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justcallmenikki7 · 2 years ago

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BTS Reaction To: Past Relationship Trauma

Hyung!Line

Summary: your past relationship with your ex messed you up and you still deal with the trauma, but your boyfriend now reassures you and proves to you that you are safe and loved.

Warnings: past trauma, mentions of anxiety and depression, self-harm, past emotional abuse and mental abuse mentioned, insecurities, angst, fluff, hyung!line being the sweetest boyfriends, self-doubt. MAJOR TRIGGER WARNING: SELFHARM

W.C.: 2.4k

Notes: heeeey, I’m back! This is an emotional rollercoaster because this is some of the shit, I went through with the boy I told you guys about. At the time I did not realize what was going on, but now that I do, I needed to write about it but with fluff and daydreams about the boys. I have a lot of things to work on because of him, but this gave me some healing and hope that my future S/O can understand where I am coming from on how I feel and that I’m going to be healing. I am healing, but the thought of being vulnerable again is scary, because you know, trusting someone with your heart is scary. But I want to let everyone know that it is okay to heal, it is okay to trip in the process in healing. So, I hope you enjoy this, and it might be hard to read, but take time. I am working on the Maknaes!line, and it should be up soon!

Kim Seokjin:

He started noticing that you have become off a few weeks ago. He did not know what was going on because from his knowledge everything was fine, and you guys were happy. Doing everything that he can, such as having the house clean before you got home from a long day at work, making sure your hoodie, or his because you have claimed it as yours, that you wear at night for bed was warm because he always puts it in the dryer before you go to bed.

It is scaring him because he loves you and does not want to lose you at all because you are his ray of sunshine. Trying to figure it out himself, he realized that you are putting a wall up that he thought he knocked down. He knows that you were mistreated in your last relationship, and it makes you scared that it would happen again. But after a year of proving to you that will not happen, he thought he conquered your demons and got rid of them, but maybe he missed those.

Finally, he approached you about it as he lays in bed with you, getting ready to get to bed.

“Baby? What’s going on?” He asked, grabbing your hands, holding tightly onto them.

Not realizing that those four words made you break down into tears. Freaking out, he pulled you into arms and held onto you tightly, caressing your hair and whispering encouraging words to you, trying to calm you down.

“I’m so scared that somethings going to go bad with us. We’re so happy and healthy that I can’t believe that this is what happens in healthy relationships. Something is not right. This isn’t right. When are you going to get irritated with me and dump me? This must be wrong because this isn’t right.” You choked out, holding tightly onto him.

That is what it was. You fear happiness, and you are not used to it. Seokjin felt like his heart broke because it hurts him to see someone who gives their all to someone and then it gets destroyed over and over. So having someone and something who doesn’t do that is so odd because you are used to that pattern and when it changes, it’s terrifying.

“I know baby. I know. You’ve been hurt so many times that being used to that kind of treatment is familiar and when you get out of that and find healthy… it’s a foreign feeling that you start preparing yourself for downfall. It’s okay to be scared, but please don’t push me away. I want to be here for you and help you. I know it’s hard, and I’ll go at your pace, but please don’t shut me out. I love you so fucking much. How about this. How about we every day sit down for however long and talk about things that are our minds. I know in that pretty head of yours can be your own worst enemy and you get stuck in it. Let me help you get unstuck, okay?”

Looking up at him with teary eyes, you nod your head in agreement. Leaning down, Seokjin presses a kiss on your lips that always makes his heart flutter. He felt you relax in his arms and smile into it.

“I don’t deserve you.”

“Yes, you do. Mr. WorldWide needs his Mrs. WorldWide, and he just so happens to have found her when they both needed each other.”

Min Yoongi:

Sometimes Min Yoongi wishes that he could read your mind like Edward Cullen in Twilight because that way he could get your overthinking to stop. He knows what hell you went through with your ex-boyfriend, and he wishes he could beat his ass for what he did to you.

But he does his best to be patient with you because he knows it’s trauma that you carry with you, and something you are working on and that is your constant overthinking.

Now, he doesn’t blame you and can understand and see clearly why you overthink because your ex-boyfriend was a manipulative, narcissistic dick. He fucked with your mind so badly that it took you almost a year to trust your mind and your own thoughts.

Right now, though, he could tell that you wanted to tell him something but kept back tracking, and this is something that he can’t help but to get irritated with. To be clear, it’s not him irritated with you, but irritated at the fact some boy fucked with your head so badly that you’re scared to even explain how you feel on a situation.

“Y-Yoongi, can I talk to you?” You stuttered, confidence nowhere in sight.

“Of course, what’s wrong?” He asked gently, giving you a gentle, loving smile, knowing that approaching him on how you feel so hard because of your past.

Taking a deep breath, you began to fidget with your fingers, and he could tell your anxiety is creeping you onto you. “I know you’ve been busy lately and that it’s been stressful, but I’m just worried that I did something wrong because you have been kind of short with me and not as t

talkative. And I’m sorry if I did something, and I seem clingy, but like I just needed to ask— “

You were cut off by his finger on your lips, shutting you up in a gentle manner.

“No baby, you didn’t do anything wrong, I promise. I should’ve approached you earlier on this, and I was about to before you came in. I didn’t mean to sound irritated and distant when we messaged each other. I was very caught up in my writing and yesterday the Maknae line was getting on my nerves, so I kind of took my irritation out on you when that was not my intention.”

“So, I didn’t do anything wrong?” Needing to hear the confirmation just one more time from him.

“No, my love, you did nothing wrong, I promise you. I’ll make sure next time to watch out on how I approach you if I’m irritated, I promise.”

Smiling at him with a small smile, he knew that you were still unsure and nervous, which he understood. But you’ve both made more progress in the last six months with you believing him because he made a promise that he will fix you and prove to you that he is not like your ex.

Leaning towards you, he grabbed your face with his hands lovingly and brought your lips to his and kissed you with all the love that he has for you in it. He smiled into the kiss once he felt your smile against his lips.

It takes time, and he knows that there’s still more battles for you both to get through, but he knows you both will get through it together.

Jung Hoseok:

The past couple of weeks, your anxiety has been skyrocketing through the roof to where you have anxiety attacks every single day and Hoseok does not understand why. Hoseok is very familiar with anxiety – having experienced with anxiety with himself – but he does not know on how to approach you on this. You are very secretive with your mental health, besides when it comes to anxiety because it is a part of you, and he knows that you hate that it is. He also does know that your past relationship with your ex, he heard from your best friend that he made you feel bad about your mental health and always made degrading comments about it, especially with the medicine that you take.

Coming home from dance practice, Hoseok was confused on why the house was so quiet. Your car was parked in the driveway and your shoes were in the shoe cubby that was by the front door, so obviously you were home, but the house was deathly quiet. Kicking his shoes off, not thinking about putting them in the shoe cubby, he sat his duffle bag down and began his mission on finding you. Checking the kitchen and living room and not finding you there, he made his way down the hall towards your guy’s bedroom. Entering it, he saw the light that was coming from the bathroom, and he heard some movement coming from in there. Walking straight into the bathroom unannounced, he found you with a razor in your hand and fresh cuts along with your wrist.

“What in the fuck are you doing?” Hoseok asked, panic in his tone.

Looking up at him in shock, you threw the razor away from you, tears coming to surface in your eyes as you broke down completely.

“I-I’m so sorry, I blacked out and-and I could not resist it,” you sobbed out, panicking to grab toilet paper to stop the bleeding. “I-I’m so sorry, please do not be mad at me,” you begged, trying to take care of the wounds on your wrist.

Not saying anything, Hoseok grabbed the washcloth that was laying on the sink and wetting it. Making his way towards you, he gently grabbed your wrist and began to dab at it with the washcloth, his focus was making sure to clean up the mess and getting the bleeding to stop.

After a few quiet minutes – minus your sobs and shaky breaths – he finally spoke, “what happened?” He asked you, voice filled with worry.

“I-I could not control it; my mind became too loud and my thoughts getting the best of me. I tried, Hope, I tried so hard to ignore it, but it took over.”

“What thoughts, baby?” He asked, needing to know what you were thinking.

“That I was becoming too much and not enough. Everything was going so right, too right, and I guess I just could not handle it. I just thought I would be the one to sabotage it and hurt myself before you hurt me so it would be easier to cope with.” You began to sob harder, not being able to take the thought of losing Hoseok. “I fucked up, I’m so sorry.”

“Baby, no you did not. You tripped and tripping happens with healing, I’m not going anywhere I promise. We will get you through this, okay? We are in this together, okay? I got you; I promise baby.”

“Okay.” You stuttered out, breathing heavy and mind foggy. But you trust him, because he did not make you feel bad about what happened, and he is still here with you.

Kim Namjoon:

It is hard seeing someone who you love so much hate their self so much to where they are so fragile emotionally and mentally. Some days, they can be doing so good and the next day they are back in their rabbit hole, not being able to take a small thing of criticism and thinking that they cannot achieve anything because of constantly, in their mind, messing up.

This is Namjoon’s thoughts on you. He loves you so much, but seeing you so destroyed from a past relationship and trying to heal yourself still breaks his heart. Just because of this, Namjoon is not going to leave you, he is wanting to fix you. Some people think that this can be exhausting and would give up, but Namjoon is not giving up on you. You both have gotten farther in your healing process, but some things can tip you off. And that thing was losing your father because of your beliefs being different than his, and it crushed you because you began to think that your thinking was not right. Getting out of mentally abusive relationship to where you felt wrong for having your own thought process and having to second guess yourself is a toll. Because, when you had your own opinion on something, your ex would criticize you for thinking the way you did and made you feel bad about it became unbearable. You lost yourself and felt so lost in your own mind that you did not know who you were anymore.

So, coming home to you tonight crying on the couch, Namjoon knew what to do. Setting his belongings down in the entrance, he made his way over to you, taking the blanket off the back of the couch and laid it over you. Sensing his presence, you sat up and wrapped the blanket around yourself before lunging yourself into his arms.

“My love, what happened?” He asked gently, running his fingers through your hair, massaging your scalp – an act that you love and found comfort in.

“I’m so sorry, I know that this is becoming old, and tiring, but at work, a coworker criticized my work, and I defended it! I defended myself, Joonie, but-but they got to me, making me think what I thought and said was stupid and they did that smirk. They did that smirk and it got to me, when it shouldn’t have. We’ve been working on this, but I could not help it. But it hurt. It made me feel pathetic and stupid. I’m so stupid.”

“Baby, I am so proud of you for standing up for yourself, and that is such huge progress that you have made. I am so, so proud of you, baby. And I know that they got to you, but you have to realize that - wait was it Michael who said that?” He asked, needing to make sure that he knew who it was from your work.

“Yes,” you replied.

Laughing at this confirmation – not at you, but at the fact that this dick who is below you in success at your company is criticizing you since he has not had a promotion in two years while you have in the past year. “Of course, it was him. My love, please do not work yourself up on someone who is less than you. And I know this is hard, but we can get this. Like you said, you defended yourself! Do you know how long you and I have been working on this? For a year and you finally did it! You did it baby, and now our next mission is to work on not caring about what Michael thinks, and not letting this dick make you feel bad about how you feel and think. We got this. Do we have a deal?”

