#i have to stay fulltime just to afford to live

[finchsthoughts]

As someone who was tested positive for autoimmune disease around 3 months ago, tested just because I was numb. Then about 2 months ago the pain started, the hard mornings getting out of bed. Now, I walk with a cane, have to sit at work, and have lost the ability to use my legs more than once in the past month. I'm only 19. It's coming so quickly and I can't prepare.

Shout out to the ten year old who just got diagnosed. Shout out to the housebound fourteen year old. Shout out to the eighteen year old who can’t go to the university they wanted. Shout out to the twenty two year old who can’t get a job. Shout out to the twenty six year old with a caretaker. Shout out to the thirty year old who can’t buy their own house.

Shout out to young disabled people. We exist.

[sheplayswithlifee]

Atreus had risen early, long before the first light of dawn, preparing for his grueling five a.m. shift at the coffee shop. In those quiet moments before the world awoke, the house felt empty, and he relished the solitude. But today, his solitude was short-lived as he heard his mother's footsteps approaching.

Heidi entered the room with a sense of purpose, "Atreus, I need to talk to you," she began, and Atreus couldn't help but groan inwardly at the prospect of having any conversation this early in the morning.

Heidi continued, her tone grave, "You having two children was... not acceptable but accepted. You went to stay with her mother, and you come back with her being pregnant again. Do you know how to be safe? Maybe I should've had the sex talk before. I expected your dad to do that, but..." She trailed off for a moment, the weight of her unspoken thoughts hanging in the air. "My home should be emptying as I get older, not filling up."

Atreus couldn't contain his annoyance any longer. "You're acting like I wanted this to happen," he snapped, his frustration evident in his tone. "The first time was a legit accident. This time we were trying to be careful. Watching when she ovulated and stuff. Apparently she's a rare breed where that doesn't matter." Atreus lowered his voice before speaking the next part, "I don't want this. I love Mel and Sym! But this ain't the life I want to live."

"It's a little too late for that." Heidi said assuming he was talking about being a father, not about his relationship with Baylee. "Do you think it's time for you to move out and provide for the family you created? I've been a crutch for you. I want you to be the adult you've made yourself out to be."

"Alright, ma. I get it. I'll get out. Is that all you wanna say? You acting like I'm not responsible. I've graduated high school early, I'm in my final semester of uni. I'll get a job once I graduate."

"You're not responsible. You're a teenager with three kids, Atreus. Does that sound responsible to you? You've been in your final semester for three semesters. Then I find out you’re engaged to this girl. You can’t even afford to wipe your own ass and you've proposed?! What is going through your mind when you make these obtuse decisions?"

"Okay."

"You don't like what you're hearing? I don't want to tear you down. I just want you to pay attention to what the hell you're doing. You've not even started your life but you've got a family with a part time job. Your girlfriend just got a fulltime job. It's backwards. I just want you to understand."

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

I have just had the longest fucking week. It got to the point where it was so frustrating that I haven’t even talked to people I know about it, I just didn’t want to think about it and didn’t want to have to keep expanding on the fucking ridiculous story of my quest to fulfill my basic autism-related desire for stability and knowing what the fuck is going on. Because that’s a big deal to me. I like being in places I know. I like doing tasks that I know how to do. I like having systems that I understand. I like a community where everything’s familiar. I do not like being in transition. I feel like I’ve been in some sort of transition for ages now.

Okay, here’s how my year has gone (just in case people are wondering if this will be one of those posts I do where it’s starts about one thing and then ties into fandom in some way or makes some sort of point, this one’s just an entirely self-indulgent personal post, written entirely because venting feels nice):

- Begin the year still in the really bad emotional breakdown I had at the end of 2022, which involved breaking up with my girlfriend, taking fewer hours at my freelance editing job (pretty much no hours during the too depressed to get out of bed phase), not looking for new jobs despite having just finished my college diploma in autism studies that was supposed to lead to a stable job in the field.

- In the spring, the company for which I do most of my editing work hired a new fulltime staff person, and a couple of other things happened to mean I couldn’t take more editing hours even if I wanted to, which I now did, because money was running out. Over a few months, money ran out to the point where I got very very worried about whether I’d be able to keep paying rent on my downtown apartment, or would have to be move in with my parents in the suburbs.

I very much did not want to do the latter, because, you know, I was 32. Not ideal to be unable to afford a place to live at 32. Also, I loved my place. I’d been there for four years. I had my bedroom set up exactly the way I wanted, with all my stuff in it that all came from something that had mattered to me over the years, I found nothing in the world more comforting than sitting in there and looking at everything around me and it was familiar and safe and mine. That house was the longest place I’d lived since I’d moved out of my parents house; I spent my twenties moving somewhere new every year, but now I finally had a place where I had stayed multiple years and really gotten to know the house and gotten probably unreasonably attached to it because, as I said, autism and the personification of objects.

Also, I was just starting to sort of get a life back. I’d started coaching again, and the practices are downtown or near it. I’d started going to watch local comedy shows, and those were all downtown. I’d started occasionally seeing friends again. The whole “life outside my bedroom” that I had shut down hard since 2020 was just barely starting to open up again, and I knew that if I went to live in the suburbs, I’d never do it. I found it hard enough to start doing that stuff again when it was a short walk; I wouldn’t manage it if I had to take three buses across the city to get there.

- I went through about six weeks of not applying for jobs because even looking at the applications made me incredibly anxious about the fear that I would apply everywhere and not find any jobs and then go the rest of my life living in my parents’ basement because no one would ever hire me, so I just avoided ever thinking about it so I wouldn’t have to find out whether that would happen. These six weeks did not improve the crisis in my bank account.

- Finally managed to start applying. Almost immediately got two interviews. One with an autism centre, directly in my field, one with a day program for group homes for disabled adults. I didn’t get the first job but I did get the second. Amazing wave of relief. It’s okay. I can stay in my house. I can make money. I can build my life back up.

- During this, my roommate of four years moved out, and had someone else sublet his bedroom. I didn’t mind this, because he was a dick who took over the whole house and treated it like I didn’t live there, and his subletter was more like me (as in, someone who tries to show consideration for a roommate in a shared living situation), so that was nice enough. Until two weeks after I started this job, when my roommate texts me to say he’s decided to move out altogether, and he has another friend who wants to move into the house with her boyfriend and their baby, so his subletter and I need to move out by the end of the summer.

- I, after initially having a panic attack, go through all my papers to find the original lease and see if he can fucking do that, and find he can, in fact, do that. Legally, he’s the official tenant and I’m an “addition to the household”. I hadn’t even realized that, as I’d been pretty desperate for a place to live when I first moved in there at the end of 2018, and this guy from the team whom I’d known (known, but not gotten along with well, but didn’t actively hate) for fifteen years was looking for someone to move into the second bedroom in his house, so I took it and signed the forms without paying much attention to the legal stuff. My fault, I know. I’d just assumed we were equal tenants, since we did pay equal rent and both pay half the bills.

I then panicked even more. I couldn’t lose this place right then. I was only just starting my new job, and finding it (as I’d expected) really really hard to go from barely leaving my bedroom for three years, to having to work in person, in a high-pressure environment around lots of people, all day every weekday. I  came home every day exhausted, and just tried to sleep enough to be able to get up the next day. I could not deal with the stress of moving at the same as that, I need time to adjust. I also needed time to save some money, which I hadn’t done yet, and moving costs money.

Also, as I said, I was very attached to that place. Also, there’s a massive housing crisis all across the country that has hit my city hard, in addition to the general cost of living crisis. I had a very good price on the rent in that place, and I looked around and learned that anything in an even slightly comparable location would be more than I could afford. I’d be back with my parents again, while I figured out something else. And whatever else I could figure out would have to be some bedroom in some stranger’s house in some terrible location, nowhere near downtown, so I’d have the same problem of losing the parts of my life I’d just gotten back. The coaching, the comedy, the social life. I’d put them on pause while adjusting to the new job, it would be so hard to get them back if I had to take lots of buses to get there.

- So it turned out that he, as the sole tenant, could unilaterally end the lease if he wanted to. I went to the landlord to put in an application to take over the lease after he ended it. He found out, called me, accused me of betraying him by going behind his back to the landlord to try to take his house. He told me I was being “difficult” and making this full of “animosity” rather than just being nice and leaving when I was told to, as I was supposed to do because it wasn’t my house. And it wouldn’t work anyway because he wasn’t ending the lease, he was just kicking me off it and would then add this family onto it, and then transfer tenancy over to them and he’d leave. And yes he could legally kick me off the lease because tenants can choose who the additions are.

I asked him why he was doing this and he said it was his house and he wanted it to go to someone he cared about after he moved out, rather than having it go to some random person. I asked him why I wasn’t a consideration, and he said he’d always thought of it as his place, where I was just renting a room from him. I pointed out that 1) maybe we’d never been close friends but I had known him/shared a sports team with him for 15 years so I’m hardly some random person, and 2) we paid an equal amount of money so did he manage to view that as me just renting a room in his house? What I didn’t mention was that, genuinely, that explains a lot. A lot about how he lived (having his girlfriend stay for 4-5 nights at a time most weeks, having her work from our living room all day so I couldn’t use it, taking over the kitchen all night, never cleaning up after himself, making noise all night, power tools early in the morning doing woodworking projects in the backyard, generally living as though he didn’t have a roommate), if he thought it was his place and no one else’s. He told me there was nothing I could do, I told him I was going to go to the landlord and find out if I had any rights to stay as someone who’d been living there for four years.

- The next day, I got a message from him saying he’d decided I could stay, on some conditions. I didn’t known why at first, then I talked to my best friend, and he told me that my roommate had called him (my best friend is the guy who runs the team with me, so my roommate has also known him for 15 years) to ask him to talk me into just leaving. My friend told him he was being ridiculous and it wasn’t his house and he should just let me stay. I’m not saying my roommate is the kind of guy who will listen to men but not women, but I am saying I regularly heard Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson’s voices come from his bedroom, and in this instance he did ignore the woman’s opinion and then listen to a man saying the same thing.

