#i mean my mom's been helping me but jesus christ i have Severe writer's block rn

[melissa-benoists]

lmaoooo i really fucked myself over with this paper

[genderfluidsodapopcurtis]

Basically it’s an unfinished Rumble Fish fanfic please read it

Alright, I’m gonna try something a little different today. As you guys may have noticed, my mental health has been...not in the most stable place for a while now. I’m currently going through the whole process of getting taken off of my current medication to start a new one, which is never fun. And my anxiety and depression are both very persistent in screwing up my basic executive function abilities, so that it’s nearly impossible some days for me to eat or bathe or even sleep, much less write.

I want to say I’ve had writer’s block for the past several months, but I’m not sure that’s true because I have been writing. I just haven’t been able to finish a story. Which of course makes me feel like a complete faliure as a writer and a human being. It’s absolutely awful, and I have had many, many panic attacks over it.

So, I’ve decided to try something new: Publishing an incomplete story. Publishing the very beginnings of a very rough first draft, mistakes and typos and forced dialogue and clumsy descriptions and all. Just to put something out there. Who knows. Maybe it will give me the push I need to keep going.

I did go with something I do like and I am kind of proud of, though. I hope I’ll be able to complete it someday.

Fandom: Rumble Fish

Ship(s): None. Rusty-James/Steve friendship. Slightly slashy undertones though, because I can’t not.

Genre(s): Modern AU, Humor, Hurt/Comfort (ish), sick!fic (ish).

Warning(s): Menstruation, and all the fun stuff that comes with it.

Additional Notes: Transboy!Rusty-James, Transboy!Steve.

The house is too quiet.

It's like one of those scary movies where a disease wipes out the whole world but one person. No sound at all; not even the usual background stuff you never really notice until it’s suddenly gone: footsteps and doors opening and closing and cars passing by down the street--there's nothing. Nothing.

The idea of “quiet” is supposed to mean no sound at all, which is actually bullshit that makes no sense because quiet is actually the loudest thing he’s ever heard. He hates it; it’s seriously freaky--probably because of all the movies and the everybody dying thing--so most of the time when he’s by himself he gets away from it and back to people as soon as possible, before that prickly feeling, the one where it’s like all the liquids are being sucked out of him, starts to set in. That’s why he’s almost never home alone.

But today he doesn’t get a fucking choice.

He can’t even move to turn on the TV or something. Can’t even move from this one spot on the bed, where he’s curled up on his side with his face smushed into the pillow. It feels like somebody is taking a knife and stabbing it into his side and then twisting it around in his guts, and then the same thing in his head, right behind his eyeballs. He feels shitty all over, really: achy and groggy and sticky and gross, gross, gross.

Boys getting periods is such fucking bullshit.

(Boys having boobs and vaginas is fucking bullshit, too, for the record.)

Time’s been dragging by all morning, Rusty-James fading in and out of an empty sleep--until a sound finally comes with a tap on the window, quiet enough that Rusty-James almost thinks he just hallucinated it.

And then another one. Louder and sharper and definitely real.

Rusty-James flinches, stiffens. If it’s a burglar or a serial killer or something (it has to be; who the hell else would be trying to get in through a fucking window), he won’t be able to fight them off, and he knows his window’s not locked (who the fuck locks a window), so they can get in and kill him easy. Jesus Christ.

Another tap. And then “Rusty-James!”

And then another.

Wait.

Rusty-James pushes himself up and turns over and feels a rush of relief flood his chest when he sees that it’s not an axe murderer at all. Just Steve.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, that makes sense. Why the fuck would a criminal try to break in here during the day, anyway? It’s broad daylight. And it’s not like they have anything worth stealing. And a killer wouldn’t tap on the window ti let you know he was coming in, because that would be fucking stupid, because then the other person would run away, which would make everything harder. An actual killer would try to sneak in real quiet; not let you know he was even there until it was too late--

He suddenly realizes he’s just been staring at Steve the entire time he’s been thinking about this when Steve rolls his eyes and taps once on the glass again, hard and deliberate, snapping him out of his head.

“Can you open the window?” Steve asks. His voice is kind of muffled through the glass, so he’s half-shouting it.

Rusty-James shrugs. “It ain’t locked,” he half-shouts back.

Steve rolls his eyes again and brings his hands up to press them against the glass, and then slides the window upward with a spliitening crack. Rusty-James doesn’t open that window a whole lot.

Cold air that feels like needles on his skin rushes into the room.

“Ah! Fuck, it’s freezing!”

“You’re telling me.” Clumsily, Steve brings one leg up over the edge, and then the other, and then he pulls himself over and inside, scrambling onto Rusty-James’s bed before turning and sliding the window shut. And locking it.

Then he shrugs his backpack off his shoulders. Rusty-James didn’t even notice that he had it, but know that he has he’s wondering what Steve’s doing out of school.