Smiling up at him, you nodded, “but it is going to be hard. He got to me, and this is going to be difficult.”

“And it was difficult for you three months ago to defend yourself, but you finally did it. And I know for a fact that we will get to where you will be able to not care about what people think of you, and how you think and feel. We got this baby.”

Smiling, feeling much better, “we got this.”

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tiny-feisty-gay · 8 months ago

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I see your a fellow Chaggie shipper. As am I. ANd I've asked other Chaggie shippers on tumblr and I must ask you: What are your FULL thoughts on Charlie learning of Vaggie's secret? From finding out in Heaven to her whole anger/hurt/confusion at Vaggie.

i wasn't ignoring this but i needed a few days to gather my thoughts because i have lots of them

between heaven and the two of them meeting back up with an army/weapons in tow, there's roughly a month's worth of time as far as i've been told/can tell, so i'm going based on that rough timeline

charlie's first reaction, imo, was shock; the way she collapsed and let vaggie shepherd her and guard her isn't the reaction of someone who's immediately jumped to anger/mistrust, it's the reaction of someone whose entire life view has just been altered.

i don't think they ever actually fought about it. gut feeling maybe, but considering what we saw (charlie curled in bed crying, vaggie saying "in our room... alone") and my personal hc that she takes after her dad in times of emotional turmoil by self-isolating and sinking into the depression... i have a feeling they didn't even talk about it for a while.

vaggie might have tried to; we got a glimpse of it right around alastor's deal with charlie. i firmly believe that after it was in the open, she probably did try to explain herself, and charlie was still half-shocked and feeling a bit betrayed and didn't have the brain space to deal with it between the upcoming extermination and knowledge that her loved ones were going to be targeted first. she probably did a ton of soul-searching on her own; remember, charlie is +/- a good few centuries, if not older, so while she's very upbeat and happy, it's not unreasonable to think she's had a good while to practice some emotional maturity. she isn't perfect, obviously, but based on how much she adores vaggie, i think she'd want to know firmly where she stands before they talk things out.

i also think vaggie was terrified the entire time that she'd just fucked up the only genuine, good relationship (romantic or otherwise) that she's ever had. we don't get much backstory on what things were like for her in heaven, but she doesn't seem to have been particularly close to anyone there, and "whatever it takes" sort of reinforces that with her "and it felt so good to be understood / but there's so much i wish that i could say." i think she wanted to tell charlie but she kept putting it off, and the longer she put it off the worst she thought it'd be, until she hit a point where she felt like she couldn't tell charlie because what would charlie think of her after lying to her for three years?

charlie did likely wonder how much of it had been a lie and whether vaggie had ulterior motives, because who wouldn't, but i think she dismissed that pretty fast. especially because there's no way angel and the rest of the crew didn't notice vaggie moping around like a kicked puppy; i'm sure they were equally unhappy with vaggie's lying, but the group sentiment didn't seem anything more than mildly annoyed by it.

she was the most hurt by the fact that vaggie didn't trust her enough to tell her; supported by her conversation with rosie. and that seems pretty fair, imo: vaggie knows how much charlie can forgive, can see the potential for redemption in people, and she's had an up-close view of that in vaggie for the last three years. and charlie trusts (trusted) vaggie wholeheartedly, so the idea of that not being reciprocal hurt her deeply.

i think they tried to talk things out ~a couple weeks in, and vaggie shut down in the middle of the conversation from a mix of trauma and fear that she'd lose charlie; i love vaggie dearly, but she's placed a ton of her self-worth on how useful she is to charlie. she very much believes she's nothing without charlie, because charlie saved her and is a large part of who she's become. there's a little bit of a power imbalance/codependency on vaggie's side, and while i don't think that's insurmountable for them nor do i think the relationship as a whole is unhealthy, that piece of it must have made it absolute torture to be pushed away.

i think she and angel may have had a few late-night conversations actually; they seem like they're on better/friendlier terms just before alastor and charlie make their deal; the whole "you ever think she's sensitive about her lack of wings? ... just like her lack of tits :D" bit struck me a lot more like friendly ribbing/trying to lighten the mood rather than actual malice. angel definitely doesn't have much experience with healthy relationships, but he does have experience with damage control, and i imagine he gave vaggie advice that basically boiled down to don't push, let her come to you, she's really hurt and needs to process. he cares a ton about charlie even if he doesn't show it, but i think he has sort of a begrudging respect/love-hate thing with vaggie lol. especially after the battle-bonding.

their first actual conversation about it was probably after the cannibal town army/weapons stockup before the battle. talking to rosie clearly really helped charlie process things, and i do think it's interesting that as far as we know, she hasn't talked to her father about it; not particularly surprising since their relationship is a bit tenuous, but still interesting, since he would likely have been a good perspective for her to have as a fellow fallen angel (ex-angel? idk if vaggie really counts as fallen). but regardless, rosie helped her a lot and most of her initial betrayal and hurt seems to have fizzled out with just the "why didn't she trust me?" piece left.

that was probably the main thing they talked about. vaggie tells her about what really happened to get her stuck here, and charlie is furious, and that alone probably helps her understand; i'd have trust issues, too, if someone i'd known presumably my whole life ripped off my limbs and cut my eye out. vaggie and charlie had an instant connection, clearly, but she didn't trust charlie enough to tell her initially and then things spiraled out of control. by the time she realized charlie might be okay with her past, she'd already been hiding it so long that it felt like too big a secret to share. and i think some part of her still believed this would be something charlie couldn't forgive.

and my favorite hc: charlie can't forgive it. we don't know how many souls vaggie has fully eradicated, but it has to be in the thousands, at least. lute's kill count from one purge was 275, and adam references vaggie being "one of his top girls." there's also a detail i saw pointed out elsewhere; most of the exorcists have plain black halos, except for lute, whose halo has a white glow as well... and vaggie, whose halo shares the same glow. there's a good chance she was high up in the ranks, possibly third in command -- and possibly quickly closing in on having a higher kill count than lute, which would explain her vitriol and eagerness to get rid of vaggie at the first sign of weakness. but obviously, that's just a headcanon. as is much of the above xD

but back to charlie, i don't think she'd be able to forgive that. the good news is, she doesn't have to. charlie is upbeat and optimistic, but she was raised in hell. she's not naive; she knows the people she wants to save have committed heinous atrocities. the difference is that she believes in change. the vaggie she knows, the one standing in front of her, isn't an exorcist. she's her partner, who while yes, eager to anger and easy to jump to violence, only does so when she or charlie are provoked/threatened. charlie is capable of still being disappointed/devastated by vaggie's past and acknowledging that it's not her present - or future.

one of the things i also think is so important is the battle scene. that was a huge test of charlie's acceptance; seeing her girlfriend step back into that role, that violence, was a big thing, one that nobody would've blamed her for recoiling from. she doesn't. she fights alongside vaggie (albeit... creatively, we'll say) and yes, the exorcists are enemies and she has a long history of reasons to hate them, but even during the battle she doesn't. she's still apologetic and doesn't really want to hurt anyone, just deter them. it takes vaggie telling her to be harsher for her to do it, and she follows vaggie's instruction. this is vaggie's area of expertise, and while she may have learned those skills by butchering Charlie's people, she's repurposed those skills. She's armor, not a weapon; she's violent only to defend, not out of bloodlust.

i think it's really easy to misunderstand charlie's acceptance of vaggie's past as naive or their reconciliation as too soon/too easy, but there's three years of history behind them and charlie actively chooses not to let this new information shatter the foundation they've built together. they're a prime example of the idea that relationships work because you continue to choose that person, to choose to work at it, and while that only works if both sides are willing, for vaggie and charlie, they are.

i do really hope we see vaggie find some self-worth outside of charlie in s2, though. she has so much potential to explore the complexity of her character and i really want to see that. i don't think they're bad for each other, but to some extent... vaggie went from serving one entity (adam) to serving another (charlie) and that level of devotion can be dangerous. charlie is infinitely better than adam, don't get me wrong, but vaggie definitely needs to find purpose beyond being charlie's right hand.

i'm personally hoping for sort of an... exorcist/angel ambassador role for her? something that ties into the hotel but is independent of charlie and something she wants to do. or maybe teaching self-defense/offense to the rest of the group (which she likely did for the battle/army, since she knows better than anyone how the exorcists fight).

honestly i probably have more thoughts than this but i hope you enjoyed my stream of consciousness ramble about Them <3

#i love them a lot and i have so many feelings about how they worked through it #chaggie #charlie morningstar #charlie x vaggie #vaggie hazbin hotel #vaggie #rainbowmoth #hazbin hotel #jesus fuck this got long oops

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multifanlol · 2 years ago

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If your still taking request can you pls do yandere Scott tenorman x reader that is like mikan tsumiki (being a nurse,clumsy,apologizing a lot,ect)

Yes I’m still taking requests don’t be shy to ask :) also sure! It might be a little out of character since we don’t see Scott a lot in the viewers pov but I’ll try-

Tw: If you’ve seen the game you know Mikan herself can be a trigger to some people with similar trauma but incase you didn’t mentions of sexual trauma, falling into inappropriate positions, bullying, etc all that stuff also stalking, overall yandere stuff

Yandere Scott Tenorman x reader who acts like Mikan Tsumuki

Before the chilli incident

When we first met you was completely by accident as he was just talking with his friends about whatever and you bumped into him into one of “those” positions

Wouldn’t lie he would make fun of you a little since his friends are there but then he’d help you up realising how uncomfortable that position must be

Then he realises how pretty you are and he was lovesick right away

Like he doesn’t know what to say then and then and you pretty much start apologising over and over thinking you did something-

He quickly stops you kinda flustered with his friends watching telling you it’s fine and to stop apologising till you run off

Yep he’s obsessed like he keeps on talking about how pretty you are around his friends that it begins to annoy them so they just tell him to take you out

Like my boy wants to but doesn’t know how to approach he doesn’t even know where to find you!

Till his friends tell him your a nurse….

You weren’t exactly a full time one since you were still in school but the way you’d heal wounds and etc were so good in the teachers eyes they offered you a job to work there! You were so good you became the official full time one-

And oh boy does he become your most visited customer

Apparently Scott always seems to have “cramps”, a “twisted” elbo, the flu….

Soon you notice he becomes your only customer, not that you mind it’s nice having a friend but…..

Anyways! When he finds out about your past of being bullied he feels some sort of rising anger in him he’s never felt before…..

Like yeah he’s been really mad before but not THIS mad it feels kinda psychotic really…..

Really

Maybe he’d get you to give them the names……and addresses…..

Sooner or later you notice nobody’s bullying you anymore! That’s great but you also notice people seem to i don’t know…..fear you? Did you do something? You’d ask and they’d practically scram acting like your gonna kill them-

You thought you did something but not to worry, your greatest and only friend Scott Tenorman is here!

He’d comfort you and make all those sad tears go away!

“Don’t be so sad s/o who needs all the friends in the world anyway? You have me and that’s all that matters”

I feel like he’d maybe let you hang around his friends only if he’s there of course and it’d be rare he doesn’t want them to ruin you….your his after all….

