#i truly thought i deleted everything during a mental breakdown

[wandercr]

I FOUND ALL OF MY OLD ICONS THAT I FUCKING LOVED, Y'ALL I'M ACTUALLY ABOUT TO CRY

[secondpubertyscene]

8.14.21

This year has been one of major change. In Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, there’s this quote, “God is Change. Beware: God exists to shape and be shaped,” and I think for the first time since reading it, I get what was being said. While I subscribe to the idea that there is a higher power of some kind, I also believe that we (as in, us as individuals) have great power as well. That power lies in our ability to change, to grow, to persevere. This year has been one of major change, and we really have to talk about it.

It is easy to look at this last year and think, “Well, that fucking sucked” because frankly, it did indeed fucking suck. I could write you a list of things that brought me great pain this year, unbelievable, undeniable, unrelenting pain that still lingers now. But, see, the beauty of it all is that none of that pain happens in a vacuum. Along with the pain, I’ve come through it all with more wisdom, more compassion, more empathy, more gratitude, more peace, more love, and more confidence. I’d like to share how those things all are connected, but first I would like to acknowledge something.

While I don’t know for sure if this is just an American thing, it does seem very clear that Americans aren’t fantastic at processing grief, death, and pain collectively. We often are encouraged to suck it up, to shut up about it, to not make others uncomfortable with our tears and trauma. I believe this is in large part due to the fact that American Exceptionalism doesn’t quite allow us to acknowledge when our systems have failed us or when we are suffering in the “greatest country in the world.” I don’t intend on participating in that toxic positivity or to dismiss the seriousness of the year past. I simply intend on acknowledging the nuances of my experiences, the complexity of it all. Now, let’s begin.

Without recounting every moment in large detail (in part because that would be far too much and also because I don’t need to relieve my traumas today), the events of the last year have been as follows: 1) COVID hit, 2) I had a severe emotional breakdown that resulted in a short stay at the hospital, 3) my grandma passed away, 4) I broke up with my partner of a year, 5) I was officially diagnosed with adult ADHD (inattentive), 6) I got into a PhD program for sociology (fully-funded), and 7) I moved to Ohio (two weeks ago now). So much happened in what feels like a blink of an eye. When you’re a kid, you think a year lasts forever. Now, a year feels like a couple months!

Anyhow, all of these things had super intense negative impacts on my life and most of them had super intense positive impacts on my life. Let’s talk about how. I won’t say that COVID had any “positive” impact on my life, because it’s still currently making things difficult and it is still destroying lives (full worlds) every day. The emotional breakdown that I experienced shortly after COVID began, however, was the impetus for some of the greatest change I would ever make in my life. It began with new therapy, medication for the first time ever to treat my mental illnesses, and a new relationship with boundaries.

Out of this breakdown, I came to realize a few things. 1) I wasn’t really feeling most of my life up until that point. That isn’t to say that I didn’t feel at all or that I wasn’t aware of my feelings all the time, but to say that most of the time, I numbed everything out that was too hard to bear. I didn’t cry, I didn’t write, I didn’t even take the time to try to identify exactly what emotions I did feel. I just lived through it and waited until I felt better. Or, I would breakdown with rage and then feel better. Therapy, especially the group therapy I participated in for a couple weeks after leaving the hospital, changed that in huge ways for me.

Because I was able to sit in my pain, in my discomfort, I was able to actually work through some of my issues. I began to identify the areas in my life that made me genuinely unhappy and began to grant myself permission to feel disappointment. I granted myself the permission to expect more, to want more. I granted myself the permission to set boundaries without guilt or shame. I granted myself freedom. It is an ongoing journey of mistakes and back-peddling and trying again, but it is mine and I am proud of it. Had I not had that breakdown, I don’t know that I would be where I am now.

My grandma dying is one of the most painful things I’ve experienced and honestly, I haven’t dealt with it all the way yet. I didn’t get to say goodbye to her in person, I still am battling the feelings of guilt despite knowing that there likely was nothing I could have done, and my chest still feels heavy thinking about her. Even as I write this, I feel that pain. I know she is not truly gone and that she lives within me, but oh, I do miss her physical presence. The nagging, the phone calls, the hugs, the cooking, her soft hair and beautiful hands. I miss her. Because of her, though, I have been able to rehabilitate another relationship in my life. The relationship I share with my mother.

My mother is a lot of things, but for whatever reason I continually forgot that she too is a victim of hardship brought on by nothing but sheer luck. In this last year, she lost her mother, the man that she loved, multiple cousins, friends that went back to childhood, and who knows who else. She suffered a lot this year and she has suffered a lot over the course of her 61 years of life overall. For the first time, I have been able to really acknowledge her as a full being with a complex history and understand her as a person, rather than just as a parent. I’ve set new boundaries with her as a result, boundaries that have completely change the dynamic of our relationship and will continue to do so as we both learn more about each other. Gone are the days where she relies solely on me for emotional support or financial support. Gone are the days where she feels comfortable talking down to me and then expecting any kind of favors from me. She understands and respects that I am an adult, that I am independent, and that I can terminate our relationship should it get to a point where I feel unsafe again. While this might sound like a threat or even negative, it is in fact quite the contrary.

We now share the belief that I deserve better from her and that my continued relationship with her is founded upon our mutual growth. That’s a beautiful thing that arose from us being pulled together by the loss of someone we both loved more than we maybe even loved ourselves. Thankfully, though, I have come to love myself more than anyone else on this planet. This newfound self-love and respect resulted in the severing of my relationship with my partner.

I won’t pretend like my ex was this horrible person because she wasn’t. She was kind, loving, intelligent, hilarious, unique, complex, and so many other amazing things. I still love her with all of my heart and have thought about her every single day since we broke up. It is not for lack of love that our relationship came to a close. The issue was that I needed more than what she could give. I needed someone who could really sit in my shit with me without invalidating my feelings jokingly because they didn’t know what else to say. I needed someone who could make me feel safe and secure, not fearful and insecure. I needed someone who understood boundaries as openings for futures, not closed doors. I needed someone who could show up for me the way I showed up for them, even when they hurt me, even when they lied out of fear. She wasn’t able to do that. She wasn’t able to stick beside me during the worst days of my life. She wasn’t able to see me beyond our relationship. When my grandma passed and our relationship was on the rocks, she made it about us. She didn’t stop pestering me about our relationship for long enough to give me support on losing someone who meant the world to me. I couldn’t trust her after that and I also realized, I wasn’t required to.

Boundaries in that relationship weren’t healthy. I felt unseen, unprotected, and sometimes even unloved. While I am sure that she has grown even more since we have parted, the reality is that when I ended things, I knew that doing so was the most fair thing I could do for the both of us. This is because I deserve someone who sees my value inherently. I deserve someone who takes the time to understand me, to love me, to see me. Not just see me and them together, but me as an individual separate from them. More importantly, I needed to be able to ask for those things without feeling guilty or bad. As of now, I still don’t know that she sees me as me, as a singular person, and maybe she never will. That is okay. I still love her anyway. I just love me more now. As a part of that love I’ve grown for myself, I also now have sought out more help for myself. This seeking of resources led me to realizing that I was ADHD and helped me change my life.

Being diagnosed with ADHD at 21 felt absolutely ridiculous. How could I be ADHD when I can sit still most of the time and have a pretty decent amount of impulse control? The answers came from my psychiatrist, breaking down the stereotypical understanding of ADHD and allowing me to find myself within the diagnosis. Finding the right combination of medication has been difficult, but what hasn’t been hard at all is finding more resources that help me manage my symptoms. It’s because of some of these resources that I am able to sit here and write this.

A huge part of ADHD is this perfectionist mentality that makes it nearly impossible to start or complete some tasks. Every time I sat down to write in the past, I told myself that I absolutely had to write every single day, once a day, or I should just not do it. When it came to this blog especially, I had so much shame when I failed to post for a long time or had a lull, that I would either consider deleting the whole thing to start over, or just never posting again. I realize now that those were just cop outs for my brain, that I can write as little or as much as I want because it is for ME. It doesn’t have to be perfect; it doesn’t have to be anything but what I need it to be. Waiting for perfection would have me waiting forever because it’s simply not how my brain works. Accepting that is a large part of how I got into my PhD program.

I’m not going to lie. I am still trying to figure out all of the feelings I have regarding this PhD program. I am shocked that I got in, shocked that I got full-funding, shocked that I am now in Ohio, shocked that I am in my own apartment, and overall shocked that I’ve made it this far in general. While I do not believe that I am stupid or not capable of greatness, I am realizing that I’ve always seen myself pursuing something more straightforward. When I was younger, I had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted to do even as those things changed. I knew what was required of me, I knew what I would ultimately do, and I took refuge in that. Doctors go to medical school. Chefs go to culinary school. Forensic anthropologists get masters degrees and do field work. It felt clear cut, straightforward, safe. This is uncharted territory. What do you do post PhD? What do you do DURING PhD years? I suppose I’ll just have to find out!

Anyhow, this year has been intense. Change is always present in our lives and sometimes it brings with gifts that we can only receive when we’re healed enough to take them. I’m hoping to keep healing, keep growing, keep loving, and keep going. I’m learning so much about myself and about the world. I’m loving myself more than I have in the past. I am incredibly proud of where I am. And I’m not done yet.

[alchemist-shizun]

I saw you in a dream. (Then it came to an end.)

Read on Ao3!

Happy belated birthday to one of the best people in the world: @lance-alt! I promised I’d do something for you on Monday, but of course I have to make people wait for the juicy stuff. (read: the juicy stuff will be your tears after this, probably.) Love you bro!

General taglist: @whizzie72 @sapphire-knight @burningpersonflapsuitcase @softanxiouspatton @royallyanxious @kim-argent-moon @lance-alt (tell me if you want to be added or removed)

Taglist: @unsocialchapeau

Word Count: 2,626

Characters: mainly Remus, Logan, Deceit, Roman, (mentioned Virgil)

Pairing(s): onesided!Intrulogical, implied Loceit

Warning(s): Angst. So much angst. Also unresolved angst. Yelling, Swearing. Might be a bit ooc cause I can’t write Remus the way I’d like.

Summary: What do we not do for a loved one? What do we not do for the sake of a friendship? What do we not do to make sure we destroy ourselves in favor of others? And how exactly did Remus think he was going to be perfectly fine?

A/N: I am not sorry. This is a human AU btw. Enjoy! :3

❝Though I am bruised

Face of contusions

Know I’ll keep moving❞

Remus would have never blamed D.

It was middle school, and middle schoolers were widely known for their passion of brushing off specific people who didn’t appear quite as appropriate for themselves in their eyes.

He had always been a devastating tornado according to those around him, unable to be tamed unless given space to burst until not even a gentle breeze was left to tickle his skin.

D, on the other hand, knew how to be cool and poised, but that didn’t mean his nature was the one of an innocent puppy.

No, better yet, he was more like a domesticated beast.

That truly gave the teachers a hard time, because once combined they became inseparable and never really ceased to meddle with them.

And yet … students were most definitely inclined to avoid Remus at best, while when it came to D only curious and interested glances were given.

Remus would have never blamed him though, D didn’t even realize how far better they were treating him compared to his friend. He only focused on how close-minded people still were in there.

Who was he not to join in his complaining?

Everything would have been fine with him for as long as their friendship stayed that way. A messy supportive two-participants family.

It felt like a welcoming and roaring fire at the same time, the chaos they brought just with their understanding looks and smirks.

They knew they were going to end up with a long lasting friendship and they were proud to remind those around them by never losing sight of each other at school.

And it was okay that way, with only just D accepting him the way he was, he didn’t really need much else.

Until that cursed afternoon.

