#i made this instead of doing labwork

[jeonghan-yoons]

jeonghan : spill the feels behind

[roach-works]

pokemon theory i just thought of: new pokemon appear in the pokemon universe when they're designed in this one. they're created ex nilho but they have retroactive realness; they weren't here yesterday, but today they've always existed.

pokemon researchers have had to suss this out on their own over decades, and it's a really unpopular theory, made worse by the fact that no one can come up with a better one. from their perspective pokemon generate spontaneously but in both chronological directions, and the similarities of many pokemon seem to be detived from a conscious and creative understanding of the world--their world, though? what other world could there be?. there are ice cream pokemon and pokeball pokemon and sword pokemon and trash bag pokemon.

there are so many pokemon with both wings and a beak. is this like swords? is there an ur-flying type that this class evokes? there are so many canine pokemon. but what is a canine? is there such a thing? there's only one set of sword pokemon, right. one tea-set line. is *feline* a coherent category? would the ur-feline have two legs or four? why do so many pokemon have humanlike bodyplans-- but then again, why so few?

pichu has always been the prior form of pikachu. why didn't it get counted in order? why do we call it that instead of saying pikachu is the middle evolution of the pichu line? why can so many trainers remember finding this out well into their journeys? why didn't ash start with one?

this is why pokemon researchers do a lot of labwork, drink heavily, and use ten year olds for field research. you can't have an existential crisis if you don't even know what time is yet.

[fazedlight]

Enchanted (idiots in love)

“Try something fun,” Nia had said. “Get your mind off science,” Nia had said.

Lena huffed as she flipped through the pages of her spellbook, scrawling notes in her notebook. Science was fun. Labwork was soothing, data analysis was exhilarating, and tinkering solved that itch deep in her bones. She wanted to understand, and science was always there for her.

… except for right now.

It just didn’t make any sense. The double-slit experiment should have produced a diffraction pattern - or at least two straight lines, if somehow magic behaved as a classic particle. But magic did neither. Instead, it either caused a damn fractal or did not seem to pass through the slits at all. How the fuck does this work?

Nia - knowing full well what it was like to struggle with capricious and chaotic powers - had suggested that Lena take a break, try something fun with her magic instead of constantly churning through its utility or its inner workings. The thought made Lena grumpy, but she was out of experiment ideas at the moment - so there she was, flipping through her mother’s spellbook, trying to find something… fun.

Lena continued her grumble, trying to get her mind off her experiments - maybe magic is some sort of phasic neutrino nonsense - and turned her page to a pair of spells that always caught her eye, though she would never admit it. It’s not as though she would ever use the spells for LUST and OBSESSION anyway.

Still, it was interesting, where these two spells lay. The spellbook wasn’t organized alphabetically or in any other methodical fashion - instead, the spells near each other always seemed thematically related. Malicious spells were grouped together, as were benevolent spells, as were helpful spells, often with some illustrations in between to separate the groups.

It always amused Lena that there were only these two spells in this cluster - OBSESSION on the left side, LUST on the right, in nearly the exact center of the book. There was nothing else… no love spell, she thought to herself. Not that she’d ever use it, even if there was a certain kryptonian whose affections she yearned for.

“Are you okay?” came a familiar voice.

Lena looked over her shoulder, finding Kara walking down from the balcony entrance. “Kara,” Lena said, feeling a little lighter as the blonde entered the room. Romance or not, the kryptonian always managed to put a smile on her face. “I’m fine.”

“That’s not what Nia said,” Kara said with a patient smile, halting at the foot of the table, as her hands rested on her hips.

“She has a big mouth,” Lena mumbled.

“She said you’ve been frustrated,” Kara said with a small laugh.

“None of my experiments are working,” Lena grumbled. “Magic acts like nothing I’ve ever seen…”

“You can’t always learn new skills from first principles-” Kara began, before her drifting eyes suddenly halted on the book.

Lena’s brows furrowed in curiosity as she watched a rose tint rise in Kara’s cheeks. Confused, Lena followed Kara’s gaze to the spellbook, before remembering… Obsession and Lust. “Oh, no, no-” Lena started, reaching over to the book to close it. “Not that type of frustrated…”

“W-well, it’s okay if you are,” Kara said, stuttering. 

“I’m not, I’m- I’m fine.”

“You don’t need a spell, Lena,” Kara said, her embarrassment tempered by sincerity. “If you wanted someone. You could have anyone.”

“I- I wouldn’t use a spell, Kara!” Lena said. Goodness knows her brainwashing days were well behind her. “There���s not even a love spell in here anyway.”

“No, there wouldn’t be,” Kara said pensively. “Love can’t be forced.”

“I’d want it to be real anyway,” Lena said, her fingers drifting over the book’s cover as she tried to fight the heat rising on her face. But Kara’s comment was… interesting. “How do you know it can’t be forced?”

“Just a conversation I had with an imp once,” she said, a fond - if perhaps a little sad - smile tugging at her lips. “Love has to be found. It doesn’t work otherwise.”

Lena hummed noncommittally, rising from her seat.

“You’ll- you’ll find it, Lena. Like I said, you could have anyone.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Lena said softly.

“Lena,” Kara said, suddenly concerned as she closed the distance between the two, taking Lena’s hands into her own. “Lena, I’m serious. You’re kind, and so smart, and beautiful-”

“Kara, please,” Lena said, finally meeting Kara’s eyes again.

Kara eyed Lena, shifting anxiously on her feet. Lena tilted her head, curious as to the kryptonian’s newfound nerves. With a pursing of her lips, a determined gaze, Kara nodded to herself, giving Lena’s hands a small squeeze.

“You don’t need a spell to enchant me,” Kara said, her voice shaking. “You don’t need a spell to enchant anyone.”

“Enchant-” Lena paused, her eyes darting between Kara’s.

“I’m not- I’m not expecting us to change, Lena. I just want you to know. Anyone would love you, you just have to put yourself out there, to find the person you want.”

Lena raised her hand to cup Kara’s cheek. “Kara…”

It was sweet, how shy Kara was, how her cheeks burned red - Lena was sure that hers was a matching shade - and yet the kryptonian sought only to give comfort. Lena smiled, as she tilted Kara’s head up, as the kryptonian looked back at her with those deep uncertain blues.

Lena smiled. “You enchant me too.”

[navyinks]

diary ↓

the year is half over so i want to celebrate my wins

i think finally i have developed a healthier mindset to art, of course i still have my bad days but i’m feeling a lot happier with where i’m at now compared to the start of the year. i learned to genuinely enjoy the drawing process instead of being obsessed with finishing something.

speaking of finished pieces, lately i was a little upset because i felt that my daily practice wasn’t reflected in my paintings. in particular the last feanor&maedhros piece made me really depressed because everything about it was so bad, i felt so horrible that i was drawing hours every day but this was the shitty result... but when i took a step back i realised where i went wrong. in the last three months i focused very heavily on drawing & anatomy, and did very few painting/shading exercises. so of course it was silly to expect that my finished paintings would improve when i didn’t put that much work in that area.

but when i started drawing some concept character sketches for dandelion children this week i was legitimately stunned by how much easier it was to draw humans in general. i don’t know why i didn’t believe it but doing figure drawing every single day really helped me to draw human figures quickly and effortlessly, and they also look much better than whatever i was doing before. the human body is no longer a mystery to me and i can feel confident to say now that i know how to draw a human xD

so i concluded that all the work i’ve been doing has really paid off - i improved in the exact same area that i practiced. in the end, it turned out that everything was fine and i’m not permanently broken when it comes to art. maybe there is some hope for me after all x’D

but i also realised that the past three months have been the only time in my whole, entire life that i’ve consistently sat down every day to practice the fundamentals. even last year during lockdown, i binged an entire anatomy course and then abruptly stopped practicing after that because i burnt out too fast. in the past i was far too distracted by the finished product to have any patience to sit down and practice. so i guess i also found the key to having balance in my art endeavors. i think that might be the most valuable lesson i’ve learned this year.

idk who will read this but going forward i will probably stop drawing much else outside of daily practice. tbh i’m already not very interested in drawing anything else, it’s hard to want to make polished work when i know my fundamentals are still so shakey. but i think i will still make an effort for a completed piece every month. i only wish that i can still continue to afford the time and energy to practice every day now that labwork is really picking up >.<”

[kakimushire]

Uekawa moved with ease, a body upon his shoulders, soon to be placed onto a table with its gut torn open but not a speck of blood. Uekawa got rid of that moments ago, though now he was climbing onto a stool that was half-leaning over the body with tools in gloved hands to twirl and spin scalpels with excitement. A new specimen was pretty rare, he wasn't one to go out and fetch it, oh no, he was an scavenger. He likes trailing behind the battlefields taking the corpses left behind.

Though he paused, his tools hovering as he stared upon the disturbance at his lab room door - mask removed for freedom in the silence and lonesomeness, but to vividly now gaze upon the man that healed his face once... he blinked rapidly with sweat beading. It's been a while... So he tools were placed down, his mask sought for to be placed over his mouth but too far from his current placement.

So, instead, he hung his head, covering himself with artificial white hair to wheeze and gulp. "How... How may I help you Taichou?"

     People could say what they wanted about Mayuri and the Jūnibantai, but if they were under the impression that the division didn't function as well as the other squads, then they were sorely misinformed. There was a difference between serving in the 12th division, and actually being a part of the Gijutsukaihatsu Kyoku. Most of the 12th division members never had anything to do with labwork or anything of the sort. They were simple soldiers, the same as you would find in any of the other divisions. They did their assigned tasks. Patrols, training as well as being assigned to different areas in the World of the Living.

     Unfortunately for Mayuri, overseeing all of this was part of his duties. He was not only the president of the Gijutsukaihatsu Kyoku, he was also the Captain of the Jūnibantai. He viewed spending time on that part of his ' job ' as a complete waste of time, and it always put him in the most impatient kind of mood. Nobody wanted to put a foot wrong in times like that. WASTING his time like this was simply the price he had to pay for his position. He knew that, but that wouldn't keep him from complaining often and loudly.

     Most of this day had been spent assigning tasks, signing reports and instructing new recruits. In other words - NOT his favorite type of day. Another reason why he absolutely did not like this sort of thing was that he always felt out of place. Being a CAPTAIN didn't come natural to him. He didn't mind giving orders and having them followed, but he was not an ' inspiring leader '. Most of those who were assigned to his division didn't even want to be there. They didn't look up to him, and they didn't respect him. They only feared him. He could always tell that he was looked at with fear and disgust. It was a little bit tiring.

     At least he was done now, and could return to what he WANTED to do - which was to dive back into his work. He was jealous, because today his division had been gifted with corpses for research. There had been a battle, and the fallen ones had been... Well - ' donated ', so to speak. It was always exciting to get fresh organic material to work with, and he knew that several lab members would want to get their hands on certain organs. There was something satisfying about seeing everyone hard at work. But, alas, he was too late to experience any of that. When he returned to the lab, everything had quieted down. The air was sterile and cold. Mayuri made inquiries, and was told that Uekawa was the only one who was still working on his corpse. They sounded jealous, as if Uekawa's specimen was an especially fine one. Mayuri didn't mind taking a look. He could ask about what Uekawa was working on too.

     He was occupying one of the many operating theaters, and Mayuri opened the door without knocking. He would have been angry if any of his division members had done the same to him. Uekawa looked surprised, almost startled. Clearly he had not expected company. He wasn't wearing his mask, which was an incredible rarity. There were many strange characters within the Gijutsukaihatsu Kyoku, and Mayuri supposed he had never thought of Uekawa's looks to be particularly off-putting. He was just so used to seeing him with his mask that seeing him without it was almost like seeing him without SKIN. Strange. Simply strange. The other hid by looking down, the artificial hair falling over his face to keep it from sight. Mayuri's head tilted to the side in question. Well - HE also hid his face, in a way, so perhaps he could relate to him. His own skin was never on display. But it wasn't as if Mayuri didn't know what the other looked like under his mask. HE was the one who had FIXED his face.

     ❝ I simply came to inspect your work, since I've already spent ALL day focusing on other people's projects. ❞ He sounded annoyed, but the annoyance wasn't directed at Uekawa. Mayuri walked across the floor, over towards him. ❝ What are you working on? ❞

[amour-de-tous]

Finally, the update on my health

TW: lots and lots and lots of talk about health, and bad health, in particular, below.  So I know I never really updated everyone on What Was (is) Going On With My Health. It’s been a huge mess, and I run out of spoons every day just trying to eat meals at the right times to take my meds.  Shortest version possible (believe it or not): at the end of May last year, 2019, pretty much all my joints and extremities swelled up unbelievably. Like I couldn’t put my feet on the floor because they were so swollen it felt like the skin would split open. I had to sit in a chair all day with my feet elevated on a stool and pillows just to keep them from continuing to swell, and I had to sleep with pillows under my feet to keep them from swelling more during the night. I say “sleep” loosely, because I was getting about an hour to two hours of very interrupted sleep every night. The swelling was so bad that just to leave my chair where my feet were elevated, and go sit at the table to eat meals, my feet would swell so bad it was hard for me to walk from the table back to my chair. Then my hands started going numb and tingly, but not in a “my hands are asleep” kind of way, but more an “this is excruciatingly painful but I still can’t feel my hands” kind of way. I couldn’t close my hands into a fist, and I couldn’t open my hands either, they were frozen in a sort of half curled position. There were several weeks where I couldn’t hold a fork or spoon to feed myself. There were months upon months were I couldn’t brush or wash my hair by myself. I spent months with my hands/wrists/feet/ankles packed in ice every 20 minutes to try to control the swelling. I also had this awful brain fog situation where I couldn’t focus on anything. Even if I had been able to hold a book, tablet, or phone (which I couldn’t, because my hands were so bad), I couldn’t read because I had absolutely zero concentration or focus or comprehension. Even watching TV was almost impossible because I would zone out and come back to awareness and so much time had passed I’d have no idea what was going on. I literally spent three or four months just sitting in that chair in pain, staring at the ceiling, crying on and off. So, so much more below the cut.

