#i just need to be held by them honestlt

[nauticasdatalog]

Therapy with the Bots:

Because i cant afford it and my shifting attemps are only giving me a good sleep schedule...here you go.

“You know, I feel like I’ve never known what it’s like to be loved.” She whispered but his audials heard it loud and clear, making Ratchet turn his helm too quickly for his attempt of being nonchalant.

But the teen standing on the platform beside him, overlooking Emma and Jazz currently teasing each other about where they were going for their date tonight, only laid her head down against her palm with a look so lost on her face that Ratchet had become accustomed to too easily.

“People say you should give what you want to receive. But I’ve seen people give their whole world to someone or something only for it to let them down. I thought having my dream come true of finally being able to meet your team would make me feel at home but I still feel the same. I still feel left out, I still feel…unneeded.” She sighed before tucking a wisp of her bangs behind her ear after it had brushed under her damp eyelashes and gotten caught.

“Kid-”

“I feel like I give all that I can. That I project my feelings as simply as possible but what do I get in return?” She asked before laughing to herself, “I get called a mother. I get, not friend-zoned! But ‘Mothered’ and in some cases that's not bad but when I can’t shake it off that someone I like will only ever see me that way…it hurts. I just want to be normal. Why is how I care for people not normal?” she questioned and Ratchet's frown only grew as he watched her left hand come up to scratch at the bracelet on her other wrist.

“And now we live in a world where people just assume I don’t want to date, or I haven’t figured out who I want to date but they don’t know that I know who I am. I know what I want I just-” she stopped because of the tears beginning to clog up her throat and closed her mouth to try and get rid of it without being too loud about it.

“I just don’t know how to get what I want.” she managed to finish and when she tucked the same piece of hair further back against her scalp, Ratchet took a deep vent before leaning slightly closer to lean against the stairwell structure.

“Before I met Drift, I felt confident in myself. In being alone, in being the only one who understood the things I did, in being an easy name on a schedule but not someone major but just ‘another medic’.” He began to explain and it gained enough of her attention that she softly looked up even with tears welling in her eyes to make contact with him as he spoke to her.

“But then he sauntered into my life and suddenly, I began to become frustrated with myself over things I couldn’t control. I started to want him to see things in me that I hadn’t told him about so that I didn’t have to explain them because I couldn’t. I wanted him to know how I felt about him without the words spoken because I didn’t know how to speak them. Instead, I came off as pushy, ignorant, and probably downright mean when I’d snap at him after a long shift that he had just randomly popped in for during his breaks to chat with me.” He explained and when he saw her small look of concern he smiled down at her and was instantly rewarded with an eyebrow raise in return.

“I’m never going to forget the first time I snapped at him and how he just stood there. Still as a statue until I started to cry. I had hated in that moment how vulnerable I felt. How simple it was for his presence to knock down all of my training and make me cry like a sparkling because I was upset and frustrated. That day I hadn’t felt good enough for my position, for who I wanted to become, and for who I wanted to be for him. Nobody knew the stresses of my job, no one could understand how much pressure I put on myself not to fail because not only was my designation at stake but so were bots' lives. But after he got over his shock, he placed down the cubes in his servos and hugged me. I hadn’t ever shown him any physical affection because I didn’t honestly know how or when to appropriately. I was always so terrified of other bot’s fields because I knew from experience I didn’t like bot’s in mine. But he hugged me, out of the blue and I felt a part of me snap and I was sobbing into his chassis like I had just lost a life.” He expressed with a shake of his helm before turning to gently watch her as she kept her gaze low and towards the red marks now covered by her bracelet.

“I didn’t know how to love but he told me neither did he. When we first bonded and he showed me what it was like to see me break down like that from his point of view, I could feel his spark stuttering in his chassis and the want and the need he had to make me feel better. Because in his glyphs, I -’work so hard to fix others without ever taking a moment to pause and check in on myself’. I let things overwhelm me, I bit my glossa if something bothered me because my opinion wasn’t wanted unless I was giving a possible diagnosis.” When Ratchet stopped again he held out his servo but she hesitated before climbing through the railing and slowly lowering down to sit herself up against his digits.

He slowly laid his thumb down across her lap and he heard her sniffle before rubbing at the underside of her nose for a second before he continued.

“I know what it feels like. To overanalyze everyone else's view of you so that you know what they expect from you. It’s why to me it always felt so easy to walk into my faction because bots expected me to be one thing, a medic. A bot who told you what happened, why it happened, and how to fix it. Not my opinion, not my emotions, not who I had hidden way too deep inside that I thought no one could ever find me.”

“But then Drift had. Without me even knowing it and I still didn’t let it sink in until the darkcycle we bonded.” He said such with a smile big enough that she smiled back while leaning her head against the curve of his digit as the last of her tears dried up on her skin.

“You may feel unseen or buried but have faith that they trust you. That they want to get to know you more the same way you crave to know more about them. You aren’t alone sweetspark. This feeling will pass.” He reassured her with a gentle rub of his thumb against her body and even though the action should have felt wrong, it was the closest form of a hug she felt like she was going to get due to their size difference.

“Thank you Ratchet,”

“You are always welcome youngling.”