- I was so relieved about getting to stay that I agreed to way too many conditions. He wanted $600 for the washing machine, which didn’t even make sense, as it was there when he moved in. He didn’t own it. By paying for it, I wouldn’t own it. He just said it was there and I’d get to keep it so he wanted money for it. He also said I had to pay $150 for an AC unit that didn’t want. And I had to pay the full September rent, my half and his half, so that he would stay on the lease without adding another person to it, giving me time to find someone else to take his place. Because during the confusion, his subletter had moved out since she needed to find a place that wasn’t trying to kick her out, so I’d need to find someone new to cover his half of the rent.

I agreed to it all. I sent him so much money just so he’d clear the fuck out of the house. So much money. It wiped out nearly all the money I’d managed to save from my new job, putting me fairly close to where I’d been early in the year, in terms of being very short on money. Though at least I now had a way to earn the money back.

- I started going online to look for new roommates, which scared me. I’d never lived with strangers before, I guess that’s the advantage of having a large sports team that’s a tight-knit social community. I had social connections to enough people through that so there was always someone looking for roommates, and I lived with various combinations of people from the team through my twenties. But now, everyone my age could afford their own place, and I’d distanced myself from that team enough so I didn’t feel comfortable just asking around, so I went looking for strangers.

Until my best friend, who lived on his own very nearby (another reason why I wanted to keep that place, I’m always walking over to see him and walking home late and love the convenience of that) said he was planning to move out of his place for various reasons. I asked if he wanted to move in with me, there was some back and forth while he thought about it, and then he agreed. He said he was trying to save to buy a place, but wasn’t ready yet, will probably buy a place late next year. But in the meantime, would move in with me. I was really excited about that. The perfect solution. I get to keep my place, and I get to swap my terrible roommate for a guy I love spending time with.

- Oh yeah, I forgot to say that during all this, it turned out that the place that hired me was pretty much a crime ring. I could see as soon as I started there that they weren’t big on labour laws. Had us work seven hours with no breaks, we were allowed to eat lunch while working but on my second day I was admonished for eating a banana in the storage cupboard because we have to continue doing our jobs while we eat. Way too many large adult clients stuffed into small rooms, enough to be a fire hazard and therefore way beyond a comfortable amount for disabled people who struggle in crowds. Incredibly low staff to client ratios, so we couldn’t properly supervise them, even the ones who could be a danger to themselves or others. All of this worsened the rampant physical and sexual violence for which we were given no training to handle; there weren’t enough staff to control the violent clients, stop them from hurting staff or non-violent clients. I got physically and sexually assaulted multiple times in two months, and at no time was I offered so much as a five-minute break after.

That’s not even getting into how they abused the clients. One guy who wasn’t toilet trained was not allowed to wear pull-ups anymore, he had to wear regular underwear and then wet himself every time, and often sit in it as there weren’t enough staff to have time to change him often. A guy who ate incredibly slowly was put in a room with a guy who compulsively steals food, we asked the managers to be allowed to take one of them out of the room and were told no, they had to stay there with the door closed. Even though another guy in the room got very upset about being a room with closed doors, due to PTSD from childhood abuse in locked rooms. On two occasions in two months, clients came in very sick, we said they needed to be sent home, we were told we had to work with them anyway because their group homes couldn’t handle them all day, we took their temperature and found high fevers, we weren’t given any PPE when doing physical work with them, on both occasions I learned informally that they had tested positive for COVID, but the staff were never officially informed of this. Every day we had to write logs about what each client had done all day, and we were instructed to lie on them, to never write anything negative – even if that client had had a violent meltdown that day, we had to write that they had a good day and made a craft or something.

I also spoke to my coworker, who had come from Peru for this job, and realized she was being horrifically financially abused. Have you ever read those news stories about labour exploitation of migrant workers? Because this had all of it. Lying to her about the working conditions and nature of the job before she came. Paying her less than I got paid, just because she was foreign. Having her live in a house they owned and charging her twice as much rent as they’d told her would be before she came, taking the rent directly from her paycheck (very illegal), sometimes taking it on random days instead of the day they’d said would be rent collection day, sometimes taking even more than rent was supposed to be. Not paying her for her training or her overtime. When she tried to move out because conditions in the house where they had her live were terrible, she was told not to leave. She couldn’t quit or she’d get deported.

At this point, I had some amazingly good luck: the autism centre for which I’d also interviewed messaged me and said the candidate they’d hired over me hadn’t worked out, and they wanted to know if I was still interested in the spot starting in early August. I said yes, so I was able to quit that terrible job after only two months, even have two weeks off in between, and then start the autism centre job, where I’ve now been working for almost four months. It’s much, much better. It’s long hours and high-pressure work and low pay, but not incredibly low pay (not, like, minimum wage), and those hours involve the legally mandated numbers of breaks, and I work one-on-one with clients in a building with enough space and other resources, and we’re given training (oh yeah, forgot to mention my previous job threw me into the classroom on my first day with literally no training), and workplace violence is very rare and handled when it happens.

However, I felt terrible about leaving me old job, knowing that staff and clients alike were being abused and I couldn’t do anything about it. But a month after I left, my coworker called me and said she needed help. She’d taken medical leave from the company after a client had hit her in the face and broken her glasses, and the company had no only offered her no compensation (for, if nothing else, the cost of new glasses), but wouldn’t give her information about where to go for medical help, which she didn’t know since she’s not from here. She found it on her own, told the doctor everything, the doctor said he’d sign off on medical leave for her and also she needed to report this to the police. So she did, and what followed was a long and horrible legal battle in which the company lied to the cops about the working conditions, it was her word against theirs, also the company was calling her and making threats, they’d even somehow found phone numbers for her boyfriend and his parents and were calling them to leave threatening messages too.

She told me it was her word against theirs and the authorities needed a statement from someone else to back up her story. So I broke all the confidentiality agreements I’d signed to write a witness testimony about all the ways my coworker had been abused by the company, which I sent to her lawyer, and he sent to the Ministry of Labour, and apparently, they said that one corroborating voice was all they needed, and she won her case. The company had to pay her ten thousand dollars in stolen wages, and they had to be pay tens of thousands of dollars more in fines to the government as penalty for wage theft and human labour trafficking. They also lost their licence to bring people in internationally for jobs, because I guess the government takes that away if you commit human trafficking. And now a disability rights organization is lobbying for a full investigation into the company.

Oh, and the government let my co-worker out of her contract on compassionate grounds due to workplace abuse, and gave her a work permit that isn’t tied to that job, so she can stay in the country and look for other jobs. I recently gave her a reference for a job at a different organization, where she’s now working and is very happy.

- So that was happening, in the middle of me working out where to live. I didn’t even have time to adjust to the first job before I started a second job, and then I had to adjust to that one. Learn the place and the people and the rules all over again. It was much easier with actual training, of course, but still stressful because 1) any new job is stressful, and 2) as I keep saying, autism. Autism and not enjoying having to transition to new things. So in August, I was still in a position of trying to adjust to a new job, still anxious and exhausted from that, still did not have the energy to move or even find a strange new roommate. Was so relieved when I could just stay there and live with my best friend.

- However, before that got resolved, I was offered a housesitting situation from some rich people that my dad knew who were going away from September 5-December 1 this year. They were way out in the suburbs, so definitely not compatible with my plan to have a social life/go see comedy and live music, that sort of thing. However, it was a ridiculously nice house, they had a hot tub and treadmill and home theatre and two lovely cats, and also, I didn’t know if I’d have my own place in the fall. I took it because I figured if I did lose my place downtown, at least I could spend the fall living there while I figured out my next step, rather than living with my parents. After that, things with my house did get resolved, but I’d already committed to housesitting for the fall, so I moved out there.

- In September, my best friend and I signed the lease as official, equal co-tenants. My old roommate was legally out of there. I’d paid so much money to get rid of him, but it was worth it. I’d live in the suburbs until December 1 and then move back downtown and it would all be fine.

- This stability lasted two weeks. Two weeks after signing the lease with me, when he was about to move in, my best friend bought a house. There were five days between him finding the house and buying it. He’d just been vaguely looking around, not planning to actually buy until next year. But then he found this place, which is literally two blocks from the place where I lived downtown, and it was amazingly cheap for a three-bedroom house, so he bought it.

He asked me if I wanted to move into one of the bedrooms there, for the same money I paid at my old place (the price of my half of the rent there, which is very cheap compared to rent on comparable places, plus half the utility bills). It was a really, really good deal. Also, I was so fucking exhausted from all the change and transition throughout the year, that I did not have the energy to go back and start looking for a stranger to be my roommate again. I just couldn’t do it. I also didn’t want to risk having a stranger move in and be terrible – after I just spent four years living with someone terrible – when I had the option of moving in with my best friend, and guy I’ve known for twenty years and love and have fought with at times but I know he isn’t terrible.

So I said yes to moving in with him, even though I’d just spent the better part of a year expending massive amounts of time and energy and stress on fighting to stay in my place. Not to mention all the money I’d paid my roommate so I could stay in that place, now wasted, even though I’m hardly rich enough to be able to afford to waste that kind of money. And, as I said, significant emotional attachment to that house that I’d now have to leave. Also, it would mean I’d have to move – and not just move out of my bedroom, but clear out an entire house – after I had no had to move for four years and was desperately trying to avoid the stress of moving on top of my still relatively new fulltime job.

- My best friend never actually moved into my new place. We put in our notice to leave the place shortly after signing the lease on it. He also gave notice at his own apartment that he was moving out. Then moved directly from his own apartment to the new house. We had to give two months notice on my place, which we gave at the end of September, so had to be out by November 30.

- So. This brings me to last week. My terrible horrible no good very bad week. Basically, the reason the week was terrible was I had to clear out a three-story two-bedroom house, at the same time as I had to move out of my housesitting situation, as they both ended at the end of November.

Last week I got quite sick, called in sick to work on Friday and spent all day sick in bed, would have done the same on Saturday, but on Saturday and Sunday, I had to go downtown and spend all day moving my stuff from my own place to my new place that was two blocks away. My three years of hardly leaving my bedroom have significantly loosened my connections to that tight-knit community, so while in past years I had people from the team come help me move, this year it was just my mother and I there all day, and my best friend came to help with his truck for the last few hours (to be fair, he would have helped more but he was away coaching tournaments all weekend, and also I probably could have asked around the team and gotten help, but I’ve been so distant that I don’t feel comfortable doing that anymore).