Steve never ditches. Any time Rusty-James ever tries to talk him into coming along when he skips class, Steve always says no for one reason or another. Usually he says it’s because he doesn’t want to “get caught” or “get in trouble” or “I have a test in whatever fucking class today and it’s really important.” (To Rusty-James, this seems like just an even better reason not to go in the first place, but fucking whatever. Steve’s always been weird about all that school shit.)

So, “The fuck you doin’ here?”

Steve looks up at him then, and Rusty-James can’t read the look in his eyes behind his thick-rimmed glasses. He almost never can, though. Stephen thinks a lot with his face, and Rusty-James has never been too good with those. 

“It’s your period, right?”

Rusty-James stares at him. “How the fuck did  you know that?”

“Periods generally happen on the same date every month, you know.”

Right. Dates. Another thing he’s not too good at.

Although the fact that his best friend knows his period scheduale better than he does is probably at least a little fucking sad.

Steve goes on. “Anyway, you haven’t been coming to school, and you usually get really bad when you’re on yours, so I just--I just, wanted to see if you were okay.”

He’s not wrong. Rusty-James’s periods are always really, really fucking awful--the time when he was over at Steve’s house and threw up everywhere suddenly jumps into his mind--and the first time, when he didn’t know so he bled through his jeans and onto his mom’s couch. They had to get a new couch after that.

And he’s been in lots of fights, tons even. But nothing has ever hurt worse than those fucking cramps. They’re the kind of pain that looks white around the edges, and they’d be enough to make him cry if he could cry.

The headaches, too. And the all-over aches. And the throwing up. They all really suck, actually.

Once in a while he can suck it up enough to go to school, although it’s almost always a pretty fucking awful idea. That’s what he did last month, and he ended up punching Smokey Bennet in the nose (after he asked Rusty-James “Aww, is it somebody’s time of the month?”) and getting suspended anyway.

“I brought some stuff for you that might help, though,” Steve says as he unzips the backpack and reaches in, pulling out one item at a time before setting in down carefully on the bed. “Midol--it’s like aspirin but for menstural cramps, so it works better--a heating pad, Nutella and a spoon--I don’t think that actually does anything, but I always eat a lot of chocolate when I’m on mine...”

All Rusty-James can really do is stare at the spread, struck dumb. He has no idea how to feel about somebody caring so much much about something this stupid.

Rusty-James isn’t a girl, but he still has to deal with all the girl problems that his father and his brother don’t, and when he started getting his period (after Steve’s mom yelled at him for bleeding on her good couch), all he got was an awkward talk from the old man and a box of too-thin pads that the Motorcycle Boy probably stole crammed under the bathroom sink, and that was it. It’s not something they ever talked about again.

But with Steve it’s different. He get’s it, because he’s the same way and he has to deal with all the same stuff, and they’ve been best friends for so long that Rusty-James can remember when he was still Stephanie--fuck, he can even remember them being friends when he was still.

Well.

They were still both girls, and that was a really fucking long time ago.

[stevedonnellyfaith-blog]

As For Me and My Family (Post 71) 1-14-15

                        Nick, Stephen and I ended up in Kirkland’s the other day in a random sidetrack from our mission to find a new recliner for the living room. Stephen has been pretty hard on the one that we bought about 10 years ago.  A decoration outlet does not stock recliners, so we had no business in the store, but Kirkland’s was a mandatory stop on any shopping trip with Pam so we couldn’t resist poking our heads in.  Actually, because I spent so much youthful time basting my eyes with my Grandparent’s wonderful Yankee antique collection, the imitations and impersonations that stock the shelves’ in Kirkland’s and Pier One usually don’t inflame my soul with avarice and covetousness.  The stuff is attractive, though, and browsing through a store that Pam liked becomes more of a nostalgic excursion where my mind tricks itself into believing that my wife might be inspecting an appealing dish pattern in the next aisle.  Nick and I also wanted to see if we could find a couple pieces of shell-shaped soap as a joke on Abby that is a totally different story – one involving nursery-school aged misappropriation.  I will say no more.

Anyway, as we entered, I noticed that the first item for sale was blatantly religious.  By blatant, I mean that it screamed, Hobby Lobby is eating our sales volume.”  The artifact was a large piece of stone “wall décor” depicting the last line of a scriptural passage from Joshua that was mounted in a tasteful metallic frame.  It is a passage that has always spoken to me probably because I am a head of household.  I wrestled hard against an instinctual urge to impulse buy item #135095, Serve the Lord Fluer-de-Lis Top Metal Plaque.  The hanging caused a struggle deep within me.  I felt Pam encouraging me towards the purchase, her voice explained that it was religious and also would go nicely with her collection of kitchen roosters. In opposition was the voice of my grandmother who countered simply, “Stephen, it’s a reproduction.”  Finally, I broke my reverie of indecision and resolved not to add this plaque to the pile of prints, portraits and photographs that I have procrastinating hanging for the last five years.   Nick, Stephen and I continued our sentimental stroll, searching fruitlessly for Abby’s gag gift.  We left shell soap-less, and without making any other purchase.  It was a pleasant promenade nonetheless.