There was an extracurricular sort of contest their school held right after lessons every year, but Remus could barely remember what it even was about

All he remembered was that damned marvellous thoughtful and focused expression when he looked a bit to his left to the boy sitting next to him.

Oh, the irony.

It had been right then that it had hit him. That maybe … maybe there was already something else. A something that transformed into something more with every little bit of interaction they shared.

Roman knew him, they were in the same class, and he had to complain at least once a day about how unnerving the guy was, always challenging him do debates Roman was so inclined to win that it took a third party member, Virgil, to separate them.

How the three of them were still close friends after three years was still a mystery to many.

So that was when he first heard about Logan.

But his brother and him weren’t exactly known for having the safest household in the world, so inviting friends over was a hard no. Then, the actual first time Remus had seen him was when he entered middle school that year.

At first he hadn’t obviously realized his crush, but after he had spent the minimal amount of time with Logan, it was so blatant that even he couldn’t deny it to himself.

He could have also labelled it as the first time someone other than his brother and D had recognized him as another human other than a weird poltergeist to avoid. There was a way he spoke with that low tone and thoughtful arguments that would have probably made him melt right on the spot. Or maybe it was his sharp features, or the way he thought he had looked at him that one time.

Remus was deep down the river at the base of the cliff, the tip of his hair barely managing to be untouched by the water.

Damn Roman. Damn Roman and his storytelling, and how Remus had always rooted for Logan in their discussions, how he had already taken a liking into him and had already doomed himself.

It was break, fifteen minutes of pure relaxation, and Remus and D had already spent the first five minutes together, trying to get away from the stress of the ending of the first term.

D’s eyes lit up as they turned a corner, Remus followed his gaze as he spoke.

« Hey! Why is this the first time I see you since school started? » a toothy smile displayed on his lips. It was almost as bright as the one he reserved to him.

« Your cousin is impossible to move from his seat. » Logan’s crystalline voice cleared. « So Roman and I mostly stay in class with him. »

« Ugh, » D rolled his eyes. « I apologize on his behalf. » he didn’t hide the fond tone when he talked, though.

« No, it’s quite alright by us. » had he ever not turned to Remus, maybe he wouldn’t have regretted meeting Logan in the long run. « Oh, I didn’t even introduce myself properly the other day. » he stretched out his hand. « I am Logan. »

« I know. »

Panic.

Fuck. Fuck what did you just say, why. Now he’ll think you’re creepy, too.

D put an arm around his shoulders. « Yeah, he’s Roman’s brother. » perhaps a saviour? « And sometimes he’s just as dense as him. »

Remus scoffed. « Lies. I’m a better idiot than him. »

That got a chuckle out of both. He felt delighted.

As he saw Logan about to withdraw his hand, Remus took it almost instantly.

Oh my god what the fuck are you doing?

« I’m Remus. » the bell rang and maybe his ears were too.

« My pleasure. » Logan conceded before letting go and starting to backtrack to his class. « I’ll see you two around. »

And as fast as he arrived, he was gone.

Like a blurry hallucination or those spots you see when you get up too fast from the couch.

The rest of the day-

Well, he didn’t remember much anymore.

Maybe the fact that he and Logan did actually have something in common.

When there was a group of three, there would always be the two that shared the stronger chemistry. And if Logan didn’t feel as close to Roman and Virgil, Remus sure as heck knew if anyone interacted with D and him, he would have felt like something was off most of the times.

There were flashes of memories that crossed his mind ever since Logan had left middle school to start his first year of high-school.

Most were all the meet ups they had with D during break, the glances he caught and buried deep down in his heart, the laughter of all three of them, how their dynamics colliding were actually definitely working well together.

What he remembered mostly were the furtive tears that were shed on their last day.

He never told D about that.

It was when he went home that he couldn’t have hidden it from Roman any longer. His brother had affirmed that he had been crying even more than himself, which was saying a lot.

So the words came out like a destructive flood, deleting with a burning strength all the hopeful thoughts.

« Rem, listen here. » Roman, thankfully, had spoken up before his mind would have travelled down risky paths. « Not seeing each other almost everyday doesn’t mean you won’t be friends any longer. »

He had only looked up from the pavement. Were he to look back at this memory years after he’d have thought himself to be pathetic.

« And you can definitely meet after school whenever you want. If our parents won’t let you, I’ll come with. »

And that they did, slowly trying to gain their parents’ trust to let them go out by themselves until they were both attending high-school.

Another three years would have passed before the lethal “last day” would come again, but the trio made sure to imprint the best memories together while they had the time.

Only that the most unexpected things happen at the worst times.

Remus and D were both in the third year; things seemed to be going smoothly as ever, between all the tests and mental breakdowns for said tests, Remus would have never thought to cross the threshold of his school and be met with loud yelling not too further away from his class.

Normally he wouldn’t have really cared much.

Unless the two subjects were Logan and D. Which they were. Which had also made him pale with a horrible feeling in his guts.

He couldn’t make out what they were saying as the screaming in his thoughts didn’t leave him alone.

« MIT, Logan. Seriously! You’re insane! »

« I had my reasons! »

D scoffed and put his face in his hands for a beat. « Refusing because of your friendships is not a valid reason! »

Remus was confused. He really didn’t want to be there at all.

« It is when you don’t want to lose them. »

« You wouldn’t have, you idiot! »

« Guys what’s- »

« There is a reason if we’re friends! »

« -going …? » he could see the profound rage in D’s caramel irises. One glance and you’re dead.

« You didn’t trust us to maintain our friendship, did you? Is that why you refused the international internship? »

« That’s absurd, that’s not what I mean! »

« It sounds a lot like it’s exactly what you mean! »

Remus connected the dots.

Friendship. MIT. International internship. Logan had refused to be an intern abroad only because of them. He had been too afraid to loose them as friends if he were to be away too long.

And, of course, D was mad about his lost opportunity. He would have never admit it at that moment, but he felt guilty, too.

« You sure talk a lot and pretend you’re smart but, really, you’re just as stupid sometimes. »

The look in Logan’s eyes changed.

Oh no. Oh no no no no.

« Fine then. I’ll keep on being stupid on my own. » he walked away in a instant, steps long and furious, opposing the low tone of his voice, but matching the seething fire in his chest.

« D- »

« Please, don’t. » D looked at him with broken eyes. « I’m fine. We’re fine. I’ll see you during break, okay? »

Remus only nodded and headed to his own class. He pretended he didn’t feel awful as he walked by the door to Logan’s own class.

It was as D said. Fine.

Everything was going to be okay.

Except it wasn’t, because that was the last time both of them talked with Logan.

The two wouldn’t even look at each other and Remus couldn’t help but side with D. That meant he wouldn’t have interacted with the older boy either.

And so time passed … months. Avoiding each other when all you ever wanted was to share at least a single word.

It wasn’t okay. It wasn’t fine at all, it hurt so much and Remus didn’t know how longer he would have been able to handle it.

Yet, he was too afraid to do anything. He wouldn’t have wanted to loose D’s friendship too because of a reckless action. And he did lots of them. So, for once, he stayed put and let the Fates do their work.

Which ended into the fight remaining unresolved, Logan graduating from high-school and both of them never meeting him again.

Roman had tried to bring up the argument multiple times, but Remus had decided to bury everything deep down and avoid ever bringing it up.

Like a ghost, Logan appeared to exist only in his mind. A mind that he didn’t seem to want to leave. Even despite all that had been going down his ridiculously tough teenage life.

Remus and D had no idea how they made it through the final exams.

They also had no clue how they almost completely lost contact after the beginning of university.

Maybe it wasn’t loneliness he felt after that. Maybe it was more disappointment.

It wasn’t like it was anyone’s fault, though. Their lessons never matched, so during the week it was almost impossible to meet, sometimes they had jobs in the weekend to pay for apartments nearby their universities.

Texts became a burden they both forgot to remember to answer, it was as if anything was a priority to socializing and it was driving them insane.

Even sad.

Then one day, out of the blue, D had texted him in a way he hadn’t done in too long. He sounded greatly excited and he had told Remus he needed to meet him as soon as possible.

He had a surprise!

Remus was radiant that day, finally getting the chance he deserved to recover their friendship.

It was a Friday afternoon, he was walking down the street towards the place they had agreed on to meet.

D was right in front of him. But enough meters away so that he couldn’t recognize yet the person walking alongside him. Remus narrowed his eyes, almost squeezing them shut at some point. Did the sun have to be so bright right above them that day?

He put a hand on his forehead to shield his vision.

He wished he didn’t.

Not because the guy next to D was Logan.

Not because his heart made three somersaults before twisting one last time as though he fell in love all over again at once, hitting his chest like a violent wind in a snowstorm.

Not because he was smiling so wide his face would have fallen off any second.

But because, as his eyes focused and examined their figures, he noticed the details.

Like their joined hands, fingers intertwined the way he would have wanted to but had never been brave enough to do.

How they looked lovingly at each other before turning back to him.

His own smile faltering for a second and then going back as it was before. Normal, sure, but fake. Fake, but not blatant enough to be discovered.

He couldn’t do this to them.

And sure he was going to be happy for them right? They had been friends. He was going to survive by internalizing everything in himself, right? He was going to forget about all his feelings in favour of his closest friends. That was the right thing to do.

It happened to everyone.

It did.

He could survive.

Hurting in the process, but he could.

The day went by in an instant, a terrible, calamitous and painstakingly long instant in which he hoped he had been hallucinating all along.

Remus had wiped everything he had seen while on his way home. He forcefully removed any kind of thought in his head so he could bask in the numbness until the silent chaos of the world around him stopped making sense.

He threw the door to his home open.

Except that it wasn’t his home and that he had somehow gotten to Roman’s own apartment, red eyes adorning his face in a brutally doleful expression.

His brother was immediately at his side, arms wrapped around his chest, with an understanding look in his eyes and anticipation for the tears to come.

He had known about Logan and D getting together before Remus, so he had seen something like that coming.

Yet Roman didn’t know it would’ve hit him hard too, seeing his brother so broken.

So he let Remus cry his soul out, while nothing else could have been done.

Dreaming, perhaps.

That was all he had left.

[back-in-wyoming]

Hey guys. Been a while. Hope you’re all doing ok. ***Trigger warnings under the keep reading line.

I want to update all of you, especially in regards to what plans I have for this blog which is that I’m deleting it and everything related to it. If any of you want some of the names I have set aside, message me and we’ll make it work. 

If you want to keep in contact, we can talk. 

This post will be taken down in 24hrs. After that, blog deleted with everything else. 

TW: Sexual assault, mental illness, abuse

I don’t use this space much anymore because around five years ago, I started having flashbacks to traumatic instances I experienced young. And once that started to unravel it was hard to function.

I distracted myself with things I thought were important because I couldn’t handle seeing anything else in focus. It wasn’t until recently that I could put some sort of timeline together. I do have flashbacks, not enough to call it a chronic issue or anything but they happen. I was almost fired from my job at the time a few times for being late as my nights and days slowly reversed and I couldn’t physically get up in the morning. Around that time, I don’t believe I really knew how to communicate kindly with others or truly consider the consequences of my actions. I distanced myself from myself, not assuming real responsibility. I was clingy. Overly sensitive. Always fearful. Angry. I couldn’t see myself in focus. I can sit here and say I never learned how to take responsibility, that I grew up with parents who had unchecked mood disorders, addictions, and unhealthy behavior and coping mechanisms and it would be true but that alone can’t unburn bridges or close a gap of five years silence.

I thought I understood myself then. I thought I knew emotions, especially my own. I didn’t. And I didn’t realize how risky I had become, throwing myself away, stacking to try and loose weight quick, drinking to the point of blacking out and doing it again as soon as I had the chance.