I could barely attend my niece and nephews baptism. We were there for as long as it took for the actual service to happen, and while I tried to stay for the meal and gifts and such, I was in such excruciating pain--and using a cane to even be able to walk--that we had to leave early.  My niece’s 4th birthday was a few weeks later, in late June, and again I was there with a cane and in excruciating pain. I’m my niece’s favourite person and having to tell her Auntie couldn’t get down and play with her, or hold her, was terrible. By the end of June, my PCP had run enough tests to be outside his area of knowledge and referred me out to a rheumatologist. The earliest the one I wanted to see could see me was January. This was the first week of July. So I looked around for whoever could see me first and chose them. The soonest someone could see me was, unfortunately, on my birthday last year, July 15th. So I spent my birthday seeing the rheumatologist, being diagnosed with carpal tunnel, tendinitis, and what he suspected was rheumatoid arthritis. Once I left his office, I spent my birthday getting bloodwork (8 vials, yikes, which continued monthly for the remainder of 2019), and then getting fitted for a set of wrist braces that I would have to sleep in for maybe the rest of my life, and wear during the day when the pain was so bad. The rheumatologist literally said to me “well, none of your labwork confirms this and we don’t really know, but we’re gonna treat you as if you had rheumatoid arthritis”. Although he kept running tests to try to confirm the RA, he didn’t look anywhere else to try and figure out what I actually have. So they started me on medication(s), and referred me to occupational therapy and physical therapy. I was so bad when I started going that my PT consisted of sitting in a chair and (trying) to flex my ankles in different directions, and then a lymph massage to try to reduce swelling. My occupational therapy, when I started, consisted of trying to pick up pieces of sponges and put them in a cup. I was so bad that was actually almost impossible for me. They also referred me out to have a nerve conduction test, where they stuck needles all through my arms and electrified them. It was the worst thing ever, let me tell you. Then I got referred to a hand surgeon (who is lovely, actually) for surgery. He decided to hold off on surgery and see if steroid shots would help (they did, to an extent, and I am so grateful for that). Fast forwards through months and months of testing and bloodwork and physical and occupational therapies and medications, and the swelling had reduced enough that I could stand up or walk to the bathroom or eat dinner without swelling up so bad anymore. Being at PT and OT still meant I came home and had to pack my feet and wrists in ice and elevate to take care of the extra swelling, but it was better. Not good, not right, but better. Fast forward more, still, and it’s December. At that point I could stand long enough to help cook dinner, or even run an errand or two before I was in too much pain and had to sit and elevate again. In mid-March they released me from PT and OT. Not because I was better--I still couldn’t (and can’t, now) bend my wrists at all--but because the prescription had run out. I’d basically used all the allotted amount I had. This ended up being alright in the long run, since aside from one trip to the lab for bloodwork, I haven’t left my house since my last day of OT on March 13th, due to Covid. Turns out having an auto-immune disease and being on immunosuppresants makes you REAL high risk for Covid, and I’m just not playing that game. At the beginning of April, I finally got to see the rheumatologist I WANTED to see all along (via video visit! Didn’t even have to leave my house and be exposed!). She’s awesome and is really set on finding an ACTUAL diagnosis for me and not just saying “we don’t know”. Had 9 vials taken from me in her first round of bloodwork, and then she said it looked like it could be Lupus and did more tests. She’s now pretty certain I DON’T have Lupus OR rheumatoid arthritis. I had an appointment with her at the very end of July (video, again), and it turns out she thinks I have something called sarcoidosis. This is going to require a CT scan, for my lungs and heart, to see if the disease is in them. Evidently with this particular auto-immune disease, your body overreacts and encapsulates what it thinks are dangerous foreign bodies (but really are just part of your own immune system) and creates “granulomas” around them. Basically think of an oyster creating a pearl around an invading body, except in this case instead of pearls, I have lumps of stuff that hurts me.  Horrifying to know I have to walk into a hospital at this point in time, of my own free will. Like I said before, aside from one set of bloodwork, I haven’t been exposed or been out where I could be exposed at ALL. All that goes out the window once I walk into a hospital for a CT scan. :\ After the CT scan, depending on the results, there’s other tests I’ll need. Chest x-rays, EKGs, pulmonary function tests, lung biopsies (YIKES) and others. She seems fairly confident that this is the correct diagnosis for me, but wants confirmation and also to see progression of disease.  At any rate, she’ll be changing my medication. Which sucks for so many reasons, not the least of which is I just picked up 360 tablets of it that I now won’t be taking. :| Also the fact that now I get to try a new medication and do the “am I having side effects or am I just anxious” song and dance. She’s also talking about needing to put me on steroids which I am REALLY unhappy about. I suppose it’s better to go on steroids than to die, but I’m still really unhappy about it. In other, related news, I’ve developed hypercalcemia. Which means there’s too much calcium in my blood, which can cause a HOST of other problems. So I’ve been put on a no-dairy, low calcium diet. Do you know how many items have calcium in them? Almost everything, that’s what. Also, they fortify all the non-dairy “milk” products with calcium. They all have as much or MORE calcium than dairy milk. It’s been a NIGHTMARE, to the point where I’m actually afraid of food now. I’m obsessively reading labels and doing research online. “How much calcium is in 81 grams of kiwi, after all?”. Nightmare. Dairy was my #1 love and foodgroup, and having to suddenly figure out all new things to eat and ways to cook while simultaneously being in pain and *exhausted* 24/7 because auto-immune is not. fun. at. all. It’s already all my energy every day to help make, eat, and clean up a meal. I literally have to sit in my chair after a meal with my feet elevated to recover. Now having to spend all this energy on a whole new diet plan is a nightmare. Basically this whole thing has been a MESS. It’s been 15 months, I’ve been being treated for the wrong disease for 14 months, the news I’m getting now is worse than the news that flattened my emotional response all those months ago, I still can’t function, and I can’t work. Oh, yeah. I haven’t played an instrument since May 2019. My whole life revolved around my music, and now I can’t even play to make myself feel better, because my hands don’t work. I’ve also been out of work since then, too: my last concert was April 2019. I haven’t made any money since. But I have had co-pays out the wazoo! Which reminds me that they raised the price on two of my meds, because of course they did. Thanks, congress. This has been really, really hard. My anxiety has skyrocketed through this, and my depression isn’t doing much better. Although physically I’m not as bad as I was, I’m nowhere near normal, and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to go back to my normal again, either. The best I’m hoping for at this point is to be able to eat calcium again someday, to not have my organs eaten up by this disease, and to continue existing. It’s been exhausting. It really, really has.  That’s not to mention the added stress and anxiety over Covid, and the fact that neither mom nor I can even go to a grocery store because of my high-risk status. We’re averaging getting groceries about once a month right now. It’s super fun now because I have to read the label on EVERYTHING but Aldi doesn’t post their nutrition labels online and!!! That means I have to either guess or not get things! Great!  All this to say that I miss being on tumblr. I miss all my friends here. I miss talking to you all and being able to laugh with you and geek out. Things have been really hard for me (and there are multitudes I haven’t included in here; even if my hands would allow that much typing, I’d probably hit a character limit. Just: I miss you all. I love you. I’ve been a wreck, but I think of you all often. <3

[shodansbabygirl]

Instead of having an abortion why don't you give them away. There are plenty of gay/straight/single people who would love to have a child.

Okay, you unwillingly give up the following for 9 months: Sushi, any raw meats, precut vegetables and fruits, lunch meats and deli cut meats (Unless heated until the point they are steaming, no toasted subs from subway are NOT hot enough for safe consumption during pregnancy.), high mercury fish, pre-prepared foods from hot tables or cold tables (i.e. from a deli or buffet), ibuprofen, many psychiatric medications (including any antipsychotics.), unpasteurized fruit juices, unpasteurized soft cheeses... and that’s just what I remember off the top of my head. 

Also, take up a prenatal yoga or other low impact prenatal exercise routine to ensure the health of you and the fetus. Get several panels of labwork done (I had over 12 vials of blood drawn, did two urine tests, and a throat swab.) in the first trimester alone (You will also have to fast + sugar drink test for gestational diabetes.)

You will also need to take prenatal vitamins or otherwise increase your iron and folic acid intake to 150% and 100% recommended daily value (respectively) to ensure proper development of the fetus. 

You will get constipated due to several hormones relaxing all of your body. Your ligaments will also relax and stretch which can lead to an increase in shoe size that may you may never recover from, you can also become flat-footed. 

In my case, you will get the worst morning sickness ever for the first 16 weeks of your pregnancy. I threw up every time I ate too much bread, drank milk without also eating a starch, but also threw up everytime I ate more than a small serving of those starches. Your gag reflex and sense of smell will also get more sensitive and make you more prone to nausea and vomiting (I vomited several times just from brushing my teeth.) 

Pregnancy glow? Doesn’t happen to most people who get pregnant. My skin has gotten dryer and my thighs feel like they’re made from lizard skin. My hair has gotten weak and brittle, my nails have gotten thicker and harder to trim and maintain. 

If your pelvis is not wide enough your hips could dislocate to accommodate for the baby during your late second and third trimester. 

If you are overweight you are at a higher risk of complications and needing a c-section, or of developing pre-eeclampsia (Which kills people every year.)

If you are already struggling with your mental health it is likely to get worse from the hormonal changes carrying a pregnancy put your body under. I have depression and I have been more suicidal in the last 3 months than I have been in the last 2 years. 

Giving birth is one of the most dangerous things you can do. Pregnant women are more likely to suffer from medical abuse than most other demographics. Doctors are more likely to ignore your wishes, and even mock you if you come to them with a birth plan. You can unwillingly get an episotomy (A cut in your perinium that can lead to a fistula into your lower colon, potentially going septic.). You can be lied to and be given proceedures or medical interventions you don’t need. Or these procedures can be preformed during labor without your knowledge. The most common one of these is after tearing during labor some OBs will give women an extra stitch in their perinium / vagina which can lead to pain during future intercourse and other complications. 

Giving birth and having children is a beautiful thing, and it is a blessing for many people. When they want it. 

Asking someone to put themselves at risk for all of these things unwillingly is, if you ask me, evil. 

No birth control is 100% effective. Almost half of the pregnancies in the US are accidental. 

If you would not willingly put yourself at all of these risks, why should I do so, unwillingly, for a baby I will not raise? 

(Birth mothers who keep unwanted/accidental pregnancies and give them up for adoption: my hat off to you. You are stronger than I.)

[asphaltvalkyrie]

New job - the first couple of months.

Just some stuff about my new job that I needed to nail down with a mighty hammer of words.

In late June, I willingly transferred from the hospital I’d been working at for about 2 years to its much bigger sister hospital, and my position officially changed from Technician Assistant to Laboratory Technician. I had/have some major doubts and insecurities, but so far so good?

pppppbbbttttthhhcutcutcutchopchopsliceslice

I’ve most definitely made a tradeoff - I don’t get to handle animals as much, but because I’m handling all the labwork, I’m learning a lot - blood cell morphology, blood chemistry values and what organs they pertain to, oncology, toxicology, etiology, etc. Stuff I’m interested in but rarely got to learn about because there were always toenails to trim, anal glands to express, or treatment plans to go over. I love that academic shit.

So, the question is... was all that animal handling at my previous job really improving me at all? I’ve been doing basic tech assistant bullshit for 6 years now. I could always get better at a few things (I’m still ehhhh at placing IV catheters, my large dog restraint is lackluster and I never learned how2 anesthesia, for example) but is that what I really wanted?

I’m inclined to say that it really wasn’t.  I still want to keep my skills sharp, but I have to lend a hand to the rest of the team often enough that I don’t think that’ll be a problem.

At my last job, my boss was a gaslighting, dismissive control freak. I could do a task perfectly 99% of the time, and I’ll I’d hear about was the 1% of the time that I didn’t. We reached a sort of understanding after awhile, but I still never let my guard down around her.

My boss here?  I see her 3-4 times a week. She says hi and asks how its going, and that’s about it.  She even has actually complimented me a couple of times.

If you think of me as a fluffy sheep (which isn’t hard if you’ve seen my leg hair) - Its like I moved from a pasture where the sheepdog is constantly howling and nipping at everyone’s heels to a pasture where the sheepdog just patrols leisurely around the perimeter, pausing ever so often to smile and shoot the double finger guns at someone.

Actually, because things are going so well, my anxious heart is telling me that something has to go wrong. Like I’m not going to make it past my 90 day probationary period because I’m too slow or not attentive enough or unfriendly or just plain bad at what I do. Like there’s someone lurking in the shadows making a tally of how many times I’ve picked my nose, made fart noises or written character meme answers on scratch paper instead of doing my job - unlike my last job, this one actually has slow times where there isn’t much for me to do and I frequently fret about not looking busy enough.