We moved all my stuff, which was all in my bedroom, because I only lived in my bedroom. But also, shockingly, my roommate had left huge amounts of stuff in the house. I’m pretty sure this is the real reason why he wanted to kick me out and give the house to a friend of his when he moved out – he wanted to have his friend live there because his friend wouldn’t mind that he never moved out most of his stuff. So I had to move out lots of his furniture. The giant piles of wood he left in the front and back, from abandoned woodworking projects. I had messaged him to say I was moving out and needed all his stuff out of here, and he said he’d move it, but of course he didn’t. And because he was legally off the lease, it would be my best friend and I who had to pay the fine if stuff got left in that house for the landlord to deal with (if you leave stuff in the house, the landlord charges you for the cost of getting rid of it). Legally, my best friend and I were responsible for the house, as the tenants. But because my best friend had never lived there, he didn’t really feel fully responsible either. He helped the way you help a friend move, not the way you help move out of a house that’s actually yours.

Also, during the process of moving I broke down crying several times because I was so upset to take apart my bedroom and lose the place to which I'd grown attached. I kept thinking of the Kitson show where he had to leave a home he loved and paid builders lots of money to take the place apart for him, had them do not just the moving but also all the packing, so he didn't have to do the emotionally difficult thing of seeing the place taken apart. I kept thinking I really see why someone would do that, all I need to do is become the greatest comedian of my generation and then I can afford to do the same.

We managed to get all my and my roommate’s stuff dealt with on the weekend. Most moved to my new house, some stored at my parents’ place, and a massive pile of stuff to be thrown out, mostly belonging to my roommate, in the basement. Wednesday was garbage night, so on Wednesday after work, I had to go back downtown and spend another three hours moving all the garbage, including things like my roommate’s old giant mattress, from the basement to where the garbage truck collects things.

The other nights of the week, I spent cleaning the very nice rich people’s house where I’d been living since September, and gathering my stuff from there to move out. On Thursday, my mother came over to help me finish cleaning and let me use her car to move my stuff from there to her place. We were up late but managed to get it all done. I brought the stuff to my parents’ place so I could crash there for the weekend, maybe the week, I don’t know. The rest of my stuff is in a disorganized pile at my new house, I don’t have the energy to deal with it. I might just stay with my parents until I deal with it next weekend.

- Here’s another thing: I bonded with both cats in the three months I was housesitting, but especially hard with one of them. I’ve known a lot of cats in my time, my parents always had cats when I was growing up. I have never known a cat like this one. When I first met her, she was violent and aggressive, she’d scratch up my hands and feet when I tried to touch her. After a couple of weeks, she started crawling into bed with me at night. Then she started sitting on my lap when I was on the couch. By the end of three months, she was the most affectionate cat I’ve ever known. Would follow me around the house squeaking. Slept with me every night, sitting right on my chest and purring until we fell asleep. Cuddled with me everywhere. I got so attached to her, I was really sad about having to leave her.

On Thursday night, after cleaning, my mother helped me clip the cats’ nails so that the owners won’t have to do that when they get home. Obviously, this high-strung cat got upset about that. I was sad about having to leave while the cat is mad at me, which I realize is silly, but a fair bit of this post has been about how I was sad to leave a house because I loved the house too. We tried giving her treats, but nothing cheered her up. Finally I picked her up even though she was still upset, so I could hold her and say goodbye. She was growling and my mom warned me that she might attack, but I said no, she was violent when I first met her, after a few weeks she stopped attacking me, she hasn’t scratched me in ages, she doesn’t do that anymore once she gets to know someone.

Obviously – obviously – she reached up with both paws and scratched hard at both sides of my face, and at the same time attacked with her face and bit me on the nose, drawing blood. Luckly she didn’t draw blood with her claws because she’d just had her nails clipped, though I do have visible scratch marks on my forehead, quite close to my eyes, very luckily she missed actually getting my eyes. I panicked and threw her away from me, scared that if I just put her down gently she’d still be able to reach my eyes. So I’d wanted to have a nice moment of saying goodbye to this cat I’d grown attached to, but the last contact I’d had was her scratching up my face and me pretty much throwing her across the room.

- Oh, did I mention that everything I own fell apart at the same time? Last week, my laptop went from randomly shutting down a few times a day to doing it almost constantly. So also during this week, I ordered a new laptop online. Which was at least a bit of luck, that it happened during Black Friday sales. I got one that I think is quite good, for a good deal, so I’m at least pleased about that. But it was another thing to worry about in the middle of worrying about everything else.

Yesterday I worked from 9-6:15 (with the legally-mandated number of breaks in the middle because this is a reasonable job), after having been up late the night before cleaning, and the night before that throwing out garbage, and all week dealing with moving out of two places, and my face hurt from cat scratches and the cut on my nose from a cat bite kept opening up, and when I finished work I was fucking exhausted, but I still had to go out after and buy a new phone. Because also my phone stopped working. Well didn’t 100% stop working, but various things happened to it to make it basically unusable, and they started happening this week.

My headphones have also been fading for a while, shutting down without warning and not staying connected, it started getting worse lately, so I got a good deal on new headphones for Black Friday. So that is cool – I have new headphones and a new laptop and a new phone. All good things. Except that they put a pretty significant dent in my bank account, especially because I’ve also just paid for half of a week’s stay in Edinburgh next year (the other half isn’t due until July, I figured paying in installments would be better). That hasn’t wiped out everything I’ve managed to save from my new job, but it has made me go from being really excited about how much money/financial stability I’ve built up, to being worried about money again.

Also, I’m fucking tired and don’t want to do any more fucking admin, and setting up the new laptop and new phone is admin. Even though it is fun admin, I actually do enjoy doing that sort of thing and will spend this weekend doing it.

- So that’s been my week, and my year. The week is finally over. It’s Saturday morning and I’m at my parents’ place. I have lots of stuff in suitcases and garbage bags here, and lots more stuff in a huge mess at my new house downtown, and I need to organize it all before I have a stable home base (by which I mean, bedroom where all my stuff is set up exactly the way I like it so I can sit in it and be comforted by the presence of all my things from all my years and know this is mine and I am safe here, because I do tend to lose my mind if I go too long without that) again. But at least I met the deadlines for getting out of the places where I needed to get out. The unpacking can happen in my own time, no official deadline. The worst of it is done. And the first four months at my current job are now almost done – I passed my three-month probation so I’m a proper employee. I’ve done some of the hard work of figuring out a new place and new people and new expectations. And maybe, once I get everything set up – the house and the laptop and everything – I can start 2024 with some stability and some things that will last for a little while and I won’t have to do any more transitions for some time.

I am aware, by the way, of how incredibly first-world problem this post is. How incredibly lucky I am to have parents who have the resources to help me (ie. a house where I can stay when I need to and store my things, a car they can use to help me move), and who are willing and generous enough to help me. A stable job. A place to live that’s free from violence. A house where I can afford to live in the city centre during a housing crisis (due to being lucky enough to have a friend who could afford to buy a place and was kind enough to offer me some of it at a cheap rate). The money, now, to afford a new phone and laptop when they both fall apart in one week. Birthright citizenship in Canada so I didn’t have to stay in that abusive job for the visa. High enough functioning ability so I don’t have to live in an abusive home like the clients at my old job. I’m ridiculously lucky in many ways. This post is venting about how hard I’ve found things, but it’s also about a life that’s a lot easier than a lot of people’s.

And I know that none of the problems I've described are even that bad. But they're hard for me to handle. I hate chaos. I hate transitions. I hate knowing a transition is coming soon. I hate adjusting to new things. I like knowing that the major things in my life are all set up and will stay they way they are for some time. It feels like fucking ages since I've been able to know that. And not knowing that makes me anxious and makes everything so much harder.

However, I did gloss over one thing there. You know what else I did last week? I booked a fucking place in Edinburgh! First week of August, 2024. I’ve put in a request for time off already, and I’ve pretty much been told anything requested this far in advance will be granted. I booked a room in an Air B&B that’s a 50-minute walk or 10-15-minute bus ride from Edinburgh’s city centre, at a price that I think is quite reasonable compared to what I’d been warned to expect from prices for accommodation during the Edinburgh Festival. I’ve spent so much time in the Edinburgh city centre via Google Earth that I feel like I know it backwards and forwards, but obviously I’ve already started exploring the neighbourhood where I’ve book the room via Google Earth, by the time I get there I’ll know that place too. I can’t stop going on Google Earth and looking at the house and knowing that’s where I’ll be for a week next year.

It’s real this time. Since 2020, I’ve been talking about wanting to do a trip to the UK. I’d saved some money for it a while ago, but when my editing work dried up at the end of 2022/beginning of 2023 (by which I mean, I stopped working when I was depressed post-breakup, and then the worked happened to dry up shortly afterward, the combination of those things was bad), I spent all the money I’d saved for a trip. I’d tried so many times to plan something, but it always fell through in one way or another. Even this year, I’ve been hoping for the last few weeks that I could do a trip to London in February, but the dent made in my bank account by having to buy all new electronics at once (even getting the non-fancy versions of those electronics and Black Friday sales) has made me say that’s not going to happen anymore.

But this one. Edinburgh 2024. That’s fucking real this time. This is the first time I’ve taken a concrete step toward committing to a trip, rather than just theoretical planning and looking around Google Earth to decide what I want. I booked the place. I messaged with the owner. I paid half the cost upfront. That is something to look forward to. Also, my workplace closes down in the last week of July, so my plan is to go to London for that week in July, and then have the first week of August at the Edinburgh Festival.

So 2024 is looking better than 2023. I think. Like I said, I haven’t even been sharing a lot of these life details with my friends for the last couple of months, I've just wanted to try not to think about it, so it has felt nice to write it all down. I woke up in my childhood bedroom at my parents’ place this morning and just started writing, because I’m so relieved that the worst of it is done. 2024. Edinburgh year. It’ll be good. I absolutely cannot be bothered to edit this post, so sorry that it’s full of errors (I know they always are, but I often try to do at least a quick skim to fix the worst of them, can’t be bothered with this so it’s probably worse than most).

