#i would like to thank the academy and also antidepressants

[reellykenzie]

Is that KENZIE HORTON? Wow, they do look a lot like NINA DOBREV. I hear SHE is/are a NINETEEN year old FRESHMEN who are studying UNDECIDED at Luxor University. Word is they are a REGULAR student who is AGAINST The Unhinged. You should watch out because they can be INSECURE and SELF-DEPRECATING, but on the bright side they can also be PROTECTIVE and FRIENDLY. Ultimately, you’ll get to see it all for yourself.

Ugh oh. Here we go. Cally is trying to update Kenzie’s intro. 

TW: domestic abuse, death, depression, mental breakdown, drugs, alcohol, and accidental overdose

So, Kenzie was born to Neil Horton and Maggie Horton in Brooklyn, New York, though her history is far darker than that. As was revealed by The Circle during the 2020 prom, Kenzie’s biological father is not her dad that she always talks about it. Her mother was in a very abusive relationship with a man for several years. She was too afraid to leave until she became worried about someone else being hurt. When Maggie got pregnant and after suffering more abuse from her boyfriend, she finally left and went to the cops. Neil Horton happened to be the officer who took her initial statements and due to his kind heart, he helped her out. At first, she went to a women’s shelter, but her ex found her there, so he moved her in with him. As he worked on her case and cared for her, they fell in love. However, Maggie didn’t think she deserved someone like him. Eventually, her ex was convicted and went to jail and she felt free of him. And when Kenzie was born, Neil was there the whole time, as he had been throughout the entire pregnancy. He cut the umbilical cord and was the first person aside from Maggie to hold her. He cried and instantly loved that baby. He suggested to Maggie that his name be on the birth certificate so that her ex would have a harder time trying to get custody or anything down the road, which was one of her fears. And he was so dedicated to Kenzie already that she agreed. Over time, Maggie opened up to Neil and began to let herself really care about him. And eventually, they got married. They were incredibly happy together until six years ago, when he was shot in the line of duty and passed away. 

A little more info on her parents. Maggie had a pretty rough life. She grew up with just her mom and a long line of her mom’s boyfriends. She often saw abuse in her own home. She moved in with a boyfriend when she was sixteen to get away from her mother. She moved to New York after that relationship exploded and though she couldn’t afford college, worked hard to earn some money so she could one day. She loved art and wanted to study it. Eventually, she began dating Kenzie’s father and lived with him, going through the abuse and controlling nature of that man. She was able to take college classes then, but her boyfriend wouldn’t let her study art like she wanted because he said she wouldn’t make any money, so she started taking nursing classes. Later on after Kenzie was born, she got her nursing degree and began working. Neil grew up in the historical and rich Horton family. His mother was an heiress and socialite and his father ran a company that owned many other companies, essentially. However, Neil was not interested in the money and following in his father’s footsteps. He wanted to help people. He joined the Marines out of high school and once he returned, he joined the police academy. When he took Maggie in and told his parents he was taking responsibility for Kenzie, they told him he should dump her, that she was using him and would take his money and leave him with a child that wasn’t even his. He stopped seeing them for several years because of that. After he and Maggie were married, they eventually came around, missing their only son. They grew to love Maggie and Kenzie.

Kenzie grew up knowing about her biological father, but she hated him. She never wanted to meet him or know him. She saw the way her mom reacted to things sometimes and saw her crying at times and she felt like it was her fault, like she was a reminder of all the bad stuff. So she tried to make sure she would never be anything like him. She adored Neil and thought of him as her real father and he raised her like that. He taught her self-defense, teaching her a lot of things about fighting and survival he learned from the Marines. He taught her about protecting people and doing the right thing. Kenzie ended up being a lot like her father, but she learned her kindness and motherly tendencies from her mom, who was always kind to everyone. After her father died, she was really devastated by it. As was her mother. She spends every birthday morning at her dad’s grave, telling her about her life. She still misses him every day. She made it through thanks to her mom and grandparents.

Kenzie’s grandparents want to spoil her, but her parents never wanted her to depend too much on money, so they made agreements with her grandparents. They pay for her tuition at Luxor, the school her father and many Hortons attended. They also have a college fund for her as well as an inheriitance for her future. They also bought her a car and supply her a monthly allowance as well as an emergency credit card, though she tries not to use too much money at times. Her grandfather died a year or two after her father, but her grandmother Alice Horton is a force to be reckoned with.