Four years ago, Dec. 2016, I was sexually assaulted in my home. I shut down entirely for a month or two. Went through the motions. I was taking writing prompts knowing they were never going to be written. I thought I could restart somehow, like I’d snap out of it, that I’d feel something again. My partner was instrumental in helping me survive the winter and spring.

The following year, we lost the house. 

My mother wound up in the hospital and has been in and out. Her addiction to narcotics nearly cost her her life twice since moving. We went through a long process to get all of her care localized finally after her latest stint in the hospital mom for overdose and encephalophy and dad for some kind of obstruction in his intestines (second time having that). During that time, I had one car, two jobs to get to, and all of the medical paperwork and doctor visits for both parents. 

I had a nervous breakdown a week or two before COVID-19 really kicked up which is when all of the above happened. I checked myself into a partial hospitalization program, left for being accused of lying, and found a better therapist whom I adore. 

It was after that I was diagnosed with bipolar I a.k.a. manic depression. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, it’s a mood disorder marked by intense highs and lows with the highs potentially triggering psychosis depending on the severity of the episode (unfortunately, I do suffer from mild paranoia which does tend to be triggered by Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria). People with bipolar I are distant, very in their head, unpredictable mood wise sometimes. It’s also been discussed that I may have PMDD as well. Basically, my brain is just trying to outright off me at this point. All of that said, the second reason I’m making this post is because I wanted to apologize to anyone I hurt during that very weird, confusing, and anger filled time in my life only to be followed by years silence. 

I didn’t forget you.

You did nothing wrong.

You didn’t deserve that. No one does. I don’t expect for this to make anyone forgive me. I’ve been trying to figure out how to get a message across but never considered that I don’t know how to make that right. I don’t think I can. 

Even if I had the chance, I’m not entirely sure I’d know what to do with it. I see old friends and they’re good. Like, they’re really really good and happy and I just... didn’t quite get there. And I dragged people down and I’m terrified of responding to messages. Terrified of fucking up, terrified of writing even the smallest responses because I just can’t... handle things. The what if’s. The fear. It’s embarrassing. Shameful. For me. I feel slower than everyone else. Learning things too late, things that I personally feel I should’ve known and remember by now.

It’s just really... hard. To not apologize. To feel sorry for existing. Looking back, it is hard to not feel those things. To just want to erase it from existence because you miss it and it hurts and you put the space there, not anyone else. Because you didn’t really say anything of worth when you had the chance because right when you needed someone, they were already driven away by all the shit you put them through.

you can’t blame them. 

and i guess this blog is really one of the last remaining archives, for me, of that person who just pushed and pushed and pushed and didn’t know when to stop. 

i want to be a better person. i’m doing my best. and i apologize for all those years of silence. i hope you’re all taking care of yourselves. be safe.

[silenceandpatiencepining]

overshare time (because literally all of my friends and family and twitter followers are so sick of hearing about this) re: my ex that’s not my ex because we never actually dated

Okay so we met in middle school at our church youth group and became friends in what was basically high school Sunday school (for confirmation), and then our senior year we both volunteered to help run the middle school youth group where we’d first me. Almost every week after youth group we would walk out to our cars together or around the same time and end up talking in the parking lot for an hour or longer, just laughing, shootin the shit. I’d liked him for a while but like really caught feelings that year. We stayed friends when I went off to college out of state and I would send him honest to god handwritten letters in the mail. He got super flaky and sucked at texting me back and eventually I was like, listen, I’m not gonna put up with this. And he was like, you’re one of the only people that would actually call me on my shit and I appreciate that, and then for a while he actually got better. Then right around Valentine’s Day I admitted my feelings after sending a super heartfelt gift in the mail and he responded by saying he felt like we should just be friends, he didn’t feel the same way, and we shouldn’t talk for a while. So we didn’t, for like 6 months. He had a minor mental breakdown and realized he had shitty friends. I was sad about things but studied abroad and had the time of my life traveling. Then right before I went back to college he said he missed me. We reconnected and talked things though and said that we could get past this whole me liking him thing. I had gotten over my romantic feelings by then and truly just wanted my friend back. So we said we’d go back to friendship as it was. And then things were basically back to normal. We would call and text and when I was back home during breaks and stuff, we would hang out but it was lowkey like coupley activities sometimes. Like there was the usual friend hang outs like going to the movies and grabbing food and playing board games and shopping for records and stuff, but he like also took me to an Alice and wonderland themed tea house, and we went antique shopping, and picked out crazy things together at thrift shops, and picked out picture frames to gift to his grandma for her birthday, and adopted some plants and he let me name them. Anyway, things were totally normal and then one year during Fourth of July week he said he was gonna call at a certain time and then didn’t. And I literally never heard from him again. At first I thought it was just a scheduling thing or timing but I kept messaging as usual and even invited him to go on a cheap last minute trip with me at the end of the summer before I went back to school and nothing. Just nothing. Not like a ‘hey sorry I forgot to call’ or ‘I’m not really interested’ or ‘maybe we can’t be friends after all’. Like, that one forgotten call after things had been going so well for so long, and then just bam, ghosted. And that was over a year and half ago!

It was so confusing when this first happened and I kept waiting for him to call or text back but then he just didn’t and I went through all the stages of grief and I deleted him from everything and was just so sad and mad. He had been flaky before and I always just thought that he would reply eventually. And then more time kept passing with nothing. I hadn’t seen or heard anything for so long I legit thought he could’ve died and I just wouldn’t know. I sent him a Christmas present. No response. A few months later, I sent him a birthday present, because every year I’d pick out a quirky/niche book. Again, no response. I gave things some time and didn’t reach out for a while. More nothing. Tried checking in to ask if something went wrong. Nothing. Apologized even though I didn’t do anything. Nothing. Gave things more time and then tried to be like hey, it’s been a while let’s catch up. Still nothing. Added him back on social, he accepted the follow request but didn’t follow back. Uh okay. I respond to his insta stories, left on seen.

It’s literally such a mindfuck. And what I hate is that even though this has just shown me that he doesn’t give a shit about me, and even though I know that there is nothing he can say that would fix the hurt I felt for the past almost two years, I still can’t completely get him out of my head. I thought I was finally really starting to move on and then a couple weeks ago I randomly had a dream about him and us making up and then I got confused and started missing him again. And anyway, now we are here. Me, still ghosted and still thinking about things.

I KNOW closure doesn’t exist but I hate hate hate the feeling of him holding the power in this situation. Like I could process him saying “I never want to talk to you again” or “I thought you still had feelings and thought it was easier to cut things off” or “I outgrew our friendship” —anything really, but the fact that he just disappeared makes it feel so impossible to just leave this in the past. It feels like it never ended.

Anyway, today (yesterday bc it is now 4am) was the anniversary of an album that super important to both of us for such a long time and I tagged him in a post and again NOTHING.

I was in love with him, and then he was a close friend, and now there’s just nothing. It would almost be easier if we bitterly split up but he really just walked out on something like 7 years of friendship without so much as a call or text.

Sooo basically I’m just thinking about things again, rehashing every memory, thinking about where I went wrong, but mostly wondering why it’s so hard to forget him.

I used to think of him when I’d sing IFTYE but now I am painfully aware that he still exists and I hate my brain for remembering him so well.

[onisiondrama]

“Onision: Proven Honest/Innocent & No One Cares” Part 1

Speaks 4/14/19

This is my reaction to his recent video about Shiloh. Idk how many parts this will be or when I’ll be able to finish it.

The first thing I want to point out is he is trying to convince his audience that every criticism he’s gotten over the years about his relationship with Shiloh is now null because he was telling the truth all along. This video disproves nothing. Everyone knows Shiloh lied about a lot of shit and did fucked up shit during their relationship. That does not mean no one is allowed to criticize him for the fucked up things he did during the relationship.

The second thing I want to point out is he acts like his relationship with Shiloh was the root cause of ALL the criticism/hate he receives online because everyone believed Shiloh’s lies. This is 100% not true. Most people (fans and antis) really, really hated Shiloh at the end of their relationship and for years after they broke up. When they broke up, not very many people took Shiloh’s side. The majority (fans mainly) took Greg’s side and the rest thought they were both shit. Her supporters were virtually non-existent as far as I remember. She ended up deleting her Youtube channels and social media. The comments on her music videos were walls of criticism and hate for years after their break up. It really wasn’t until years later the internet softened up to her, mainly for two reasons. One: Greg continued to obsessively talk about her online for years (case in point: this video), while Shiloh publicly talked about him maybe a handful of times. When she appeared in a Q&A video with her friend she refused to say anything negative about him. It seemed like Shiloh moved on and matured while Greg continued to want to destroy her reputation and maintain some control over her. Two: Billie. The parallels between Billie’s relationship with Greg and Shiloh’s are undeniable. I noticed after his final break up with Billie, many people’s perception of Shiloh changed and the comments on videos about her and her music videos drastically changed. Like before, everyone either took her stories about Greg with a grain of salt or straight up ignored them because she was caught lying so much, but since Billie had a similar story about Greg demanding she shave her head as Shiloh, people started to think maybe she wasn’t lying about everything and maybe she wasn’t as crazy as Greg made her out to be after all.

Ok so the first part of the video he talks to a woman who claims she dated Shiloh while Shiloh was simultaneously with (on and off) Greg and Shiloh’s baby daddy. Supposedly Greg and this woman talked long ago, but Greg didn’t remember who she was. They got into contact again because he mass twitter followed all of his gmail contacts in January. I think it’s weird we’ve never heard about this woman before and Greg somehow managed to keep her a secret (before he “forgot” about her) for all these years since he’s usually quick to use information like this to make people look bad in videos. He’s mentioned countless times Shiloh cheated on him with her baby daddy, but would it have not been beneficial for him to mention she cheated on him with two people?

One of the first thing this woman tells Greg is Shiloh lied about her daughter’s death. It wasn’t a lie. There were a bunch of anti-os who hated Shiloh that continued to follow her and her life after Greg. Some befriended her baby daddy to get dirt on her and they confirmed the baby passed away.

When it comes to Shiloh, I don’t know why Greg (imo) wrecks his credibility by taking the word of random people from the internet as fact to use against her. This woman supposedly was cheated on by Shiloh, broke up with Shiloh because Shiloh got pregnant, stayed close enough to Shiloh months later that Shiloh told her about her daughter’s death, then somehow confirmed Shiloh lied about the death?? Ok look, first of all, how the fuck does someone get away with faking a baby’s death? It doesn’t make any sense. Shiloh has a family, the baby daddy has a family, don’t you think someone would realize the baby was still alive? Where is her daughter now if she lied? This wasn’t an internet hoax. It was real. I remember the the baby daddy announcing the death online. They weren’t together when it happened. He had no reason to lie for her.

Greg goes through some of the stuff we’ve all heard already. Claiming Shiloh threatened to kill herself and make it look like he did it, she told him she has a split personality, blah blah blah. “But you all said I’m lying” - he’s trying to make it seem like this random woman from the internet proved all of his stories about Shiloh true. These are all still unproven claims from Greg as far as I’m concerned, just as the stories Shiloh told about Greg are also unproven claims. That’s how it works. You don’t just get to tell a potentially reputation damaging story about someone with no proof and everyone just believes you because you keep mentioning how “honest” you are. Also, I don’t see how what this woman said proves any of those stories true. I guess to him he’s proving Shiloh was a liar? But we all already knew that.

He continues with DM’s from the woman. She says she found out she was being cheated on because of one of Greg’s videos. 