[mod2amaryllis]

This might be a bit out of nowhere but any advice or where to begin on becoming a vet tech? I currently have a job as a kennel assistant and I've decided I want to pursue vet work as a career but don't know where to start

that's exactly where i'd recommend you start, at a kennel! build confidence working with animals in a way lower-stakes environment (dogs are usually relaxed and happy at daycare/kennel, compared to the stress of being at the vet). unless you're already at a clinic? ok i'm gonna operate under the assumption that you're at a daycare/kennel.

all the following advice is usa specific. depending on where you live, you might need to get registered by taking the VTNE standardized test. i have an associate's degree in veterinary technology but never passed the test and am therefore not registered. in my area it hasn't been an issue because registration isn't required. nobody really cares as long as you can do the work, and i'm a shit test-taker yet a BALLER tech (also the test costs hundreds of dollars to retake). but again, i do have a degree, completed a full vet tech course, and my only option in the whole state was a private tech university which was waaaaaaaaay more expensive than it should be. like $40,000 student debt in a job that's infamously low paying. if i could do it again, i would NOT go to THAT school, because the other huge thing is: the clinical experience is where i learned 90% of what i needed to excel. if you have a more affordable schooling option like a community college or a university with scholarship options etc, do it!! but be wary of private schools, they're entirely profit driven.

if you're a kennel tech now and want to take the next step, then apply to be a kennel tech AT a vet clinic. kennel techs are usually there for janitorial duties and an extra set of hands for stuff like easy restraint. there's a big ol national veterinary staff shortage, you shouldn't have any trouble finding a clinic that's hiring. EVERYBODY hiring right now. bringing someone on as a kennel tech then eventually transitioning to vet tech/assistant is often the preferred way to hire from a training perspective, because starting with easier responsibilities and focusing on getting along with the rest of the team is less pressure than hiring a brand new TECH tech and loading them up with all the craziness right away.

now as far as the like....emotional side of things, i think i've already spoken extensively on how hard it gets. the first five years of fulltime teching was a roller coaster where the lows were a very very deep level of hell. now it's been 7 years going on 8, i'm part time, i'm the best at what i do, i've stayed with the same clinic and my pay is closer to what i deserve (it'll never ever be high enough lol), so i've finally reached a point of peace with this job. just be prepared for it to get worse before it gets better. one bit of advice from a trainer's perspective: when i'm hiring/training someone, the value that is way higher than your tech skills is how well you get along with the team. are you inquisitive and willing to learn? do you explicitly ask questions when you're not sure about something? are you respectful of doctors? do you keep a level head in a crisis? are you humble and willing to do the gross or mundane sides of the job? are you, like, cool? having those attributes makes you a good candidate, even if you're inexperienced. some of the best hires i've had were total newbies with great attitudes, and some of the worst hires i've had were seasoned techs who think they're hot shit and don't play nice with others. can't overstate how important teamwork is in this field.

if your plan is to eventually become a veterinarian, then this is where my expertise ends. <3 i have never wanted to be a vet, i'm settled in my career, i know nothing about vet school, go with god. <3

[esperanta-dragon]

I will add the fact that people think that I have time to finish artwork every 3 days and they don't understand I have to pay my bills. But I would have to get more Patrons, which is impossible because when Patrons join and see I don't have Patreon as full time job and I don't post every 3 days something new, they leave. Because they expect this is something like Netflix, Disney+ and so on when they pay few $ per month and get access to many possible movies and TV series which costed millions of dollars and are owned by big corporations. And like this I will never get to the point of having this as fulltime and creating more art. Because I am in constant stress that I can't even take a break from drawing when I feel burn out because more Patrons will leave because apparently I am not human being and I need to burn out in order to deserve that 1$ Patron who might change their mind when they see I am not posting every 3 days so I am apparently waste of money.

"But you do this for fun, no?"

Yeah, I do. Guess what, if you say this to a lot of artists and add "why do you expect money when you do it for fun" you can say good bye to their content because they have to eat and pay bills. People expect to get everything, fast and in the best quality and preferably for free. But if I will keep having this as a hobby and will have time to sit down to art only few hours a week, you will never get more. I don't have rich parents or family (I don't have any) so I can't afford to live with them until I make proper money from art. I don't have a partner who makes a lot of money (I don't have any) and I can stay at home and build my art career. No I can't leave my job to pursue my art career and hope I won't starve in first 1-2 months and then I will have to go to work again because I failed. But yeah in order to build fanbase and Patreon I have to spend more time on art which I don't have and will never have in foreseeable future because age of supporting artists is apparently gone (or my art is shit, who knows) and my time and work has no value to others. I even lowered price for tiers, deleted the highest tier, consolidated prices, I am turning off billing when I feel I am not providing enough of content, yet people still leave, so you can imagine how I feel and how I am constantly thinking I should give up and delete Patreon. Because I am starting to think my art has no worth and I shouldn't be even bothering people or asking for support. And don't let me start on how algorytm works on social media because I have to be extremely lucky to reach more than few people with my art.

Apparently my work and amount of time I put into my art is not worth even that 1$ per month. Bless to all my Patrons who stayed and keep supporting me and if not with money, they are my mental support.

I am human being, yes I would like to be an artist, I have a lot of project in my mind which are on hold or I get to them very slowly because I have job which pays my bills. And without supporters who understand I need to start small, I will never ever create more often and faster.

I guess I will have to put aside a lot of money to leave my job and try if I can burn out while releasing something every few days and hope people will think of me worthy of their support. At this point I just gave up on hope that one day I will have more support from fanbase and I will be able to leave my job and pursue art career.

If I will win a lottery, that would be also an option and I will start drawing more. Or maybe I will finally find a good and compatible partner who would be ok if I stayed home but I don't want to rely on other person in this.

Rant over.

tl;dr: I don't have time to make more art. I need to pay bills. I can't get more supporters because I don't make enough of art. In order to do that I need more money and supporters. This cycle will never break. So I am stuck I guess. Unless a miracle happens. Which won't, I am a realist.

The curse of modern fandom is that it has allowed fans to get even closer to artists, but they won't view the artists as people.

Human limits, human mistakes, human feelings, human needs, are never ascribed to artists, and when other fans rightfully point out, "hey, humans are making this, maybe don't harass them or demand they cater to your personal tastes," it gets shut down under, "uh, people who make popular mainstream things are automatically Public Figures who are also probably rich, so eat the rich and destroy artists over every perceived minor fault. <3"

Even though there's, y'know, a really big strike currently going on because those artists are very much not rich or influential or in control of the bullshit.

[thedailydosevibe]

The ‘Unseen’ Students in the Affirmative Action Debate

July 1, 2023

Dolly Amos, a black student who struggled financially to make it through nursing school, trying to stay happy and be in school or struggle was becoming a battle. She didn't struggle with making it in the school she struggled with affording it and still trying to maintain her college experience. The Supreme Court’s decision to strike down affirmative action will very likely have powerful consequences for elite college admissions, potentially limiting the pool of Black and Hispanic students at the most selective universities and affecting the diversity of future leaders in business, government, and beyond. Many students have said that this isn't fair for colleges such as HBCUs "The culture should be kept not opened up to many". School hasn't been a choice for many especially those who can't afford it such as myself. I've been finding my way but stressing in the process I am blessed not to have gone straight out of high school to work because there was no way for me to get there instead I have been working during and after high school and still full-time now as a fulltime college student at my dream university but some aren't as lucky which isn't fair. I am a firm believer that college should be free. “Somewhere it switched from ‘I want to be in school’ to ‘I just want to survive,’” said Ms. Ramos, 25, who recently finished her nursing degree. To get there, she cobbled together credits from multiple colleges in New York State, and at times lived in a youth shelter and slept on the floor of a professor’s office." That is just a voice from one imagine a voice from many I know I am not the only one who can relate here is the link to others who have similar stories.https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/01/us/affirmative-action-students.html

[thokage-archive]

Lol depressed on main

[lennjamin-o7]

I feel a little bit bad that I haven't been able to update To Be Truly Free. Even though I know I have a good reason, I am very sorry it is taking so long. And while I recognize I don't OWE anyone an explanation, I feel like it will make ME feel better to explain.

TW: Discussion of Death, Dementia

So, my Grandmother who lives with me has dementia. We've known this for a while, for years. But over the last month, her health has taken a pretty sudden downhill. Her memory is almost completely gone, and she is entirely unable to explain any medical issues she is having. She can say "It hurts" but is unable to tell us exactly WHAT hurts or why. So my family is constantly trying to figure out WHAT medical issues she is having when she cannot tell us herself.

She is unable to be left alone for even a moment, constantly needing someone to watch her. She needs a lot of help getting back and forth to the restroom. She is constantly refusing to eat, so we are scrambling to find things we can convince her to eat. She isn't drinking enough water, so we have to encourage her to do that. Frankly speaking, she's dying. And we are doing what we can.

Everyone in my family works fulltime, so we have a sitter that sits with my Grandma when we work. But on our days off, we take turns sitting with her and taking care of her. Sometimes we can afford to ask the sitter to stay on our day off if there is something we really need to get done.

I do most of my writing on my days off. I write on my pc in my room, which I cannot do while I watch Grandma. My sister was kind enough to loan me her laptop so I can write while I stay with Grandma, but it really hasn't worked out great. I don't know why, but I really haven't been able to be productively writing while watching my Grandma. I don't know if I am such a creature of habit that the change in environment is throwing off my writing, or if the constant need to stop and help Grandma is slowing me down, or just the use of an unfamiliar keyboard is causing issues. But even though I spent two whole days writing, I only got about maybe a third of the amount written I usually do in a day.

So, it really sucks because I still LIKE the story and I am so EXCITED to post it. I just haven't been able to devote my time to it. And it is what it is. My family is more important that a fanfic, and I know everyone would understand why its taking so long. Just makes me feel sorta bad because I want to post, but just do not have the time.

Anyways, thank y'all for being patient with me. It's greatly appreciated.

[blackswallowtailbutterfly]

I can only speak for Ontario, Canada, but for me moving from my small city where I just couldn't find longtime fulltime work to my current city where I've been working at the same job, with raises, for the last six years:

It helps to have friends or acquaintances or family members in that city in case a position at their place of employment opens up so they can vouch for you.

It helps to have those people so if a job does become available, you have someone to stay with while you look for a place.