Would probably be more gentle and calm with you as to not freak you out but not gonna lie in his opinion seeing you scared some times can be cute…..

Definitely wouldn’t tell you about the whole pubes thing as he wouldn’t wanna let you in on it as it’d be kinda embarrassing in his eyes although he does let you go to the chilli festival to “impress you” or something like that….

Cartman would def find out about you when stalking Scott he’s stalking you so he would just take a few photos of Scott and give them to you i mean who would you believe Scott over an “innocent” little boy?

Your not really sure what to believe honestly with the way you grew up you’d find it maybe…..cute? Scott is your only friend! You don’t wanna lose him

During the chilli festival you watch Scott lose everything embarrassed in front of his friends, his parents dead, his favourite band brutally roasting him, yk he’s kinda going mad

After the chilli incident

Ever since the festival Scott was missing not even you heard of him, you were worried and it’s not like your life got any better, people went back on to bullying you, etc yk it sucked

But you always felt like someone was watching you…..particularly all the ginger kids, like they were meant to keep an eye on you….

You didn’t really want to think much of it but one day while you were sleeping, you woke up in a…..different place

And you felt a presence of someone in the room and noticed a shadow…..coming out was Scott Tenorman! With ginger kids behind him…?

Not to worry! Everything’s gonna be okay, he just had to kidnap you and keep you here to make sure your safe! He’s gonna get revenge on that Eric kid for ruining his life….

He’d become much more possessive and brutal although not exactly brutal to you as in his eyes you can do no wrong although brutal with others especially with his kills

Good luck because i don’t think you’ll ever be seeing the light of sun again, maybe just maybe he’d let you and him go at night but only at night as it’s too risky

I mean can you totally blame him? (Yes you can) he just lost his parents thanks to a little kid (and that kid is Eric Cartman) anything can happen….

Definitely becomes much more clingy and affectionate with you now as before he’d still be embarrassed in front of his friends now he doesn’t care he can give you all the attention you’d desire! If you ever cried he’d feel horrible

“Aw d-don’t cry! Look i know you want to leave but it’s not like you had it good out there anyway! They all hated you, I’m protecting you!”

Whenever he’s thinking of some plan to get back at Cartman and you sadly can’t be there which is rare he get some of the ginger kids he got to watch over you which would be kinda rare although he trusts you won’t leave i mean, not only are you insanely clumsy but do you really wanna go back to your life out there?

Overall he would be a bit of a messy yandere tough with a soft side i guess?

I hope you liked it-if you wanna request anything else it’s open! Bye love y’all! :)

#character x reader #south park #South Park x reader #Scott Tenorman #Scott Tenorman chilli #Scott Tenorman x reader #Yandere Scott Tenorman #Yandere South Park #South park teens

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veronicaphoenix · 1 year ago

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Chapter tags & trigger warnings: angst/hurt, intoxication, patient in recovery, panic attacks, mentions of substance abuse. | Word count: 1.5k | Cross posted on AO3.| Series masterpost. ✧.*

General trigger warnings: This work addresses and depicts issues related to addiction and violence, contains explicit sexual content, and explores themes of childhood trauma. Reader discretion is advised.

The world we live in is one that teaches you to fear death since you’re a child, but as we grow up, some of us realize that we’re not really scared of dying; we’re scared of losing the ones we love the most.

Twenty-four hours after I held Lia in my arms, I called grandma. It was 5pm in Japan.

“Grandma, it’s Lia. She’s… she’s in the hospital. I don’t know what to do.”

I didn’t know what else to say, either, and there was nothing she could say to change the situation.

Lia lay in an uncomfortable bed, and IV line connected to her right arm. Her black tights and the oversized shirt she had been using as a dress were gone, replaced by a whitish gown. Underneath, ECG leads were attached to her chest to keep track of her heart. Her feet were naked under the cold sheets. The hardest part to look at was her face. She was pale, her lips chapped, her hair greasy, and there was an NC connected to her nose to provide her with oxygen.

Her eyes were closed. I couldn’t see her light.

I couldn’t bear to see her like that.

I was sitting in the single uncomfortable armchair that was in the room, looking at her with my chin rested on my intertwined hands. My elbows pressed on my knees. My body was bent forward, toward her. There was nothing I could do but stare at her benumbed body.

I had touched her hand before, but the cold startled me, and I had to leave the room for a while before I succumbed to another wave of panic.

The first panic attack came when we arrived at the hospital, right after the paramedics carried Lia’s numb body in a stretcher towards the ER. The air was thick with urgency as they talked to a group of people covered in white clothes: nurses and doctors. One of them turned her gaze toward me, and a few seconds after, the woman was standing in front of me. She asked me who I was to Lia. I didn’t know what to say. Her best friend, her only family, her lover? Luckily for me, Jolly was standing by my side, and he gave an honest and valid reply, sparing me from the struggle. With a nod of acknowledgment, the doctor asked for an insight into Lia’s history, her problems. They wanted to know what had happened, why it had happened…

Then I started panicking. I didn’t know where to look, where to go.

Jolly must have managed the situation. The doctor nodded, jotting down a few things on a sheet of paper, and went back to where Lia had been taken; a secluded corner where she was out of my sight the moment they moved a curtain to separate her body from the rest of the patients and people in the emergency room.

There were too many people. Too many accidents. Too much pain and death.

I shouldn’t be there. Merely four hours ago I was standing on a stage, controlling a crowd of over six thousand people. Now, I couldn’t get a hold of myself.

My breaths grew ragged, the noise around me transforming into an unbearable symphony. Tightness gripped my chest. I was suffocating. I pressed a trembling hand against my chest as I moved somewhere in search of support. I heard a few voices behind me, some calling my name. Then there were a few nurses approaching us, one of them said something about not being allowed in those premises, that we had to wait outside. I couldn’t wait, didn’t they understand? I needed to know that Lia was going to be okay. They wouldn’t shut up. Someone called out my name, louder than before, the voice breaking through. Following that, I felt a hand gripping my shoulder.

Nicholas.

I looked up to find him, and I collapsed in his arms as I let out a cry and the tears started flowing.

He held the weight of my body as I emptied myself of everything I’d been carrying for the last few months: the guilt for not realizing sooner that Lia was being abused by the one who was supposed to adore her, the guilt for not gathering the courage to tell her what I felt, the anger for every time Lia refused to talk to me, the anger at every time she decided the pills were better than my shoulder, then, every other mistake until this very right moment, when I didn’t know if I would ever get the chance to hold her in my arms and see her smiling up at me, her eyes shining with anticipation as I bent down to kiss her.

A nurse approached us and suggested that I lay down in one of the beds. The promise of care and a calming remedy seemed tempting, but all that I could mutter was a harsh “fuck off”. I didn’t want to hear about any fucking pill that would calm me down. Nicholas raised a hand and gestured towards the nurse to give me some space.

It took me a grueling thirty minutes to calm down, and even after that, I still couldn’t stand straight without my legs shaking and my chest hurting. My eyes would burn until Lia opened hers.

I didn’t sleep that night, and neither did I the next one.

I remained awake, by Lia’s side. At times I drifted between reality and dreams. There were moments when I drifted into a hazy realm, only to be abruptly pulled back into the real world. In those instances, I would jolt awake gripped by the haunting illusion that Lia had woken up, that she was awake and was calling my name, asking for my hand to pull her out of the water.

She was still unconscious.

As the hours ticked away, the room started getting filled with flowers and bouquets that our friends brought as they came to see her, check on her. Jolly stayed with me for hours and insisted that I go to the hotel and take a shower, get changed into clean clothes and eat something while he looked after her, but I denied over and over again, relenting only when he managed to coax me into sipping on a cheap disgusting coffee fetched from the hospital’s cafeteria.

I saw him crying for the first time in my life when he entered the room shortly after they had settled Lia into the bed.

Folio didn’t even dare to come in. He was terrified, and I learnt days later that he had endured a series of nightmares the night following the incident.

As I looked around and took in the colors filling the room, I wondered if the number of flowers was intended for Lia or perhaps meant as a collective gesture to instill hope in me, a silent illusion that would make me believe that Lia would recover.

I had lost track of time.

I had seen the sun rise twice since I settled in that sterile room, which meant I had been there for two days and that Lia had been asleep for forty-eight hours, at least. I had only eaten two bites of a cheese sandwich that someone brought. I couldn’t recall if it was Matt or Bryan. Maybe, Jolly. Who cared.

I saw them all coming in and out of the room constantly the first day. The second one, it was just me and the closest to me and Lia. The rest of the team flew back home because life didn’t stop, even if it had for her. Even if it had for me.

My mind was filled with a void, but every once in a while a question would pop up, or an image. They were so random, varying from one happy scenario to a very tragic one. I saw Lia as a kid, when grandma used to do her hair and braid it at her back, then I saw her falling of my bike, but she looked older. I saw myself drowning in the same lake where we had swum all those summers ago. I saw Lia kissing a boy who wasn’t me in the lake’s deck. Then I saw her wearing the same dress she had worn the day she graduated from high school. The image transitioned to one in which she was wearing a white dress. I was waiting for her at the end of the desire path, ready to marry her. In the next one, I saw her playing with a huge dog somewhere in the mountains, her body covered by layers of clothing and a thick scarf. She smiled at someone, and I realized it was at me. She called me to go to her, and I did, but as I reached to grab her hand, she faded away.

I opened my eyes in a halt, again. I sat upright in the armchair and grabbed the front of the hoodie I was wearing. I was breathing hard, and I could feel a drop of sweat sliding down my back.

It was a dream.

Then, I heard what I had been waiting for two eternal days, and there was no telling it wasn’t real.

“Noah?”

Lia’s voice calling my name.

Author's note: This is the end of Koi No Yokan. From this chapter we move onto Zutto (or a Promise of Forever) where I promise there will be less angst and more fluff and love between Lia and Noah 🥹

Thank you to every one that's been reading and commenting on this story :') It means a lot.

READ ZUTTO CHAPTER ONE HERE

#noah sebastian fic #bad omens fic #noah sebastian x ofc #noah sebastian #bad omens #bad omens fanfic

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daebraeksan · 2 years ago

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Scared to talk to Bachira about him hurting your feelings (but then you do it and he apologizes and you forgive him)

Genre: comfort, established relationship, pro player Bachira

Contents: anxiety, insecurity, implied trauma, trust issues, fear of confrontation

Wc: 1289

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

You’re in a little bit of a catastrophic spiral. You feel really tender and sensitive and like anything could send you over the edge. You feel like you’ve done everything wrong (what specifically? Everything. What more explanation could you possibly want?) and you feel like everything is going to be taken away from you.

You get like this sometimes. You try not to. But it’s hard to outrun a childhood. And you aren’t really trying to outrun it. You just want to be happy despite it.

Having Bachira in your life is one thing you have tried to remove from the list of things you have periodic freak outs about. You want to work on your trust issues, and you have, and you know Bachira is trustworthy. He has never done anything to prove otherwise. Logic doesn’t really help your anxieties or insecurities but you still feel the need to point out the facts.