He says everyone made blogs and memes about how evil he was because we all wanted to believe Shiloh. Again, this isn’t true. most antis took neither side and used their platforms to criticize Shiloh just as much as they criticized Greg. He says people wanted what Shiloh said to be true because he had opinions about people we liked and he’s not allowed to have opinions. Wow. I guess it wasn’t the uploading her mental breakdowns to Youtube, or the fact that he left his 5 year marriage to peruse a 17 year old, or that he creepily traveled to a state Shiloh just happened to be to have sex with her legally, or shitting on her for 8 years. Hm wow I guess it wasn’t his own actions that lead to people criticizing his role in the relationship. It was his gosh darn controversial opinions. Wow honesty is such a burden. Poor Greg.

He tells more stories we already know to prove being in a relationship with her was horrible. memory loss, seizures, fire department bringing her back home after she passed out on the sidewalk, calling the cops on her. “You internet folks conclude that she’s actually the rational sane one despite how obvious that is not the fact.” Lmao. Greg no one thinks Shiloh was rational or sane during your relationship. Even most of her die hard supporters admit she went crazy, they blame Greg for causing it.

“I don’t know how you could lie about a baby dying, but she did it apparently.”

He’s so desperate for shit to use against Shiloh he’s using shit from unconfirmed sources and hiding behind “apparently”. Like if he truly believed Shiloh lied about her daughter’s death, don’t you think he could get into contact with someone that could prove her daughter is still alive? That would make a heck of a video. Even if he’s too lazy to do that does he not think it’s weird Shiloh supposedly got away with convincing the internet her child was dead for 7 years?? He won’t look into it because he knows it might not be true and he knows if he repeats it a few times in a video his fans would believe him anyway.

The woman in the DM lists stealing as one of Shiloh’s toxic traits. Greg says he never saw Shiloh steal anything and he would have mentioned it to us. I feel like I should point of a majority of his fan base mix up Shiloh and Skye. he accused Skye of stealing his belongings and his money through alimony, but you’ll see a lot of bananas who bash Shiloh say she stole from Greg.

[morningfears]

Dear Stranger

Rating: PG-13

Summary: Sort of inspired by The Perks of Being A Wallflower? Basically, reader and Calum have a sort of relationship. Things don’t work out. She writes a letter to get explain her feelings. (This isn’t connected to my Letters AU! That’s a separate thing and it’s going to be for Shawn. I just felt like doing this one.)

Word Count: 2.2k

*Note: This is written a little differently. So, let me know what you think?

Dear Stranger,

If I’m being honest, I don’t know why I’m writing this letter. I don’t think that anyone will read this but the thought that someone could makes me anxious. Even though you don’t know me, I’m writing this letter to release some of my deepest thoughts and that vulnerability terrifies me. But I guess that fear of vulnerability is why I’m in this situation in the first place.

I won’t bore you with every single detail, hypothetical reader. I’ll just give you enough information to understand why I feel the way that I do (which is like shit, in case you were wondering). I need you to know two things before you continue reading, though: I never meant for things to turn out this way and I do, truly and with every fiber of my being, love Calum. Even if, throughout this letter, you doubt everything else I say, don’t doubt that.

Calum and I met our freshman year of college. We were in the same group for orientation and got stuck being buddies for the weird camp experience they made us go through. I’m not sure if you’ve ever been to a college orientation or if yours was anything like that, just know that it was the worst and none of us wanted to be there. Anyway, we were in the middle of the woods for hours and we got stuck on a zip-line platform because the kid before us got stuck in the middle and we were already clipped in and couldn’t move.

Calum was quiet, I was shy. We said, maybe, five words to one another the entire experience. But I had a massive crush on him immediately. He didn’t say much but he stood close to me on the platform (after overhearing that I was terrified of heights) and made sure that I was alright when we got to the other side. He didn’t really ask, he just kind of guided me to the table his friends (the ones he knew from high school) were sitting at during dinner and had me sit beside him.

His friends made me feel welcome, they included me in the conversation (even if I didn’t really have much to contribute other than a nod or a laugh), and they became my first friends in college.

I expected the relationship to taper off over the course of the semester but Calum and I grew closer and closer. We started talking to one another and, let me tell you. The moment he opened his mouth, my crush grew exponentially. Calum is the funniest, sweetest, most intelligent person I’ve ever met. We can talk about any topic there is and it’s the best conversation I’ve ever had. Calum plays bass and, although I’m musically challenged, I could listen to him talk about bass lines for hours because he’s so passionate and makes it sound so interesting.

Over winter break, we kept in touch and even sent one another gifts (I got him custom guitar picks, he got me a record I’d been looking for for ages). But there was always that fear in the back of my mind. I was always afraid that Calum would find someone better, someone more fun to hang out with. I was always afraid that I wasn’t enough for anyone (but, most importantly, him).

And I think that fear of not being good enough made me hold myself back. It made me hide parts of myself from him, made me keep my heart guarded. I figured that if I didn’t let him in, it wouldn’t hurt so bad when he left.

For a while, that was okay. Calum knew that I was shy and that I didn’t open up easily. But he kept chipping away at my walls and I felt my resolve crumbling more and more each day. He was managing to do something no one else had ever done; he was managing to make himself at home in my heart.

Sophomore year, nothing interesting happened between Calum and I. I got involved in philanthropy and those stereotypical college activism groups, Calum walked on to the university’s soccer team and quickly became the best player we had. We were both busy but we made time for one another.

I moved off campus that year and we cooked dinner together once a month. We watched movies sometimes, texted as often as possible, but face-to-face interaction was nearly impossible.

Somehow, though, we made it through.

Junior year is where things start getting complicated. Calum started dating this girl, Anna. She was nice, I guess. I always got the feeling that she didn’t like me but I never wanted to be that person, you know? I didn’t want to think that she was jealous of our friendship or that she felt threatened by me. Because, honestly, what was threatening about me? Calum never looked at me that way (or, at least, I didn’t think he did).

Calum and I stopped seeing each other as often as we had before. He spent his weekends with her, I spent mine with my textbooks. It sucked, suddenly going from having someone to hang out with and call on to being alone, but I managed. As long as he was happy, that was all that mattered.

Junior year is also when I realized that I was in love with Calum. 

I always thought that my crush was based on the fact that he was one of the first guys to pay attention to me. But the longer he was out of my life, the more I missed him. I missed his conversations and his jokes. I missed listening to him play bass at three in the morning over FaceTime when neither of us could sleep. I missed seeing him struggle to hold back a smile when I told a stupid joke. I missed calling him just because I wanted to hear his voice.

And when I really reflected on all of  those feelings of longing and loneliness, I came to the conclusion that I was in love with Calum.

It was a blow to the stomach, really, realizing that I was in love with someone who would never love me back. And, stupidly, I thought that the best way to get over my feelings was to just let him go. He was already blowing me (and most of his other friends!) off to hang out with Anna. So, I decided that enough was enough and let him go.

I started hanging out with new friends, friends that he didn’t know, and I even spent my breaks with them. Calum fell out of my life completely and it was the hardest thing that I’ve ever gone through. I would catch myself staring at old pictures, smiling at my phone in the middle of the night. Or I would open up our old message thread and type up a message when I got good news before I remembered and deleted it.

But the hardest part of it all was that he didn’t even try to keep me around. He didn’t try to chase me.

I didn’t expect him to. I was just a friend, after all. But it still hurt, you know?

Anyway, the summer between senior year and junior year is where shit really hit the fan. (Also, sorry if you’re offended by swearing. I never know if it’s cool to do or not.)

Calum and Anna broke up just before everyone went home for summer. She had a guy back home that was waiting for her and she wanted to be with him, not have a long distance relationship with Calum. I only know this because Calum showed up at my apartment (I stayed in town for my internship), drunk off his ass.

As his only friend left in town, I became his therapist. He spent the night on my couch, telling me everything. We shared a bottle of Jack.

From there, it was a slippery slope. I want to believe that Calum kissed me first but, honestly, I don’t think I’ll ever know. We were both drunk, he was out of his mind with heartbreak and I was the first person he saw. It could’ve been anyone that he hooked up with that night.

But it wasn’t.

And the next morning, we woke up to the sun pouring into my living room, both of us naked and hungover. We didn’t talk about it. Just pretended it hadn’t happened and he left.

We didn’t talk much after that but the sex continued.

He would come over, we would get drunk, we would sleep together. Sometimes we woke up together; others, he was gone before I even thought about opening my eyes.

His heart was on the mend but mine was breaking all over again.

The summer went by way too quickly. Between the thirty hours I was working each week for my internship, the twenty five at the diner, and the off time I was spending with Calum, I don’t know how I didn’t have a mental breakdown. But by the time August rolled around, I was exhausted.

Senior year passed in a blur. Calum and I kept up our relationship (if that’s what you want to call it) but I think he could tell that it was taking a toll on me because one morning, right before our winter finals, I woke up to find a note instead of him in my bed.

He told me that he was sorry, that he should’ve seen what he was doing to me. He said that he loved me and that he’d never meant to hurt me and I believed him. He also said that he wanted to be friends again.

So, we tried it. After winter break, we went out for coffee for the first time in a long time and it was nice. It was awkward, there was a lot of unspoken tension, but it was nice, just the same. And, honestly, that’s how our friendship was afterwards. Awkward, but nice.

If our friends caught on, they didn’t say anything. They just let us be and I think that’s the best thing they could’ve done. It’s hard enough explaining here. I can’t imagine having to tell any of them.

Now, you may be thinking that we’re friends, the story’s over. But, unfortunately, it’s not. There’s still a little bit left to my story with Calum.

Over the rest of senior year, we were okay. And, until a few weeks ago, I thought we’d graduate and move on with our lives as friends. But at a party, Calum got drunk. He ended up at my apartment and he told me that he loved me. He told me that he’d dated Anna to get over me and that he wanted to actually be with me now.

But I couldn’t believe him.

I wanted to. I desperately wanted to believe that this person I’ve been in love with for nearly four years loves me back but I couldn’t. Every bone in my body was telling me that he was just drunk and that I couldn’t spill my guts to him only to have him reject me when he sobered up.

So, I asked him to leave. 

I lied to him that night. I told him that I didn’t love him in that way, that I never saw us as anything but friends with benefits. I told him that I couldn’t see a relationship with him when he pressed. And the look on his face broke my heart.

Seeing his eyes, that’s when I knew I made a mistake. But the thought of letting him in, letting him break my heart for a third time, made me panic. Those walls that he’d knocked down years ago had already been rebuilt and I couldn’t allow him to see through the cracks.

So, I let him go.

He didn’t walk at graduation. I’m not sure if that was his plan all along or if he didn’t come because of me. I wanted to apologize to him but he’s blocked my number and broke his lease the day of graduation. Our friends have promised to pass on a message to him, have promised to tell him that I’m sorry for lying to him, but I’m not sure that they will. Or if he’ll believe me.

I don’t know if I’ll ever see Calum again and that scares me. I was afraid to have my heart broken again, this time intentionally, but it’s true what they say. It’s better to have loved and lost. I wish I could’ve loved Calum the way I wanted and had him love me back.

I can only imagine it would’ve been a beautiful love.

I’m sorry for rambling, Stranger. And I’m sorry for cluttering your mailbox with this. I’m hoping this will become a dead letter, one that no one will ever read. But, if you do get this, take a chance today. Tell someone you love them. Live without fear.

Be well, Stranger.

Love,

The One with the Broken Heart

Author’s Note: This isn’t the start of my letters series. This is something else entirely. But this is the format the letters will take? They just won’t be this long. I don’t know. I was in my feelings. I wanted to do something different. How do you feel about this? I know it’s in first person and I usually hate that but it’s a letter so. I couldn’t really do it any other way.