Boundaries!!! Figure out what you can afford to live on and don't settle for a place that's more expensive! I decided I wasn't going to pay for an apartment over $1000 (which at the time was already much higher than the one in my old city), all included, and that I didn't want a roommate. Took some time but I got it.

Friends and family willing to help you move. This will cut down the cost of moving by a lot.

Friends and family willing to look after some things you don't want to get rid of but can't take with you right away or at all.

Try to get a place close to your new job if possible. You're going to save a lot on transport if you're able to walk every day to and from work rather than driving or taking public transit.

Obviously, this depends a lot on circumstances that might not apply to you, in which case I unfortunately can't speak from any experience. But if they do, then that's how you can not let the potentially higher cost of living (if you're moving to a bigger city) completely eat away the difference in higher pay.

I am told that moving to a smaller city can be better for both finding work and cost of living if you have a car. I don't, so unfortunately small city life, while I generally prefer it, hasn't worked so well for me, but I can definitely confirm the lower cost of living part and less stress of travel for non-job-related things.

Realistically speaking, how difficult and quickly would it be to:

Move to another city (or even another state)

Find a good place to live, like an apartment

Get finally fucking hired for a job above $17 an hour, preferably $20 an hour at minimum

Yes, I'm truly asking this because I really, really want to know opinions (Me: a Black American female)

PLEASE

[outerbankspreferences]

Into the Unknown - Sarah Cameron

Request:  Can you please do a sarah x fem reader were reader is a pogue and they are oposites. Like the reader dresses more sweat shirts and mom jeans. And they are kinda rivals because she’s a pogue but they spend a day together and realize they have feelings for each other. Could you also add in somthing bout not really knowing if reader really like girls but descoverse she’s bi after talking with Sarah (sorry Ik this is vv specific but I’m feeling some sorta way towards sarah so yea)

MASTERLIST

WORD COUNT: 1531

A/N: I hope I portrayed this the way you wanted!

You hated the thought tog going to the Kook academy, but when you got offered a scholarship your parents didn’t want you to give it up. You were an amazing artist, and your art teacher at your old school had helped you get the scholarship. You didn’t come from much. Both of your parents worked fulltime to help support you and your siblings. At first you didn’t want to go because you didn’t want to leave your friends. The Pouges were the closest thing to family you had.

 You only agreed because Kie went there, and said she finally wanted to have some friends. She had a falling out with Sarah Cameron the year prior. “Come on Y/N, it won’t be that bad. You can hang out with me. At least you’ll know someone.” Kie said sitting around the fire. “Oh yeah, hang out with the one who was no friends. Probably not a smart move.” JJ spoke up. Kie slapped him on the arm, “it’s the Kook princess’ fault I don’t have any friends. She told everyone I called the cops on her party.”

 “But you did call the cops on her party. I was with you when you did it.” John B interrupted her. “Okay who’s side are you on? She invited everyone in the school but me. The bitch got what she deserved.” Kie snapped at him. It was an unspoken agreement that none of you liked Sarah after what she did to Kie. They were best friends in grade 9 and then Sarah threw a party and didn’t invite Kie, so she got the party busted. You can still remember her calling you all the time crying, you felt so bad because there was nothing you could do to help her.

 “I plan on keeping my head down until graduation, I don’t want to meet anyone. I’ve got all the friends I need with you guys.” You said leaning back in your chair, watching the fire. “Probably a good idea.” Pope said to you, he knew how nervous you were for this.

 It was finally your first day at the Kook academy. You and Kie shared a room but didn’t have any classes together. She had showed the day before where all your classes were so you wouldn’t get lost, but this place was huge. You had been looking for you AP Art History, when you bumped into someone, “I am so sorry, I wasn’t looking”- You cut yourself when you saw who it was, Sarah Cameron.

 “It’s okay, you’re Y/N, right? I think I’ve seen you at the boneyard a couple of times.” She said smiling. You didn’t really know why but she made you nervous. It was something you’d never felt before. All sudden you had not idea what to say to her. You realized she was waiting for an answer.

 “Uh, yeah that’s right. I’ve seen you there before too.” You confirmed, looking back down at your schedule. ‘don’t talk to her Y/N.’ you thought to yourself.

 “What class are you trying to find. I couldn’t find my way around this place for like a month.” She said grabbing the schedule out of your hand. “Oh, AP Art History, I’m in that class too, follow me.” She said leading you the way to the class.

 She was still looking over your schedule, “it looks like we have a lot of classes together, we should hang out I’ll help you find your way around. Who’s your roommate?” She asked walking fast through the halls, you were struggling to keep up. “Uh Kiara, and I’m sure I could find time to hang out.” You said trying to avoid the topic, Kie would kill you if you hung out with her. You guys made it to class right before the bell rang. “Kie would probably kill you for hanging out with me, it’ll be our little secret.” She said winking at you, and your heart flutter.

 This kept up for weeks, always hanging out, you learned a lot about Sarah. She was an artist too, and you guys spent a lot of timing drawing each other. You would catch yourself sketching her when she wasn’t around, simply drawing her silhouette.

 You’d never felt this way about another girl before. You always assumed that you were into boys, but maybe you were wrong. You and Kiara had gone down to the meal hall to eat supper, a normal night for the two of you. You hadn’t really been paying attention to what Kiara had been talking about, more focused on looking at Sarah. She seemed so confident with her friends, like she was on top of the world.

 “Y/N? Earth to Y/N.” Kie said waving a hand in your face, pulling out of your own little world. “Sorry, what did you say?” You blushed hoping she didn’t realize who you were staring at. “I said, Kelce asked me out for lunch next week, do you think I should go.” She seemed annoyed you weren’t listening in the first place. “I don’t know, he didn’t really have the time of day for back home so what’s different here? I think you should be careful.” You spoke honestly. She looked at you like you had five heads. It wasn’t the answer she wanted, but you were known for speaking your mind with your friends.

 “Well, aren’t you a supportive person.” She said laughing. You felt bad for what you said, not wanting to hurt her feelings. “I’m sorry Kie, I didn’t mean to be rude.” You spoke not wanting to start an argument. “I think I’m just going to go back to the room, I’m tired from volleyball today.” She said getting up, you tried to stop her put she didn’t listen. “Smooth move L/N.” You look up to see Sarah sitting in the place Kiara was sitting.

 “What are you talking about?” You asked even though you knew she just watched the whole encounter happen. “Kie, I know it can be hard living with your friend. We’re all going to the beach tonight if you want to come.” She offered smiling at you. “I don’t know Sarah; I’m not really dressed for the beach.” You gestured to the mom jeans and sweater you wore down to supper.

 “Yeah, I didn’t really want to go to the beach anyways, let’s go down to the art room, I still have to finish my project for Mr. Willis’s’ class. You both grab some snacks and head down laughing to each other. You got your easel all set up and started working on sketch. Sarah but some soft music on in the background to break up the silence. It was the nice thing about your friendship, you didn’t need to speak, just each others company was enough.

 It made you nervous to be alone with her. You were sure her friends didn’t like you, and yours didn’t. “So how did you get into the academy Y/N? I’m not trying to be mean, but I know you’re a Pouge, I thought your parents couldn’t afford something like this.” She asked, careful about how she worded things. “Uh, I got a scholarship, my old art teacher sent some of my work in without me knowing. It was Kiara who convinced me to come. It looks better to art schools apparently. I’m going to need a lot of help if I want to leave the Outer banks.” You explained not looking up from your drawing.

You weren’t normally this open with people, but with Sarah it was just easy. You never felt judge by her, she would let you talk all your problems away and never interrupt you. “Do you want to leave? The Outer banks I mean.” She asked sounding sad you didn’t want to stay. “Yeah, it’s every Pouges dream. I think I still want to live by the ocean, just not here.” You explained. “Sometimes I wish I could just get up and leave today, you know? No explanation just packs a bag and never come back. Go from town to town working a little when I needed the money.” You said looking over at her.

 She was staring back at you. “I wish I knew that freedom. I know you guys think being a Kook we have everything we could ever want, but I would kill for your freedom. I see you guys hanging out having so much fun in the summer. Know cares if you guys are late, or what you wear, or who you with. You don’t have an image to uphold.” You could tell she was being sincere about it. “We’ll leave one day Sarah, just me, you and the open road.” You said giggling, falling in love with the idea. “Promise?” she asked laughing, “Promise.” You replied.

 When you talked to her like this, it was when you knew you loved her. Sometimes you were sad because she was dating Topper, and clearly not interested in women, but you were happy you got to spend these moments with her. Just the two of you talking. Not a Kook and a Pouge, but two friends with a mutual understanding.

TAG LIST: @drewstarkey @fttayla @lemur46 @pita0402

[reila-blr0906]

So life update...idk who actually reads these but i just wanna vent somewhere..

Since october i got offered a fulltime job at a warehouse. The pay has been decent and decent enough that i would consider staying even with shitty managers up my ass, but overall ive liked it so far because it suits me and i get paid weekly.

They offered me a permanent position and i said id take it if they would allow me to have an additional day off for my upcoming spring semester, but i have yet to recieve an update on this...i hope they keep me on. Im really anxious about this because my spring semester begins in about 2 more weeks.

Also did i mention i changed my major to a two year mechatronics major starting this spring. So now instead of waiting for a possible career for another 3 years its been shortened to 3 or 4 more semesters (depending on how quick i move).

Anyways, things at home have been getting more tense. The narcissism and verbal abuse continues. And its only got worse ever since my youngest sibling turned 17 and started rebelling. Its so ironic that if it was ME behaving the way her so called favorite is behaving now when i was 17 id literally be beat. But no. I stayed home and had no friends just as this person wanted me to.

Just now this person got finished lecturing me again with the usual hypocrisy they think i never notice. I keep my mouth shut the entire time cause that's what i was taught growing up otherwise id be beat like usual. And funny enough her favorites have always talked back with no consequences.

I really do feel that 2021 may finally be the year i make my way out with the little bit of savings i have in my account. Unfortunately I've already looked and looked for places to live in my state but this place is just too expensive. So when i do make my way out i will need to leave to a more affordable state while i wait it out in hotels. I am so thankful that i finally got my own car last year. That was all i needed to make my way out along with a fulltime job. I am so close. I just need to work on my savings now.