[somedaypast-thesunset]

i actually commend him today. a legitimate issue between us is the fact that the weed we have ends up being shared between us but no one knows who smokes what amount or when and its just like stoners arguing about a weed bag which is asinine after awhile - its your word vs theirs. but i did smoke his weed this weekend / this week. im smoking it now. to be fair, its one of the ways i help create equality - for a long time i did not get what i want, and i dont really think i am so this is something ive done but its time to mature out of it and set a better example. its a very uncouth/unclassy thing to do. he was angry this morning and reiterated thst hes told me a number of times and that this is a giant inconvinience to him and it means i have to see him etc. but i also felt like it was a very controlled response to a legitimate thing i am doing to him in some ways. it wssnt like this random outburst of emotion - it felt much more straightforward and i feel that there were things he had to take into account - the fact that i do buy weed and it gets mixed in with his. or the fact ive given him 40$+ since the beginning of may and have paid for a nunber of things. the fact i continually offer him money or weed replacement. he repeated thst it was an inconvinience and that he didnt want to worry about it so stop smoking it. and fine - this time it feels different because hes not adding on "but i dont really care about it" - or watching as i smoke it and saying nothing. i can even appreciate that this comes at a time when im more likely to be able to afford my own in the future. which is why i dont believe its a huge issue to just pay it back. i told him i could just drop it off in the mailbox - which honestlt is more convinient for me because after three days of sitting st his house in the evening, im actually ready to just chill at home. or do other things. i appreciate that he used his time on projects and that i downloaded a dozen movies - the fact i have them honestly settles my anxiety because i know i dont have a lot of options. today is a studio day at the gallery, i have a cleaning job i feel well eniugh for out of the city and i havent seen our mutual friend since the weekend. i also promised to have drinks with another friend if she needed it. so i was naturally inclined to be distracted by things not involving him to begin with and taking a walk up to his house in the evening is just nice to enjoy the weather and go for a walk, or maybe get a drive from our mutual friend. what i dont appreciate about him is that he. reates these scenarios as giant ones that are end of his world. its an exaggeration thats really unnecessary but i know its becsuse alot of people have taken advantage of him. so ive always tried to give to the best of my abilities if i choose to take from him more than he is giving willingly. instead of dragging it out - i apologized. he told me sorry was not much because i did it anyways and continue doing it. i told him the only thing i can do is apologize and bring him back something in return, which could be done casually and without fanfare. it shouldnt be unusual to say something like, " oh will you be home? should i drop it off somewhere? ". he decided to drive me home before getting ready for work which i also appreciate because it meant that he was choosing to end the conversation without making a huge scene. it wasnt leading to this is break uo im not seeing u fuck u etc. it didnt include this so to me it felt like it was actually serious. like i could take this at face value and accept it as is and any further consequences from it. he just choose to end it. and our car ride was silent, which was fine - theres nothing else to say. i understand i did a thing that bothers him on legitimate levels and i can only be sorry for it and pay back whats owed. its very basic. but what i also appreciated was that when we got to my place i told him that i was sorry i continued to smoke his weed and i was sorry he was angry; not in a condescending way but just an apology that an action of mine caused him to feel anger in the day and that i would drop off weed in his mailbox tonight; he just needed to trust that i would pay him back. he said alright, give me a kiss, i have to go. which is very.. amazing. as we drove i kind of apologized to nyself that i was involved in an anxiety provoking situation in the morning and that i was causing harm to the success of my day but it wasnt the worst thing. so to end it on a peaceful note instead of no fuck u i dont want it i dont want to see you... im really grateful. i might even write a note with my drop off and like.. applaud him for making an effort not to be sooo... like he hss been. i dont know, this was very easily an opening for him to be like fuck it im done this is the last time its not worth it we just went through this. but he let it be and he wanted to trust in some ways that id pay him back and i wasnt ungrateful and i wasnt trying to take advantage of him and not acknowledge what i was taking. i am not an enemy. and after such a battle where nothing has been spoken about it since or ever came to a real conclusion.. its truly amazing this is how we are operating. i dont feel negativity. there are certain things i need to do in life anyways and i feel like by him not exagggerating this to a "break up" and dragging in all these random delusions of how i act and what we are that its actually taking seriously the probability of us remaining together. and if we are remaining together then this is not okay. temoorarily? whatever, minor expense. long term? not okay. and just this like little bit makes me feel better about things because i came to realize that there is absolutely no trust with him. he has also been hurt so many times that he operates at full protection mode all the time. when i said thst he hsd to trust id pay him back, as the words came out i realized they carried a heaviness. he did not trust i would pay him back. he did not trust that i wasnt taking sdvantage of him or trying to take up all his time. but ive never done this. to get here, its taken consistency. despite my overall instability, i am probably the most consistent thing in his life right now besides his mother. and my reactions have remained consistent and i really do want to control my habit at that level and stop smoking it now. i am truly amazed. i think after the last bit and the fact no one is talking about it made him realize hes here to stay. its "not a relationship" is now a joke, a funny belief of the past. it is love because i stood and took your abuse; not purposeful abuse, but being side swiped by an inability to control themselves. and i think hes smsrt enough to know that we are equals. he has had to carry me and stand thriugh and put up with anxiety because of me and i have done the same for him in times that are mentally very hard and even physically hard. i think its easy to say this is my boyfriend. this is my girlfriend. this is a relationship. but what does that even mean? my partner in life. to me, for the first time as an adult, i believe this might be setting ground work for a defining relationship in my life that is so enormous in what it could be that it simply cannot be done in fast forward. to be fair, i actuslly dont reallllyyy want to live with him right now. the comfort and safety of being able to leave when hes unbareable is so much better than being stuck. but what if that changes? what if his methods of expression become bareable? ive never seen someone grow. to make choices above the base one. but i know it happens. and to see this choice is inspiring and makes me want to make better choices. i feel about as bad for smoking his weed as he does for all the times he told me this isnt a relationship. i dont have guilt, unfortunately. i doubt he does either. but it can stop. on both sides it can stop and once it does, it doesnt need to be discussed or held on to. im hoping to watch a movie & get ready for my cleaning job but im 95% thsre - 5% wants to stay home and sleep but i want to atleast try to live my idealized version of the day becsuse i was given an idealized resolution this morning.