[pricryo]

tw: abuse shit, manipulation shit, transphobia ment, death ment, christianity ment, probably more. hi i’m tim wright and today i remembered one of my abusers so naturally, while instilled with fiery rage, i thought i should make a post abt it here for reference as to why i have “don’t follow if you kin ticci-toby (creepypasta) or yato (noragami)” as one of my don’t follow criteria. there will probably be another post on this in the future because there’s really a lot to unravel about her abuse and how it’s affected myself and my friends. this is just one of the main and most notable incidents, roughly around the time our friendship truly started its decline.

putting this shit under a cut so it doesn’t clutter things up on anyone’s dash

her name is grace. i initially met her in the fourth grade (when i was around nine or ten), but i wasn’t really close friends with her until late middle school to early high school. she was always sort of uncomfortable to be around, but she was one of the few people who would talk to me, so i considered her a friend. when i was a freshman in high school, i had just been introduced to the otherkin and fictionkin communities by a friend (named cas) at the time, along with grace and another friend (her name was destiny). 

i kinfirmed being wolfkin first and foremost (i know, i know, how generic) after a lot of reflection and questioning on the subject, and cas, who was also wolfkin, suggested we make a wolfkin pack (a.k.a, mistake number one) under the presumption that all four of us were wolfkin. (hint: only half of us were)

grace agreed, claiming she was also wolfkin, and a pack was formed. now, this wasn’t the healthiest pack, realistically. we were young and honestly? a little dumb. we had this big ~pack mentality~ that was horrid and cringy to look back on, and i’m very ashamed of myself. we were overly protective of each other, saw cas as our boss, and overall were just... toxic in mindset, if i remember correctly. unfortunately, this made us super easy to manipulate.

it started in either january or february (i can’t remember which anymore), when grace told us that her long-time boyfriend (joe) had broken up with her during our high school’s winter formal dance. supposedly, it was during their first slow dance, to be specific. she claimed that he’d been abusive to her before, including hitting her, insulting her, etc., and destiny even backed this claim up by saying she’d seen it. (note: joe was openly known to be autistic in our school, keep this in mind.) we, of course, didn’t take this well. after confronting joe on the matter, he seemed confused and had genuinely no idea what was happening, even saying he hadn’t broken up with her at all.

we further confront him (this time on deviantArt) and he continues to say he has no idea, and he’s very confused over who we are. we... honestly treated him like trash. not because he was autistic, but because he was supposedly abusive. it was terrible. and while we’re doing this, grace is just feeding us more and more lies about the guy. she went as far as to make fake texts between himself and her, where he was saying shit like how we were demons, and that we needed to go to church and we needed jesus, calling grace fat and ugly, saying that he’d won her and she was just his trophy, and even being openly transphobic regarding leelah alcorn’s death, among other things. we would be like “give us his number/account, let us talk to him” and she’d always tell us “oh he deleted it right after” or some similar shit. that was red flag number one, but i trusted her (mistake number two) because she was my friend.

by this time, we're literally enraged. we told the dean of our school about it and everything. we were shit talking joe all over deviantArt and threatening him (which was so immature, and looking back on it, i hate how i handled that situation at 14) and everything. i deadass made what was supposed to be his in minecraft just to pour lava over it and burn it down. terrible shit. but the bottom line: we were very angry.

around this time, i start noticing that the way he types on deviantArt and the way he types in the “texts” don’t match up. it’s super suspicious. red flag number two. he types perfectly on deviantArt, but types exactly how grace types in the texts. i bring it up subtly and i’m all like “haha that’s pretty weird, why does he do that?” grace agrees that it’s weird and then starts saying that she recreated some of them because they were deleted too fast. the typing difference happened on all of them. again, that’s super suspicious, but i really trusted her as my friend.

things escalated. i can’t really remember most of it, but here’s some details i do remember:

there’s a fake instagram made (something along the lines of ‘weirdguy101′ or some similar shit) where art that cas and destiny had made was uploaded, supposedly owned by joe, who was claiming to have drawn it himself. none of my art was stolen. grace was the only person to have taken pictures of that art. red flag number three.

an “undercover” deviantArt account made by grace where she pretended to be a different person to interact with joe as if she was on our side.

a lot of skype calls on the subject - during one, grace calls joe on her home phone and cas and destiny make weird noises in an effort to freak him out - which was succesful.

we make both a deviantArt group and instagram to combat the fake instagram and make vague, threatening posts to him (which i’m very certain is deleted by this point).

the dean told us he spoke with joe, and that joe had zero idea what was happening at all.

we were going to go to the principal over the matter because we thought the dean didn’t take us seriously. i was absent that day because i was sick if i remember correctly, and cas and destiny didn’t go talk to the her because grace didn’t show up, either. red flag number four.

grace would intentionally rile us up if we weren’t having a conversation specifically about the conflict. like, this happened for weeks, and when we tried to have other, normal conversations, she’d butt in baout how much she hated joe and about how we should all burn down his house and shit. i’m fairly certain that some of the fake texts were just to draw our attention back on that topic. red flag number five.

and honestly? a hell of a lot more that i don’t really remember.

cas mentions that he thinks things are getting a little fishy after a while, and i tell him about what i’ve been thinking. we end up calling her on skype and he calls her out because he’s 100% certain that she had been playing us. she’s dead silent for most of the time and doesn’t even defend herself or say he’s wrong. he hangs up on her and i’m there listening to her crying alone (and it’s such an ugly noise, mind you) and i’m filled with disgust and anger and hurt. i’m there for two to three minutes listening before i hang up, too.

even after that, we’re all like, “we forgive you. just don’t do this shit again,” because we still saw her as a friend despite her 100% being trash to us, and we were still willing to move past that. and grace has the audacity to ask if we’ll go to the dean with her in the morning and explain the situation.  like.... she manipulates us into harassing and threatening a kid, pretends to be him and insults us + is transphobic as all hell, literally steals art from cas and destiny under the guise that it’s him, plays us like a game of chess for her own sick amusement.... and then expects us to help her explain to the dean that she was lying the entire time and nothing was wrong. ofc, we said no. things simmer down.

for like a day or two.

and then we’re in a group chat with a classmate named britney who says we need to stop bullying her friend. get this - grace has been showing off the screenshots of what we’ve said to her (which was in no way bullying, btw) and claiming we were bullying her. greaaaattt. grace didn’t bother to tell her the full story (a common theme with her) and now britney has taken it upon herself ot be a good samaritan. she yells at us, removes cas from the chat after one of his alters front, i add him back, and britney refuses to tell us who it was. (spoiler alert: we already know). i agree that we’ll stop “bullying” grace so she’ll leave us alone and the conversation is done.

so naturally we’re all like, “what the fuck dude, it was over? and we didn’t do anything to you? you were just bad to us?” and ofc this sets her off to continually tell us ”it’s in the past, i made mistakes, you should forgive me” even though all the shit she did was entirely intentional. initially i don’t want the reason why she did it, but i get progressively more frustrated and then start demanding to know why. she legitimately didn’t say anything other than “...” on the subject. considering how i was young and had a short fuse, i kinda go off on her abt it. because that’s such a fucking dick move. and she says “well idk what to say except sorry” as if she isn’t aware she can tell us why she did it.

i end up having a breakdown because i realize that i’m a total fucking monster who harrassed a kid and was manipulated into doing s and i don’t even get to know why. cas removes her from the group and we’re left to pick up the pieces.

i end up giving a handwritten note containing a formal apology to destiny and she agreed to give it to joe for me. all was well for a while with grace out of my life.

unfortunately, this was not the last incident i had with grace. i’ll post more on it some other time but like... dm me for her tumblr if you want to block her or some shit. she’s still out there and active on tumblr as far as i know.

bonus: a screenshot where i totally should’ve realized she was playing us, ft. me talking to joe

[thisnerdsadventures]

how operating systems went for me

the beginning

In the beginning, there was doubt. And fear. But mostly doubt, because I “sort of” knew C, and I could /kind of/ figure out page tables, and I took the prereq for the class, so it shouldn’t be that bad? Well, I was expecting it to be bad, but absolutely nothing worse than 046 right? because that was known to be the worst of CS at this school, so nothing could be worse than that....right?

Wrong. WRONG! First class I was like, ah you know, i know Linux. I’ve OPENED A FILE BEFORE. I know what a FILE DESCRIPTOR IS. (wrong. i truly did not know what a file descriptor was, in all of its essence.) If you read my Admissions post, you’d know that my life was in the process of being truly wrecked by my paper revisions, so I wasn’t able to start on the first lab until the weekend, and it took me around an hour to do the first exercise, which was really one solid line of code, and I was like well ok, there’s only like five exercises, shouldn’t be too bad.

WRONG AGAIN! the last exercise will forever be engraved in my brain as xargs because it took me and my friend K a solid TEN HOURS. to do the last exercise. JUST THE LAST ONE. It was the first time in maybe like a year I went to an office hours. I had never spent so long thinking about recursion in my life. I have really vivid memories of sitting at the rooftop garden with K at the poolside chairs near the Marriott staring back at the googz office, tear streaming down my face, as I thought ahead about whether I should drop the class early. (ok it wasn’t this dramatic, but I was definitely staring longingly at the coffee baristas through the window.)

And after we finished the lab, we thought, oh maybe this is just a poor learning curve. Maybe it gets better from here.

the crisis begins

*say it with me this time* WROOOOONG - we really thought the next lab would be better because it seemed like the last exercise of the last lab, but slightly expanded. but L o L! we had spent a solid five hours with no progress up until like 3am, when I lied in bed in the dark and panic emailed my advisor, asking to meet the next day. There is a calendar event in my calendar called Cry to John (john’s my advisor). I spent perhaps the entire next day up until my meeting at 4pm working on the lab, making a bit more progress after going to office hours. During my meeting, I relayed how hard the class had been so far, and whether I should drop it to the undergrad version of the class, and it got to the point where I was just like “but its just. SO HARD” and he replied “....it’s a grad class dude”

After I returned home, I consulted my head of house and he also suggested I either drop the class or drop it to the undergrad version. I really was like “lol my dude, I’m already only on 42 units, I can’t really just drop this class. it’s already like two and a half weeks into the semester.” So I ended up dropping it to undergrad status.

A few more late nights pulled because I *surprise* have OTHER CLASSES other than this one, and I still ended up staying up til nearly 3am the night before career fair finishing up the lab. A total of more than 20 hours spent on this lab, and I thought, maybe just maybe this would be the hardest lab.

And the next lab wasn’t too bad. I had spent a solid 12 hours on it, but got it done pretty efficiently. Unfortunately, it was still the time in the semester where I was doing like 1923819238 things and catching up with 1928319238 people, so it felt overwhelming, but wasn’t /that/ bad. so i thought things were turning up! I also met up with my old googz team at around this point and told them that it was a hell class, and they relayed their sympathies.

lazy_alloc

So was it in fact, getting better? WRONGGGGGG. the next lab was perhaps the WORST LAB OF THE ENTIRE CLASS. By this point, we had hit the first week of october, and I had deleted instagram off my phone in an attempt to better focus on classes. due to other things happening, like various house gov events, an 18.06 exam, and another pset, I was only able to put in around 6 hours of office hours time on this lab before Wednesday night, where K and I quickly realized that this shit was no joke, unlike the last lab. We had also met our other friend at office hours who would become the third member of our group chat kalloc==0 (iykyk), and we befriended her after including her in our sarcastic comments about lazy allocation. It was maybe four hours into an all-nighter that we went to Verdes, realized Verdes was closed, and proceeded to sit on the floor of the student center and yell about how hard this class was.

