in his and squeezes them. His face is calm and sincere; his boyish Good looks assuring her of his honesty.

The sound of Jesse’s cries echo throughout the hallway and through the speaker of the monitor. Amanda sighs deeply as Sonny continues to hold her hand. Tears well up in her eyes as the thought of her alienation builds inside of her.

”I got her. You finish this show.” He squeezes her hands and stands up, setting his glass on the table. He bends over and kisses his friend on the forehead. “Let me help.”

[road2nf]

Jensen McRae | The Road to Nerdfighteria

DFTBA. If you are not subscribed to the vlogbrothers YouTube channel, and if you never have been, you might not know what that stands for. It’s an initialism (because acronyms are pronounceable, fact c/o of a vlogbrothers video) that stands for Don’t Forget To Be Awesome. It is the official (or perhaps unofficial) motto of the nerdfighter community. (Nerdfighters are people who are fans of vlogbrothers, the content creators therein, or the community therein. I think that’s enough definitions for now). When I was 14 years old, this book called The Fault in Our Stars came out. A good friend of mine was kind of obsessed with the author, this slightly sub-middle-aged white guy named John Green, and she insisted that I read both The Fault in Our Stars and Looking for Alaska, this John Green guy’s first book. I was a reader in childhood, having developed nearsightedness due to my predilection for reading in the dark after my bedtime by flashlight (at least that’s the explanation my mother gave me). However, recently I’d found myself frustrated by books. I would tear through middle-grade chick lit (that’s the best way I can describe these terribly formulaic books with dull characters and contrived plots that always involved two straight/white/able-bodied/middle-class best friends falling in love) when I found it, but other than that, I wasn’t reading as much as I used to. I can’t really remember what I did with my free time. I guess I was writing songs? I think I was mostly playing The Sims 3. I digress. In any case, I was in ninth grade and on the precipice of Maybe Being Cool, and this friend was one of the cooler girls in class, so I bought TFiOS (hip shorthand) about two months after its publication and read it over spring break in ninth grade. I read it in one three or four hour sitting, and I cried. Like a lot. It was the first time since early childhood that I could remember a book moving me in such a poignant way. I was attached to the characters, I was absorbed by the plot, and the language! The LANGUAGE in that story was so compelling. I was picking up on subtext and metaphors in a way that I’d only ever done when I was forced to in English class. The book had reinvigorated my love for words in stories that no other book could have. Then I took a brief reading hiatus. The second half of my ninth grade year was me continuing to ascend the social ladder, however slowly. I still joked that I was a dork, but the truth of the matter was, I had friends from every rung. I was sociable with tech geeks, theater nerds, football players, and cheerleaders alike. I felt like people had stopped looking through me like I was invisible. It was largely due to my presence on the school newspaper, which drew both the ambitious popular kids and the ambitious nerdy kids to its ranks. Also, I had a boyfriend. We never kissed or held hands or even went on dates, but we hung out every day at school and told people we were dating. This was enough to get me at least a bit of social buying power. (I promise this is all relevant to the story). Then, at the end of freshman year, I realized that I was sick of having a boyfriend who did not kiss me or hold my hand or go on dates with me, and also didn’t answer my texts or calls once school let out. So I called his house and dumped him over the phone. I spent the summer feeling sorry for myself, turning to the Internet and its thriving subculture of fame and infamy. Whenever I get heartbroken in real life, I fall deeply and inconsolably in love with fictional characters and/or celebrities who are too old for me. That summer, it was Jack and Finn Harries, Dan Howell, and any other British 20-year-old who made funny sketches and made me feel like I was loved, even though they were thousands of miles away, several years older, and had no idea who I was. It was during this summer that I discovered a channel featuring two much older men named Hank Green and John Green (yes relation, they’re brothers). Their videos were all at least somewhat informational, whether they be about politics, science, literature, or just about the personal lives of the men who made the videos. About five videos in, I realized that John Green of the vlogbrothers was John Green of TFiOS fame. I was elated! There were hundreds of videos on the channel going back to 2007. In between reading self-insert fanfic about the Harries twins, I would watch vlogbrothers videos, reminding myself to read John’s other books when I got the chance. When I returned to school, all the work that I’d done to become popular seemed to dissolve before my very eyes. Sophomore year was when we switched campuses, to the Upper School, and all the actual popular kids were going to parties with upperclassmen and trying alcohol and getting into real relationships. I was stuck in the past, pining over boys who only hung out with me so I would help them write their essays and obsessing over Tumblr and YouTube. I was also experiencing turbulence in my personal life unlike any I’d ever had before. It’s so clear to me now that I was afraid of the social rejection and emotional darkness in the real world, so I holed myself up online, laughing while handsome young Brits wore wigs on camera and rewatching John Green speed-talk his way through a fake television show he titled “Hitler and Sex.” In the midst of this Internet-ing, I read that other John Green book my old friend had mentioned, even though she’d already begun the slow and painful process of outgrowing me (the death knell of our friendship was when she told me about having sex with her boyfriend in her car and my response was some combination of a prudish, judgmental face and an exclamation of “Ew!”). Looking for Alaska leveled me just as profoundly as TFiOS had, and with no social life to worry about, I was hungry for more. I read the other books that John Green had talked about on his channel–Fahrenheit 451 and The Great Gatsby, plus other works that his recommendations had led me to, like Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, The