One big downside - the folks at my last job were a lot nicer to me. Earning the friendship of my new coworkers is gonna be a long time coming, if it comes at all. They’re very cliquey, and some of them legit ignore me 100% of the time, even if I’m talking directly to them. But that’s a parasite of a different phylum.

Congratulations if you read all of this!

[tmitransitioning]

Im the anon who asked the process of getting T prescibed, i live in the US, specifically west coast

Thank you for that—I’m going to write out a list here, but there are a few options you might have, so bear with me if it gets a bit convoluted!

I also strongly encourage followers to chime in in the notes on this post if I messed anything up; my experience with healthcare is all Canadian, and while I’m fact checking as I write it’s also possible I might miss things.

Also after I wrote this I realized it was incredibly wordy so I’m going to put it under a cut. There will be a TL;DR at the end.

First, if you have a GP or primary doctor, check their clinic website to see if they do HRT care. If they do, that’s great, and all you may have to do is talk to your doctor about how to access that; they will walk you through the particulars.

If you don’t, or if your doctor’s clinic doesn’t do HRT, you have a couple different options:

You can ask your doctor if they know where to refer you to; they may know trans care clinics or endocrinologists that take trans patients.

You can see if there’s a Planned Parenthood in your area that offers HRT on an informed-consent model; many places on the west coast do this. They usually require you to be over 18 in order to consent without a guardian present.

You can check local universities or health centres yourself to see if you can find a clinic that does trans healthcare. Googling “[local major university] trans clinic” often is a good way to discover this, and they may have resource guides with provider names.

For the latter two options, start with their website to gather information and then call their front desk and lay out specifically what you’re looking for—the message I left was, paraphrased:

“Hi, my name is [legal name] and I read on your website that you do hormone replacement therapy for trans people. It also said to set up an appointment for more information, so, can I set one of those up over the phone or should I come in person? I live in [city], and my PHN [Canadian personal health number, may be different for you] is [redacted], my name again is [full legal name], last name is spelled [data expunged], and my phone number is [double redacted]. Alternately, my email is [triple redacted]. Thank you, and have a good day!”

It’s okay to say your preferred first name too, but I personally used my legal name so that they could look me up in the provincial medical system.

The individual clinic might vary, but in my experience most places ask you to cold call them, which is very intimidating. Having a script helps. You want to make it clear what you’re looking for, ask how to set up an appointment, and give clear contact info. If they don’t get back to you in like... two weeks or so, then call again and try to get a live person rather than an answering machine.

Some places (Planned Parenthood especially) might offer online appointment booking, which is also cool!

When you’ve made the appointment, show up with these questions in mind:

Does the provider require a therapist letter?

Informed-consent models usually don’t, many doctors still do.

This is a letter from a psych professional (usually a psychologist or psychiatrist, not a counsellor) that says you have gender dysphoria for which the indicated ‘treatment’ is HRT, and that any of your mental health conditions are well-controlled and don’t make you legally unable to consent to treatment.

This is partially a gatekeeping holdover, and partially because, in the States, “gender dysphoria” is a medically formal diagnosis that allows you to have controlled substances prescribed.

Does the provider take your insurance?

Bring your insurance info to the appointment if you have it.

Do you have to do anything in particular to get T covered (like a special authority letter, I’m not sure what the US equivalent is), and what are the expected costs of various forms?

What kind of lab work do you have to have done?

The vast majority of the time, you will have blood drawn, where they will check things like: cholesterol, red blood cell count, your “baseline” testosterone levels, ALT (liver function marker), blood sugar, and infection/inflammation markers.

You will probably be asked to fast for 8-12 hours before the blood draw if your blood sugar is being tested.

Some clinics can do same-day labwork; this might be a good thing to ask on the phone if you get a call back to set up an appointment.

What forms of T are easiest and cheapest to access where you are?

Your doctor prescribes this a lot if they do trans care, so they’re likely to know this.

The answer will probably be injections, but if you have a strong preference for something like gel instead (needle phobia, maybe?) then you can ask about how much that usually costs.

Costco and Walmart pharmacies are often the cheapest.

Where you go from that first appointment depends a lot on what kind of clinic you access.

Many informed consent clinics can do all the labwork etc on the same day that you walk in. This isn’t universal, but allows many people to access HRT quickly, assuming they don’t have health conditions that would need additional monitoring, analysis, or treatment.

If you need a therapist letter, and you don’t already have a therapist, the doctor you see will probably be able to refer you to one who’s trans-competent.

If you do have a therapist, they might be able to write the letter, and if they can’t then they probably can refer you to someone who can.

Some doctors or clinics have specific procedures they follow.

For example, the clinic I went to was all-in-one and worked on an interesting combination of informed consent and diagnosis.

I had three appointments—the first one talked about my dysphoria history and psych diagnoses, the second was a physical and analyzing the results of my bloodwork, and the third was signing consent forms and walking out with a prescription.

This is becoming an increasingly common model, with GPs performing the “gender dysphoria” diagnosis themselves rather than requiring a therapist’s letter. It isn’t universal, but you may encounter it.

If you have a health condition like liver damage or polycythemia that would be affected by HRT, your doctor will give you specific information on how to treat that, and may require it to be controlled or ameliorated before you start.

A nurse at the care clinic may be able to show you how to administer a shot if you go with injection methods. If not, there are lots of youtube tutorials, or you can write to us.

The common outline of events looks like this:

Set up appointment

First/intake appointment

Bloodwork

Followup appointments; “gender dysphoria” diagnosis

Consent forms

Prescription

Or, if you need a psych:

Set up appointment

First/intake appointment

Therapist’s letter for “gender dysphoria” diagnosis

Bloodwork

Followup appointments

Consent forms

Prescription

Or, if you go to an informed consent clinic that does everything the same day:

Set up appointment

Meet with doctor who will:

Draw your blood and run bloodwork in the clinic’s lab

Ask you questions about your psychiatric and medical history

“Gender dysphoria” diagnosis

Prescription

The psychiatric questions you’ll probably be asked are, among others:

What labels and pronouns do you use?

When did you start identifying as trans?

What was your experience of gender like as a child? How did it change and develop as you grew?

Did you play with children of the “opposite” gender?

How did you dress? Did you pick your own clothes?

Did you insist on being not your birth assignment to adults?

Were you a “tomboy”/”sissy”/some other gendered or pejorative term atypical for your assigned gender? Were you singled out or harassed based on your gender nonconformance or behaviours?

When you went through first puberty, how did you feel about your body changing?

Were you most upset about primary or secondary characteristics? Which ones?

How did you feel about your voice/chest/genitals/body shape?

What have you done to hide or change them (affected voice, binding, tucking, etc.)? How long have you been doing that?

What changes do you want from HRT? How will those changes make you feel better in your body and/or affirm your experienced gender?

How has your dysphoria impacted you socially? How would HRT change that impact?

What psych diagnoses do you have?

How long have you had them?

What are you doing to treat or control them (medication, therapy, mindfulness, etc.)?

You may also be asked to rate things like anxiety or depression on paper inventories/scales.

Whether or not a psychiatric examination will focus on you as an adult or as a child is entirely a tossup on the provider’s part. Many doctors now acknowledge that not every trans person experiences identifiable dysphoria in childhood (ex. I didn’t know what nonbinary was until I was like 15, and it wasn’t an issue).

Don’t downplay your experiences. There’s an urge for a lot of people to do that, to act like oh it wasn’t That Bad, out of a reflex where we’ve been told to conceal pain or distress. It’s important that you give space and acknowledgement to how important your experiences are; you are there specifically to get help for something that majorly impacts you, so tell them about it. They’re not going to think you’re weak for it, they’re going to see it as a reason to prescribe you hormones.

Tl;DR:

Call the most accessible trans care provider for you and ask how to access their HRT services. When you’ve made the appointment, come prepared with a few questions, and find out if you need any extra documentation like a therapist’s letter. You will be given both a medical and psychiatric examination or interview, and they’ll take your blood for testing. Your provider will have you sign consent forms showing that you’re aware of the effects and risks of HRT, and will probably be able to give you insurance information on how to get hormones covered.

- Mod Wolf

[sunaddicted]

#4 from prompt set 690 for 00QAD

Anon, I hope you enjoy it even if it’s pre-slash.

Danny nervously looked around the room, eyes darting left and right, feet tapping on the floor in an erratic rhythm - if it could be defined as such, since they didn’t follow a particular scheme - and his balled up fists were stuffed between his thighs, wrists trembling; it was as if he had suddenly been thrust into one of his worst nightmares - at least since he had discovered that the secret service was thirsting for his blood: the room was cold, all impersonal steel and a menacing one-way mirror that made Danny feel like he was trapped in a terrarium or an aquarium, constantly under scrutiny.

Much to his surprise, he hadn’t been manacled to the table and nobody had harmed him - though, he supposed that they had already done enough when they had purposefully gotten him infected with HIV. Danny shook the thought away, teeth sinking in his lower lip: the diagnosis still panicked him, every morning he studied his body in the mirror in search of any tell-tale discolorations on his skin.

But those would be stage three symptoms and, as far as Danny knew, the virus was in a state of latency in his T cells.

Not that comforting but still, it could have been worse; Danny had learnt to see the positive side in any situation and even if that made him seem particularly foolish, he didn’t really care - Frances had offered him a bittersweet smile at that explanation, halfway between proud and heartbroken.

The door opened.

Danny gaped.

Looking at the young man who was sitting in front of him with a steaming mug of tea - white with a black Q painted on it, the handle chipped on the swell of the bottom curve - was like gazing into a mirror: they were startlingly similar, if one ignored the different quality of their hair and the fact that the other man wore glasses with what seemed to be pretty thick lenses.

“Hello, Danny” a grin transformed the other’s face, turned it into an expression Danny had never seen on himself - but that probably was because he never grinned, preferring sweet and soft smiles to express himself “And no, we’re not even distantly related: I have the labwork, if you want to give it a read”

Danny appreciated that nothing about the other’s voice implied that he wouldn’t understand much of the report, unless there was a line at the bottom written in simple English for the benefit of those who didn’t have a degree in Genetics or whatever title was needed to do that kind of job.

Still, Danny nodded in agreement since the other man had been so nice about his offer. “You talked with agent Double-Oh Seven, correct?”

007.

The number didn’t really do justice to the man Danny had been trapped in the room with for hours: eyes as blue as ice and a predatory calm lazily swimming in them, a subtle flashing reminder of how dangerous he could be - no matter the fact that he was wearing a suit perfectly tailored to every line of his body and how politely he expressed himself.

He was dangerous.

Kind.

And he wouldn’t bat an eyelash as he stabbed you in the back or shot a bullet right between your eyes.

“I told him everything” Danny immediately blurted out.

“I know, but I would like to hear the story again if you don’t mind?”

Danny knew very well that whether he minded or not, it really didn’t make much difference: the other’s request was a concealed demand - polite, but still an order “Who are you?”

“Q”

He tilted his head to the side and then shrugged “Okay”

“I’m MI6 Quartermaster”

“I have no idea what that means”

Q took a sip of his tea, clearly relishing in the taste flooding his tongue “I take care of weapons, cars, various gadgets… and I oversee the more delicate missions”

“Sounds like a lot”

“It is”

In Danny’s experience, people either downplayed or overstated their actual efforts: Q, instead, seemed to just objectively acknowledge the kind of pressure he was put under.

It was a very mature thing.

Danny wasn’t sure he would have acted the same and that immediately made him respect Q - he opened his mouth and started talking, unprompted.

In that moment, Danny didn’t know many things: he didn’t know Q would tell him that he actually wasn’t sick, that one of MI5 agents had been planted in the facility and instructed to show him a fake positive test to scare him; he didn’t know Q would show him a video feed of Alex, breathing and alive; he didn’t know he would fall in love with the quirky Quartermaster with a wicked sense of humour nobody really got and his lover, the infamous 007, who had a heart as soft as ice cream.

He didn’t know anything but he wouldn’t regret a thing.

He would be happy.

They would be happy.

Far more than Danny’s wildest dreams had ever allowed him to imagine.

[f-imaginings]

kmky stanford experimenting on bill? :3c

The lab was a marvel of engineering, a true testament to Fiddleford’s skills, and Ford was eager to trial all of the different analytical devices in the subterranean lab. 

It was just a shame Fiddleford wasn’t here to show him through the various machines, the other scientist having demurred labwork today, claiming he had a very pressing appointment to attend to with the town doctors. 

“I’m sick.” Fiddleford coughed unconvincingly. “So, uh, I can’t join you in the bunker today. But I’m sure Bill wouldn’t mind keepin’ you company.” 

Bill shook his head, making negative gestures vehemently behind Stanford’s back, and Stanford caught the tail end of Bill’s signalling to Fiddleford, the muse stilling and forcing an innocent smile. 

“I know you don’t like the bunker, but are you sure you don’t mind?” Ford questioned. “I’d love to spend the time with you, and the bunker is quite fascinating really. I’d be interested to see your take on the engineering.” 

Bill seemed to grind his teeth for a moment, before issuing his strained reply. “Sure Sixer. Why not?” 