It was then like 5am, and I decided to sleep and wake up in the morning to look at it again. It was then 8:30 am, and then it was 12pm, and then it was 4pm, and I had mandatory class. My friend passed me in Stata and asked how i was, and i replied “look at me. LOOK AT ME”

It was then 6pm. I had spent 20 hours of the past 24 hours doing this lab. and the most extraordinary thing happened -- I got the OK. I cried. I weeped. I texted my friends and let them know I was alive. And I slept for a long time.

exam szn

Ok truly, things could not get that much worse after this right? WRONGGGGGG. the first exam was just around the corner! After maybe a week of rest, I started the grind, a painful realization that I knew nothing, I did not truly know what a page table was, I had no idea how a system call worked, and the throwing shit at the wall style of doing the labs was indeed going to catch up with me. It was the long weekend, but I was still studying 4-6 hours a day on top of everything else I was doing, and many nights in the student center were spent in sadness. I barely remember anything from this caffeine/adrenaline fueled week. And I got a whopping 40% on the exam! yay me

All I remember after the exam was crying from shock in Stata after the exam because it was so hard, eating too much at hot pot and nearly throwing up in the Uber, and almost punching a hole in the ceiling because I was so happy that my score was not single digits. I was actually so tired after a week of studying nonstop that I had to S^3 one of my other psets because I legitimately could not think nor read. My friend was then like why dont you just yeet to new york for a break, and i was like who in the right mind would do that??? and then i yeeted to new york (as you can read about in another post of mine). Truly an amazing decision because I really needed a break from that craziness. After that, the learning curve did chill a little. My life though? no, I went to Princeton for a hackathon, stayed up all night doing stuff for our party, and then managed to finish the very last lab of the class right before Thanksgiving break.

the finish line

This brings us to the last week of the semester, where I thank my lucky stars I dropped to the undergrad version of the class, because I watched K suffer through a whole week of all nighters for the final project, in which I definitely would have straight up had a mental breakdown, because that week was still somehow one of the worst weeks of the semester for me (two poster sessions, exam, two week pset). But luckily I was straight up j chilling until the final because i had finished the last lab before break.

obviously, this takes us to last week, which was our finals week, where I spent 40-50 hours over the course of a week just studying for this exam, which features a day where I had done a midterm from 9am-12pm and then proceeded to study from 2pm to 2am for this operating systems class, and I had had three cups of coffee, which I don’t strongly recommend as a life decision. But after much strife and anxiety, I had mustered out a 60/76 on the final exam, which I thought was a solid B, but much to my shock and my other friend’s delight (she checked my class grade for me), I actually somehow got an A after this shit of a class, despite not knowing how to use a pointer 3 months ago, despite trying to survive against grad students, despite having to pour 18239128983x energy into understanding lectures??? somehow. anyways, now i am absolutely sure I have gone through the worst thing you could ever go through in this school. if anything turns out to be harder than this, i’m pretty sure it’s not worth it lol

[gryffon]

gonna post that thing i wrote about my abusive ex, this isnt a callout but its just like, all the shit ive been wanting to say and havent felt like i could. gonna namedrop people, gonna not give a fuck, i cant cw for everything but there are rape mentions, physical assault mentions and like. general feelings that happen the wake of emotional abuse.

i dont check often but my ex has deleted the blog she was currently using, (@windowpainter or somethng. she was @hamgubber before, previously @miniaturehorse if anybody remembers from when we were totgether and would post on each others blogs nonstop lol) she has a history of lurking around and worming her way into befriending popular people in online subcommunities i am part of or adjacent to. i have not spoken to her since i realized she was abusive and started to try to pull out of our codependent dynamic. she panicked when i realized actions speak louder than words and her long winded apologies, excuses, and textbookish tripe about DBT and getting better or whatever meant nothing in the face of months of repeated lying, breaking of promises, degradation, disrespect to me as a person, disregard of my physical disabilities, insults, patronization, manipulation, multiple instances of cheating, antagonization, neglect, extortion and overall emotional abuse. when she caught wind that i was going to leave her she wrote me a series of emails totaling over 30,000 words, all varying from "i love you please dont leave me we can work this out. breaking up with me is weak." to "you are not a victim. you are not a victim. here is a categorized list of the ways in which you are abusive while i downplay my own behaviors and patronize you. here's an ultimatum and you are not allowed to respond with more than one sentence." to which i disregarded and wrote up a long, thoughtful reply and chose to never send, ending contact with her for good. this was like, 2013 or 2014.

she never called me out, and i never called her out despite giving very serious consideration to it. i was listening to the advice of my therapist at the time, who told me that she thrives on drama and spends her life constantly creating it, and to give her that kind of attention was exactly what she wanted and would only engage her more in my life and be more degrading to my mental health. the best course of action was to give her nothing, and not give her any more power or influence over me, any footholds or any more of my time, consideration, energy or thought. if anybody reading this has endured emotional abuse from somebody you love, you know it is extremely difficult to totally ignore somebody like this, especially when that person has isolated you from the majority of your support system and friends and you have shaped your entire identity around your relationship with your abuser. but i have followed my therapists advice. i have been working on moving on.

still, over the past few years ive had my mutuals contacted by her friends and told to stop talking to me. ive had people i follow put her and her friends on my dash, which up until recently would send me into a panic that lasted several hours. i have a lot of people in the lesbian/commie/leftist/trans/etc/whatever circles on tumblr who just like randomly have me blocked for no reason (since i dont give a fuck and im going for a spirit of total honesty here, ill name drop @butchcommunist, who she dated for a period of time iirc. a lot of my followeds and mutuals reblog from her. i made a point not to check either of their blogs after finding out but it was upsetting since i would see julia all over my dash. that connection still exists in my mind and its pretty upsetting.). ultimately, and rationally i know that these things do not matter that much. i have a vibrant, healthy and loving circle of friends outside of the internet/tumblr and some randos on the internet having me blocked doesn't really mean anything in the scheme of things. still, when this shit happened it felt terrifying and i was horrified, my emotions magnified by the effects of emotional abuse. despite my VERY intense urge for closure, i try to keep as far away from her as possible.

i gave this woman a year of my life that in my memory is defined by her. i was very madly in love and i spent countless hours at her beck and call, countless hours in calls and in text conversations with her, countless hours supporting her through breakdowns, countless hours talking through her fears and worries, countless hours defending her when she stirred up drama, countless hours defending her horrible behavior to my friends, countless hours rationalizing her abuse to myself and people who approached me with worry, countless hours loving her and wondering why it felt so horrifically painful to be with somebody who told you they wanted to spend the rest of their life with you. almost all the money i was making at the time was spent on her. i helped her move across the continent. i had her at my house for weeks. she fucking took out a loan from my mom. despite how big a role she played in my life, over the past 3 years since our falling out i have only checked her blog less times than i can count on my fingers, usually in moments of distress and in the spirit of self-destruction.

i know for a fact she has convinced her friends to check my blog for her god knows how many times, telling them about her fear of me as a 'dangerous person', that i’m going to call her out, her "fear" that im obsessing over her and am quietly plotting to ruin her life. she's scared for a good reason, but not because i'm an abusive bitter ex out on a smear campaign to slander her innocent name and ruin her life in the name of revenge. she's scared because she knows i have some undeniably serious receipts on her. i have receipts of her sending me a horrifying letter her ex had written her describing a graphic instance of a time my ex had raped her, and of her admitting outright to the rape. i have logs of her checking her rape victim's blog and telling me how exasperated she was her victim was still angry with her even after she apologized, and couldn't understand why her victim was stuck on her and wouldnt move on, going on to blame modern feminism and its tendency to portray abusers and rapists as incorrigible. i have receipts of her admitting to perpetrating emotional and physical abuse in her previous relationships, like an instance where she describes losing control of herself and beating her ex senselessly. i have talked with exes, who confirm stories she had told me where she would cut her arms in her presence, deep enough that her life was at risk, and then refuse to go to the hospital, leaving her girlfriend to either bandage and tend to her wounds or else my ex would bleed out and die. those are just the more horrific ones. i have many receipts that document her emotional abuse towards me as well, which im barely even getting into here. i know plenty of other people have experiences with her and accounts of interacting with her that undeniably portrays her as a serial abuser, rapist, and extortionist and exposes the falsehood of her charming and intelligent persona.

several times i have considered calling her out because she has proven herself beyond a doubt that she is a serial abuser who leaves a trail of burning bridges in her wake. i have no doubts that the evidence i have against her is completely solid, and her claims of my status as an abuser that she perpetuates to her friends are built on pillars of sand. i am not afraid of anything she could bring to the table anymore. i have spoken quite a bit with exes and ex friends (some of which sided with her during our breakup and who eventually ended up cutting off, and we reconnected with years after), and they all suggest the same shit. she is manipulative to her very core and will not stop hurting and using people until she dies.

these are big claims and again, this isn't a callout and the reason im not providing the logs is because im just trying to get out my thoughts in an honest way and im not trying to make a case about anything. this is cathartic. im so fucking tired of feeling like its a secret. i dont even know what blog shes using or whatever and while that scares me, i don't care anymore. people who are still semi-big names in the online communities i drift around in still have me blocked and a lot of times i wish i could message them and tell them "hey, you know she's wrong, and i have absolute proof." but my self worth is high enough that i dont need to go around convincing every single rando who doesn't like me that im a good person, not to mention the risk of indirect contact through those who's lives she is still present in.

for a long time the way i coped was by holding onto the idea that she would apologize to me, and i could finally have closure. she apologized to the ex i mentioned earlier, and because of that i hoped she would grow enough as a person to realize that there is literally no way any rational being could look at our relationship and say that, yeah, i was the one hurting her. apparently thats too much credit to give her, and i realize she only apologized to her ex because she wanted me to think she was changing, growing and a good person at heart who just had a rough past. after enough time, enough conversations with people who she was previously close to, i have accepted that she will never truly dedicate herself to getting better. she will always be using people, always be hurting people, always lying, always hypocritical, always disingenuous and always covering her ass by hiding under the language of victimhood, trauma, recovery, self-improvment, DBT, and therapy to convince her victims that her offences are missteps in her journey to improvement. 

this isn't a callout, this isn't meant to be circulated as a warning, this isn't meant to be any sort of vengeance or crusade. i dont even think shes fuckin on tumblr anymore lol. i don't care anymore. i dont care what people take this as. this is me writing an honest, open, reflective, cathartic processing of the scenario that impacted my teenage years so severely.  this isnt concise or well written and i dont need it to be. i've spent too many years wanting to talk about this, needing to process it more openly, but being riddled with horrific anxiety and fear, worrying about her and her social influence and her ability to impact my life. but its been a long time. ive worked hard at this. ive worked hard to get past this. ive worked hard to learn how to be with people who will treat me with kindness. i needed to write this and i needed to post this without editing every sentence a thousand times. this is largely unedited. i dont care if this makes me look pathetic or obsessed with her ive been letting these feelings stir for years and im just ready to breathe again.

if you want to talk about this post DM me or whatever. if you know her and think its all bullshit and you want logs, sure. i dont have anything to hide anymore. her name is viv and she is the worst person i have ever met and i feel sorry that i gave her so much of my love. thanks.

[minigoblinnn]

Hello! Long Time No See

Hello everyone idk how many people will see this because I don’t have a lot of followers but that’s okay. HI! I haven’t used this account in almost three years I think. I’m pretty sure the last time I used this was possibly my freshman year of high school and I am now going to be a senior in September. So the world has kind of gone to shit recently but I had some soul searching while stuck in my house for over 3 months and realized that I needed to try to find what makes me happy. So bc we have all the time in the world rn bc 1. quarantine and 2. school is over, I thought I would try to revisit things that I used to love from freshman year and before. Yes I am 17 and I am no longer a hardcore stan like I was in middle school but it’s been a little refreshing trying to find myself again. If you’ve made it this far on this post thank you so much! This is more of a revamp of myself bc I realized over quarantine that I haven’t been truly happy in almost 3 years so whoops. 