[tamakiamajikistentacles]

Lucky Charms {Eijirou Kirishima}

A/N: So I got this idea earlier this morning for the holiday and wrote it instead of finishing the piece I originally wanted to put out this weekend. I hope you all enjoy because Kirishima as a dad has me weak!

When he was younger, Kirishima was a night owl through and through. Waking up in the morning to attend classes at UA had been a struggle especially before the dorm system was put in place. An earlier time on the train meant an earlier alarm but on campus he had an explosive best friend to quite literally drag him out of bed.

Now two children, a full-time job as a pro hero, a shared agency, and ten years of marriage later, his body took whatever sleep it could get and refused to let him sleep past seven am. Which was fine because it allowed him to get done what he needed before the rest of his family awoke.

It was definitely fine on Mother’s Day because it gave him the time to wake up his two children in preparation for the holiday. Since they had inherited his late-night tendencies and reluctance for mornings, it was often a challenge.

“Chiyo, its time to get up,” he said softly, nudging his daughter’s shoulder lightly. “We’ve got Mother’s Day to celebrate.”

The teenager grumbled, her comforter pulled tight around her curled up form and scrunching up her already rumpled black braid, every minute of her thirteen years evident in the reluctance.

“Don’t make me send your brother in,” he threatened playfully.

“Dad!” she groaned, blinking up at him with her mother’s eyes. Brows furrowed, she rubbed her pajama sleeve across her face before sitting up. “Why can’t we wait another hour?”

He laughed as he walked towards her bedroom door. “We wake mom up with breakfast, she doesn’t come looking for it. You act like you haven’t done this a dozen times before.”

Ignoring her huffs he told her to meet him in the kitchen as he made his way across the hall to his son’s room. Walking into the smaller room, he chuckled at the sight in front of him.

Kazuma was lying on his stomach, his arms and legs star-fished out in all directions. One foot peeked out from beneath his blankets, the blue sock half off and the elastic clinging desperately to his toes. The closer he got, he could also hear the tiny snores escaping his parted lips.

“Wake up, little Riot, its Mother’s Day,” he laughed, grabbing his foot and shaking it.

The boy snuffled and rolled over slightly, blinking up at his father sleepily.

He grinned. “C’mon, we gotta meet your sister in the kitchen to get started!”

“Oh, okay,” he mumbled as he tossed his comforter aside. Just like his sister, his dark hair stuck up in all directions, though the shorter length made him look more like a black-haired version of his favorite uncle.

The Kirishima boys made their way down to the kitchen where Chiyo was waiting for them on one of the breakfast stools, her thumbs flying across her phone’s screen. Her braid had been taken out and her hair laid in wild waves against her shoulders.

“Alright,” Kirishima started as Kazuma took the seat next to his sister, “I’m gonna start on your mom’s breakfast and you two can go get your gifts from the closet, make sure everything’s ready.”

Chiyo set her phone down and gestured back towards their living area. “I grabbed our gifts and everything looks good. We both signed the card last night. The flower and card from you are with the gifts on the kotatsu.”

“Thanks baby girl,” he smiled. “Then let me get her breakfast ready and we can get this show on the road!”

Kazuma giggled. “Dad, you’re just making cereal!”

“Yeah, but that’s Mother’s Day breakfast!” he replied as he pulled a bowl down from the cupboard. He declined to add that breakfast also included coffee, but that wasn’t always the case. “Chiyo, can you grab the milk please?”

She nodded, moving towards the fridge. “He’s right, though, dad. We don’t do much for Mother’s Day breakfast. The Bakubabies were telling us that Uncle Katsuki wakes up super early and makes a big American breakfast for Auntie, then wakes them up to help carry it and give gifts.”

He grabbed the milk from her, dousing the poured cereal as he chuckled lightly to himself. Bakugo should never have made such a big deal about the little nickname for his children.

“Its just sort of tradition,” he said easily, pouring the coffee into a large Red Riot mug from his first official merch line.

“How did it start?” Kazuma asked curiously, kicking his legs absently.

Kirishima paused as he finished putting the coffee and cereal onto the serving tray. He often thought about the first Mother’s Day they had celebrated after Chiyo was born, especially when the holiday approached, but he didn’t think he’d ever really discussed it with his children.

“Well, your mom and I had been dating in high school and after graduation we moved in together. I was just starting out as a hero, doing sidekick work at Fatgum’s agency with Suneater, and your mom had taken a position at Ryukyu’s agency for management. Chiyo was born about a year after we graduated, and even though we both worked fulltime up until then and even after, money was tight,” he admitted.

He didn’t find it shameful that they had struggled when they were just starting out or that having a baby young had been difficult, but he often worried that his children’s confidence in him would wane if he showed too much of the hardship. Old insecurities always died hard.

“The very first Mother’s Day we celebrated, I… I couldn’t afford much,” he murmured. “I got her a card and a pink carnation, but when I went to make her breakfast I realized we didn’t have anything to make a special meal. All we had was an unopened box of Lucky Charms so I went with it; either I brought it to her in bed or she would walk out to the kitchen to get it, you know? If nothing else I could save her a trip down the hallway.”

Glancing up at them, he saw the eagerness to listen to their parents’ beginnings, no trace of pity in either of their gazes. He briefly marveled at how beautiful their eyes were, thankful that they got their mother’s eyes and his dark hair to become perfect little combinations of them both.

“She didn’t mind the cereal and cried when she opened the card,” he continued, smiling at the memory. “She told me that it was the best first Mother’s Day she could imagine, and that she couldn’t wait until Chiyo was older to help carry in the tray of cereal. So that’s just how it’s happened every year since. Even when I became a hero with Fatgum and when your Uncle Katsuki and I started our agency, she told me I should only ever get her a card and maybe flowers, but no gifts. When you two got older it was easier to get gifts because I could just say they were from you, though.”

They all laughed, the tension that the air had held since he began his story gone.

Chiyo bumped Kazuma’s shoulder with her own. “That’s the kind of husband you better be.”

He puffed out his chest and knocked his little fists together in his father’s signature move. “It’s the manliest way to be a husband!”

Kirishima smiled widely, pride filling him at how truly amazing his kids were. He was blessed in every way possible with his family and he wouldn’t trade them for anything.

“C’mon, kiddos, let’s go surprise your mom,” he said, and they ran to the kotatsu to grab their gifts to her, Kazuma handing him the single flower and dusty pink card he had chosen for his wife.

The trio made their way upstairs, presents held in the children’s grasp and him balancing the tray in one hand and his own presents in the other. He was sure his wife was already awake from their laughter in the kitchen, but tradition said they had to wake her up with breakfast in bed.

“Happy Mother’s Day!” they shouted as they entered the bedroom, Chiyo and Kazuma jumping onto the bed with her to give hugs and kisses.

She looked up at him with a beaming smile as he set the food on her bedside table, mouthing “thank you” as she hugged the children close.

Kirishima nodded, his own smile wide, as his eyes drifted to the three frames on the wall behind her. The bottom two displayed each of their children’s pictures from when they were born, the frames a soft purple color with their names engraved under their respective photo. Above them hung a dusty pink frame that read My First Mother’s Day, an open card and a single, dried pink carnation inside.

The carnation represented endurance, and he knew what the writing in the card said by heart, the words he had written so many years ago still true.

“I grew up with two mothers, and I used to think that taught me what motherhood was all about and, in a way, it did. I’m forever thankful to the women who raised me but when it comes to motherhood I look to you as my source for what it truly is. Growing up I didn’t see them struggle but persevere through the hard times. I never came home to see them swaying a sleeping baby in a sling across their chest while they prepared dinner, a laptop on the counter with a business meeting half over where they presented end of the quarter data. They supported my dreams of being a hero, but not by staying home with a newborn daughter while I took extra hours to grow my name and try to earn just a little more than enough money. I love you endlessly for the sacrifices you’ve made for our little family and the way you mother Chiyo. I can’t imagine anyone else by my side during the good times and the difficult ones, and I say difficult because with you they’re never bad. You’re an amazing mother and I can’t wait to see you teach Chiyo even more as time goes on. I love you so much.

Eijirou”

[onceaponamidnightdreary]

The Crimson Crusader

Ksk--ksk--testing-sks- ello- ske- esting one to three, testing one two three. Alright, we’re live. Greetings civilians. This, as you may not know, is the Crimson Crusader, your average vigilante that you don’t know and love to hate. Though, I ain’t your average vigilante. Why, I’ll get to that later. I’m perched on a rooftop, doing my daily patrol. It’s about ten at night and things are a little low, crime-wise. You may want to know why I’m broadcasting this recording, as people like us like to keep our identities hidden. It won’t matter, you won’t find me on any records, or government documents, those have been burned. Heck, I don’t know why I’m doing this myself, but I’ve gotten tired of all you conspiracy theorists. This is my story, where I came from.

See, I was born and raised in the town of Lindhold, of which you are probably familiar. You see it on the news all the time, all the crimes and the rich people up the hill. See, the town was divided into three parts, the Uppers, the Middle, and the Slums. Figure it out by yourself what they mean. O’course, I just happened to be born in the worst part of town. Down there, we didn’t call it Linkhold, nah, to us, it was known as Fester. Cuz everything was always rott’n and festering, the buildings, the food, the people. ‘Specially the people. I was born in a dead-end alley-way with one-eyed alleycat as my nursemaid. The first thing I saw, apparently, was the cat hissing as me. Funny enough, I’ve always loved the creatures after that.

My mother named me Angel Crimson Aldrich, though nobody called me Angel. You called me by my middle name, or you didn’t talk to me at all. Why my mother named me this, I didn’t know. I was as far from Angel as you could get. She said it’s cause I looked like one, with my sienna-pale skin, slate-grey eyes. And white-blond long hair. I cut it the next day, lopped off the sides and the back and it stayed that way ever since, wild in a devil-may-care way. Nothing to grab. One thing I couldn’t figure out was my last name. Aldrich. My mother's name was Evalin Savanna, so I figured it was my father. Never knew him, but I hated him all the same. It was ‘cause of him that my mom suffered. Never even paid a stupid child support check. I bet he didn’t even know I existed.