And so here they were, Ford tinkering with the various equipment, trying to run tests on the Gremloblin spines for the fourth time, while Bill sat on one of the wheeled office chairs, his feet up on the counter top, eating peaches from the tin. 

The analysis took a while the machine scanning the quills over, while diagnostics printed out slowly. Ford tapped his pen impatiently watching the computer run, before he looked over at Bill curiously, an idea springing to mind. 

Bill seemed to notice Ford staring at him, and sucked peach juice off his fingers, narrowing his eyes, not liking that look in Ford’s eye. 

Ford got up and walked across the lab, reclining against the counter beside Bill, feigning innocence. 

Bill just glared at him suspiciously. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing.” Ford said lightly. “Just waiting for the machine to run it’s analysis. It takes such a long time.” 

“Mmmhmm.” Bill replied, unimpressed. 

“You have some peace juice on your face.” Ford leaned down, making to brush it off. “Here.” 

Bill stilled, allowing Sixer to clean him, and was surprised when instead of wiping his face down Sixer reached behind him and yanked out one of his hairs. 

“Hey!” 

Ford was already running over to the analytics machine with the hair in his hand, eager to dissect Bill’s dna. Right before he could drop the hair in the diagnostics chamber it sizzled up into ash, combusting in between his fingers. 

Bill had clicked, and was scowling at Ford, leaning forward in his chair. 

“Bill!” 

“I did not give you permission to study me Sixer. Don’t try that again!” 

“It was a harmless dna sample. Just one hair.” 

“Taken without my permission, against my will. No.” Bill crossed his arms resolutely. 

“What harm will it do to let me study you?” Ford beseeched him, turning back to Bill. “Honestly. You’re not going to miss one hair, and studying it isn’t going to hurt you. It won’t cost you anything.” 

“Except for my hair, my dignity, my self respect.” Bill listed. 

“Why are you so against this?” Ford questioned. “Running a few tests on you isn’t the end of the world. I don’t understand why you’re so against this.” 

“Hmph.” Bill crossed his arms and turned his nose up at Ford, looking the other way stubbornly. 

“I mean, unless you’re scared of it - which really -” Ford paused, noting the way Bill’s shoulders tensed at the mention of being scared. “You are scared.” 

“No I’m not.” 

“You’re scared of experimentation. You’re scared I’ll hurt you. Why? It’s just a harmless experiment.” 

“Oh sure, it starts out harmless, but it is a slippery slope.” Bill said, pointing, looking a little frantic now as Ford stepped closer to him. “First its hair samples and eye tests, and then it’s vivisection’s and taking me apart piece by piece. No!” 

“You really are afraid.” Ford reached out and cupped Bill’s face gently, watching him swallow, staring at him with wide wary eyes. Ford let his hand slide across Bill’s cheek, dipping to rest his fingertips at Bill’s pulse point below, feeling the way it was skyrocketing. His temperature too. The thought of being at the mercy of experimentation was really affecting Bill. 

Ford tried to be gentle, to reinforce his care with his movements, stroking Bill gently, but his mind was racing, oddly titillated at the thought. The part of him that he tried to ignore, the part that loved seeing Bill off balance, was burning inside of him, almost sadistically eager to put Bill in a position where he’d feel that fear and be forced to trust Ford, a position where he would willingly place himself at Ford’s mercy for something he felt uncomfortable about, just so Ford could change his mind. It stirred something inside of Ford that made his trousers tight, and he brushed his thumb over Bill’s bottom lip, leaning over him. 

“You don’t have to be afraid of this, you know I’d never hurt you.” 

Bill’s mouth was pressed into a thin line, and he looked conflicted. 

“I didn’t hurt you before when we ran those tests, and I wouldn’t hurt you now.” Ford continued, his voice gentle and soothing. “I just want to understand you. Can you blame me for being curious? I want to see what makes you tick, and if you like it - well - what was it you said before?” 

Bill didn’t answer, and seemed frozen, almost shivering as Ford leaned in to brush his lips against Bill’s cheek, murmuring his words against Bill’s ear. “Then we can just keep on ticking.” 

“Unfair. Unfair Sixer.” Bill muttered, closing his eyes, clearly torn between the prospect of allowing Stanford’s promising exploration, and not wanting to be experimented on. 

“I promise you’ll like it, if you let me.” Ford said, sweetening the deal, running his hands down Bill’s arms, rubbing them. 

He was loving the way Bill wavered here, the burning possessive part of him crowing jubilantly at the thought of Bill giving into this, of him trusting him that much. “Just do what I say, and the experiment will be over before you know it.” 

“Ugh. I hate you. I hate this.” Bill shook his head, and looked up at Ford, his face flushed and his tattoos glowing. His reluctant desire was everything Ford wanted, and he leaned down and sealed his lips over Bill’s, kissing away the last of his resistance. 

“No you don’t.” Ford said, oozing self assurance. He looked Bill over, clinical and eager all at once, and smiled. “Now, let’s begin.” 

[trade-baby-blues]

Like No Other

Pairing: Jim x Reader

Word Count: 1894

Warnings: cursing, nudity, general embarrassment (nothing nsfw tho)

A/N: This was shamelessly inspired by an episode of Miranda (which is a great show and you should totally watch it if you like British comedy). Also the second installment of my “Embarrassing Encounters” series. I really enjoyed writing this one, so hopefully you guys like it too!! Plus, it’s a Jim x Reader. When was the last time I posted one of those, lol? (Also, I mention a dress in the fic and there’s a pic at the very bottom if you’re curious about what I was picturing). 

Finally. You finally had a date. Three years in Starfleet Academy and you’d watched so many of your friends fall in love and get married that you were starting to wonder if there was something wrong with you. Maybe you were doomed to die alone. At least, that’s what you thought until none other than James Tiberius Kirk himself asked you out.

You knew his reputation. Rumors jumped dorm to dorm faster than Jim, but you couldn’t bring yourself to care. A three year dry spell had made you so desperate, you felt like you were falling in love with everyone who simply held the door open for you. At least Jim had the added benefit of being experienced.

“And drop dead gorgeous,” your roommate said when you finally told her. Of course, she promised to stay over at a friends. “In case you decide you need a little company,” she winked.

You felt your stomach turn at the thought of Jim spending the night. You wanted him to. God, you really wanted him to, but what if he didn’t feel the same? You’d be the only girl in Starfleet Jim turned away. If that happened you knew you’d die alone at home with a tub of ice cream in hand moping in embarrassment and that was NOT an option. The only thing to do was to make sure you were absolutely irresistible.

It started with getting your nails done. A beautiful blue manicure that would match your uniform but still be practical for when you got back into labwork. After the manicure, you stopped by the mall to pick out a jaw-dropping dress and a few bath fizzers before heading home and running some water for a bath. You lit a few candles and set up your speakers to play some classical 1980s music while you stripped down. Finally, you filled a glass with champagne and made your way to the bathroom. Yes, you took spa day very seriously.

The water felt like heaven. Or maybe it was the champagne. Either way, you started to remember why being single was actually great. No one to crowd the bath with you or complain about your off-key crooning to old timey pop songs.

“It's gonna take a lot to take me away from you,” you sang as you swirled the champagne in your glass. You set it gently on the ground and picked up the wax kit you had left to warm up beside the tub. “There's nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do.” You spread the wax all over your leg, enjoying the warmth of it but knowing full well how much it was going to hurt to pull off. “I bless the rains down in-” Your voice sounded like a velociraptor as the song cut off abruptly.

You heard your roommate cackling through the closed door. “Good thing you’re gonna be a medic so you can fix people’s ears after you make them bleed.”

You glared, hoping she could feel it through the walls. “At least I can get along with people instead of just machines.” You heard a muffled snort but your roommate didn’t respond, and you decided to count it as a win, getting back to the wax on your leg. You pulled strip after strip off until your legs felt baby smooth and your eyes were a little watery.

You hoped to dull some of the ache in your leg with a big swig of champagne, but found yourself unable to move. Your eyes shot to your leg, hanging just over the edge of the tub. “This is not happening,” you whispered to yourself as you tried to pull your leg up again. The skin tugged but remained stuck. Leaning forward, you could see some wax had dripped down between the bottom of your leg and the bathtub, sticking them together.

Although you’d been trained to keep calm under pressure, your mind went into blind panic. You were sure you’d learned how to remove wax from skin at some point but nothing was coming to you except the thought of Jim waiting at the diner two streets down while you were stuck here, naked in your dorm room with your leg stuck to the bath. Honestly, you couldn’t imagine a worse situation.

The mirror in your bathroom rattled as your front door slammed shut. All the blood ran from your body and you prayed to hear something, even just the tiniest noise coming from your dorm room. For once, you would’ve given anything to hear your roommate snoring but everything was quiet except the hum of the air vent in the bathroom.

“Jila,” you called. Nothing. “This is not fucking happening,” you muttered as you took stock of your surroundings. A spark of genius hit you as you remembered you had a hair dryer under your sink. Maybe you could heat up the wax and free yourself that way. If you could just reach the cabinet from here, you might even make it in time for your date.

You steadied yourself on the wall, leaning forward carefully to avoid pulling on your skin. You were suddenly very thankful for the yoga classes your roommate had pestered you into signing up for as you stretched out towards the cabinets. Your fingertips brushed the handle but didn’t find purchase and you slunk down with a sigh, hand hitting your champagne and spilling the contents across your bathroom floor.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” you groaned, standing up again. Your leg was beginning to cramp from holding all your weight, so you braced yourself against the handle on the shower wall to ease some of the tension. When your leg felt better. You set at it again, this time using the same handle to push yourself up and throw your un-waxed leg over the edge of the tub. Unfortunately, your foot landed straight onto a stray puddle of champagne and slid out from underneath you.

There were a series of sharp pains as your waxed leg ripped off the edge of the tub and your elbow slammed against the handle on the wall. Your ass hit the tub floor, sending water splashing up the sides and over your body. Then, everything went black as your head cracked against the tile wall.

Everything was perfect. Even better than you could have imagined. The dress you bought absolutely floored Jim. He could barely even speak when he saw the fabric moved against your skin. In the moonlight, you looked like you were glowing and Jim made you feel like an absolute star. Despite his reputation, he was a complete gentleman, pulling out chairs, holding doors. He even paid the whole bill no matter how much you protested.

Neither of you wanted to go home just yet, so you started wandering around San Francisco together. You talked about nothing and everything, feeling like three years of wondering why you were unlovable finally paid off because you found someone who completed you. Not just someone who covered the cracks in your armor, but someone who, in just a few short hours, had managed to fill all the gaps and build you up stronger than you’d ever felt before. Some who, dare you say it, might even be your soulmate.

A breeze from the Pacific hit you and brought with it a deep chill. You kicked yourself for not bringing a coat, even if your heart skipped a beat every time Jim ran a hand down your bare arms. Still, you were glad when he draped his jacket over your shoulders and pulled you against him. Everything felt idyllic until a loud banging made you jump out of your skin.

You whipped around but couldn’t find the source of the noise. When you turned back to ask Jim if he’d heard it too, there was only empty space next to you. In fact, all of San Francisco had slipped away around you and left you in darkness. Your heart pounded in time with the banging as it got closer, closer, closer 

You heard Jim call your name as you woke up. Your vision was foggy and you couldn't remember how you ended up in a bathtub full of cold water, but the smell of alcohol gave you a hint. At least it was your bathtub. “I’m coming,” you shouted as the pounding continued, wincing as a stabbing pain shot through your skull. You rubbed the back of your head and walked groggily into the living room to open the front door.

“I thought you usually wait to go home with a girl until after dinner,” you said casually, letting your arm drop to your side. You tried not to let the way Jim’s eyes widened raked up and down your body go to your head. His tongue flicked out over his lips and you smirked proudly.

“Usually girls wait to get naked until I’ve bought them a drink first, but I kinda like it this way.”

Your smile dropped as you looked down at yourself stark naked in your doorway and the memories of the night came flooding back to you, bringing with it a throbbing in your leg. “Shit,” you muttered. “Shit. How long was I out?”

To your surprise, Jim laughed. “I thought I was the only one who slept through dates.”

“I wasn't asleep,” you snapped. “I hit my head. God, I’m so sorry. Let me finish getting ready.”

“Wait,” Jim said, grabbing your hand, “you hit your head and blacked out?”

“Yeah.”

“And you still want to go on a date instead of I don't know...going to Medbay?”

You stared at him like he’d just said the sky was blue and grass was green. “I’m training to be a doctor. I see more than enough of Medbay as it is.” You crossed your arms when you saw Jim shake his head and chuckle under his breath. “What? Because I’m a doctor I’m supposed to like being in Medbay all the time?”

“No, no, I just...I’m really glad I came up to check on you.” The way Jim smiled at you sent an entirely different kind of shiver down your spine. You wondered how many other girls had seen him smile like that: soft and innocent. Almost loving. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get you dressed and checked out so you can make it up to me for standing me up.”

“Only if I can check you out, too.” You cringed as soon as the words left your mouth, turning to your closet to keep Jim from seeing the blush rising to your cheeks. Jim howled with laughter as you pulled out a pair of shorts and your Starfleet sweater. “It’s the head injury, okay?” You scowled as you pushed past him.

“Of course, of course. I’m sure it has nothing to do with my dazzling good looks and natural charm.”

You snorted. “I didn’t hit my head that hard.”