You’ve been off kilter for a few days in a row, situations not going your way, some major, some minor, and you hate it. You hate that you can’t just coping-strategy all of this away—all of these feelings away. You pace around your house. You sit down at the dining table and rock yourself. You curl up on the couch in an incredibly uncomfortable position and don’t move.

Normally, you are pretty good at feeling secure in your relationships with people. You’ve worked hard to get to this point. You don’t have to second guess their motives, when you’ve known them for a long time, and they’ve demonstrated nothing but respect and kindness towards you. But this week has been crazy for Bachira, too, or something—regardless of the reason, you felt ignored one too many times, felt like you were snapped at, and felt like you were expendable. You don’t blame him at all since it’s your interpretation but at the same time you know from experience that invalidating your emotions isn’t going to make any of this go away.

And then you’ve gone and wrapped yourself up in your old habits of being afraid to talk about something. Your classic fear rears its head: you’re too much trouble, way more trouble than you’re worth, and everyone is going to leave you.

Bachira comes home, drops his stuff off haphazardly in the front doorway, and makes a beeline straight towards you. He ruffles your hair and presses a kiss to the top of your head.

“I’m home,” he sings.

You smile at him, but you feel crazy. He must notice something is off—how could he not?—because he cups your cheek. It has the intended effect—you indeed feel soothed. You nuzzle your cheek into his palm. You want to be completely engulfed in his touch. You hate everything you’re feeling right now. It’s too hard.

“What do you want to do tonight?”

You know sometimes he asks this as a formality. He always likes having something to do—but he is content to “compromise” with you and create an “event” for something very normal and calm and low-key that you also want to do (at home. Definitely at home.) (You hate that word because it still feels like both people lose something but whatever the word is for both people are happy with the outcome lol.)

“I don’t know,” you half-lie—at the very least, you know you have to talk to him. The words coagulate like mucus in your throat. You’re so stupid. This shouldn't be that hard. Bachira loves you and he’s going to listen to you and nothing is going to be wrong.

You can tell yourself these things. And it won’t help. But to be fair, being mean to yourself won’t help either, but. Yknow. You aren’t going to win every battle. Definitely not this one today.

Not that you want this conversation with Bachira to seem like a battle. You don’t.

He studies you for a bit. “We could…just relax together until we think of something?”

You like having a specifically-designated task, something delineated, and can make you feel like you aren’t a failure and aren’t causing a fuss or scene or trouble. You aren’t ruining everyone’s night, this still “counts” as “successful”—you give in to all your old habits, all your rigid, self-scaring habits. Why not? When it rains it pours, or whatever. Let the dam break. Etc.

You hear him heating up food in the kitchen and he spreads everything out on the coffee table in the living room. You look at him adoringly. He knows you don't eat when you’re like this. That bastard. Loving you and taking care of you.

How dare he?

You both start on your food, him digging in, and you nibbling.

“Can we talk?” you ask.

“Always,” he says, and a few pieces of rice fly out of his mouth onto the table. He picks them up and tries to feed them to you.

“No!” you bark jokingly as you twist your head away, scrunching up your face, trying not to laugh because then he will put the rice in your mouth.

“Don’t waste food!” he admonishes seriously.

“Stop!” you finally let out a giggle. He eats the rice himself and settles back down.

You stare at him and he stares at you.

“Sorry,” he says. “It’s your turn again.”

“Thank you,” you say. You figure you might as well ease yourself into it. You don’t have to accuse yourself of manipulation or lying or whatever—you just need to let yourself be. You’re trying your best. You start off with talking about some random topics that were bothering you this week to set the scene. You explain the headspace you’ve been in and how you’ve been feeling.

He puts down his food. “I’m sorry that happened,” he says. “Can I hug you?”

You nod. You put down your food just as he throws his arms around you and squeezes you tight. He kisses your cheek. “I don’t mean for those actions to make you feel those ways. Is there anything I can do to show you that I didn’t mean any of that, and that I love you so much?”

You are very embarrassed. You hate to ask for anything—even normal boring stuff, and now, this feels like you are being asked to ask for something extra special. Asking someone to make amends to you feels so wrong. It feels like you’re not supposed to cause other people trouble. But anything you say, Bachira probably has already done before, and is okay with it, and some, he’s even done on his own volition before, and you might not have even known it was what you liked or wanted before him.

You make your requests of how you want to spend some time with him doing your favorite activities and he happily acquiesces.

“I’ve been wanting that, too,” he says. He peppers kisses all over your face. “I’m sorry you had a bad week,” he says. “That’s so stupid.”

“It was really stupid,” you say sadly.

He shakes you. “Do you want me to beat them up?” he asks in the most chipper tone.

You sigh and shake your head. “No. Let’s just watch tv.”

He grabs blankets, and you finish the rest of your food while watching your comfort show, snuggled up next to Bachira, who waits patiently until you’re done eating so he can hold your hand.

Nothing can make the bad events of this week less bad—but you also don’t have to carry your insecure energy into next week. You know you can do what you need to do and you know it’s okay to feel this way sometimes. And if there’s anyone who believes in you the most, it’s Bachira.

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ncsdlr · 1 year ago

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Pick and Choose - Blossoming Love

Riverdale

Warnings: cheating (I do not encourage this), CHONI, hints of depression, talks of past trauma.

Pairings: Cheryl Blossom x fem!reader

Word Count: 1566

AN: Well, I finished this way faster than I thought I would, so here we are. I hope this isn't as shit as I think it is. 😃

_____________

A month. A whole ass month's worth of all this chatting, dating, and being clingy. You were so tired. You wanted a break, at least for a few minutes. In complete honesty, it wasn't all bad. You appreciated the gifts, the words of affirmation, and the romantic dates. All you wished for was a little distance. Everything was getting so serious so fast, and the fact that Cheryl made you feel so good about yourself didn't sit right with you.

Vulnerability wasn't your strong suit. It made you feel small. It made you feel like you were weak. So, to have someone act so close to you, made you feel things you didn't want to feel. "My love, what is on your mind?"

You tore your eyes away from the invisible speck on the ground and focused on your lover. You shook your head, "Nothing."

"I fear I don't believe that. Something else on your mind must have stolen your attention away from my gorgeous frame."

You internally cringed, not knowing whether to make an excuse or tell her exactly what was on your mind. "I'm just thinking of... things."

"Anything I can assist you with?"

You wrapped your arm around yourself and rubbed it on the bicep it landed on. Cheryl eyed your hand and squinted at it. "Not really. They're pretty mundane things."

Cheryl let you slide and opened her phone as it pinged. She grinned but rolled her eyes at the message she received. It read, "Fine, you win." Cheryl intended to ignore the message entirely, but then she got curious about how things would turn out. So, Cheryl being Cheryl, she let herself fall into the moment. "Meet me on our spot at Pop's."

"Dear, Y/N, I apologize, but I must leave. Something very important has come up. But do expect that once I get back to you, I will have very exciting news." Cheryl gave you a smile before she stood up and left, seemingly in a hurry. You didn't even get a word in, not that you minded.

Finally, peace and quiet.

On second thought, your book gently fell back against the table as your mind wandered off somewhere no one would ever find. What could it have been? Cheryl would stay with you the whole day, and when she would tell you that she had to leave earlier, she'd let you give out a response before changing her mind and staying instead. You were so curious, it was, honestly, killing you.

It took every fiber in you to take your book seriously. It was a good book. You didn't want to miss out.

----

Toni sat there in all her glory waiting for Cheryl's striking entry, wearing her serpent jacket. She had made sure to dress up the way Cheryl wanted her to, knowing that if she did, their chances of getting back together would be higher. When the bell attached to the diner's door jingled, she turned her head to it, visibly lighting up as she spotted her favorite redhead strutting up to her.

"I knew you couldn't live without me, I am, simply, the best thing anyone could ever ask for. So, dear Tee-Tee, I hope you've prepared a speech to move me enough to take you back." Cheryl sat on the stool to Toni's right and faced her ex.

"Cheryl, I know we both can't live without each other. I can feel it. it's like we're bound together by some invisible string that makes us tied to each other. Cher, we complete each other, and this past month without you has been painful as hell." The way Toni spoke was gentle and soft. Cheryl loved this about her Toni. Her Tee-Tee could match the sensitivity of a situation with her words, and that made Cheryl feel safe. Toni handled her with so much care and patience, and she fell in love with that. She fell for Toni so hard and so fast.

Toni meant everything to Cheryl, and losing her might as well be the world's end. With Toni, it was all or nothing for Cheryl. It was either commit or don't commit. She wanted to commit. They both did, but for Cheryl, something came up. Sure, she still wanted Toni, but not as much as before. Now, she only wanted Toni at a certain level.

They love each other dearly. They cared for each other. But there was this large strain in their bond that made it seem like fixing things or talking it out would not suffice as a fix. They felt compelled to hear the three words they dedicated to each other again, but Cheryl had restraints now.

Then in the heat of the moment, Cheryl found herself leaning back against the counter while Toni pressed her body against her's for a big kiss. It was slow and passionate, something they'd been yearning to experience from each other again. Now that Cheryl had Toni again, everything else just didn't matter, or in Cheryl's mind, fuck it.

They found themselves in Cheryl's bedroom at the Thistle house, making out against her door like they would die if they stopped. It just felt so good. Their hips gyrated against each other, the moment proving to grow hotter by the second. As Cheryl's back hit the soft mattress of her bed all the while keeping her lips locked onto Toni's, it sealed their fate for the night.

When they awoke the next morning, they did their morning routine. They shower together while making no effort to keep their hands to themselves, cooking breakfast, and holding onto each other on their way to school. They were both still reeling off from their midnight escapades the previous night, so the world was pretty much blurred around them. Their focus remained on each other, not even bothering to hide their very couple-ly PDA.

You noticed, of course. I mean, they were everywhere and they were the talk of the school. Most students murmured about Choni being back together, while the smaller half muttered sick comments saying how Cheryl used you to get Toni back.

You weren't going to lie and say you weren't hurt. You were, but not as much as you should be. Were you hurt? It wasn't like you cared about Cheryl at all. It's not like you weren't just starting to get comfortable enough to open up to her. Funny enough, you were, actually, planning on telling Cheryl everything tonight. Oh, well. It didn't matter anymore. She finally had what she wanted.

You proceeded with your day like normal. I mean, nothing really changed, it wasn't a big loss. That's what you told yourself at least. As the day dragged on, you forced yourself together, squeezing your eyes shut for a few seconds before opening them again to relieve some of the drowsiness you felt. When all of your classes for the day finished, you headed to the library and sat down on the floor between two aisles of bookshelves, resting your head in the palm of your hands as you curled your knees up to your chest.

Life, for you now, is uneventful, other than the whole Cheryl thing. Your life before coming to the North side of Riverdale was hell, but it was perfect nonetheless. Your parents were there, your family, your grandmother, your home, your serpent family. It was all you knew, so when you had to move due to Hiram's work, it really crushed your soul. Then came the day of your family slowly being ripped away from you. It was like your heart was being gripped very tightly, thus causing you to feel as if it had stopped beating entirely. But it still was. It just took you a while to realize it.