Taming of the Shrew, and one of my all-time favorites to this day, Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. I was reading a book almost every week, downloading them to my iPad and going back to my old habits, reading by dim light long after I should have already gone to sleep. My schoolwork wasn’t where it needed to be, but I was thriving. Awakened, even. Though my junior year marked another ascent into minor popularity, I crash-landed my senior year, coming off a painful rejection from a summer romance and a position in student government that should have won me acceptance but largely isolated me from everyone but my fellow council mates and steady friends. College applications were stressing me out, I felt alienated from even my immediate circle, and I was worried about my social future. Though I was accepted to the only two universities I applied to, I felt inert and emotionally itchy. I descended back into what I knew best: books. I read more Vonnegut, bizarre stories by delightful authors like Graeme Cameron and Douglas Coupland, and of course, my current #1 all-time, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz. After my brain literally exploded from reading Oscar Wao in all its sprawling, multilingual, multigenerational, magical realistic/science fictional glory, I devoured Díaz’s two books of short stories, Drown and This Is How You Lose Her. I vividly remember those days in the spring of 2015, using my seemingly endless multitude of free periods to sit in the sweaty, iron-hot bleachers, nose burrowed in a book, ignoring the festivities of senior year around me. I was happier alone, laughing at Kurt’s crude drawings and Díaz’s matter-of-factness about love and sex, experiences I’d still yet to have at 17. I graduated, and I went to USC, where within a month of starting school I met Junot Díaz and got him to sign my copy of Oscar Wao. I dealt with the Usual College Stuff, like homesickness (from half an hour away…I’m weak) and social anxiety and academic adjustments and figuring out what the hell it actually means to major in popular music. I stopped judging people for drinking alcohol and having sex, I stopped being afraid of parties (though I’m still terrified of boys…and rightly so), I stopped being disappointed in my real life because it doesn’t follow a neat narrative (or at least I do it less now). However, I never stopped reading, and I never stopped watching vlogbrothers videos. I am a faithful nerdfighter, because that online community and John’s books have seen me through some dark times. Somewhere in the last five years, I read An Abundance of Katherines (not my favorite), Paper Towns (used to be my favorite but TFiOS ranks supreme at the moment), and Will Grayson Will Grayson (absolutely ACES but technically cowritten with David Levithan so to me it is in a separate category). I’ve watched thousands of videos from vlogbrothers and Crash Course. I went to Vidcon in 2014 and met John in person for about five seconds, handing him my business card and a #JustinCarrWantsWorldPeace luggage tag before he was escorted to his next event by security. My love of language has blossomed into three young adult manuscripts, two feature films, a handful of short films, and hundreds of poems, songs, and essays. Though my inner and outer lives have changed substantially since I first wept onto the pages of TFiOS, I’m still anxious, and often. I’m still terrified of romantic rejection and I still put myself out there frequently and embarrassingly. I’m still a bookworm and I’m still a writer and I’m still a nerdfighter. And I think I always will be. John Green and his books have a special place in my heart. So when he announced that his first new book in almost six years is coming out this fall, I was overcome with emotion. Turtles All The Way Down isn’t just a book. It’s a historical artifact from the future, a piece of my past hurtling towards me from the opposite direction. When I think of John Green’s work, I think of my cringey adolescence, my weirdly small glasses and then my weirdly big glasses, my difficulty with my weight and my stunted social development. I think of the hours I spent reblogging fan art and GIF sets of real people that I’d mythologized into characters by watching their YouTube videos for so long. I think of my transition from Cute Little Girl to Awkward Bookish Teen to Real Human Woman. I was 14 when I read my first John Green book. I will be 20 when I read Turtles All The Way Down. The chasm between who I was and who I will be then is huge. Un-crossable by anyone but me. Right now, we’re a little less than four months out from the release of Turtles All The Way Down. Not much is known about the book, and I’d like to keep it that way. I’m feeling those tingly “no spoilers!” feelings I felt when I was in high school and enamored with the purity of an untouched literary experience. But as much as this book’s impending release is inspiring a unique kind of nostalgia in me, it’s also reminding me that I cannot go back. I cannot return to the innocent girl of 14 I was when I first heard John Green’s name, and I can’t get back the years I spent/lost/lived in between then and now. I can only move forward. I can only grow up. This book, in all likelihood, will not live up to my expectations. It will not change my life. It can’t, because though it will be my first time reading this particular book, it won’t be my first time becoming infatuated with literature. I’ve done that already. I may love this book, but there is a difference between falling in love with someone new and falling in love for the very first time. Before I met books with sweaty palms, dress askew, tongue heavy in my mouth. So…come here often? Now, each story is met with a knowing smile, legs crossed at the ankles like they’re supposed to be, no lipstick on the wine glass. Your place or mine? Before this book comes out, and I form any opinions about the content or the style, I would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to John Green. If not for his careful handiwork, if not for the immense trust that he puts in his young readers, if not for his heart-wrenching stories, I might never have been drawn to great books the way I am now. Thank you for caring. Thank you for writing even when your illness handcuffed you, tried to make you stop. Thank you for making videos about hard topics and silly ones. I may grow up, but I will never outgrow you and your words, John. Keep publishing books, and I’ll keep reading them, no matter how old we both get.

via @withfeelingoncemore