Anyways this is gonna be sort of like a long rant but if you end up reading to the end I really appreciate it I hope I don’t bore you!

1. A major thing I had to come to terms with during quarantine was that I am indeed depressed. For the past 3 years I have been shoving down my inner struggles really deep within myself and never officially addressed it. As I’m sure many others who struggle with mental health have had to deal with the same difficulties of being stuck at home, it was a very shitty experience that I had to endure. I think a lot that attributed to it was the pressure of school and the rapid change of being in school one day to having a complete flip was also a major adjustment. As someone who has major control issues and hates very big change all at once this was very overwhelming for me as I’m sure it was for many of you. With this, I also realized I never prioritized myself before quarantine. I never talked about my struggles with friends and I was very irritable around late April/early May when it came to a specific friend. I previously had a major breakdown in school bc I was super anxious over losing this friendship back in February so that was also affecting my mental health extremely. Since my birthday in May, I have since slowly learned to prioritize myself and to face my struggles instead of avoiding the problem like I usually do. I now have a therapist that I talk to weekly over the phone and also with school ending it has released a lot of pressure that I had on me before. I still haven’t really discussed it all yet but I am the type that doesn’t like talking about me in that way or discussing myself in a vulnerable way but I hope I will slowly learn to improve on that. School wise, let’s just say the 4th marking period was an extremely ugly one. My sleep is something that is on and off. I am constantly exhausted but I cannot sleep so I’m trying different methods to try to fix my sleep but that is a uphill battle. I am currently writing this at 4:39 am so if that gives you any indication there you go.

2. Since there hasn’t been anything else to do and I don’t have my license yet, I have been getting back into things I used to enjoy freshman year and prior as I stated above. On my journey of trying to find any ounce of happiness again, I have been re-watching and revisiting things I used to “fangirl” over such as tv shows, youtubers, etc. 

Shows I have re-visitied include: The Vampire Diaries, Teen Wolf, Reign, Avatar: The Last Airbender, I finally watched Shadowhunters all the way through and not just the first season

Youtubers: Maddi Bragg (she recently rejoined youtube so...), I also have re-watched Dan and Phil Games, specifically the sims series bc I used to love it. 

And bc I re-watched Shadowhunters I re-watched the Mortal Instruments: City Of Bones movie that is on Netflix and before I get bashed I used to love that movie bc I personally think it is more of what I envisioned of what the books come to life would look like minus the ending...I also really like Jamie Campbell Bower and Lily Collins so personal bias but Malec on the tv show are immaculate. Controversial topic I know. And just earlier last night ig I finished reading City of Bones and I’m gonna re-read the entire TMI series and re-read/finish TID series. 

3. Along with revisiting things I have sort of slowly reinvented myself ig. I cut my hair right after my birthday so before it was about right past my chest and I cut it to roughly above my shoulders and I re-dyed my hair black bc I cannot be a ginger. My music taste has also slightly put more alt music and indie groups. Everyday I find new bands such as Meet me @ the altar, 100 gecs, and I recently got into $uicideBoy$...but honestly I get good music recommendations from tiktok so ofc. Also with the current climate in the US I have been a lot more outspoken when it comes to politics and my activism. I have a pretty conservative republican father who listens to fox news for however long I can remember. And after the 2016 election, I never really tried to argue/debate my father about Trump and everything but I also was not super informed in politics. But now I am absolutely never silence. I have gotten in plenty of arguments mostly with my mother about my activism. I have also gotten into painting political statement paintings after I painted my BLM protests signs. I have put these paintings around my room but my mom does not like them but I don’t care. So I am definitely wayyyyy more vocal when it comes to social issues and politics and I am not afraid to back down. I think before I didn’t speak up bc I didn’t want to argue with my father bc he would shut me down immediately when I tried to say anything against trump. But now I don’t care. Bc everything he stands for goes against me and my existence so I will not be silent as much as my parents want to. They don’t understand that I have always had these opinions, I just never expressed them as much until now bc I didn’t know how to properly express it. That I am super proud of.

4. Another thing I sort of realized ig was that I can now fully say I am definitely pansexual. Bro even typing that is like wow. Okay okay back story. So freshman year I told my two best friends at the time that I believed I was pan bc I’ve always thought that but I was never comfortable enough to say I was apart of the lgbtq+ community bc idk I just don’t feel like I have a right to? Bc after freshman year I slowly moved to other best friends and with them and my family I have always referenced to only being interested in men and ig I instilled this norm that I could only talk about liking men in front of them and my friends so I never felt comfortable addressing it. I still always had that thought in my head and especially in recent months I have been turned off from guys in general besides maybe 4, all who are actors or Kurtis Conner lowkey. So I’m not really looking to date anytime soon so it doesn’t really matter but I just don’t see me dating a guy. I think about it for about 2 seconds and then I snap back to reality. But yeah I made a pan flag painting and put it in my room and my parents have no idea what it is so they won’t even question me. But I don’t feel comfortable addressing it to my friends or my family, oh definitely not. I’ve put it on my second tiktok account but I don’t let my best friends ig see it so yeah i will probably never tell them until college. I’m sure most of them won’t care but again, I never really addressed personal things about myself with them unless it’s like my depression where I couldn’t hide it anymore but anyways that’s just how I am.

So things I’ve learned since being stuck at home for 3 months: I’m depressed, I’m pan, I’m a leftist/left-leaning, and I will no longer just say I will beat someone up but I will actually do it not that I haven’t already but that’s not important. But anyways, idk how often I will use this but this is an update. I might delete some old posts based on me now and everything but yeah I will hopefully use this to update on the things I revisit! Hope everyone is doing mostly well! If you read all of this thank you thank you thank you! Sending virtual hugs and kisses!

sorry for any errors, I recently put on these long acrylics and I’m using my laptop and I haven’t had long nails in a while so bear with me :)

[rosepenrants]

!!!Trigger Warning!!!

I’m currently 18 years old. I lost my virginity to my boyfriend, at the time, at age 14. You know how when you meet your first love they become your first everything? Well, in this case...everything means, everything. I thought he was making me happy. I thought HE was the reason I was still alive. When he caught wind of that statement, he knew that I’d do anything for him. And I would. And I did. Let me start at the beginning....

Freshman year of high school. I knew a couple people from my middle school, but I wasn’t that popular, at all. Our homecoming fell on October 30th, and the people I had met up with, ditched me on the dance floor. Before I left for the game/dance, I was thinking for hours. And I talked myself out of committing suicide. I told myself if I didn’t make at least one friend tonight, I would go through with it. I’m standing all alone on the dance floor where the dj was, no one came near me. I zoned out, thinking about the ways I could’ve done it. Until he walked up to me and scared me. He was about 6′1″ while I was 5′4″. Since it was Halloween themed everyone was in costume. He mumbled something through his mask. I couldn’t hear him, he was wearing a robe with a hood that had a cloth covering his face, where his eyes should’ve been were two red glowing dots. I backed away as I said “I can’t hear you.” He took off his mask and the eyes and repeated “I said, ‘What are you doing just standing on the dance floor?’” I couldn’t answer, so he continued, “Do you know how to dance?” I just shook my head. I couldn’t confide in some stranger, so I stayed quiet while staring at my shoes. A couple minutes went by, and I was sure he had left by now, I looked up and was greeted by him. He looked disappointed for a second, once he realized I was looking at him he smiled, I just smiled back. He started to say something but as soon as he did, one of his friends came up and started talking, I knew his friend, we went to middle school together. His friend left and the boy before me continued, “Since you don’t know how to dance would you like to dance with me?” I smiled, thinking to myself that this could be the reason I stopped myself from doing that. I nodded, and it wasn’t a slow song at all. Yet he grabbed my hands and told me to start swaying with him. As the tempo kept increasing we did too. By the time the song was over we were jumping and laughing.We got off the dance floor after that and he asked me again, “Why were you just standing n the dance floor?” I told explained to him how the people I met up with had left me and I just started thinking. We got to talking, we got to know each other a little bit more, until I realized I didn’t know his name. He told me, and I exchanged the favor. The night was coming to an end, and he asked for my number, I gave it to him. He walked me out of the gym and to my dads car. He texted me as soon as he waved goodbye. I smiled and we texted almost all night. As Halloween day went on, we texted. I was handing out candy and he was with his friend and his friends little sister, trick-or-treating. He acted like he liked me, and I liked him. We didn’t have any classes together but most of our classes were close. He told me one night, that the next time he sees me in person, he’d kiss me. I hadn’t had my first kiss yet so I was scared. I didn’t tell him that. 

November 5th, he told me to stay after school for tutoring, his Spanish teacher, and my french teacher were the same person, so we stayed after together and talked while the teacher was helping other kids. I got done first and he told me to go behind the school and sit on a bench. I did, but I curled up in a ball, knees to my chest and my head in my knees. As he came out I finally confessed that I haven’t kissed anyone. He said it was okay and to just follow his lead. I did as he told. He stopped after a couple of seconds and started to laugh. I started to think that this was a prank, and he really didn’t like me. I was about to cry, but before I did, he told me that I just need to relax, put my feet on the ground and put a hand on his face. I did as he told me to. Everything he did in the kiss, I retaliated. About a week and a half goes by, and were still talking, but one day as I’m on the bus, I see him. And he’s with some girl, I thought they were friends until i saw them kiss. And i did know this girl, she went to my middle school, and she bullied me everyday. I texted him about it and he told me they were dating. I got depressed, I self harmed that night. His girlfriend told him to stop talking to me, and he did. After a month he texts me saying they broke up. We talk about it and he tells me it’s because he couldn’t stop thinking about me. I told him he needed to regain my trust, he did in about a month.

January 13th, we started to go out. We kissed in school and at our houses, but that’s all. Until about a week, he started to touch me. When I told him no, he said, “Well if I can’t pleasure you, can you pleasure me?” I wish I didn’t, but I agreed. We didn’t do anything except kiss for the rest of the night. The next day at school, he asks me to skip my 5th period, which was math class. I had first lunch, while he had third. So, I stayed in the small gym until he showed up. He took me to a staircase and told me there was no camera in here and rarely any teachers/staff came through it. I was scared, I’ve never skipped class before. He told me it was going to be alright. He made me feel safe. So I said okay. He leaned in and kissed me, as things got a little heated up, he pushed me against the wall behind me, and started to push me to my knees. Obviously if I hadn’t had my first kiss, I definitely didn’t know how to do this. He described to me how and made me do this until he came. This became routine, every school day during 5th period, he made me skip and pleasure him. He seemed to enjoy it, and if he was happy, I was happy. Or so I thought. This went on for the entirety of our relationship. A couple weeks in, after him begging me, I gave into him asking if he could pleasure me. But I didn’t want to do it at school, so we went to his house. and he did it. I enjoyed it and he did too.

February 10th, it was a school day, but it was a snow day. The snow was mushy and muddy, but it felt nice out. He texted me around 9 AM asking if I could come over.I told him not at the moment, my parents weren’t awake. He told me to sneak out and come over. I asked what was so urgent. He told me he needed me. Not the way I had been pleasuring him, he meant 100%. He wanted to have sex. I told him that I didn’t know if I was ready or not. He manipulated me, saying if I truly loved him, I’d go. I thought he was the only thing keeping me happy. I felt like I owed him my life. So I went. We were supposed to meet half way. But I ended up walking about 80% to his house. He met with me the last 20%. Once we got to his house he told me to take off my shoes outside. I did, but I just untied them cause he told me to stay on the porch while he makes sure his sister wasn’t in the living room. She wasn’t so I proceeded inside with no shoes. We walked to his room, and to secure the door, he pushed his dresser against the door. We sat on hi bed awkwardly, about 5 minutes of sitting there in silence, I was about to tell him that I was definitely NOT ready, but before I could get the words out, he kissed me. It still didn’t change my mind, so as he laid me down, I told him I wasn’t ready. He looked at me confused saying, “You love me right?” I nodded, “Then let me have you.” I didn’t say anything, and he took it as a go ahead. After he finished, he got up and told me to get dressed. It was my first time and he didn’t cuddle me or anything. I got dressed while he made sure the coast was clear, as it was we got outside, I put my shoes on and we started walking. He told me he loved me, and that he enjoyed it. I just agreed. He walked me to the end of his street. And kissed me bye, telling me to text him when i get home.