Afterward, Nick cut our Sunday afternoon boys shopping trip short. He didn’t specify whether he had been summoned by a young lady, called by a buddy who needed help turning a wrench or if he was off to burn another bonfire pile of Christmas trees with some dudes as he had done the previous evening.  It was “peace out” for Nicholas with his half-moon smiling back scar.  He was off to parts unknown. Post-op our relationship has returned to the status quo routine where we can forget to appreciate the preciousness of our time together.

The scripture verse would continue buzzing about my week like a gadfly, though.  On Tuesday I stumbled across the same passage in the 5 AM quiet of my Richmond office where I read the bible each morning to start the work day.  It caught me by surprise because the Kirkland’s plaque had not cited chapter and verse.  I thought the quote was from Ezekiel.  It just goes to show that biblical specifics can sometimes confuse themselves in your mind when you do all your reading before the little elves complete their cobbling and secret themselves back in the cobbler’s cabinet.

 “But if it seem evil to you to serve the Lord, you have your choice: choose this day

that which pleaseth you, whom you would rather serve, whether the gods which your

fathers served in Mesopotamia or the gods of the Amorrhites, in whose land you dwell:

but as for me and my house we will serve the Lord. “ (Joshua 24:15)

So I had had a second encounter with the same verse within a couple of days, an occurrence which counts as coincidence if there is such a thing with respect to scripture.  I pondered the passage and tried to discern why it was one of my favorites.  I like that geriatric Joshua, near the very cusp of the completion of his life’s work, proclaimed the steadfast consecration of himself and his family to God’s service.  At the age of 80, Joshua led the Jews through the dry riverbed of the Jordan that had been cleared Moses-like by the Ark of the Covenant. The triumphant invasion of Canaan had been delayed for forty year by the lukewarm commitment of their complaining compadres until Caleb and Joshua both qualified for platinum AARP cards. Evidently, Joshua continued whacking people for the Lord for another twenty plus years and used the occasion of self-eulogy to commit himself and his kids to continued service to Our Creator. His example set the bar high for the men of his children’s generation and for the men of our generation as well.

On Thursday I attended a gathering of people that are currently answering Joshua’s challenge to serve the Lord.  There were fathers, sons, mothers and daughters who had all collected in the family room of a residence to watch a video on Christian apologetics, the discipline of defending and explaining the faith to non-believers. I would say that there were close to fifty people in attendance, enough carcasses so that a late-comer like me had to nestle in the back corner of the beautifully decorated kitchen near the sink.  I was back in the zone where the moms and grand-moms were trading about the pajama clad and pacified youngest of the gathered.  It was an excellent presentation; the group reminded me of how, appropriately, the early church had met in the house of Pricilla and Aquilla. Even before that, while The Word Made Flesh still walked the Earth, many of the stories in the New Testament are played out in houses of families that had put their wealth at the disposal of an obscure rabbi from Nazareth and His Gospel.

I stood by the sink and looked across the room spying Nicholas seated comfortably in a recliner in the corner of the room where he controlled the video presentation with an X-box joystick.  Closer to me I saw an older man and his younger clone watching together that I knew had been estranged for many years. Many had prayed for them and the father and son had reconnected and reconciled under unusual circumstances. Now they watched together studiously learning how better to serve the Lord.  Joshua’s commitment was apparent all around the room among the Catholics and Protestants alike.  Each of us listened to prepare ourselves to go forth from the meeting to our jobs, schools and wherever we shop with the hope of acting as faithful and peaceful emissaries for Christ.  Our hope is to answer for Him with our words and actions in a world that has largely forgotten His message.

Realizing I was distracted, I turned away from the room, looked down at the sink and noticed a smaller but equally tasteful plaque with the words of Joshua 24:15 inscribed upon it. The third incident ruled out coincidence.

Nicholas, who never cared much for reading, asks me sometimes how I can write an essay every week.  I explain to him that I don’t really think about it.  After my commitment to serve the Lord by writing, each essay just seems to present itself for typing. I don’t really stress much or suffer from writer’s block.  Nick, himself, has volunteered to serve the Lord by speaking at the next Pan de Vida retreat.  I think the other youths present will benefit from his commitment to pay his debt to Jesus forward.  I expect that the retreat will be fruitful.  Last weekend’s Couples in Cana retreat looked like a bigger group than the previous year.  I have heard also that several people that have spectated through Mass for years are now enrolled in RCIA.  Joshua is working on all the hearts at IHM.  I expect the turnout from the parish for the West Coast Walk For Life will be impressive as well.