After those traumatically tragic events, you opted to just go with the flow, sitting alone and keeping to yourself. You still hung out with the Serpents, of course, they are your only family left after all. But even if that is the case, you still felt like you were the only one who was left in the moment of grief. It looked, to you, like you were stuck in a ditch with no chance of getting out any time soon. It took something that shined as bright as the sun to find a way out, but even then, time was at a standstill for you.

Along with that came the emptiness you felt. It was like you had something to do, but you didn't know exactly what that thing was. You were in a very complicated ditch, and there wasn't anything to grab onto around you. But there was one, only it was all the way on the other side, and you didn't have enough energy to get up and get to it. You wanted help, yet you were too tired to seek it. For you, it was exhausting to even think about, getting up to help yourself and all that.

In this ditch, it was dark and cold. It felt like there was this big storm coming and it was nighttime, and there was no safe place around for you to nestle yourself in for, at least, the shortest amount of time. It was like, wandering around the desert, stressed, tired, and cold. It was pressuring. The world was pressuring. It motivated you yet diminished your confidence in conquering its trials. It tested your patience greatly.

And you aren't the most patient person to ever exist.

#not the mcu #lgbtq #YESSS CHONI #I DO NOT ENDORSE CHEATING #DONT CHEAT ON PEOPLE #i am gay #cheryl blossom x fem!reader #cheryl blossom #toni topaz #riverdale #x fem!reader #apparently there will be a part three #pls reblog it really helps #I LOVE YOU ALL SO MUCH PLS

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buckybarnesss · 1 year ago

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I was thinking the other day, Stiles has really gone through so much with his mom. There's being with her when she died (and the rush of relief/guilt that must have brought), dealing with her forgetting him and attacking him, and then having to fend off a magical clone of her in season 6.

It's interesting to me because no one else really has this level of parental trauma, and it's reoccurring in Stiles' narrative even though he never really talks about it. It's like it really is too personal for him to talk about with anyone, maybe not even Scott.

stiles as a character only makes sense when viewed from the lens of the trauma left by his mother's condition and death. claudia died when stiles was 8 years old and by that point she had gone through severe deterioration both mentally and physically.

we don't know when claudia started exhibiting over symptoms of dementia but i would hazard a guess of maybe 2-3 years seeing as she had a child within the last eight years of her life and stiles has memory of claudia before she was ill. still. it's way too young for him to fully understand what is happening.

like he internalized claudia's delusions that he was trying to kill her to the point of believing it on some level and believed that he was going to kill his father too. like jesus fucking christ.

his anxiety and obsessiveness surrounding his father's health and safety stems directly back to losing claudia. it's why he's so terrified of losing his friends.

hot take here i think his infatuation with lydia is wrapped up in feelings about claudia. he says he's been in love with her since the 3rd grade which would've been around the same time claudia passed. he latched onto lydia martin as a concept and didn't start seeing her as a real person until season 3.

his speech to her in master plan wasn't stiles talking to lydia it was talking to the lydia that was the stand in for his mother.

"you see, death doesn't happen to you, lydia. it happens to everyone around you, to all the people left standing at your funeral, trying to figure out how they're going to now live the rest of their lives without you in it."

it's why their relationship cannot progress romantically until the ghost of his mother is exorcised, but i haven't fully watched 6a yet and i still don't really view a romantic relationship between them as necessarily healthy.

but speaking of 6a, jesus christ the level of trauma of stiles has due to having to endure people forgetting about him. especially his father. his mother already forgot him once and died now his dad too? plus his closest friends. stiles's greatest fear come to life.

like with derek the trauma stiles endures isn't really talked about. stiles witnessed the mechanic get crushed by his jeep in abomination while being rendered helpless to do anything but watch and that's just glossed the fuck over.

this doesn't get into the relationship stiles has with his dad because that's all kinds of tangled. noah stilinski isn't a perfect father. there's definitely a level of stiles being both treated as a child and as an adult by his dad.

and you're right stiles resolutely doesn't discuss it with anyone. it's like he's taken it as his burden to bear and that's it. stiles keeps people emotionally at arms length as some measure of protection for himself. he's not really willing to crack himself open and share. emotionally vulnerability scares him.

one of the few times we see him really open and raw in front of others is when he's trying to talk scott down in motel california and holy shit stiles was fully prepared to just die with scott. you could say he was bluffing but was he? was he really?

the kids ain't alright in teen wolf. allison was never more right when she broke down saying "we're just a bunch of teenagers. we can't handle this."

they all need therapy.

#my blog #teen wolf #thoughts on teen wolf #stiles stilisnki

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loveyourlovelysoul · 2 years ago

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How to make better types of friendships?

We all want to have deeper and better relationships, not those that stay on the surface and last a few messages, but we're not always too open for them. We also expect others to start giving to us, asking us, through our half-open doors. But we rarely initiate an interaction. Now tell me, if everyone keeps waiting to initiate, how can we actually have a conversation or even start a friendship? It's good to take a step back, open our door a little more and be the first one showing interest in another person. It's safe to do that, despite our minds sometimes tell us the opposite to cause... we fear rejection. And historically (when we used to live in tribes), being rejected by others meant basically be in a huge life threat. But things have changed nowadays. If by any chance the other person will close their door on us, it's fine: it means we're not for them. But we can survive anyway, and it will still be worth to try. It'll help us as well in making experience for when our people will come in. Rejection is okay, it doesn't mean we're not worthy of any type of releationships on a world-wide scale. We're not in danger. It only refers to one person. And do you know how many people live on this Earth, right? So just try. Contact 5 people you'd like to talk with and see how things go. But remember to show interest in them, so keep the convo going (unless the other tells you differently ofc).

We have self worth issues: we don't feel enough, we have social anxiety (to an extent), we feel like losers, not interesting, boring, too sad, too whiny... and whatever other negative adjective you want to add. If we start this way, we may even just get that: we may really look like losers or too sad or closed off. All this is never of help in letting people in and be curious about us. Start seeing yourself differently: list 10 positive traits, or things you have achieved. Every little thing counts (even getting out of bad on a very tough day, or drinking a glass of water when you needed: you took care of you, and did amazingly). Be more proud about your small achievements: we tend to focus too much on negative parts of ourselves and life, and that's cause of some twisted up self preservation habit (think about wild animals and how they need to survive to their predators: if they kept thinking about being eaten, they would never have the chance to enjoy anything, to even live. That's what we do though: we keep thinking about being eaten by some strange enormous being -that is only inside of us. So we may even fight it and show it we can actually do anything anyway and nothing bad will happen). Starting from seeing ourselves as not good enough for relationships, we assume nobody will like us. This is where we should make a 180° turn. Let's try assuming someone will like us. Let's be propositive and happy. This way, we become unconsciously more open, warmer, welcoming.. all traits that attract people in and make them like us. Ofc there will still be some people that won't, no matter what, but that's okay: we're not made for everyone anyway.

We tend to overthink about what other think, mean by saying a specific word or sentence, or with a specific act (e.g. they cancelled our meeting so they must hate me; they aren't answering immediately to my text so I have hurt them or they hate me). This is where we lose it all. Doing so, overthinking through our self perception and our own life experience (and possible traumas/triggers), we may even end up misinterpreting the other's true intentions. And forget others do have a life of their own as well, so they may even be busy studying, working even playing videogames... just living, but it doesn't mean they hate us or don't care about us. They need time to do things for themselves exactly as we do. Making assumptions about others is rarely of help in understanding them and their true intentions. So try to be objective, get away from your own point of view on a fact, and try to be neutral. Try to see the world from the other's eyes, but even better, ask. Talk. Communicate about your insecurities, fears, worries... Keeping them inside won't be of help in understanding the other, it will just rot inside of you, hurt you, possibly cause pain and mine the relationship. To be open and vulnerable, also mean be ready to have some tough convos on emotions, feelings, experiences, problems. And to be ready to say you have been wrong or have judged the others to ofast based on your own past experiences and fears. Life it's not all about flowers and candies... there's also the other side of it. But having a deep relationship based on trust and security, will help you find common ground and be clear with the other through communication. No fears. No masks. And being understanding of each others' need for space. Focus on what you can control = YOU. How you express yourself, your thoughts, your perception of who you are and what you are saying and doing. Set your values and stick to them. And also remember to set your boundaries and be in control of your ground: you can be kind and still say no to things you don't want to do. Do not people please: this won't bring you your dream friendship or relationship, but only someone toxic taking the best of you. Relationships needs to be balanced, we need to leanr to be open and giving to receive as much. It's also about respect for the other but ourself as well. Show up as the type of person you'd like to interact or have a relationship with. Show yourself what you really deserve. And be ready to only have that back. It's not being picky, is being self respectful. And ofc it will take time and effort, lot of practice, but you'll get there. Trust yourself and your own worth. Know what you need in another person, and be ready to ask for that. You aren't needy, people has needs.

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imogenkol · 2 years ago

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I’m curious about your thoughts on Bix in that leaked teaser because I’m VERY worried about her storyline 😞

!!!!! thank you for asking!!! I am hella stressed about it too and I've got some long winded scrambled thots under the cut here:

As we know, she obviously isn't in/never mentioned in Rogue One and sometimes that implies a prequel character is doomed by the narrative so my main fear is that her story is going to end in her death. There's also a few lines from Cass in RO that could reinforce that theory (ie: him telling Jyn she isn't the only one who lost everything). Apart from me being totally biased, I do think it'd be a waste of her character, especially since she was criminally underutilized in s1 imo

anywho, from the poor quality clips/screencaps I've seen (I will admit that it can be kinda tough to tell who is who and some scenes flash by so quickly) it looks like Bix might be struggling a lot with feeling like her life is out of her control, even after at least a year time jump from s1. I do think it looks like she is the one who goes after Gorst either as revenge or to regain the control she lost or both. Then that shot of her in bed with the blaster could be the aftermath of that encounter, whether she succeeded or failed. If that's true then it doesn't look like it made her feel any better. But I imagine she'll be a very broken version of herself from when she first appeared in ep 1 because she basically did lose everything and was tortured to near insanity

All of this must have radicalized her, but it's hard to say what kind of rebel she'll be. I hope her storyline is centered mostly on herself, her healing, and the kind of person she wants to be in the war against the Empire. Based on the trailer and some set pictures I've seen, it looks like she’ll thankfully be taking on a more active role and I'd really enjoy seeing her kick some ass. At least for herself considering she had to get rescued a couple of times in s1.

It also very much looks like they're putting her back with Cass and, my own personal ship biases aside, I don't really like that at all. I really love the history and dynamic they share and I thought they made it pretty explicit that any romantic ties between them were cut. I've seen people theorize that she isn't in the right state of mind and might be grasping for any physical connection that makes her feel safe - which can make sense given the trauma she went through - but idk I wish we could explore more of a nuanced friend/familial relationship between her and Cass. I know it’s his show, but I really don’t want to see her be reduced to a romantic prop for him or god forbid she’s that and he loses her to further fuel his storyline. Either way, Bix is in a very vulnerable emotional state and I'm not sure any love interest would be necessary for her (yes I know how ironic that is coming from me and my many oc x canon google docs lmao) at least not until she's had the proper time to heal.