I lived with my mom in a rotting wooden flat, just the two of us. She died when I was five, pneumonia. Never had the money to afford the medicine.

The tenant evicted me and I spent the next two years as a street-urchin, pickpocket extraordinaire. Don’t feel bad for me, I was’n the only one. Hell, those streets were riddled with kids like me. Nobody batted an eye. It was just life in the town of Fester. I went to elementary school, I was smart for my age. The school was deplorable, a library the size of a cupboard, overcrowded classrooms, you name it. Dropped out at age six. From then on, my life moved on faster. At seven, I joined my first gang, held my first gun at nine, and killed my first man when I was eleven. Those streets make you grow up fast.

When I was thirteen I was lucky enough to run with a gang called the Crusaders.

Sound familiar?

I kept with them, moved up ranks. I was smart, I followed orders, I was ruthless, I fought like a demon. At fifteen I was the right hand girl to the leader, a chick called Smoky, cause of her eye-shadow. She was like an older sister to me, teaching me everything I knew. She was the toughest person I know, and it ain’t easy for a girl on the streets. You learn to survive, to not trust. She died in a gang fight, promoting me with her dying words. I was sixteen and I became leader to the second largest gang in Fester. Back then, gangs were everything. You paid homage to the right gang or you died trying. Turf wars were battles that decided life or death. We controlled five city blocks, and they were everything and we gave everything to defend them. But the Crusaders weren’t your average gang. I doubt any gang led by a woman is. See, we didn’t deal drugs, ammo, or counterfeit money. And I know you’re wonderin’ what we did do. See, ‘Crusaders’ means a person who fought in the Crusades, a medieval battle for Christianity or something. But today, it comes to mean someone who uses vigorous, aggressive movement for the defense or advancement of an idea or cause. That's what we did. Since the police were useless and usually bought off by a gang, crime raged rampant in Fester. If you walked down town at night, it was extremely likely that you would be mugged, shot, stabbed, or kidnapped.

Or all of the above.

So me and my gang, we dealt out justice, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth situation. But we had a very meticulous system. If you stole, the first question we would ask is why. If you stole to feed your family, we would let you go. If you stole because of greed, we would take double what you took. And thrice the second time. The third time, we cut off your hand. If you murdered for revenge, we understood that. If you killed for power, for gain, for absolutely no reason at all, well, then you died. If that made us bad people, we didn’t know. But it was the only type of justice we knew and we were good at it. We also stole from the Uppers, the rich, white folk in their god-awful fancy McMansions. They never walked in our lower part of town, didn’t bat an eye at the crime and the poverty, didn’t know an’ didn’t care that one peice of furniture in their house could feed an entire family for a year. Man, we hated them, them in their fancy cars and clean clothes. Worst of all, they did nothin’ to deserve it. They were all born into money, like their parents before them. And their parents before them. So we stole from them, hacked into their bank accounts, emptying ‘em little by little.

Wait- sks there's something,- sks- I’ll be back- sks-(Gunshots and yelling in background. Thumps and bodies hitting the wall.)

Sks- ksk- krshhh-sks-kay I’m back. There was some idiot who thought he was at the top of the food chain ‘cause he had a gun. Now he’s got a major concussion and the entire police station in his face.

Idiot.

So I should probably tell you about some people that were in my crew. Every gang has a crew, the inner circle basically, then a few runners, people that send messages and help with other stuff but aren’t there fulltime and lastly, your hoard, which were people that were under your protection that other gangs couldn’t touch but only ran favours for you now and then. My crew and I were real tight, we had to be, watching each other's backs and all.

My right hand man was a guy called Leon, smart as a whip and tough as a shark, and man he could get things done. He used to run with the Sidestreet Shavers, I think, before they kicked him out ‘cause he saved a little girl's life. I heard, took him in, and he’s been loyal ever since.

My tech guys, the hackers, was a girl, ex-heroin addict nick-named Half Print, and her sweetheart, a thin, skinny blond guy called Stevie. And damn, were they good at their job. I had no doubt they could hack the Pentagon if they wanted. They had an extensive blackmail file on everyone. You know, just cause.

My muscle, two brothers, only two years apart, named Cork and Neal, just your average for-hire thug, buzz-cut, 6 foot 2, tattooed knuckles, that kind of thing. But they had good hearts, you know, real softies when you got to know them. They lived on the streets before they busted a dog-fighting ring and I gave them my protection. Genuinely good people are hard to come by.

I also had a spy/assassin, a mute girl named Stiletto, cause of her preferred weapon, and her girlfriend who was my scout, Hatchet, an african-american girl who ran away at age ten thanks to her abusive and homophobic father. She also had the largest library of curse words known to mankind, including some in different languages.

We all suffered. We all dreamed. And that's what made us different from other gangs, you know? Nobody in the god-forsaken town of Fester had ever dreamed. The place just sucked the hope right outta you. We were a group of hopeless dreamers, wishing for something more than this hellhole. We wanted to go to college, to travel, to help others like us. But we can’t. Can’t afford any of it.

Which brings me to the next part of my story.

It was dangerous, living in a gang. You run the risk of getting beat up and shot.

Which was exactly what happened to Stevie.

Now we weren’t as close as Me and Leon but we were still great friends. And looking at his broken and bleeding figure I wasn't thinking clearly. He was the most fragile out of my crew, and I thought he was dead. So we did the worst thing possible.

We called 911.

We were gang members with a bleeding dying figure on our hands. But we were hysterical and young enough that they didn’t arrest any of us. They let Half Print ride in the ambulance and the rest of us ran. Straight on ran the six blocks to the hospital.

The news was grim.

He was alive but in a coma. Busted rib cage, punctured lungs, ruptured organs, several broken bones. They needed to do surgery or else he wasn’t gonna live. We agreed, saying that we would pay them back.

The price came to $530,000.

We didn’t have that type of money.

Hell, we didn’t even know how to get that type of money.

But Hatchet heard about a government program that needed willing human volunteers to experiment on. They were offering $600,000.

We argued about who should go, everyone offering themselves. I told them it was my duty, as leader and left without a word. I appointed Leon as the head until I returned. No one mentioned what we were all thinking, that they might never see me again.  

From then on, everything becomes a little blurry.

The scientists didn’t bother using anesthesia, so I remembered pain. Lots of pain. They took my right eye, too. Replaced it with a mechanical one. After the experiments, I trained, and everything became a haze. I learned weapons use and types of fighting styles, my drugged up mind not even questioning it. They made me stronger, faster, with inhuman reflexes. There were 20 volunteers of people desperate enough to need the money.

After a year, there were only three left, including me. I still don't remember what happened but apparently I killed them. Then I burned down the government building. The head scientist escaped, a man called Dr. Armada.

Then I went back to my gang.

They pressured me to tell them what happened, how I was stronger then normal, stronger than human.

I didn’t have a lot of answers to give them. They were excited for my powers, as they called it. They wanted to use it to stop crime, to do the things we strived to do.

I told them no. I didn’t want to be like the superheros in New York. Nothing good came out of that, look what happened to Tony Stark. Dead after saving the world. I wanted to lay low after all that had happened.

We had a fight, … and… I left. One of the greatest regrets of my life. As I was heading out, I heard a girl crying out for help, with my inhuman hearing. I got there without thinking and stopped the guy attacking her. It was laughably easy. I realized that they were right and I headed back to apologize.

And I will never forget this, as I headed back, the warehouse doors were wide open and the moonlight illuminated red stains on the floor.

Blood.

I rushed in but it was too late. Wide, glassy eyes, bodies cold and stiff. And I heard a gasp to my right. It was Stiletto, the girl who never spoke in her damn life. She looked at me and… I-I’ll never forget this. She said “Remember Crimson, doing what is right is not always easy. But doing’ what is easy is not always right.”

And then she was dead.

I swore then and there that I would become what they wanted to be. The dreams they never had, the fight they always wanted.

I became, in honour of them, the Crimson Crusader.

That is me, Angel Crimson Aldrich, signing off, for now.

[pynkhues]

Assuming the divorce has been finalize and Dean’s new job is stable do you think Dean and Beth will still try the whole nesting plan from season 2? I’m hoping he’ll just live with Judith for now until he get his own place. Like can you imagine if Beth has to share a one bedroom apartment with him and constantly wonder if Dean remembered to wash the sheets before they switch because if he had no problem sleeping with women when they were married he’ll definitely do so now that they’re divorce.

I’ve actually been thinking about this question a bit, anon! I’m not sure, of course, but one of the things I think 2.12 and 2.13 sort of underlined in terms of Beth and Dean is that they’re still in dire straits financially. Beth has all of Rio’s cash now, but it’s cooked so it’s unusable, the dealership is shutdown at least temporarily (although I think we have it more or less confirmed now it’s been shut down for good with the S3 spoilers we have so far - or that they’ve sold it, which could have solved a few of their financial problems), and Dean’s incapable of working for anyone else because he’s 110% ego and clearly had a money repellent curse put on him at some point, haha.

What I’m getting at, is that I’m not sure how on earth they could afford an apartment, and even if Dean’s new job is stable enough, I don’t think their credit will have rebounded enough for either of them to get a loan. Since we know Jessica Walter is back as Dean’s mother, I could see him either living with her fulltime, or - if they were still trying the nesting situation - him staying with her on Beth’s weeks with the kids, and Beth staying with Annie or Ruby during Dean’s weeks with the kids. As a solution though, it’s hardly one that would work longterm, but then a shared apartment wouldn’t either for exactly the reasons you said.

So I’m not sure, I guess! 

It’s interesting though, because the Boland kids seem to have been on set a lot for 3.01 and 3.02, and we know a part of that will be because they’re a part of the Beth-Rhea plot, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was also due to a shifting domestic setting / domestic tensions for Beth either aka Dean moving out and the two of them attempting joint custody (which honestly - I can’t imagine ever running smoothly). 

What do you guys think?