Jim laughed again and slung his arm around your shoulders. “So are you gonna tell me how you ended up unconscious in your bathtub with a big patch of skin missing from the back of your leg, or should I call the police now.”

“Definitely the police,” you said, “I told you I’d have to kill you and you’re fun to look at.”

Tags:  @outside-the-government @martinawalker @thevalesofanduin @goingknowherewastaken @yourtropegirl @mysteriously-lost-forever @feelmyroarrrr @yukki-art @atari-writes @pabegay1 @bolontiku  @brooke-taylor0323 @anotherotter @the-witching-hours12-3

Here’s the dress! I was picturing it in like...red or black though. 

[kinoglowworm]

Maternity Jeans, Never Used

XL Drabble for Day 3 (Maternity Clothes) of Knock Yuuri Up Week [A03]

They weren’t even nice jeans. The soft, black band at the top didn’t really make any sense with the dark-wash denim, but Yuuri supposed it wasn’t really meant to be seen. By the time these jeans would have been relevant, they would have been paired with long, flowing tops every time, the kind designed to mask the awkward change in the lines of his body, to drape just so across the midriff and its round, growing swell.

Yuuri had been more looking forward to the kind of outfit that said, “Fuck you, look at my belly. It’s big and you can fucking deal.”

He'd had actually been surprised how comfortable he’d been with his growing body, in a way he’d never been before. Even when parts of him were too tender and sensitive to touch. Even when his weight was up sixteen pounds from where it was twelve weeks ago. He’d already been right on the cusp of where his in-season weight reached off-season levels at the beginning of that. Even the sticker shock of that didn’t phase him at the time.

Viktor had taken such delight in surrounding Yuuri with treats over the last few months, coach’s hat set aside as he played the doting partner instead. The steamed fish and vegetables were still there, but alongside them were the dumplings and desserts that were usually reserved for special occasions, for celebrations. Each meal felt like one, though. Even the confusing ones at four AM. Yuuri had more than once accused Viktor of talking to the dumplings when he snuggled up to Yuuri’s belly and started whispering to it in a voice just loud enough to be clear that it was for Yuuri’s benefit as much as his own. They’d even started referring to it as “the dumpling.”

Yuuri had eaten his mother’s katsudon once a week for the last six weeks. He’d had the same satisfaction as if he’d won a medal each time. Somehow, it was easier to believe it was happening when he was eating, which made eating that much more appealing.

He wondered how much of the weight he’d lose with the procedure next week, and how much would be up to him to work off before it came around to trying again.

The jeans had been Yuuko’s idea, about two weeks ago. She’d caught Yuuri trying to surreptitiously unbutton his pants while sitting on the train. She was one of the very small handful of people who knew, and she knew him too well besides. Even as she tried to wrangle the triplets around her, she caught the look on his face just after, the awkward mix of relief and worry that people would know his pants were undone without knowing why. They weren’t even his in-season pants. But even that discomfort was only physical, bypassing the shame that had always come before from ill-fitting clothes.

He dropped the jeans limply onto the bed beside him. That tightness had been one of the first things that really made him believe it was true. All the rest of it - the exhaustion, the soreness, the hunger masquerading as vague nausea - was too easy to explain away as circumstantial. The labwork was harder to dispute, but blood and urine was just that. Any story it told was one that was written on a page or a screen; not one that was written on his skin. Not yet, at least.

Yuuko complained about the stretch marks that wrapped around her belly after the triplets, but Yuuri had quietly envied them for years, since before he had really even thought about it in terms of wanting his own child. The scarred fingers of stretch marks already cradled the edges of his own hips; a combined gift of a teenage growth spurt and the off-season softness of his belly reasserting itself. Yuuko’s, at least, seemed honestly gotten to him. Yuuri had imagined himself in her position, confidently explaining them away: “Oh, well, you know what children do to your body.”

Even holding the strange jeans up to look at them in the store, Yuuri had felt like something was wrong. But if he wasn’t ready to tell most people about his pregnancy, he was even less willing to confide his uncertainty about it. Besides, what was he supposed to say? I’m worried because I don’t feel low-grade like shit all the time anymore?

Not that he was uncertain about wanting it to be true; he had surprised even himself with how confident he felt about being ready for parenthood. Instead, the same nagging feeling that had followed him around for most of his life, the one that wouldn’t let him believe in good things happening to him, had taken up this cause with full force. The feeling that told him to hold his dreams at arm’s length when they seemed too close to coming true. It had whispered in his ear at every competition, whether he had won or he had bombed. He knew better than to believe it, but it wasn’t wrong every time, either.

That voice had kept him from telling almost anyone about it. Viktor hadn’t been able to contain himself and told a wide swath of his friends and family almost immediately after they had found out. They were all on different continents, though. The distance made it easier somehow.

Yuuri had told Yuuko and his mother. That was it.

Yuuko had been so thrilled when he’d told her, jumping straight into stories about how sick she was with the triplets and all the moments where she was convinced she had a bellyful of angry aliens rather than tiny humans, poking their sharp edges into all parts of her. He wasn’t sure how he was going to tell her it was off.

His mother had surprised him when he’d told her this morning, just the two of them as they worked through folding up a load of clean towels. Apparently she’d been through her own miscarriage, sometime between Mari and him being born, though it was earlier on than this was. When he asked why she had never mentioned it, she had simply asked him, with that gentle smile of hers, when the right time would have been. Yuuri didn’t have an answer for that.

He hadn’t even told Mari or his father. He’d tried, a couple times, but his mouth came up dry on each occasion. Viktor had offered to start the conversation with them, to say for him the words that stuck like wet paper on Yuuri’s tongue. But he also listened to Yuuri when he said he wasn’t ready. Next week. He had planned to tell them next week. Once he had proof that this wasn’t just something his mind had managed to dream up, despite all evidence to the contrary. Once he had proof that he wasn’t going to break anyone else’s heart with a false start.

Yesterday was supposed to be the proof: a heartbeat, a tiny shadow of a figure dancing inside of him. Instead there was just an empty space that kept growing to accommodate something that had apparently given up long ago, but which his body still seemed to refuse to let go.

He winced as he felt the tears building up in his eyes again. He was past the big, wracking sobs that had come out as soon as he’d gotten home yesterday and buried himself in bed. He’d held it together long enough to send Viktor to the grocery for something. He couldn’t even remember now what he’d asked for, only that it was easier than asking to be alone.

Yuuri had held it together through each of the appointments yesterday, his neutral face a matter of pride as he talked with each of the doctors and nurses, with the ultrasound tech, the receptionists who checked him in and out. Viktor had been the one with tears on his face when Yuuri was up on the table being examined, but he probably would have been crying even if it had been good news. If it had been good news, Yuuri might have been crying, too. Those tears wouldn’t have been a burden on anyone else.

Yuuri had been over the worst of it when Viktor came home and found him cocooned in the heavy quilt on their bed, curled tightly into himself. Viktor slipped in behind him and wrapped himself around Yuuri and his blankets, and it had started all over again. They’d cried together there holding each other until they’d fallen asleep, the afternoon sun laying warm fingers around them as it angled itself through the window.

The tears had come and gone since then, almost at random. They seemed silly, on some level; the ultrasound had shown that there wasn’t even really anything with a shape worth grieving in there, just shreds of tissue that had barely been recognizable under extreme magnification. He could almost feel them sitting inside of him now, in a way he never could when he thought they were becoming a person.

There had only been a few brief moments when he’d allowed himself to imagine what it might be like past this point; imagining the alien feet poking at his skin from the inside like Yuuko had told him about so many times, brief glimpses of what it might be like to cradle that tiny person against himself. Imagining what it might mean to show up at the beginning of the skating season in the fall, proud of his unignorable belly, what New Year’s would look like with a newborn.

Those felt too much like a promise he wasn't sure he could keep though. They felt like guilty indulgences in the moment, the way imagining meeting Viktor once had. He tried to keep himself in the moment, putting maybe too much value on each rice ball he pulled out of the fridge after waking up in the middle of the night, each wave of nausea that sent him sitting with his head between his legs, each time his pants didn't quite fit right. That much, at least, felt real.

The pants had been on clearance; it’s not as if he could return them. It would be a waste to throw away a garment that had never been worn before. Yuuri hadn’t even tried them on in the changing room at the store. They wouldn’t have fit right now anyway. Not the way they were supposed to. Not even with the firm rise in his belly that had pushed him to undo his pants on the train, that would still be with him for the next few days.

Yuuri folded the pants neatly, smoothing the creases out across his lap. Maybe he was too hasty thinking about how he could get rid of them. There was nothing about this situation that suggested any difficulty in him getting pregnant again later. The doctor had said that they don’t really even worry until this happens at least three times. Give it another cycle, and then they were clear to try again. Maybe he’d have a use for these at some point anyway. He just couldn’t look at them right now.

They really are hideous, Yuuri thought as he tucked the unworn pants into a far corner of the closet’s upper shelf. Next time, he promised himself, he’d find something that fit his style when it came time.

[robininthelabyrinth]

Summer in the City - 4 (Flashwave)

Fic: Summer in the City - Chapter 4 (AO3 Link) Fandom: The Flash Pairing: Mick Rory/Barry Allen

Summary: Barry Allen is a good CSI, but this whole stupid Heatwave serial killer thing is just killing him.

Or, you know, people around him.

Luckily for him, he’s always got Mick to complain to…

—————————————————————————————————

"No surprise, absolutely nothing from Palmer Tech other than the small sample of the alloy he gave us," Barry tells Joe. "Industrial strength cleaner is a thing to be feared by us all."

Joe nods, looking unsurprised. He knows the drill. "So, nothing then?"

"Well," Barry says reluctantly. "There is one thing."

Ray was super nice, and Barry can't possibly imagine what he might have to do with a serial killer or whatever weird thing is going on here in regards to these thefts, but he feels he has to mention any oddities. It's his job. Joe's job is figuring out how all those oddities came together in a way that made sense.

"Oh?"

"Yeah," Barry says. "I found absolutely nothing."

"You just said that," Joe points out.

"No," Barry says patiently. "Absolutely nothing."

Joe pauses. "I thought you said that was because of the cleaner?"

"It is," Barry says. "But there's finding nothing relevant or useful, and then there's finding nothing at all."

"Wait, you found nothing at all?" Julian says, looking up from where he's sitting on his side of the room. "In a working lab? During mid-morning? Impossible."

Barry points at him. "Exactly. I mean, unless the lab was scrubbed shortly before we arrived. Which, uh, they would probably have had time to do, if they wanted to."

Joe frowns. "You think they were hiding something?"

"I mean, yes and no?" Barry replies, shrugging helplessly when Joe glares at him. "Okay, let me rephrase. Yes, I think they were hiding something. No, I don't think it's really relevant. I mean, I don't really think they were hiding Heatwave in the alleyway out back or anything like that. It's probably nothing more than some run-of-the-mill labwork paranoia that someone's going to steal their work, or maybe some scientists they hired have a bad history with law enforcement, or something like that." He pauses. "Or, well, this is Central..."

He arches his eyebrows meaningfully. Joe nods thoughtfully.

"What does that mean?" Julian asks with a frown. He's good at his job, but he's not from Central; he hates it when everyone else just makes a reference to the city and share knowing nods like Barry and Joe were just doing.

Naturally, Barry makes a point of doing it as often as possible.

"Something they're working on for a Family," Joe clarifies. "Labs can process everything from drugs to explosives, and it's an open secret that running any type of successful business in Central - at least, running that business long enough that you want to keep it being successful - involves having an open mind in regards to the Families, if you get me."

"Though drugs have gone down since Snart came around," Barry comments, then flinches back when Julian and Joe both glare. "What? It's true! Palmer Tech could have a deal with the Rogues instead of a regular Family."

"I don't want to know what a guy who made himself the leader of a metahuman army wants with a lab, Bear, I really don't," Joe says.

"More parts for that cold gun of his, no doubt," Julian says.

"But the labs weren't working on cold, they were working on heat," Barry points out.

"Still, it's temperature related. Maybe Snart is thinking of switching it up."

"Seems like a stretch," Joe says doubtfully. "That bastard's pretty committed to his theme. Just last week he had snowflake-decorated hoodies delivered to the local children's hospital with a note saying 'when life's getting you hot under the collar, think Cold thoughts' - hoodies he stole, might I add, not that there's a public company in the world that's going to publically take clothing away from kids with cancer..."

Julian snorts. "What is he, running for mayor?" he says with a sneer.

"Don't ask me to understand Snart," Joe says. "If I were any good at it, he'd be in prison."

"Did Eddie find something in the logs?" Barry asks, thinking back. "He had his thinking-face on."

"He thought he did," Joe says. "Went down to records to check it out."

"What's left of records, you mean," Julian says.

To be fair, there wasn't much left after Snart's midnight raid. Of course, they couldn't prove it was Snart's doing, certainly without the relevant records, but the tell-tale thin layer of frost left behind made it pretty clear. Not that the policemen who'd first found it had thought to take a picture of it before it melted away...

The simultaneous electronic attack that ate away a big chunk of their electronic files and back-ups only made it more likely that it was Snart. He wasn't necessarily known for hacking, but simultaneous attacks utilizing all the skills of his subordinates were just his style.

Everyone just quietly hoped that it'd been a one-time job and Snart hadn't actually acquired a high-class hacker willing to join his Rogues.