[mylifeasilivedit]

IM UPSET

Wow wow wow wowie

It’s a little late where I’m at, but I’m feeling upset. Let me explain. Firstly, I kept seeing tweets about Drake “going off” so I got excited about new music but I don’t see any on Spotify, so whatever. 

I’ve currently taken refuge on the couch, because for the second time since moving home, a spider crawled across my bed. I don’t really know what I did to deserve this type of terror in my life, but I would like to formally apologize to the higher power who had control over these types of matters because I’m truly scared to fall asleep. I don’t think I’ll ever sleep in that bed ever again. The funny thing is, I moved the comforter to make sure there was nothing in the bed and still a spider crept up on me. 

It’s only been one night since I last wrote, so I’ve already met my goal of writing again before two years fly by. I’m pretty proud, but I realized how fun this was. Writing my feelings down has been nice, even if its only the silly off-beat ramblings that trapeze through my mind whenever I put finger to keyboard. It’s pretty enjoyable, and you know me. I’m a writer and even if I’m blocked, writing anything at all is good practice. 

I honestly didn’t even leave the house today or put on makeup, which is kind of pathetic, but I’m not even going to complain. I complain about not wanting to work when I’m scheduled, and then I complain about being bored when I’m not working and have free time. Maybe If I complain less the bugs will be less attracted to me bed. Is there a correlation? Probably not, but a girl can hope right? A spider nearly crawled across my face for the second time. I’m a little traumatized so excuse anything crazy I say. It’s the adrenaline. I’m still buzzing over here. Why do people even bother with drugs when the fear of spiders is so much more manic than any faux high. 

I had the slight inspiration to write today, but ended up playing a card game with my mom instead. I just can’t say no when my mom asks me something. She’s truly an angel and I love her so much I’d literally do anything for her. I’d miss my own college graduation if she asked me to play Skip-bo with her. You can’t say I’m not committed. My mom continues to give me everything, and I’ll forever be grateful. I cry whenever I think about how much I love her. I am eternally grateful for the relationship we have. If you don’t have the same relationship with your mother, I’m truly sorry and I’m here for you if you need anything. I will be your mother. 

Okay, that took a weird turn. Again, I’m slightly traumatized, but ignore that. I haven’t talked to my ex in a hot minute, and I kind of miss talking to him. Simply for the reason that he’s my best friend. Despite my introverted personality, It was usually nice to have that connection, to tell things to, and express how my day was. He was always there to listen and joke with me. But, I can’t go there again. I really need to distance myself, and I think maybe typing in this journal might help. Even if no one ever reads this, it still might make me feel better. 

I wish that my best friend and I were closer. I get that sounds somewhat like an oxymoron, but despite her being my best friend for several years now, we don’t talk as much as we use to. We’re in different states living different lives, and don’t always have time to talk 24/7. Now that my ex and I aren’t speaking, I’ve tried reaching out and texting, but haven’t gotten much of a response. I need some real friends don’t I? My introverted self has gotten worse since HS and i’m feeling these repercussions. I have friends in UNI, but I don’t have my best friends. It is okay though, I will survive. I have the ability to make friends. I think...

I’ve talked about some random things just to keep my mind occupied, so let’s get a little weirder. 

First off, I typically never remember my dreams upon waking up. Almost never, but last night I did! 

I remember having the coolest dream, one that I might’ve even been able to turn into a novel idea. I even slept in later than I like to possibly keep the dream going, but I woke up and immediately forgot it. I basically only remember it being about a boy, and he went on an adventure with a girl names Lila, despite him having another girl whom he liked/was his friend. It wasn’t in normal times, so it must’ve been a fantastical universe I somehow created in my brain, but I just remember it being super cool. I’m really sad that dream stopped and that I don’t remember it. I’m always looking for things to turn into story ideas, and so remembering that dream could’ve been cool. 

Well, despite being blocked, I’m trying to focus on my one novel idea, so maybe its for the best? Here’s to praying that dream replays tonight if I can fall asleep. I’m pretty scared, even though I’m on the couch. 

i guess I should sign off and leave this journal. I spat my word vomit onto the screen already, even after doing absolutely nothing today. Let’s hope something exciting actually happens tomorrow (and when I say exciting, I mean HAPPY and not another spider) and I’ll have something decent to write about. 

Above is how I feel about the spider in my bed. I think my brother killed it, but I’ve convinced myself that he killed a second spider and another one is just sitting in my room enjoying my California king sized bed. He’s just sitting in the fucking middle sipping an iced tea. UGH!

Tom Holland makes things better, and jesus christ I sound like a 16 year old obsessed fan girl. You know what, I don’t even care. Enjoy the gif of Tom Holland future me. 

Feeling bored and uninspired and kinda traumatized and yeah on 28 June 2018 xx