All this to say that it looks like they're setting her up for another pretty tragic arc next season and I hope the payoff doesn't end in complete emotional devastation, but this is one of, if not THE darkest star wars stories out there 🙃

These thoughts of course are just based off a grainy one minute teaser trailer that could very well be purposefully deceptive considering the show hasn't even finished filming yet. But I'd love to hear other people's thoughts too!

#asks #anon #bix caleen #I could talk about this a lot more too 😬#but anyway if she dies Tony and I will be exchanging words

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april-december · 10 days ago

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Comments in the main reblog today, because I have a lot to say and I want to say it right.

If you don’t want to listen to trauma regarding grief and death, feel free not to read. I think I just need to get this down for my own catharsis.

Because you see, grief is a terrible thing. It’s the aching absence of the thing you love. What you love is gone; but the love remains and you no longer have that person or thing to give it to.

And then there’s anticipatory grief. This is when you know you’re going to lose that thing, and you are already grieving that loss, before it happens. But the thing is, that person you love is still with you! You want to enjoy the time you have! But you can’t, because everything, every joy and every sadness is tainted by the fact that you know: this isn’t going to last. They will be gone.

I am speaking from experience here. My Mum died in February this year. Her name was Brenda and she was 63. She died of Multiple Sclerosis, a disease so insidious that I can only think of one worse fate, and that is motor neurone disease. Sometimes MS isn’t fatal; you get episodes of it, and then it retreats into the background. Sometimes it is fatal; it progresses, relentlessly over years, stripping away every working function of the body as nerves and pathways are destroyed.

My mum was diagnosed when I was five. I was 37 when she died.

That is 32 years of knowing my mum was sick.

At five years old I was too old to understand much, just that she was ill, and the fact that some day, being mortal, my mum would die.

It wasn’t always apparent that it was going to kill her; at 17, she reassured me that she had the type that didn’t kill. A few years later it became obvious that she *did* have the type that killed.

My sisters left for uni. My dad got scared and ran away, vastly unhappy with his life. I became my mum’s Carer. We lived together from my birth until her death.

All this to say, I understand, intimately, how much it can fuck you up to know that the person you love most is going to die. And not to know when it’s going to happen, just that it will, just that they will die too soon, no matter what you do to try to help.

Because you can’t fight death. You just can’t.

And Agatha knew Nicky was going to die. She must have noticed him getting sicker. And that is terrifying, knowing that the thing you fear most is hurtling towards you, coming right at you, and you can’t stop it. It fucks you up. It fucked Agatha up for the next 270 years. And I bet you that in that montage up there where she’s teaching Nicky about magic, and singing and playing with him - it’s beautiful, but I bet that at every moment, there was some small part of her twisting in sadness because she knew it wouldn’t last.

And not knowing *when* it’s going to happen. Oh, that is the worst thing of all. Will it be today? Tomorrow? A year from now? Do I have a decade to enjoy? (Of course, it’s impossible to tell, and so it’s impossible to fully enjoy it without that fear that it’s going to be taken away).

Rio thought she was giving Agatha a gift: time with her son.

And we see it in the scene where Nicky is born. Agatha desperately asks ‘How much time?’. Because isn’t that the most natural question? You find out someone will die, the first thing you want to know is how much precious time you have with them. As if knowing will help to prepare you.

But Rio is gone already, giving no answer, leaving Agatha with this terrifying black hole of a question she /cannot/ divine the answer to. Agatha loves to /know/. Her crime against her coven was stealing knowledge she wasn’t supposed to have! She’s in her 70s in these scenes and she’s still shown with books, learning, and passing that knowledge on to Nicky. And there is this one burning, terrifying question she doesn’t know the answer to. That she has no way of divining. I think she might hold that against Rio almost as much as Nicky’s death itself; she never told her /when/, and then she took him in his sleep, when Agatha’s guard was down, when she couldn’t do anything to stop her.

And it eats at her, before Nicky is even gone. She does her best, or what she thinks is best. It’s fucked up, obviously, to keep a sickly child alone in the woods and make him help you kill. That’s why Agatha can’t face him in the afterlife. She can commune with the dead and she has never tried to contact her son because she’s too scared! But she is trying here, while he’s alive. She’s a survivor of parental abuse herself, and she is trying to show Nicky how much she loves him, even if her own trauma keeps her from seeking a community that could help them.

As they say, the love is there. It doesn’t change anything; Nicky died and Agatha made mistakes, huge ones. But the love was there.

I have to admit, I am so grateful that this show came out when it did; it’s helped me through my own grief immensely. Fiction is a safe lens through which we can examine our own pain. But even then, it has to be at the right time.

So I am weirdly grateful to Jac Shaeffer, to Kathryn Hahn, and everyone who worked on this show, for helping me safely examine my own grief, exactly when I needed it. I’m also grateful for these deep dives, because they’re helping me examine it further, in a format I find very comforting, like a good discussion about the class-taught books in High School English Literature class that I loved so much. So a huge thank you to rootspiral, who has dedicated so many hours to them.

So yeah. I’m not saying my experience is special. I’m not saying I understand this show on some special level that no one else comprehends; I know everyone is touched by grief in some way, shape or form. And that’s why it’s important, isn’t it? That’s why Jac Shaeffer has told this story twice now, and why it’s worked and been so good both times. Grief is universal. We are all mortal. It’s important to think about it, and talk about it. And it’s so important to have what Agatha didn’t: some kind of community or support system to help you through it when the time comes.

If she’d had that system, the grief wouldn’t have been any less. But someone might have been there to hold her through it, to help her. Maybe she would have felt safe enough to examine and deal with her grief, rather than burying it and desecrating it with 270 years of killing sprees and an absolute refusal to confront what was eating away at her.

And that’s what she finally got a little taste of with her Witches’ Road coven, wasn’t it? And that’s a tragedy all of its own as well, because she lost them, too.

God, this show is so good.

Agatha All Along deep dive: episode 9 part 3

(Wandavision entries: [1][2][3])

(AAA entries: ep1 [1][2][3][4] ep2 [1][2][3][4] ep3 [1][2][3] ep4 [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][+1] ep5 [1][2][3][4][5] ep6 [1][2][3] ep7 [1][2][3][4][5][6] ep8 [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9] ep9 [1][2][3])

the river flowing. mushrooms and lichens growing from a fallen tree. nicky's other mom is always with them.

agatha clearly loves teaching nicky all she knows about magic, because she is a teacher at heart! and he's literally the first person she gets to pass her knowledge on to, she's relishing every minute of it.

meanwhile poor nicky is just hungry. because the fucker makes him live in the woods.

and I guess she finds it easier to be honest when it's about explaining how magic works.

oh no the way they're whispering is so cute??? and she'll keep calling it her purple long after nicky's death.

and this has been pointed out many times, but when nicky smiles you're sure reminded of how they went out of their way to find a kid who looked like aubrey plaza too

another thing that has been pointed out ad nauseam and it will be repeated again, because it's so good: I cannot heal you, like jen would. I cannot protect you, like alice would. and I cannot divine, like lilia would.

could a real coven have healed nicky, protected him, saved him from his fate? did she kill him sooner than necessary by keeping him cold and starving in the woods? agatha will never know, because despite all her love, she put her own fear over his safety. maybe nicky would have died anyway, but it's still cruel and unfair that he had to spend the little time he had on earth in such a lonely way.

agatha, despite all the mind tricks she plays on herself and on others, is simply too smart to not see that what she's doing is selfish, harmful to nicky, and ultimately futile. this is why she'd rather blame rio, and it's why she can't go to nicky in the afterlife: she can't face her own guilt.

(also, she's afraid she'll find a version of him that can now understand what she did and will hate her for it.) (and I imagine that a grown up nicholas would have had a hard time coming to terms with his childhood too.)

and still. and still. this whole mess of a person doing a terrible job at raising her son? she's also the daughter of an abusive mother who is trying to be better, she is trying to give him what she never had - love, support, knowledge. her selfish choices don't negate all the love and joy she gave him too.

and on top of everything else, nicky is about to freaking die! in modern times we'd say he has a terminal illness, she doesn't know how much time she has left with him. that is an impossible lot to navigate, especially for a person alone and carrying with her so much baggage and trauma and unhealthy coping mechanisms. keeping nicky so isolated is the only way she feels like she has an illusion of control over the inevitable.

agatha is not only denying nicky a coven, she's denying herself a community that would have helped her carry this burden, that would have taught and encouraged her to do better, that would have ultimately shared her pain in mourning. isn't that another tragedy within the tragedy? knowing what could have been?

agatha teaches him magic, even though he doesn't have any. maybe he was still too young, maybe he really was just a regular kid. still, she teaches him.

NOT THE DANDELION. i'm about to bite my screen in anguish

sure, sure, the time has come to go. I'm fine, I'm totally fine.

aaaaaand some more scamming!!!

agatha the ham is one of my favorite agathas. but wait, I'll make you sad again now! they're doing this shit because they don't have any money to eat. and nicky is clearly sick, and agatha is still making him do it. because they don't have any money to eat.

meanwhile witches everywhere are getting curious about the Ballad. (doesn't she look a bit like sadie sink?)

for the THIRD TIME a witch notices nicky coughing / how sick he is and offers her coven's help.

nicky looks agatha straight in the eyes and refuses to lure witches to their deaths. he stands up for himself. he disobeys.

and yes, the obvious double meaning: my other mother needs me home.

agatha forgets all her scheming and runs after him in a panic. she is losing control over him. she is losing him.

go to episode 9 part 4

#Agatha all along #grief tag #agatha deep dive #Agatha harkness #nicholas scratch #character study

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feminist-minimalist · 1 year ago

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Hey, so....

I don't know how to put this, but abuse and neglect is bad, guys.

I mean, let's look at my life for a moment:

I don't talk to my family. I either am or used to be in two different wills. I no longer care about that and went no contact. Every interaction with them felt hollow, superficial, and like I was a fucking accessory. Anytime I was struggling it was "here, have money" with my dad. Other folks, "get over it, man up, sticks and stones my break my bones". Then made to feel bad about it when the money was all he offered.

My family don't know shit about me. And now I'm just like "meh, I'm gonna stop trying." Blood of the covenant is thicker than water in the womb it seems. Not that I'm leaving my university apartment much. I don't even have a car anymore. One day though.

Also, I am at a point where people talking about their family irks me unless we stiching and bitching (using that endearingly, sorry if that was a bit too harsh). Same with people's love lives. I am hoping EMDR makes me a lot less sensitized to every thing. I feel like an exposed nerve.

I lost my job over mentions of rapists during icebreakers and my PTSD response. Got blamed for it obviously. I mean, yeah, I didn't act perfectly, but they could have been more understanding. Like I had a right to sue and everything and just went "you know what? I want to fix this myself and I don't want a court case". Not saying they didn't do anything wrong, not saying I am a complete angel either. Just saying...it's chaos, be kind.

With Epstein, Pizzagate, The Sound of Freedom, I have to say...ya'll...

DON'T KNOW A DAMNED THING! Like, I think in this case, Urissa was kind of right. There's a lot of performative support. Not a lot of actual support. Still, doesn't make it any less true that she could have gotten help if she wanted though. I mean, I swear by my Medicaid paid, telehealth EMDR. I might even try to be a provider for it later. It feels like an antivaxxer talking to a doctor who specializes in immunology. Just shaking my head like...."that's not how...any of that works".