"Well, hope Eddie's hunch gets us somewhere," Barry says. "Palmer Tech seems like a dead end."

"Except for the fact that the CEO, the COO, and the Head of R&D all flew over from Starling to show us around in person," Joe says. "They're staying on the suspect list."

Barry wonders if he should mention that he saw Felicity outside during their investigation - but no. There's no law against taking a smoke break.

"Anything from Mercury?" Joe asks Julian.

"Ms. McGee was outraged we were trespassing, interfering with delicate projects, etc., etc.," Julian says with a shrug. “The usual. Actually, it turned out that her stolen project related to tachyons, not heat tech. Their heat tech is, according to them, still secure – they’re developing a heat-sensitive trigger, designed to activate alarms once a certain heat threshold has been passed.”

“Alarms,” Barry says, arching his eyebrows, “or a fuse?”

“Given the prevalence of the word ‘trigger’ being used and the dearth of any additional details,” Julian says dryly, “I suspect the answer will be whatever pays more.”

“Still, strange that they weren’t hit,” Barry says, then frowns. “Wait. Were the other places hit around the same time, or sequentially?”

“Sequentially,” Julian replies, nodding in understanding already. Sometimes Barry wishes the guy wasn’t so competent, just so he could hate on him properly, but sadly, even Barry had to admit that having another brain to bounce off of has made them both more productive.

“What are you thinking, Bear?” Joe asks.

“That Mercury might not have a heat-tech related theft yet,” Barry says, gnawing at his lower lip. “If this guy is going after heat tech and given our suspicions that the leak might have come from Ramon’s Foundation – well, they just sent in a proposal, right? The guy might not know that it’s just a trigger system.”

“I’ll post some guards and tell them to keep an eye out,” Joe says. “If we can catch this guy breaking in on camera, that might be the key to catching him.”

Joe still lingers by the door a minute.

“Anything else, Joe?”

“Just – you’re going to this Ramon guy, right? The one we think the leak might've come from?”

“Tomorrow, yeah; after I finish up with whatever I get from STAR Labs this afternoon, yeah, with Ramirez and Stubbins,” Barry says, smirking at Julian’s quickly suppressed jealous expression at the mention of STAR Labs. “Why?”

“Be careful,” Joe says. “I’ve been asking around. No one’s said anything yet, but – well, Ramon is a non-police affiliated meta expert. And the biggest customer for that would be…”

“Snart,” Julian says. “I wouldn’t be surprised. Not least because Ramon wouldn’t be able to get easy access to test subjects without an illicit source, and his papers are –”

“Really good,” Barry interjects.

Julian looks sour. “Yes, unfortunately. The Foundation's very good. Though personally I think his associate, Ms. Snow, likely has more to do with it..."

"Julian's got a crush," Barry says wickedly.

"I most certainly do not!"

"On her excellent biomedical analysis of metahuman physiology, honestly, Julian, get your mind out of the gutter."

Julian glares, but there’s a bit of a blush on his cheeks.

Joe chuckles. "I'll leave you two to it. But seriously, Bear - be careful, okay? I’d rather Eddie and I went with you to Ramon tomorrow, but chance are we’ll be booked solid fielding calls about our investigations today."

"Relax," Barry says. "Heatwave's not after me, okay? It was coincidence. Now shoo, I need to pack up and freak out about going to STAR Labs before meeting you downstairs."

"I don't understand what you all see in Wells," Joe complains half-heartedly; it's an old argument. "He did cause the current metahuman crisis, you all remember that, right?"

"It's not technically a metahuman crisis," Julian says immediately. "It's just regular crime, as done by metahumans."

Julian had had a serious grudge against metahumans early on in his career, but after he'd nearly shot a kid pretending to be one, he'd gotten some serious therapy and sensitivity training.

"Plus, Heatwave's not a meta, remember?" Barry reminds Joe. "Can't say that one's a meta issue."

"Not that certain newspapers haven't tried."

"Man, am I glad Iris took the job with Picture News," Barry says. "Even if that tabloid probably would've paid better."

Joe glares the way he always does when someone brings up Iris, but Barry's working on wearing him down. It might take forever, but eventually he'll get used to hearing her name and maybe - just maybe - they'll be able to work their way to an apology.

Maybe.

Preferably without Barry screwing up in such a massive fashion that both of them have to forgive him because he's family, and then forgiving each other because they don't want to be hypocrites.

You know, like the last four times.

He's just about done getting his stuff ready when his phone beeps. Wondering who it might be, Barry scoops it up.

Making you something special for dinner, it read. No cheating.

Barry grins. He'd given Mick his cell number a while back, when he'd tried to order dinner on his commute home in hope that it'd arrive after he did (it arrived before, thus Mick's demand for a mobile number), but this is the first time Mick's just texted him out of the blue.

Even though his number's already saved as "M" in Barry’s phone.

Barry has a rich fantasy life, okay? And if someone - Iris - were to grab his phone now, she'd get the totally wrong impression.

Barry depresses himself for a few minutes, thinking about how he'd lure her into snatching the phone then tease her mercilessly about her misconception, if only they were still talking, but then he puts it out of his mind and focuses on the dinner Mick's undoubtedly making for him. Possibly personally.

Barry's imagination has decided to give Mick the shoulders from the guy he'd seen this morning, the hot one talking to Felicity in the alley, and for some reason he's decided to cook Barry's dinner shirtless. Mmmm, yes, please.

...make that a very rich fantasy life.

Barry sends an estimate of when he expects to be at home - around eight, barring surprises - and heads off to meet Joe and Eddie for their trip to STAR Labs.

STAR Labs is just as impressive as always: a giant, round tower, looming over mostly empty parking lots that circle it like a moat.

More impressive is what's inside.

Harrison Wells had initially gone into hiding after the explosion that created the metahumans, but he had reemerged with a fresh sense of determination and a hundred new ideas, and he was slowly building his reputation back up, one small piece at a time.

He sometimes said, in interviews, that science had gotten him into the situation he was in now and so science was the only hope he had left to get back out.

Of course, all the tabloid columns were more interested in what, exactly, had caused the final split between Harrison Wells and his former protégés, Cisco Ramon and Caitlin Snow, who had been among the only people to stand by him after the accelerator explosion. And then, a year or so later, they abruptly left him, both of them: Snow to return to medicine, Ramon to start the Ramon Foundation.

After the Foundation struck gold with a number of apps and assistive technology, not to mention a number of anti-metahuman defenses, Snow had left her budding ophthalmology practice and returned to Cisco's side. More intriguingly, they had been joined by Hartley Rathaway, another ex-protégé of Wells, and one whose parting of ways had definitely been on bad terms.

Yet no matter how anyone pressed, and no matter how upset the leading members of the Foundation became when Wells was discussed, they never said a word against him. A number of gossip columns - not that Barry read those, well, not too much - suggested that Wells still had some form of blackmail over Ramon, something to do with some technology he had developed while he was still with Wells.

Barry might be a little star-struck by Harrison Wells' marvelous brain, but he's not going to let down his guard. His dad had always said that if a teacher keeps chewing up and spitting out students, the problem's with the teacher.

He hadn't been able to see his dad in a while. Henry Allen had been hit by the accelerator explosion when he’d been given that day pass to visit Barry to watch the grand opening, resulting in a nine-month coma and speed meta powers, both of which had definitely taken a few years off Barry’s life, but he steadfastly refused to use those powers to escape prison, which didn't always make him too popular with the other inmates. That meant more solitary, which meant fewer visiting hours.

Barry missed him.

It’d be nice to have someone in his life that he could talk to about stupid things, like fanboying over Harrison Wells.

Huh, maybe he could talk about it with Mick over dinner. It wasn’t like it was police work or anything.

"Gentlemen, sorry to keep you waiting," the man himself said.

Barry jumps a little, not having seen him lurking in the shadows in his wheelchair. Though in fairness, Barry was also hanging back a bit.

He turns to look, and - oh, wow, it's really him.

Harrison Wells. He looks just as distinguished as on television - though he also looks just as gray and worn out as he did on television, too, which was presumably why the gossip mags had a field day proposing that he had any number of mysterious illnesses potentially caused by playing with dark matter.

"Not a problem," Joe says. "I'm Detective West; we spoke on the phone. We're sorry to take time out of your undoubtedly busy day."

Barry very carefully did not look around the virtually deserted labs.

"Not at all," Wells said. "You're here to investigate the theft of the thermal core?"

"Thermal core?"

"Yes," Wells says. "I've been working on developing energy sources - smaller, more efficient. Someone took a prototype and hid it somewhere."

"How do you know that they hid it?" Eddie asks.

"I went to look for it, obviously!" Wells snaps.

"And you weren't in the lab that night?"

"No," Wells says, regaining his composure by a visible effort. "I'm sorry, Detective...?"

"Thawne."

Wells' hands clench on his wheelchair. "I see. Yes. Of course. Welcome."

"And this is our colleague, CSI Barry Allen," Eddie adds. “He’ll be assisting us today.”

Wells' reaction is - well, Barry's going to have to go with weird.

He twists to look at Barry, and he's almost - hungry. But also like Barry's disappointed him, somehow, like Barry's a very close but not quite right reminder of someone he wanted to see.

Also, is it just Barry, or is his hair going blond at the roots and the tips? Like, not white or grey, but blond?

Weird.

Barry'd say that Wells must think that brunettes have more fun and forgot to dye his hair recently enough, but it doesn't explain the slight blond at the tips. Whatever, Barry's not here for hair styling advice.

"Mr. Allen," Wells says. "It's a pleasure to finally meet you."

"I wasn't aware it was such an honor," Barry says, aiming for light-hearted as he shakes Wells' hand. He's mostly kind of creeped. "It's an honor to meet you. Sorry for imposing on you like this."

Wells' smile is tight-lipped.

"Not at all," he says. "I'll show you where the lab is."

The lab is stupendous, but Barry's got this weird feeling, like it was almost meant for something else before it got transformed into what it is now. There's a surprising amount of tech that he can identify as medical; he doesn't know what a physics lab would need with that. At least the speed measurement stuff makes some sense.

Wells goes away for a few minute, some excuse about putting something in order, and comes back refreshed, almost perky; he's charming and urbane, chatting lightly with them as they search his lab.

Barry doesn’t glance at Joe or Eddie, but he assumes they’re thinking the same thing (drugs) as he is. Possibly prescription, possibly not, but man, what a difference. The Harrison Wells that left them was erratic, irritable, eccentric; the one who returns is the one that made himself famous enough to sweet-talk the city into building his Particle Accelerator.

Charming enough to almost (almost) make them forget how weird his introduction was.

Amazingly enough, Wells seems to enjoy talking with Barry. He’s interested in Barry’s work, his projects, everything; he seems to think Barry’s got great potential, which, uh, Barry’s going to have to find a way to include in his official write-up because holy crap Harrison Wells thinks he has great potential and everyone, ever, needs to know about it.

Joe and Eddie don’t seem particularly happy about it, but whatever.

It’s probably just because they’re not finding anything useful.

“Perhaps you can stay behind, Mr. Allen,” Wells says with a smile. “I’d love to discuss your theories in further depth –”

“I’m afraid since this is an open investigation, it wouldn’t be appropriate for Mr. Allen to socialize,” Joe cuts in.

Barry gives him an injured look. Does he not realize this is Harrison Wells?

“There would be nothing inappropriate about it, I assure you,” Wells says smoothly. “Merely an academic discussion of mutual interests, which I believe is entirely permissible, even in an open investigation. After all, I’m not a suspect, am I?”

“Of course not, Mr. Wells,” Barry says, reaching for his phone in order to text Joe to shut up. “I’m sure that –”

His phone.

No cheating.

“– we’ll be able to catch up another time,” Barry finishes with a sigh. Damnit.

If it wasn’t the very first time Mick had texted him, he might have opted to cancel, but Barry’s lost too many friendships to his inability to schedule his life properly, and he’s not losing this one.

Wells looks disappointed. “Another time, then,” he says. Then he smiles. "We'll have to make sure of it."

[anxiety-naturalsolutions]

Self Help for Anxiety & Depression

According to MIND one in four of us will experience a mental health problem during our lifetime and each year over 4,000 people experience enough distress to take their own lives, so we can all benefit from changes in lifestyle to support our mental health.

I have lived with anxiety and depression for over 30 years which has taken me on a journey through the various complementary and standard treatment options.  It took me a long time to realise that way I had got used to feeling wasn’t right but I have never given up in my search for an alternative to anti-depressants.  After ten years of researching I found out that I am hypothyroid - I have an underactive thyroid which is the most commonly under-diagnosed medical condition in the West and this was the cause of my anxiety, low mood, and debilitating lack of energy.

I have had the conventional medical treatments of psychotherapy, CBT, and SSRIs all of which have been helpful to an extent, but no GP or psychiatrist has ever mentioned the importance of nutrition and the role it plays in good mental health.  This is something I have had to find out for myself and I am sharing the information now in the hope that others also find it helpful.

Always go to your GP for diagnosis and ask for psychotherapy and CBT.  Most surgeries have a long waiting list for these treatments so it is important to get on the list as soon as possible.  If your illness is so debilitating that it is having a negative impact on your life so that you are unable to work or look after your children etc then SSRIs can be an effective short term solution to get you back on your feet.  It is important to start doing as much as you can to help yourself so that you don’t become dependant on the drugs starting with daily meditation, diet, and supplements.