Throughout our relationship, we exchanged pictures, me more so than him. He also made me take videos of myself as well. I didn’t and still don’t like my body, so I hated that 100%. After sending those pictures and videos, I deleted them off my phone and the messages. Just off my phone, so he still had them. One day he asked me to send, and he sent one first. After I sent mine, they were off my phone immediately. His, I didn’t delete his. I would just delete our whole conversation. After this time I didn’t, I got straight in the shower. My mom told me to get dressed and come to her room. I did so. Back then, my parents went through mine and my sisters phones. I didn’t realize that’s what my mom was doing. So, I didn’t delete anything. She saw the ‘sexting’ we did after the pictures. She yelled saying “You don’t talk to someone like this unless you’ve had sex.” As she scrolled up she saw his picture. She asked me then if I had sex. I didn’t answer and she knew that meant that I had. She started to cry and my dad came up to their room. She told me to tell my dad. I did. I got yelled at and grounded. I was also forced to break up with my boyfriend. I did, in front of my parents. But at school we talked, and we started to date in secret. It was mid-March. One night I had a mental breakdown and almost killed myself. I wrote notes and everything. My boyfriend talked me down, told me to tear up each note, except his. He wanted me to bring his to school the next day. I did. When I got to school, I got informed that our schools power was out. And classes were cancelled until they ran again. School wasn’t cancelled just classes. I met up with my boyfriend and gave him the note. He read it, and didn’t cry or make a face. After he was done reading it, he folded it back up and put it in his pocket. He asked if I wanted to go to a place near school. I said sure. My fascination is nature, it calms me down. He brought me to a field. And took me to the middle of it. Since it was March, it was muddy. It was breath taking. I took it all in, and he grabbed me and hugged me. After about a minute of hugging, he pulled back and started kissing me sweetly. It got heated quickly, he pulled away from the kiss and simply said, “You might want to lay down for this.” I definitely didn’t want to do this, not after I tried to kill myself the night before. He was already laying me on my back, and I finally got the courage to say “No, I don’t want to do this.” His reply was too quick for comfort, he said firmly, “Sure you do, just be quiet.” And proceeded to undress me and his lower half. He broke the button off my pants, and got my black shirt all muddy. At this point I realized that this relationship couldn’t go any longer. That night I was thinking about all the times we’ve done something sexual. From the beginning I didn’t want to do it at all. Remind you, I was still skipping my 5th period to give him a blow job. Every day. I did some research, and as it turns out. Almost to the T, I was being date raped by my boyfriend. This whole time. After I broke it off, and was giving him his stuff back, he was threatening to kill himself. I talked him down, and I have barely spoken to him since.

I do have questions for him though...even though he won’t see this.

Why did you choose me at the dance? Why did you take advantage of me, day after day, after day? Why did you hurt me so much? Do you regret anything you did to me?

[socialattractionuk]

16 people open up about their most brutal breakups

(Illustration: Liberty Antonia Sadler for Metro.co.uk)

Breakups suck. But some are worse than others.

If you’ve managed to have an easy breakup, and have even stayed civil with your ex, you’re one of the lucky ones.

Other people haven’t been so successful.

Breakups hurt. They can be traumatic. They can affect your ability to trust or to open up your heart ever again.

We spoke to 16 people about their most brutal breakups.

Here’s what they said.

‘He said it was for the best’

‘I had been seeing this guy for 10-ish months when he suddenly dumped me. Didn’t tell me why, just that “it was for the best”.

‘Fast forward a month later I was feeling uneasy. A doctor’s appointment later I found out the guy gave me an STD and that I suffered a miscarriage.

‘Told the guy, he confessed he was screwing one of my ‘friends’. She gave him the STD, then he gave it me.

‘Realised and hoped I would get with someone else and blame ‘him’. Oh and his response to me having a miscarriage was “well least it didn’t have my nose”. So that was fun.’

‘He left me for another girl during a breakdown’

‘We were together for six years and I had bad mental health problems. One month I was in a really low place. I was contemplating ending my life and was under the Crisis mental health services.

‘One weekend he went out with “friends” and didn’t come home. I trusted him so didn’t think anything of it.

‘Two days later he ended it with me. He deleted and blocked me on social media despite me still living in our shared home and sharing bills together.

‘Two weeks later he was in a relationship with another girl. He was pictured with her on the night he didn’t come home.

‘To add extra pain they posted a photo of themselves together, and she was wearing my jumper.’

(Picture: Ella Byworth for Metro.co.uk)

‘He said I needed to find somewhere else to live’

‘I was suffering from PTSD and really bad anxiety after being sexually assaulted. For the first time in a while I managed to leave the home we shared together only to I come back and find he’d packed a bag and disappeared.

‘He didn’t answer his phone and I only found out he was breaking up with me when I checked my emails.

‘He said that it was over, he was staying at his parent’s place and I needed to find somewhere else to live. I genuinely thought I’d never get over it but now I see it as him doing me a favour as I got to see how unreliable he was before getting married or having kids.’

‘He’s getting married’

‘He texted me the day my best friend was getting engaged (it was a surprise for her but her boyfriend had organised a party) to tell me he wouldn’t be coming because he didn’t want to see me anymore (after two years together).

‘Found out later he had slept with someone he worked with two days before and they were in a relationship three days after he did that (though I have messages from him saying he made a mistake and just needed a break).

‘They are getting married this year. He basically played me around until he knew this girl wanted a future, when he was 100% sure she did, he dropped me!

‘I had to spend the whole day being happy for my friend while literally dying inside. I was so happy for her but it was super hard.’

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‘He nagged me about my weight’

‘One ex became obsessed with what I ate and nagging me about my weight.

‘He was completely unsympathetic when I was diagnosed with Lyme disease, let me go to A&E alone, then due to all the medication I was taking I was gaining weight but not hungry and I just snapped after more hurtful comments.

‘The worst part is he collapsed at work three months later and it turned out he had a brain tumour, which is what had caused the personality changes and lack of empathy. He’s still undergoing treatment and apologised but I had a lot of guilt over it.’

(Picture : Ella Byworth for Metro.co.uk)

‘He’d been having a seven month affair’

‘Husband was in a crisis and it made me crash and burn, ended up having a breakdown and looked after by mental health teams, only to find out ten months later he’d been having a seven month affair with a girl he worked with.’

‘He dumped me on the day I was getting a biopsy’

‘A guy dumped me on the day I was having a biopsy on my cervix after getting very bad smear results.

‘Through tears I told the nurse that it wasn’t because I was scared, but because i’d been dumped. “Did he know you had this today?” she asked.

‘”Yes”, I replied.

‘”Then he’s a c***”.’

‘He didn’t know what he wanted anymore’

‘I was getting ready to spend New Year’s Eve with my partner of six years. As I was about to get in the car to go to his, he called me and told me he “didn’t know what he wanted” anymore. Left me hanging in radio silence for eight days then officially ended it.

‘It turned out he’d been cheating on me.

‘I spent NYE alone with my cats and the next week of my life in absolute turmoil not having a clue where this had come from… we’d just spent a lovely Christmas together! The girl he left me for was someone I went to college with, who he’d been working with.’

‘We were making an album together’

‘My ex and I were together for ten years, had forged a career together, and then we suddenly found ourselves at the end. It was extremely painful for both of us, but we both did everything we could to make sure the other had what they needed.

‘We were making an album together at the time, crying in the vocal booth between takes, living in the same apartment writing songs together. It was tough, and it’s the worst I’ve experienced – but what you went through was truly awful.’

‘He went to South Africa and ghosted me’

‘My ex was going to South Africa and told me as it was only for a few weeks we’d still speak and it would be fine. Literally as soon as he left he ghosted me.’

(Picture: Ella Byworth for Metro.co.uk)

‘He’d changed his mind about marriage and kids’

‘Ex-husband phoned me from work one night after 13 months of marriage to tell me he’d “changed his mind about marriage/kids.”

‘He sent a mate to collect his stuff and I never saw him again.

‘Best thing that ever happened – Went on to have a baby girl three years later. So thank you!!’

‘He left me in debt’

‘I found out my ex was cheating on me, then when I left I had to try to pay all the bills and all the debt he had left me in (£13k), I tried to get my stuff back but had donated everything to charity. I was left in so much debt and had no clothes or anything.’

‘He broke up with me on New Year’s Eve’

‘After seven years my ex let us move into a new flat. Signed a lease. Spent the day at IKEA buying new furniture, then putting up all this new furniture, before breaking up with me out of the blue.

Oh and it was New Year’s Eve. Spent midnight at Reading services drinking tea.’

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‘We got married young’

‘I married the first time very young. I was not 20 until a few months after we married. I worked as a night audit at a hotel. I decided to get off early and surprise my husband. I was the one that got surprised – he and one of his coworkers were in our bed together.’

‘He said we should go back to dating’

‘I had an ex say we should go back to just dating. No label on it. He then basically ghosted me after a day or so of this and turns out he ended up with a girl from his workplace that same week.’

‘He was having an affair’

‘My ex was having an affair.

‘I am severely disabled. One day he came back from his bit on the side and told me to get out. Me and wheelchair ended up on the street.

‘He refused to let me have my cat or my things. Left me in £12k debt, and he had claimed ESA in my name.’

MORE: Six men open up about what it’s like to be pegged by women and why they loved it

MORE: People tell us the heartbreaking stories of why they broke up with their best friend

[mewithoutyou-journal-blog]

day two

I wake up, it’s 5:26am. I don’t feel as if this is real. This can’t be real. This didn’t happen. I lay in bed and I stare at the wall, replaying the past 9+ months of my life with you at the center of it.

My therapist, my lover, my best friend, the one I look up to and depend on, the one I confide in, the one who keeps me balanced.

I check my phone religiously as if I’m going to find a message from you telling me this is all just a joke.

Nothing.

Derek calls, he wants to go to the temple together. Reality hits and I realize that’s the last place I should put this disheveled shell of a person on the verge of a mental breakdown. Him and Mal convince me that I need food and alcohol, so they take me out to the Matchbox diner for drinks and to talk me through things.

I felt somewhat ok for a minute during brunch. They tell me that I’m a fucking incredible, intelligent person who doesn’t deserve to be someone’s lousy side dish. They tell me that I deserve to be cherished and wholeheartedly, unconditionally loved by someone who only wants me. Someone who doesn’t have a wife. Someone who truly loves me, and only me. I want to believe their words. I want to feel worthy of being loved by someone like that, but instead I feel sick. Their words hover around me, but I don’t comprehend what’s being said. I know they’re just trying to make me feel better, but they don’t understand the connection we had. No one will ever understand the connection we had.

I receive an email from you saying that you have some things you need to say to me. I don’t know whether or not to email you back or delete you from my life altogether. I still have a small amount of hope that you just want to get together just hug me and make everything all better. To take all this pain away.

I go home, I feel sick to my stomach. The quarter of my breakfast I could keep down doesn’t stay down for long. I finish my homework. I write you pages and pages of angry thoughts, pitiful thoughts, manipulative, shitty, fucking thoughts.

I take too much Xanax and I finally go to sleep.