I also still really really really don't want to deal with in person sex or romance. I'm way too fucking scared because of Urissa's bullshit. Hire a cam model a few oceans away? Sure. But a woman that I see in person? I'm like "....." Like I really don't see anyone I meet in person as "romantic or sexual prospect". I am *way* the fuck too traumatized.

Even if I do say "well, I'm going to lose weight" I still fear the attention that I had from women growing up when I was actually able to take care of myself for a few years once my molesting brother moved to the other side of the country for college. I still think I was pretty asexual growing up because of the molestation and after Urissa it just became this thing of like "well, here's some connection and here's a way to experience sex without having sex". Don't so much agree with the shitpoor Asperger's diagnosis anymore. I may have had symptoms that shared across for PTSD and trauma. Bear in mind when I reported my CSA, the CPS laughed at me and my parents' response was either no response or "this makes me feel bad take care of me and make me feel better!" instead of you know? Protecting me?

Eh.

Am man. Must shut down emotions.

At least, that's what people want me to do. But I am a rebel it seems. A very fat, tired, broke rebel shouting with his keyboard. For now anyway.

What happened to me didn't make me a better or stronger person. It made me fearful. It made me miss out on "normal human things". It's blocked me from connecting with people properly. It made me distrustful. It made me less joyous. It made me angry. I already was a sweetheart and relatively resilient when I could actually have what I preferred. But after everything. Especially after the PTSD incident that got me fired, I just...don't know if I can always be sweet anymore. I really do have a high sensitization level for injustices. It's made me cynical.

Oh, and my childish family and Urissa kept telling me to grow up. So that's fun. Seems like I had to parent them and whenever I didn't know how to handle a situation instead of saying fuck off they just said "grow up and leave me alone with your stuff, that's your job to take care of my emotions and my adult issues!" in essence.

I don't even call Urissa an ex-girlfriend anymore because what the fuck was that shit?

I never actually dated her. I trauma bonded with her.

Guys.

What's a date? Because I don't fucking know if I did that with Urissa.

I think it was more like:

Raymond: "Hey, I see you are suffering do you want help?"

Urissa: "Yes."

Raymond: [Listens] "Oh, by the way I gotta go do some activist thing".

Urissa: Oh shit, there's gonna be girls there, let me express my "feelings" to him!

Raymond: [Shocked, but I think "this is new, let's try it. My mom's dying and I don't understand why I just don't care"]

Raymond as a 32 year old: "I should have listened to the social cues of interest at the activist event and let Urissa figure her shit out. Not that I have that drive anymore."

I don't know. I regret a lot of things regarding women that have shown interest in me, but I never thought "let's have sex!" Maybe I thought "eh, I'll try it and they're pretty and interested". But I never thought that it was "for me" you know?

Also, maybe they just were like "oh attractive, but.....eh." I didn't want to impose.

Anyway.

I don't miss my family. At all. I didn't mourn when people starting passing away or having health issues. I just thought "shit. They just..fucking. FORGOT about all the fucking trauma I went through with my brother and his best friend and my uncle. What the actual...what? I miss my Ozzie cockatiel though for sure. I miss the financial support. But the neglect? The verbal and emotional support abuse? The sexual abuse? The dismissals when I confronted them on it?

Nah.

I mean, yeah, I still feel compassion for them in a very intellectualized, cognitive way, but at the same time I'm like "on paper, you should have been a great family!"

I wanna change my name, ya'll. I really do. And I wanna move to a different, more nurturing country. But, I have some healing and desensitizing to do first.

I need a break more than anything, really. I feel like I've been in survival mode for 32 years whilst taking care of people who should have been able to take care of themselves.

#gpg #goldenphoenixgirl #trauma #ptsd #recovery #narcissistic abuse #male rape victims #male abuse victim #asexual

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tinycatslay · 2 years ago

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#7 Boys I’ve clearly traumatised: recounting the good, the bad, and the worse

In 10th grade, I was reciting "An Almost Made Up Poem" by Charles Bukowski for an English class assignment because I thought it would make my high school crush whom I had been anonymously talking to every night on Twitter realise that he was in love with me all along. Me and my grown-up poems, and my need to be mysterious enough that he would ask me for more details about made-up stories I thought would make me look interesting.

Boys taught me to lie. Men, boys, the whole want-to-be-right-side-of-the-brain-thinkers side of the species. My first lies (that were not meant to get me out of trouble with my parents) were aimed at levering my stance with the opposite sex, in hopes I would feel as important - or even better, get to date them. From little white lies to full-blown exaggerations of things I had or hadn't done.

As much as I wanted something real with any of the people I previously dated, I was never able to just be myself without the shiny lies adorning my being - because if falling for that got them falling for me, how could I get rid of those lies?

(There's only one particular ex that is not in any shape or form a part of anything I will mention here. We love exes that become good friends again.)

As much as the men in my life have shaped my growing pains, the female rage side of my personality cackles at the ways I must have traumatised them right back - it can't be a coincidence that three of them have ended up with girlfriends that have my name and became the most hilarious attempt at branding themselves "entrepreneurs" (not to mention one of them started a podcast).

These boys might have mocked me, made me not trust my instincts, have me give up concert tickets to my favourite bands, getting Brazilian waxes out of fear I would be dumped, and even doubt my friends. But everyone knows there isn't a bigger consequence of ending a relationship on bad terms than a woman willing to talk about everything you did wrong.

The Good

Giving into romance (in my head), learning how to kiss, learning how not to kiss, learning how to play mind games.

The Bad

In my first year of university, I tried dating my best friend of roughly 6 years in the making. After a month we called it quits, but because we were always on and off of a situationship we decided to lose our virginities to each other. Not only did this end up not happening because of "technical difficulties", but he blamed it not happening on the account of me being too stressed and focused on my traumas. Could it get worse? Yes. This guy, still being my best friend, was hoarding my nudes having said in various instances that he hadn't kept them. A week later after this chain of events I returned home because of the pandemic. The straws that broke the camel's back were the fact that he didn´t understand why I was mad, and that he lied about having COVID.

Moral of the story: if he has the "potential" to become just a random rich white guy with a podcast, don't do it.

The Worse

During the summer of 2020, I momentarily cured a depression by swiping on Tinder with my mum's help - and ended up in a three-month relationship that seemed like it lasted three years.

This was one of those relationships that you'd tell your grandkids about one day - a gut-wrenching raw crazy type of summer love that finally measures up to the movies you've watched growing up.

He couldn't dance like Patrick Swayze but he had a car and enough parental freedom to take me places.

I felt on top of the world with this guy - which is why it really fucking hurt when one day when, after some morning snogging at one of his friend's country house we were spending a few days at, he said we needed to have a talk (code for "we just had sex but now I'm going to break up with you"). I still had to stay there with him and his friends for another 2 days, grieving a relationship that apparently never happened while he vlogged this getaway to upload it to Youtube on the following weeks.

Seasoned takeaways: Men with small penises will blame you for not being what they need. Men with big penises will think they've got it made and then demand your approval because deep down they know they can't possibly be making you feel good.

All men will treat you like they're entitled to a piece of you. Your brother will want your servitude, your dad will want your obedience, your predator will want your silence, and your boyfriend will want you to shave every hair on your body. The women in your life know it, but somehow don't talk about it.

Until you decide to not give a shit anymore. And then one day you will find someone that not just loves you but also likes you with all of these things you won't do or be anymore.

#writing #caffeine withdrawal #no coffee #relationship #reflection #boys #mature tag #breakup #gossip #gossip girl #romcom #quarter life crisis #vent blog

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oonajaeadira · 5 months ago

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@littleredpandanaps @cas-readsandwrites @for-a-longlongtime @boliv-jenta @rifflovesjoey

@sixhours @toomanytookas @schnarfer @littlemissskuld @maggiemayhemnj

@cheekychaos28 @missredherring @insomniamamma @nothoughtsjustmeds

@something-tofightfor @jessthebaker

Thank you all for your very very very kind words. You have no idea how helpful they were.

Here's what was going on.

On the final day of my annual event--the event I work all year to plan and make and manage--I woke to a woman screaming. And I will never ever unhear that sound.

Gordy is our Aussie Shepherd rescue. He's 7 years old, very submissive to people, very loving and fluffy and smart and well trained. Except when it comes to other dogs. He is heavily dog reactive. It's a reaction born out of intense fear and trauma, and it's a lot. We only discovered the severity of it after we adopted him last December and have since done some light training with him and talked to other reactive dog owners about their experiences. Mostly we wanted to do our best by him and give him a good home.

We discovered too late that we have a faulty latch on one of our gates and Gordy got out and attacked another dog that was being walked by our house.

I didn't witness it myself--the SO went out to break it up and handle it all. I just heard her screaming. I still hear it.

The morning was a whirlwind of worry and information sharing and washing the blood out of Gordy's fur. The owner didn't want to talk to us directly so a kind neighbor helped to give her all our contact info and Gordy's vaccination records.

I spent a lot of the day in tears and that evening trying to enjoy the closing celebrations of my event that I had to M.C. By the end of the night, all I knew was that the dog was rushed to emergency and suffered a perforated bowel and bleeding in the lungs and was going into surgery.

We were looking down the barrel of that little dog dying, that poor woman losing her pet, tens of thousands of dollars in vet bills, and Gordy possibly being taken away by animal control and being euthanized.

It was a horrible feeling. Like I failed everyone--my SO for bringing home a dangerous dog, Gordy for not getting him proper professional training, and that poor poor woman....I can only imagine how fkn terrified and traumatized she must be.

That woman and her dog were my first point of concern above all else. And thankfully we heard back from the owner's partner that the dog came out of surgery and was on the mend.

The expense was the least of my worries. If I had to take out a payment plan, I would of course cover all the costs to help them. It's just money. It's not as important to me as making sure they were okay.

Goddammit, I'm just trying to get through this life without hurting anyone and I know it's not my fault, but I am still responsible for this tremendous hurt and fuck am I carrying it.

But then there's Gordy. He's in 10 days of house-bound quarantine, standard, as a precaution to watch for rabies. He's vaccinated, and so is the other dog. No worries there.

But I won't lie. Gordy's 55 pounds of very fast dog. And his fear is very deeply seeded. I've no doubt he was absolutely horrifying. I was sure he was going to get the death sentence, or at best, be deemed a "dangerous animal" which would require us to post signs and get a special collar and a higher insurance liability.... and if that was the case, I didn't know if we'd be the right owners for him. I spent a few days with a pit in my stomach, getting ready to say goodbye to him.

But today we got a couple more lucky breaks. First we found out that our insurance will fully cover the vet bills. All the way.

Secondly, Gordy was ruled "potentially dangerous" which is the lowest possible rating, and I'll admit that I had hoped for this but didn't believe it would happen. It means he has to be walked on a short leash with a muzzle. And we had to pay a small fine. That's it.

I thought I'd wringed out all my tears when the attack happened, but there must have been twice as many--and all at once--when we got this news.