Dietary changes and supplements can take three to six months to be effective so they should be started before you try to come off any medication.  When you do come off go very slowly, much slower than the doctor recommends. I got a large emery board and filed across the tablet with one long stroke.  I increased by one stroke every day to shave off a small amount to prevent withdrawal.

I have been on and off anti-depressants (SSRIs or Selective Seratonin Reuptake Inhibitors) five times during a period of fifteen years.  I was told by my GP that I should remain on them for the rest of my life, but I refused to accept that.  The diagnosis of depression and anxiety is entirely subjective and the knee-jerk reaction is to prescribe anti-depressants.  There shouldn’t be any stigma to taking medication for those who need it, but it really is only a short-term solution.  

In my opinion the medical profession should be spending more time finding out the underlying cause of the depression and anxiety because they are a symptoms of an underlying condition.  This could be: iodine deficiency, underactive thyroid, low vitamin B12, copper imbalance, or a lack of good fats in the diet.

1. Nutrition

There isn’t much point spending any money on therapies or supplements until you have made changes to the lifestyle choices that could be contributing to poor nutrition.

Eat three meals a day with protein at every meal.

Cut out all sugar, caffeine, gluten, processed foods, refined carbohydrates, alcohol, vegetable oils, and margarine.

Sugar is an anti-nutrient that strips essential minerals from your reserves as your body attempts to break it down.  Depleted levels of calcium, chromium, magnesium, and zinc leave your body in chaos.

Coffee inhibits iron absorption, affects B-vitamins, and raises cortisol.  

Refined carbohydrates, such as baked goods made from white flour, have very little nutritional value and cause your blood sugar to spike.  Reduce carbs and eat as advised by Weton A Price http://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/be-kind-to-your-grains-and-your-grains-will-be-kind-to-you/.

Alcohol damages the gut lining, causing it to become permeable and ‘leaky’.  It also breaks down B-vitamins and antioxidants such as vitamin C.

Monosodium Glutamate (MSG) is a processed food additive. It is an extremely dangerous neurotoxin (excitotoxin) that shrivels and kills brain cells in the hypothalamus and has been linked to migraines, seizures, ADD/ADHD, heart palpitations, tremors, and MANY other symptoms.

Following a low carb diet such as Weston A Price Foundation (WAPF) for a nutrient dense eating plan that doesn’t remove any food groups.  Read Sally Fallon’s Nourishing Traditions.

WAPF also promotes the use of good fats such as lard, goose, and coconut for frying and roasting instead of vegetable oils which are too high in omega 6. Omega 6 imbalance causes inflammation in the body so we all need to increase our intake of Omega 3s.  Extra Virgin Olive Oil should never be heated, reserve it for pouring on salads etc.

Read: Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon more information at https://www.westonaprice.org/.

2. Testing

B12

Low B12 has been linked with depression and anxiety.  This can be tested by your GP.  Ask for a print out of your results and check them yourself.  On a range of 180-900 a healthy level appears to be 800 or higher. In the 500-800 range, you can benefit from supplementation.  

You can increase your levels with B12 injections, by sucking B12 lozenges, or using a spray - sublingual B12, specifically Methylcobalamin, is a better form of delivery than swallowing capsules because the digestive process can inhibit uptake.  

Take B12 alongside a good B Vitamin Complex supplement such as Doctors Best which contains the active forms in the correct ratio.  People with MTHFR gene mutation cannot process synthetic B vitamins.  B vitamins are water-soluble which means the excess is excreted through urine.

Take B supplements in a split dose at breakfast and lunch to give you energy throughout the day - do not take at night as they can keep you awake.

Keep a diary and note down when you started the supplement and how you feel.  

Can be tested via finger-prick test with Medichecks https://www.medichecks.com/tests/vitamin-b12-active-folate

MTHFR  

Diagnosis is via the 23andMe genetic saliva test. If you feel too overwhelmed at this stage to do this test you can just take the methylated B complex and see if that helps.

Vitamin D

Vitamin D isn’t a vitamin it is an essential hormone and chronic deficiency can contribute to depression and low immunity so it is important to ask your GP for a Vitamin D test. 

Unless you are getting 20mins of sun exposure (without sunscreen) daily throughout the year it is likely that you will need to supplement with Cod Liver Oil and Rosita is the best quality.  Raw organic milk is also a good source of vitamin D.

Morley Robbins advises against D3 supplements and increaseing magnesium instead.  For more information on the Root Cause Protocol go here: http://gotmag.org/vitamin-d-deficiency-mg-deficiency-period/

Ferritin

Ferritin is a blood test that measures your levels of storage iron.  The best test is the iron panel which can be done via finger-prick with Medichecks: https://www.medichecks.com/tests/iron-status-check Ensure you stop iron supplements 5 days before testing.

Stop The Thyroid Madness recommendations on interpreting results:

Iron/Total Iron: 23 is optimal

TIBC: optimal 1/4 above the bottom number in the range

Transferrin Saturation: optimal at 25-45% or close to 35%

Ferritin: optimal between 70 and 90 ug/L

Low ferritin can occur with high iron due to the MTHFR gene mutation impairing the ability to break it down.

Morley Robbins advises against taking iron supplements because the oxidise in the liver.  Her recommends eating beef liver or taking Perfect Health Beef Liver capsules.  http://gotmag.org/category/iron-toxicity/

Cortisol

Abnormal adrenal function can alter the ability of cells to produce energy for the activities of daily life. People who have a hard time rising in the morning, or who suffer from low energy throughout the day, often have abnormal adrenal rhythms and poor blood sugar regulation.

High dose Iodine supplementation above 100mg daily support an antioxidant effect which supports the adrenals and reduces cortisol levels by opposing the strong toxic effects of mercury - Iodine pushes mercury out of the body.

Cortisol levels can be measured by a saliva collection test.  This test is recommended by STTM in the UK and I did it myself.  I found it very easy to do: https://www.medichecks.com/cortisol-tests/cortisol-saliva-tests-4 .

https://stopthethyroidmadness.com/adrenal-info/faq/

Thyroid

The NHS will usually only test for TSH and Free T4.  It is essential to also test for Free T3, Reverse T3, and Thyroid Antibodies.  

Ask for a print out of your results which include the lab reference range. Optimal is FT4 mid range with FT3 high. Any lower and you are hypothyroid which causes depression, anxiety, brain fog, and low energy.

If you want to check yourself a cheap way of doing it is a home finger prick test.  Medichecks https://www.medichecks.com/ do a range of thyroid tests depending on what you want tested, most of which can be done as a home finger prick test.  Reverse T3 needs to be done by blood draw.

https://stopthethyroidmadness.com/recommended-labwork/

If you are hypothyroid the FaceBook group FTPO - UK & Europe can help with interpretation of results.

The best remedy for hypothyroidism is high dose Iodine (50mg for 6 months) and then once you have reached 90-95% saturation, if required, Natural Desiccated Thyroid - NDT.  I recommend reading Dr David Brownstein's books - Iodine Why You Need It and Overcoming Thyroid Disorders. Those books have changed my life. And you are welcome to join my group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/NaturalThyroidHealth which has further information about iodine supplementation, the Root Cause Protocol, and Stop the Thyroid Madness.

3. Heal Your Gut

There isn’t much point taking supplements if you aren’t digesting the foods you eat properly.  Before spending money on supplements, healing your gut is essential so that you body can successfully absorb nutrients.  If you drink alcohol or have taken antibiotics your gut flora will be damaged.  

Include fermented foods: kefir, sauerkraut etc.

Make your own bone broth and drink a cup per day.

Increase good fats: use animal fats such as ghee, lard, goose fat, or coconut oil for frying, baking, and roasting.  Use Extra Virgin Olive Oil for pouring on salads and other cold foods - do not heat EVOO.

Cut out refined sugar and refined carbs.  Take Oregano Oil capsules to kill off the bad bacteria.

Read: Gut & Psychology Syndrome by Natasha Campbell-McBride.

http://www.doctor-natasha.com/.

4. Nutritional Supplements

Iodine: should be the first supplement to start as it is an essential micronutrient which nourishes every cell in the body.  It is difficult to get enough from Western diets as we do not eat enough shellfish or seaweed.  Not only does it detox the body of heavy metals and other toxins, it flushes out halides such as fluoride, chlorine, and bromine which block iodine receptors and prevent absorption causing chronic deficiency.  Follow the guidelines detailed in the posts on Iodine.

Read: Iodine: Why You Need It by Dr David Brownstein.

Join my group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/NaturalThyroidHealth/ 

Fish Oil: take a fish oil supplement that is high in EPA.  I take Rosita Cod Liver Oil.  EPA has been found to be effective in high doses in treating depression.  It also contains Vitamin D which is a hormone not a vitamin and plays an essential role in the way the body functions.  In the UK we don’t get the 20 mins per day sun exposure required to keep the levels normal all year round so supplementing is a requirement.  The use of sunscreen prevents natural absorbtion so it is essential to get tested.

Amino Acid Complex: I take Biocare Broad Spectrum Amino Acids, one capsule after breakfast and lunch. It provides the essential building blocks for the brain to regulate chemical production.

Curcumin/Turmeric: reduces inflammation which can be a cause of depression.  It acts like a MAOI antidepressant, but without the side effects, by inhibiting the monoamine oxidase enzyme modulating the release of serotonin and dopamine.  It should therefore not be taken when you are on SSRI medication.  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2929771

Magnesium Oil: lots of people are magnesium deficient due to soil depletion.  I use 20 sprays of Better You Magnesium Spray before bed.

Probiotics: BioKult which is recommended by GAPs practitioners.

Tulsi (Holy Basil): reduces cortisol levels - the stress hormone.  This should be for short-term use only while the underlying cause is being addressed e.g. removing the cause of the stress.  http://www.livestrong.com/article/432475-holy-basil-for-anxiety-insomnia

5HTP: acts like a natural anti-depressant but should be for short term use only while the underlying cause of the problem is being addressed.

5. CBT - Cognitive Behaviour Therapy

After ten sessions of this therapy you will learn how to change your thinking to prevent your own self-talk from making you feel bad about yourself.

Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by Dr David Burns.  This was recommended to me by a psychiatrist and I found it to be a useful self-help manual.

6. Psychotherapy / Counselling

If there are people or life situations that are causing you to feel emotionally stressed through bullying, control, or manipulation then talk-therapies can help you to explore your feelings in a safe environment.  This will enable you to gain insight into your own behaviour and that of others.

You can get 12 sessions on the NHS and there are organisations that provide low-cost services according to income.

7. EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) / Tapping

There are lots of clips on YouTube that can help you to learn EFT which uses the tapping of acupressure points with the fingers to release negative feelings.

8. Exercise

Daily exercise for at least 30 minutes, preferably in the sunshine for vitamin D and light.  It is important for the exercise to be strenuous enough to cause breathlessness to get the blood pumping.  The only exception to this would be if you have chronic fatigue and adrenal issues - exercise will make you feel exhausted.

9. Mindfulness

It is clinically proven that daily meditation reduces anxiety and depression.  Find a beginners meditation CD and do some every day.

It is free, you can do it anywhere, and you don’t need a group, teacher, or special equipment.  Daily meditation for between 10 and 60 minutes, depending on what your body needs, is the best thing any of us can do for ourselves to overcome stress, anxiety, and depression.  

Decided on a time each day for your practice.  I find after lunch is best when I put my children down for a nap or sit them in front of the TV for a DVD that lasts at least an hour.  Switch off your phone and sit in a chair in a quiet room on your own.  Bring your attention to your breath.  If your mind wanders, you start thinking, etc calmly send the thought away without judgement and bring your attention back to the breath. When a thought comes don’t see it as a failure but as a sign that you are growing in awareness.  You are observing your mind and environment without judgement.  You should eventually feel a sense of total calm and peace like you have never felt before.  This feeling will come more quickly and easily the more you meditate.  You will notice you are calmer and better able to deal with problem solving and you will become more efficient at your work.

The Mindful Way Through Depression - Freeing Yourself from Chronic Unhappiness by Williams, Teasdale, Segal, and Kobat-Zinn.  This was recommended to me by a CBT therapist.

Sane New World by Ruby Wax.

10. Reiki

This is a hands-on healing technique performed by a trained professional which delivers universal healing energy via the healers hands.  You lay clothes on a couch while the practitioner gradually works around key points on your body. The treatment takes around 50 minutes.  You may feel very tired afterwards.  It heals on a physical and emotional level and can help to remove deep emotional trauma which is causing anxiety or depression.  

I trained as a Reiki Level 1 so that I can treat myself every night in bed.  I spend 10 minutes working on the back of my head to calm my brain and then I fall asleep with my hands on my heart to open up my heart.

11. Acupuncture

Acupuncture works to relieve anxiety, depression, and insomnia.  Start weekly before gradually working towards monthly top-ups to unblock the energy pathways in the body bringing it into balance.

12. EMFs

As much as you can try to avoid exposure to Electro Magnetic Fields (EMFs) which causes damage to our cells creating artificial stress responses which can adversely affect sleep and the production of neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine which affect mood.  

Put your mobile phone on airplane mode when it is in your pocket or in a bag that you are carrying.  When you are at home put it on change in a place away from where you or others are sitting.  Turn off the Bluetooth and Wi-Fi signals.