[maergo]

Not often would Minho reach out to his parents in a state of panic. If anything, he’d never want to do it because of the distance between them and a phonecall wouldn’t always be enough for him to calm down. In a lot of cases he’d need a hug, a cup of tea, any simple type of gesture that’d help him to calm down a little by being taken care of, and though he had friends to reach out to, even that didn’t feel like it was enough anymore. He didn’t know if it was because he knew what he could expect from them or because he felt like he was bothering them too much even if they’d say the opposite. Either way, he felt the huge need to talk to his parents – or specifically his mother – anyway as there were some things he’d kept hidden from them and it became harder and harder to keep those things hidden. So, without much information he’d asked his mother to come visit him as soon as she possibly could and within a few days the two of them were seated in front of each other, a cup of freshly made tea in their hands. It was silent, Minho was trying to find the words he desperately needed to tell his mother but now that the moment was there it suddenly had become a lot harder again. Luckily for him she wouldn’t try and rush him.

After a long moment of silence Minho took a deep breath, staring at the table in front of him. ‘‘I don’t know how much longer I can go on.’’ His voice sounded like all emotions had left him, though in reality he was feeling everything at once. Joy, anger, fear, sad, all the common feelings were there and he didn’t know how to deal with them. ‘‘What do you mean with that honey?’’ The woman looked confused, but deep down she knew what to expect. ‘‘Life.’’ Short and direct, like the typical ‘I’m fine, thank you’, although his answer wasn’t a lie that’d cover up the truth and he couldn’t even remember if he had ever been so direct to his mother about it. She’d known in the past that he was struggling but ever since he left New York he wouldn’t talk much about how he was feeling if it was even slightly bad unless they were seeing each other in person – and even then he would often cut things short. Of course, the times he would see his mom in person were times he wanted to enjoy.  The expression the woman had on her face didn’t change much, it became more worried but that was really all. Minho was too afraid to look her in the eye as he continued to talk. ‘‘I’m trying so hard to find things to enjoy, to hold onto any happy feeling but I just can’t anymore. I can’t enjoy anything anymore.’’ Barely had he told her anything yet he already felt like he was about to completely break down in front of her and suddenly he wondered how he had been able to stay quiet about it all for so long. The one person he used to tell everything to had become the one to knew the least about what was going on and for Minho that only was another thing to add to the list of things he absolutely hated about himself. Maybe moving away from his hometown wasn’t the greatest idea he could’ve had after he graduated, but it was too late to make a change to that now. Of course, he could move back but that would just be more stress added to him and at this point he was sure he’d get a heartattack if he had to deal with even more. ‘‘Sweetie, you’re pressuring yourself so much more than you can handle, you need to-’’ ‘‘No, mom. All I ever wanted is just a little bit of happiness. And I had it. And I fucked it up big time.’’ He looked at her, eyes as watery as they could possibly get while his hands started shaking, the content of the cup almost spilling out. Just two weeks prior had he texted her that his relationship had come to an end, he didn’t explain anything and he wouldn’t answer any questions about it either. His friends had been there for him when needed, it felt like there wasn’t any reason to talk about it to his mother but of course he was in the wrong thinking that. She was the first to know he had fallen in love yet the last to know how badly he had fucked it all up. ‘‘I fucked it all up so bad. I couldn’t make him happy, I couldn’t make him proud, I couldn’t make him feel like he had won the lottery. All I could do was make him feel like complete shit, I could only drag him down with my negativity and that resulted into a fucked up relationship.’’ The tears were making their way down as he spoke, voice cracking as if he was about to lose it. The woman put her own cup down before reaching out to grab the one her son was holding, the worry he would actually spill the content was extremely small but she knew that in a situation like this, anything small that would go wrong could have the biggest impact. There were a lot of things she wanted to say but most of them would be the wrong thing to say for the time being. She had to be careful but still realistic. ‘‘Minho, there are always multiple reasons a relationship comes to its end and only very rarely is it caused by one single person.’’ ‘‘I couldn’t be happy, I couldn’t make him happy. I couldn’t hide my feelings anymore so I fucked up moments that were supposed to be nice.’’ ‘‘Honey, those are very general exa-’’ ‘‘I couldn’t make him feel like he could tell me absolutely anything. He’d pushed someone out of his and Luna’s life, then hid the fact that that person was back in because I’d be upset. I was put to blame for that person to not be in their lives for a while. He didn’t want me to meet his first son because I’d just fuck up the vibe. Up until the day we broke up he didn’t tell me he had found his brother, he refused to tell me sooner because I’d just be upset. My jealousy would’ve been a problem. Again, would’ve ruined the mood if he did tell me sooner and I’d meet his brother. All I did was ruin the mood and if I tried to do something fun then out of the blue I’d fuck it up anyway because I can’t fucking stick to any positivity. I don’t know how people deal with their fucking traumatic experiences, how they keep their heads above the ground.’’ There was a sigh, a worried one. It wouldn’t be fair for her to be biased, of course she’d much rather comfort her son to try and convince him that he was not the one at fault, but hearing what he said partially sound reasonable to her. If he really was feeling down so much then it wasn’t weird to her that some things were left unsaid, but that didn’t mean it was fair. ‘‘You’ve been able to keep your head above the ground sweetheart, what happened that you’re struggling with it so badly now?’’ A sad laughter came from the writer and he looked further down. ‘‘If only you knew...’’ ‘‘If only I knew what?’’ ‘‘About my suicide attempt last year.’’ Silence. Complete silence, aside from the rushed heartbeat that Minho could clearly hear – and it wasn’t his own. He gave it a moment until he spoke again. ‘‘I tried to kill myself last year with halloween and I would’ve succeeded had he just listened to me and stayed home.’’ He’d dreaded this moment for so long. Though there had been a lot of moments he was on the edge of telling her, it never happened. Not a single part inside of him wanted to hurt her like that. She was the person that gave him the life he had and there he was telling her that he didn’t want it anymore. No person would ever want to hear their children say that they didn’t want to live, or that it was too hard to. With that there was the fact that he’d kept it hidden from her as well, though part of him knew that she was suspicious anyway. Their bond had always been strong like that. ‘‘I never liked the idea of you living so far away from us, but you seemed to be so sure of it being a good idea that I kept my mouth shut about it. I wish you had stayed with us in New York for longer, that you would’ve let us take care of you longer. You needed it to get yourself back on track but instead you wanted to move here. We let you, because you were old enough to make your own decisions, but we were always worried to receive the call we did now.’’ ‘‘Even dad?’’ ‘‘Even your dad. Despite that you two didn’t have the best relationship, he would’ve gone through fire to keep you safe. When I informed him that your relationship ended he got more worried than me, unfortunately he couldn’t afford to leave with his job going on. He did ask me to tell you that he feels really sorry about that.’’ It felt like a part of Minho got healed, for so long had he dealt with the idea that his father never wanted him around but now that he heard the truth from his mother things seemed to lighten up already. Not enough for the situation to become better now at all, but now he did have a chapter he could give an ending to and never look back at again. ‘‘I don’t.. want you to feel like you’re always the one who should get blamed, because that’s not true and a lot of times you can’t do anything about certain situations, but you do get in your head so much. There is no reason for you to keep blaming yourself for everything, especially not because there are a lot of things that your father and I could and should have done differently when you were still growing up. We can’t undo the wrongs, but we can admit to our mistakes. Right now you’re striving for the perfect life, with the perfect income, the perfect relationship, but if I can give you one piece of advice right now it’s that you’re never going to stop learning and you’re never going to stop making decisions that you’ll later on realize weren’t the right ones. What you need to do is learn how to cope with situations in a way that isn’t so self destructive.’’ ‘‘Then what am I supposed to do? Therapy isn’t working, work isn’t distracting enough to keep my thoughts occupied, I don’t have easy access to a piano…’’ Looking up when he spoke Minho could tell how nervous his mother was. There was something she wanted to say but her entire expression gave away that she wasn’t sure how he’d respond to it. ‘‘Maybe.. you should consider to get some help in a psychiatric hospital. Fulltime help. I know it doesn’t sound very appealing but I think it’s all there’s left to try for you to deal with everything. They’ll be able to invest more time into your situation and you’ll have easier access to instant help even in the middle of the night.’’ A psychiatric hospital. Not once in his life had that ever sound like it could be the solution, but it was indeed the last option to try out. Would he be happy to go there? Definitely not, death still sounded more appealing, but if it’d even make one person feel slightly more at ease knowing that he was going to try it out then he figured it could only be worth it. However, ‘‘What if it won’t work?’’ He was one that’d doubt absolutely anything, he didn’t believe that he could get better again, but for once he was willing to force himself to go into it more open minded than what would be usual. Either way he had to ask the question, yet he did so in a way that it would be clear for his mother to know that this really was the last option he’d try out, even if suddenly there’d be something on the market with a guaranteed solution. The woman let out a nervous sigh, knowing what he meant to say. She did not want to give in but it wasn’t realistic to force her son to stay around completely against his own will. ‘‘Then that is what it is. I’ll be thankful that you’ve been willing to try it anyway.’’ Something held her back from saying that if it wouldn’t work that she was willing to let him go, as if admitting to it would guarantee for the treatment to fail. Minho knew that it is what she meant to say, and for the first time in a long while he felt a genuine smile on his face, knowing that he finally had her understanding.

[thatdisasterauthor]

So...I have two options right now:

1. Move to the Denver area, have a job that pays $12.50 an hour plus commission (for an average of $16-$18 and will be fulltime by spring. However, it is still retail and sales and wouldn’t have a set schedule or the best benefits. I’ll have to live with my dad for at least a year because Denver is EXPENSIVE. Nothing wrong with living with my dad, especially rent free, but I’m so fucking exhausted at not having my own place. It has been threeish years since I had my own place and I’m tired of it. I want my own bathroom, my own kitchen. Also, living with my dad means living in the family waystation which has tons of people coming and going at all times. Last time I lived there I twice came upstairs and found cousins I didn’t know I had just lounging around.

2.  Stay in Colorado Springs with a job that pays $16 an hour full time and is in a sales position with a regular schedule and better benefits. But I’d have to move into an apartment IMMEDIATELY since I got kicked out of my mother’s place for not cleaning up after her dogs. Rent down here is much more affordable, but things would still be tight even at $16 an hour. I’d have my own space like I want, though. However, I’m also sick of Colorado Springs. None of the stuff I like to do is down here, it is all up in Denver, and it is at least an hour’s drive between the two.

I just. Hrgggg. I can’t make up my mind. They’re both pretty equally balanced with pros and cons for me.