Their dog will live. My dog will live. Insurance will do what we pay them for. I don't know what I've done to deserve such luck, but I promise not to squander it. I will be seeking out a behaviorist and Gordy will get the best training I can afford. I owe it to him and my SO and all the dogs in our neighborhood.

Through this week the SO and I had to remind ourselves that we're good people. And Gordy's a good dog--he's just broken and needs us to care for his dog-reactive anxieties better. This was nobody's fault, it's just a bad thing that happened.

But I never ever want anyone to hurt like that again on my watch. I just want this fluffy boy to have a good life with us and for that lady to have a good life with her little dog.

Please hug your pets for me. I love them so much. And you too. Thank you for your kind thoughts and words. Like I said, you have no idea how healing they were.

^^adoption day^^

It's been a rough few days in my world. I'm not gonna go into detail and sue me for vagueposting, but Sunday was one of the hardest days of my life and I'm in a holding pattern to see if the powers that be decide to make matters worse or not.

This is all to say thank you to everyone here. Thank you for posting beautiful pictures of our boy and for letting me share in the joy of Deadpool and Wolverine with you and just posting stuff that makes me laugh or lets me know what you're thinking. It's like stopping in at a big party and just sitting on the couch while my favorite people wax poetic about cats and occasionally get really deep about politics and then really funny about politics and then stop everyone in their tracks by whipping out new Pedro footage and everyone going into instant bite mode.

Thanks for being my effortless haven y'all. I fkn love this fandom so much.

#trauma

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jdgo51 · 2 years ago

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How Long Has It Been Like This?

Today's inspiration comes from:

Why Am I Like This?

by Kobe Campbell

Pain Changes Our Brains and Our Lives

"'Within my first few sessions with clients who’ve experienced childhood trauma, they usually find a way to communicate that their pain isn’t valid enough to hurt them as deeply as it does — especially my Christian clients. They’ll go through a list of rehearsed statements when I begin to allow room for them to feel deeply about their experiences without my interrupting.

“It’s not like I was sexually abused or something.” “I didn’t have it as bad as others. I just need to get over it.”

“But no one laid a hand on me.”

As they continue to attempt to convince me of how their experiences really aren’t that terrible, I think of all the times they must have been invalidated in the past. All the times they let their pain be seen, only for others to shame them into leaving it in the darkness. All the times they taught people how to dismiss their pain by dismissing it themselves so they wouldn’t have to live with the unexpected sting of rejection.

Sometimes we’ll turn our back on ourselves because we think others will, too, one of the most common acts of self-betrayal. I consider self-betrayal the act of denying or minimizing one’s true nature, feelings, or needs in order to avoid conflict or judgment. It’s a clever way to maintain connection with others and a quick way to lose connection with ourselves. Unfortunately, it’s common for Christians to feel shame about their needs, because of how Scripture has been used against them. They often expect me to join the chorus of invalidating voices as they list off Bible verses people have used to shame them in the past. Instead, I lean in and listen. I stay right there, not letting the conversation move on. Whenever this happens, I think of those funny images of lazy dogs who are all but forced by their owners to go on walks. Rather than resisting or running back in the house, they just lie down, leash and collar attached, deciding they won’t.

You don’t have to be touched to be traumatized. The words spoken over you that sting to this day are evidence of that. The phrases that swirl in your mind, talking you out of trusting and risk-taking, are proof. Not thinking about the things you experienced doesn’t mean the damage they’ve done in your life is gone; being hurt a long time ago doesn’t mean you’re not affected right now. You may think that what you went through was small, so you don’t have to deal with it. I hear you. But you also know you can’t keep living the way you have. The patterns of overdoing, underdoing, hiding, and craving the limelight have shoved you into the shadows of inauthenticity and shame.

There’s a reason God tells us to love our neighbors as ourselves (Matthew 22:39). We can’t love others well until we love ourselves first. You may show up for yourself when people are watching, but how do you speak to yourself when no one can hear you? How do you treat yourself when no one can see you?

Deciding to “skip over” acknowledging and speaking about our trauma while trying to live a full and present life is like refusing to rehabilitate a sprained ankle to focus on running a marathon. Not only does it not make sense, but it’s also incredibly dangerous. Similarly, deciding not to talk about your trauma or address it at all will cause incredible damage to your brain, body, and soul — the very things you need to live the life God has called you to.

Some of us don’t feel worthy. We don’t feel like we’ve been through enough to seek help or share our wounds. We feel like there’s not enough shock and awe in our stories for people to care. After years of being told by parents, teachers, and pastors to “just let it go” or “leave it at the altar,” seeds of self-loathing create the deep-rooted fear that our pain is still present because there is something fundamentally wrong with who we are. Your pain deserves to be seen, heard, and validated. No matter how big or small society says it is. You are not the problem. Your pain is; your wounds are.

Being wounded doesn't make you a bad person. Being in pain doesn’t make you a bad Christian. It means you need comfort and healing. You deserve to receive that. The courage it takes to recall some of the worst moments of our lives is truly divine. It requires something outside of ourselves to revisit the times that made us feel like life was unsafe, scary, and not even worth living. But the harsh truth, from one trauma survivor to another, is that every time we don’t look back and revisit the past to heal, we pay the price. Even when we’re gifted, even when we’re successful, even when we’re “anointed.” We don’t have to live in the past. We don’t have to be consumed by it. But in healing, we get the opportunity to look back at our past to process our pain and extract the wisdom that we need for our present. We can’t move forward without looking back. I imagine that’s why the word “remember” is used 253 times in Scripture. Remembering, confronting the truth of how we’ve been wounded, is what allows us to recover our lives from the trauma that’s taken so much from us.

Being in pain doesn’t make you a bad Christian. It means you need comfort and healing.

HOW LONG?

In Mark 9:14–24, a father brought his demon-possessed son to Jesus to be healed. No one had been able to heal him or help him. The first question Jesus asked this boy’s father was, “How long has he been like this?”

I think Jesus wanted to bring to mind the full scope of this family’s anguish. They needed to be fully aware of the size of their despair, so they could see that pain so deep and long-lasting can only have a divine solution.

I am not saying that your mental and emotional pain is a sign of demon possession. I am saying that Jesus asked this question because it matters how long we’ve been in pain. It matters how long we’ve been carrying these burdens.

In a similar way, God is calling you to remember how long you’ve carried your burdens so that you can become aware of how in need you are of His divine presence and healing.

Many of us have been wondering why the good moments of our lives don’t stick. We don’t understand why, even when our prayers are answered, we don’t feel grateful or excited. We can’t enjoy the present until we’ve made peace with the past. We have to look back; we have to stay in the room in order to heal.

Many of us learned how to be safe through hiding behind patterns. It’s time to learn how to be free. We must face the things in the shadows and tell the boogeyman, “This is my house, and if anyone is leaving, it’s you.”

Reflection Questions

What situations do you feel God is calling you to acknowledge and talk about? What emotions do those situations bring up? Who is a safe and reliable person you can talk to? (A therapist is always a great option.) When you feel the emotions this situation brings up, how do you cope with them?"'

Excerpted with permission from Why Am I Like This? by Kobe Campbell, copyright Kobe Campbell.

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teacherintransition · 2 years ago

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I Got More Behind Me Than I Got in Front of Me

Muerte, décès, morte, tod, смерть, death!

Now, everyone in a good mood?

For over two years, I’ve been engaged in an ongoing exploration of my personal path of adjusting to changing my life in retirement and finding meaning in this new adventure. Without too much paraphrasing, I’ve come across folks who, when confronted with my choice, responded, “retirement… you’ll probably be dead in five years.” W …T …F? You think I’m kidding; but I kid you not gentle reader, there are people like that who roam our fair lands. You may feel such individuals deserve a beating, but listen as I tell that pity is probably the more appropriate response. It must be terrible to feel that the distraction of toil is the only thing keeping away the grim reaper.

There’s probably a number of reasons this uniquely American mindset exists: keeping up with the Jones’s, religious upbringing, trauma, the Puritan work ethic, guilt…etc.. I experienced that mindset…oh yes, I started working at the tender age of thirteen and worked every work day until my retirement at fifty four. Even as a teacher with sixty hour work weeks, I worked every summer until I shattered my leg in ‘06; I even ran theatre camps after that injury. I got my creds baby, oh yeah, I’ve put in the hours. So, what changed my perspective you ask? I dunno, a lot of things I guess. There was some serious questioning of my spiritual and world view that came from tragic events; there was the loss of some significant people in my life at an early age; and I guess I actually picked up some wisdom. Who’d have thunked that?

I cannot deny certain facts though, the big sleep gets ever closer …that’s a fact …Jack! You WILL begin to lose your cultural lodestones as you age. In just a week we lost Jeff Beck, Van Connor, David Crosby and Lisa Marie Presley. If you’re Gen X…it was an emotional kick in the gut! You realize that there are lot less fewer birthdays in your future than you’re in your past. I remember at the beginning of a summer break a few years ago, a friend and colleague commented how she hoped summers would last forever! I replied that I did love summer and if I was lucky I’d have about forty more of them. You would’ve thought I told her that Santa Clause wasn’t real! “OH MY GOD…how can you think that way? I’m so depressed now.” Hell, that’s just the way it is…what can you do? I understand the sentiment… it’s not an “oh boy” moment; and my religious upbringing did foster a terror of the final curtain.

Do I fear death? I used to a lot… now not so much. I’ve got a Buddhist, eastern vibe going on and that’s as much as I’ll say about that. Here, right now, how do I deal with the unavoidable shuffling off of this mortal coil? I’m about to get philosophical right now, so buckle up! I lost a good friend who drowned when we were ten; terrible fear and anxiety followed. Another friend died at nineteen …the fear and torment followed again. You know the routine; we are going to keep losing friends and family and if you’re not careful, each one will take joy away from you. You’ll get consumed with the unfairness of it. I quote from Clint Eastwood’s character, Will Munny, from The Unforgiven, “fair ain’t got nuthin to do with it.” Well, there you go, not much more to say after that. All we are left with a growing sense of impending doom? No, change your mind and your ass will follow. Our life is as long as it’s supposed to be. Don’t go to fairness, or being cheated, or that’s wrong… that’s a losing proposition dude. You might as well try to keep the tide back with a broom. What is …is.

What’s a bigger tragedy: dying at the age of nineteen or living to be eighty and everyday being an exercise in avoiding joy because of some indoctrinated fear? I know what I think. No one knows how many birthdays or Christmas’s you have left, so why the hell do we bother worrying about them. You have today, thats it compadre…just today. If you’re fifteen, all you have is today. If you’re eighty five, all you have is today. Try getting out of that one. With this late in life realization and with the knowledge I had financially prepared for myself and my family; I decided that whatever day was my last, it wouldn’t be spent workin’ for the man! That’s all I got for you …it’s what gets my by. Maybe because I’ve lost so many friends, family and heroes that my connection to this world has lessened…I’m sure that’s part of it. I mean who really wants to live forever? We have right now and if we’re lucky or smart, we have treasured people to spend it with while here. Don’t get tied down with the “what ifs” or “what about’s” …fill your heart with the what is. You can’t avoid the grim reaper, but you can punch him in the teeth when you see him. Have a great day!

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