Don’t use Bluetooth accessories for your computer or mobile phone.

Turn off the Wi-Fi signal on your router and use a wired connection for your computer.

Buy a corded landline phone and get rid of any wireless (DECT) phones.

Buy an earthing sheet from The Healthy House so that your body can repair itself during sleep.

Avoid using a microwave by heating things up in pans or in the oven.

Buy a salt lamp for every room in the house.

Put orgonite on electrical devices in the home.

More information about EMFs at http://www.powerwatch.org.uk/.

13. Managing Your Life

If you are fed-up of being bullied or controlled by others take and assertiveness training course and learn how to confidently take control of situations.  Learn to avoid such people to make life even easier!  Confidently say no with a smile on your face.

14. Detox Heavy Metals

Detoxing is only a good idea once your mood is stabilised

Lemon Juice Cleanse: two tablespoons of organic, preferably freshly squeezed, lemon juice in a glass of filtered tap water daily for three weeks.  Then two teaspoons on alternate days.

Apple Cider Vinegar Cleanse: two tablespoons of organic apple cider vinegar with the mother (Biona do a good one) in a glass of filtered tap water daily for three weeks.  Then two teaspoons on alternate days.

Take a super greens supplement containing Chlorella to chelate mercury particularly if you have amalgam fillings or if you have had vaccines. http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/01/28/chlorella-for-mercury-poisoning.aspx.

Use only stainless steel, pyrex, or ceramic cookware.  Remove all aluminium pots and pans.

Avoid all vaccinations because they contain either mercury or aluminium.

Consult a homeopath or naturopath for chelation therapy to remove heavy metals from the body.

Filter your tap water and buy mineral water in glass bottles.  Buy reusable stainless steel bottles to take out with you.

Iodine also pushes mercury out of the body.

15. Journaling

Write three pages in an A5 notebook on waking.  This should be a stream of consciousness exercise to allow ideas and feelings to freely come up from the subconscious before the thinking and doing side of the train takes over during the day.

Read: The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron.

16. Hormones

If you are a woman visit my hormones blog at https://www.tumblr.com/blog/ovulationsyndrome

Read: A Mind of Your Own by Kelly Brogen MD.

[sudsybear]

Back to School

I was given permission to stay on the camp grounds for the last weekend. All the other counselors had other plans, either returning on the buses to NYC with the last group of campers, or were off to catch other transportation to places more exotic. But with my own vehicle, I just needed a place to sleep. So, I drove down the hill into town and did my laundry, and then spent one last night in my bunk before heading back up to Western New York.

 Lawrence and his family welcomed me to their home in the Finger Lakes – Seneca Lake, just south of Geneva. On my way from Fishkill to Kashong, I drove through Ithaca. Unbeknownst to me when I planned my route, it was Cornell’s freshman arrival day. I left a summer spent in a platform tent with eleven-year-old girls who had never experienced complete darkness, much less heard roosters crowing and cows mooing or the birds chirping in the pre-dawn, and came through a small town overwhelmed with BMW’s, Station Wagons, Custom Vans, U-Hauls towed by minivans. The contrast was overwhelming, and I was pleased to spend a few days of respite in the quiet company of my friend and his family.

 Dorms opened Labor Day weekend. I drove over on Tuesday after the holiday and checked into my room. I retrieved my stuff from storage, and moved into my super single. Back on the same special interest floor of the same dorm, instead of turning right when I got off the elevator, I turned left. My friend Karen lived in the room next door, Jen, the Kappa Kappa Delta, cheerful and perky in the other single, and a quiet deadhead in the smallest single. Our two freshmen in the double were Diane, an Air Force ROTC from a small town on Lake Ontario between Rochester and Niagara Falls, and her forgettable roommate.

 Now a senior, Jim lived across the parking lot in the “Phase” dorms. He was living on the fourth floor with mostly the same group he lived with last year, Craig, Bart, and Keith. Lawrence, wanting more independence, moved in with a friend in a graduate student apartment. In his stead came Andy, another friend and former roommate of Jim’s. And the group found another Jim, a quiet senior psych major, also from Baltimore. (He bought himself a CD player and one Eagles CD that he played over and over and over again. All these years later, I still can’t listen to Hotel California.)  They pooled their cumulative housing points to score one of the first choices in the housing lottery and garnered a six-single suite with a kitchenette and a view of the cemetery.

 Jim and I renewed our relationship in earnest after our separation from the summer, although I was colder toward him. There was no mutuality to our intimacy. I struggle to call it love-making, as we didn’t celebrate love at all. Instead, Jim had a sexual appetite which he satisfied while I lay on the bed beneath him. One night, laying on the loft bed in my room, naked except for socks to keep my feet warm on the cold floor, Jim rutted above/on me, while I turned my head and stared at the closet doors. Tears spilled silently, and after Jim was “done” he asked me what was the matter. “Nothing.”

 Why couldn’t he see what he was doing? Why didn’t he recognize what he was doing was wrong? He could be so kind, so caring, so supportive. And yet in our most intimate moments, he completely disregarded my feelings or needs. I began referring to him as “it”. The anger helped – it was what I needed to begin to heal. In a sick way, I had to be completely destroyed in order to regain my sense of self-worth, my confidence, and my identity. And yet, I stayed with that monster for months and was assaulted (never penetration. Never.) several times before I finally found the strength to tell him “No more.”

 I continued working with the committee to establish the scholarship for refugees from South Africa. I took a more challenging course load – English, botany, more philosophy, and a religious history course. Jim worked hard for his own studies. Homework and job took up much of his time outside of class and laboratory. We had study dates, and he left me alone to read while he did his own labwork. I benefitted from his self-discipline. And yet, he became more and more controlling of the time we spent together, ignoring many of my concerns or desires.

 I had trouble with my contact lenses. The air in the dorms was very dry, and I had been having trouble with my lenses since the weather turned cold the previous fall. The winds were constant, funneling down the hill to the dorms. I was forever taking my lenses out and moistening them, putting them back in. It was a major hassle, and I didn’t care for my glasses – heavy plastic frames that were the wrong shape for my face.

 Jim and I sat in my suite working on homework. One of my lenses was irritating my eye once again, and Jim lost his patience. “Why do you bother with those things?” he harumphed. He got right in my face, grabbed his own glasses in his hand, and said forcefully, “Look, I can take them off, I can put them on. I can take them off, I can put them on.” He was tired of my vanity. So I stopped fussing with contact lenses, talked with my parents, made an appointment at the eye doctor and got new glasses. Problem solved.

 *          *          *

 With a car at my disposal, and a single dorm room, I decided to acquire a pet. The Lesters were gone, and I wanted a companion in my room. I drove out to the local pet store and brought back a small mini-lop and named her Homer. I litter trained her, and rabbit-proofed my room. That wasn’t difficult, I wasn’t a poster-girl, and didn’t have a stereo system to worry about. I bought a spray bottle for water aversion training, and Homer-bunny and I got along just fine.

 *          *          *

 Spending the previous school year and summer apart had been the longest David and I hadn’t at least seen each other in passing since perhaps second grade. We were always a part of each other’s lives, if only casually. Whatever his reason for visiting, I was blind to it. I was flattered he wanted to see me and excited to see him. I mailed him directions for how to drive from Ohio State, and he arrived late one Friday evening. He crashed on the floor of my room, and the following day we walked around campus, I introduced him to my friends and we worked on homework. David brought calculus homework he was struggling with and knowing I was useless with the subject, I asked Jim to take a look and give him some help. He did.

 Jim, intellectual snob that he is, recognized that David’s learning style is different from students that Jim had experienced at the UofR. Jim spent the remainder of David’s visit announcing his low opinion of David loudly and frequently. “He didn’t know _____!” “He’s just now studying ______!”

 I was horrified that Jim could be so unfeeling and mean. Yes, Jim treated me that way for months, but I didn’t recognize it. Instead I saw what he did to David, and I didn’t like it at all.

 On Saturday night, Jim and his suitemates hosted a party. I took David over, and between the culture clash, the snobbery on Jim’s part, and David trying too hard, the evening did not go well. It was a confirmation that my two worlds could never collide again. David ignorantly insulted Karen with a joking comment, and pissed off both Craig and Jim with his physical antics. But I knew David, I knew he was harmless and well-meaning. Underneath the outrageous behavior was a caring, kind, young man who wanted to please and be liked. But they misinterpreted his enthusiasm and decried him a boor. I tried to defend him, David was my friend and confidante. Alas, he won no hearts that visit.

 Insulting David and showing him nothing but disdain was just another item on the growing list of things bothering me about Jim. The demanding and unpleasant sex and his forceful style of “I’m going to do this,” were upsetting enough. His controlling nature was irritating now, instead of comforting as it had been. I continued referring to Jim as “it” more and more publicly. If he was going to treat me like dirt, I would return the favor, to the best of my ability.

 Chapter 1  

The End

  It ended over a meal. It must have been dinner. Potato salad was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. He served, I picked, he got mad, and I threw my plate at him. He ducked, and the plate hit the wall. Then I attacked him with all the pent-up frustrations and anger that had festered for months. I was done. No longer would I tolerate being treated like a pet, a toy to be played with and tossed aside when he was bored.

 For weeks previous, I referred to him as “it.” I belittled his accomplishments as much as I could. Hell, he treated me like garbage, why shouldn’t I return the favor? It wasn’t quite so nasty as that, or was it?

 Back to what became known in the suite as the “potato salad incident.” Jim was “off board” his senior year, trying to save money by cooking for himself. Mostly he ate cheap chicken breasts he nuked in the microwave and served with cheap store brand barbecue sauce. One afternoon he prepared dinner for us; chicken, potato salad, something to drink. I welcomed the intimacy of a meal together as well as a change from the dining center fare. I was appreciative if not enthusiastic. While the chicken cooked, he served his potato salad. Potatoes, mustard, mayonnaise, curry powder (relatives of his had been missionaries in India, and he had grown up in a household where Indian spices were added to more American dishes) and onions. I enjoyed the spices, the potatoes were well cooked, but that onion…

 I’m not an onion fan. Onion rings? I love those. Sliced onion (thick or thin, each has its advantages) then batter dipped, and fried in God only knows what kind of hot oil, drained on waxed paper so the oil pools in the bottom of the basket and then served still hot with ketchup. My mouth waters just thinking about them. But raw onion in potato salad? No thank you. Some people like it, and more power to them. But I don’t care for raw onion. There are as many recipes for potato salad as there are people in the world – hot potato salad, cold potato salad, potato salad with vinegar, potato salad with pickle relish, potato and pickled beet salad, etc. Whatever grabs your taste buds. But I just don’t care for raw diced onion in my potato salad. Not then, and not now. Former President Bush (elder) doesn’t like broccoli, I don’t have to eat raw onion. There I am, sitting at the table pleased that “my man” has prepared a meal for me. I don’t want to insult him, or criticize his efforts, but neither do I want to eat the onion. What a dilemma!

 I carefully eat around the onion pieces. Just like a ten year old picks the mushrooms out of spaghetti sauce, I pick my bites around the onion and enjoy the rest of the salad. I thought I was doing rather well. I ate lots of bites of potato, complimenting him on his efforts, enjoying a culinary adventure. I was not raised eating much with curry flavorings – it added an interesting twist. Jim took offense, despite my efforts. Not only was he insulted, but he chose to tell me I must eat the onion he had prepared.

 Everybody has a breaking point. A point at which he or she says, “No more.” Those who study torture probably know just how far they can push their victims before they snap. But knowing how somebody is going to snap is a different question. Will the victim collapse into tears, grovel for mercy and submit? Or will the victim fight back? I found an inner strength that had been missing for so long I didn’t know I had ever been strong.

 Jim had assaulted me physically, abused me mentally and blackmailed me emotionally. He controlled every aspect of my life – what classes I took, what friends I had, what activities I participated in, when I studied, when I slept. And for months I tolerated it. At first I welcomed the control. I was devastated from leaving home, losing my grandmother, losing Ross, disappointing my parents, and the control Jim offered was a welcome haven. I didn’t have to think, I could just act, be, do. But I would not, could not tolerate Jim controlling the food that went into my mouth. I would not let him tell me that I must eat onions or garlic or sheep’s brains or calves tongue or snails or spaghetti sauce.

 When Jim got up from his seat to walk around the table and to try and force-feed me like a child, I picked up my plate and threw it at him. I was done. He would no longer control me, or my life.

 Trouble is, he didn’t understand that. In my mind, from that moment on, Jim was no longer my boyfriend. We were splitsville. I no longer needed him in order to survive. So long. See ya! We can stay friends, but don’t ever touch me again. I’ll still work on your committees, but don’t call me your girlfriend. It’s over between us. Jim thought I was just having a tantrum. His little plaything would get over her anger and all would be well. How wrong he was.

 That’s how it ended. For me, anyway. That plate bounced off Jim and clanged against the wall, potato salad flew around the kitchen area, spattering on the wall before the bulk of my serving landed on the floor. I yelled a few obscenities and left the suite.

But it took Jim several more months to finally realize how wrong he had been. He apologized, but I don’t know if he ever learned his lesson. Can a rapist ever be cured? My husband doesn’t think so. My “couch guy” doesn’t think so. That makes me sad. Jim has since married – to a woman he impregnated while overseas. Did he rape her, too? Or is she stronger than I was, and put him in his place? I’ll never know.