Kenzie is a tall, adventurous, outgoing, and sporty girl. She loves to be outside and explore, camping, working out, sports, and food. She has a huge stash of candy in her room at all times because she has a huge sweet tooth. She often bakes cookies and sweets for her friends as well. She makes friends with everyone she meets, or tries to. She usually finds ways to worm her way into the hearts of even the toughest people. She is 5′11″ and hates it at times. She can be very competitive, but also just loves to have fun, which is why she doesn’t really play many sports aside from cross country and equestrian at school. She is also very much the protective friend. She will do anything to keep the people she cares about from being hurt. She will always have your back no matter what. Because she knows very much how to fight, she has gotten in a couple, but most of the time, she tries to stop fights, using her skills to keep people from fighting. Kenzie is also a huge nerd. She loves books more than anything and has hundreds in her room. She works hard to get the highest grades she can, though she suffers from dyscalculia, which makes math hard and usually has a math tutor. Another skill she has is knitting and crocheting, which she learned from a neighbor back home who always babysat her, so people often get homemade sweaters and stuff for the holidays. She is a huge animal person, often rescuing animals or just playing with wild ones. She usually volunteers at an animal shelter close to home. She has two cats that live with her mom, Victra and Sevro. Sevro is a cat that she kept in her dorm room throughout her entire junior year.

Now, Kenzie also has some bad parts to her. She can be very insecure and cover it up with false confidence. She tries to be perfect and feels like a failure if she isn’t or if she thinks she has let anyone down. She also has a bad history with dating. Most guys she had crushes on would call her ugly or think of her as too much of a guy because she was a tomboy. Or even that she was too tall. The guy she lost her virginity to lead her on for a while until they had sex and then told his friends that she was begging him to sleep with her. She has mostly had failed relationships after that, though she did sleep around a bit. Then there was the throuple. She hooked up with two guys and liked them both, and they liked her and each other. So they decided to try and all three date. Kenzie tried hard and did research to try and make it work. For a bit, they were happy. But it eventually imploded. They felt like she was trying too hard to take care of them and lots of other stuff, which ended it. And Kenzie spiraled a bit. She fell into depression and, because she felt like her friends were annoyed with her being sad, she pretended to be happy, with the use of alcohol and pain killers. And she ended up having an accidental overdose at a masquerade ball. She was held at the hospital and after talking with therapists, diagnosed with depression. She began seeing a therapist weekly and taking antidepressants. She slowly got better, but she was still holding in a lot of issues, like with her biological father. She had a few more breakdowns and eventually spoke to her mother about a lot of issues. Now, she is dealing much better with things, but still struggles at times.

Kenzie is a tomboy through and through, so she isn’t always good with things she deems as ‘girly’ such as makeup and dressing up, which is where she relies on her more fashionable friends to help her with. She is confident sexually and in many of her skills, though will make self-depreciating jokes about the things she isn’t good at. She isn’t looking for a relationship currently after breaking up with her long-distance boyfriend, but is down for hookups. She drinks and sometimes uses weed, but not often, considering her accidental overdose before. She has four tattoos, which are all based on books. Her first was at seventeen and on her left shoulder. It is a wolf head with the worlds ‘hic sunt lupus’ and her father’s Marine number surrounding it from the Red Rising series. She has a healing run from the Shadowhunters books behind her right ear, which is for her saying she is healing from her mental issues. She has the saying ‘she was no lamb, she was a lion’ on her wrists from The Beautiful. She has her ears pierced, both nipples pierced, and a cartilage piercing. 

Her mother has been dating a doctor at her hospital, Derek Price, for almost two years. He liked her for years, but Maggie was hesitant to date him. Kenzie likes him and now, her mother and Derek are engaged. Derek is divorced and shares custody with his ex of his 11 year old son Nash. 

For school, Kenzie is an undecided major. She has no idea what she wants to do in the future. But currently, she is taking Literature, Human Biology, Psychology, World History, and Women’s Studies. Her extracurriculars are National Honors Society, Events Committee, ASL, Book Club (President), Films Club, GSA, Equestrian (Eventing), and Cross Country.

[soviet-history-detective]

Legasov You Did Not Know

I am going to share an ingot of solid gold right now, the kind that will break your heart and ruin your day.

I have unearthed this some time ago from a book that’s been long out of print. It is the translation of a truly heart-wrenching eulogy written by his late widow, Margarita Mihailovna Legasova. There is a lot of new information about Legasov in this piece, the kind of things only the wife of 30 years would know. 

Defenceless Victor—Margarita Legasova’s title of her reminiscences 

This title in Trud was followed by a quotation by Valery Legasov:

There are two colour photos hanging in my office at work. One of them is of a Nuclear Atomic Plant, the other of storks. These photos hang near each other as a reminder of the close relationship between life, nature and technology, letting one know beforehand of the fragility of life, about the necessity to keep it. I recalled these photos when I worked in Chernobyl eliminating the consequences of the accident at the NPP. Really, could storks in the future, living on the earth, feel themselves to be safe with modern industry? Is such a peaceful coexistence possible? And if possible, then what should be done to achieve this?

It was not until 10 years after the accident and eight years after Valery Legasov’s death that his widow published a short memoir in Trud that unequivocally confirmed that her husband had committed suicide on 27 April 1988. They had first met when students in the same institute and together worked at a students’ building construction project in what were termed in the USSR as the virgin lands. Under the title Defenceless Victor she described her memories of Legasov’s troubled times at Chernobyl and the period afterwards when he was, to a certain extent, ostracized by the establishment. She also includes interesting comments on what life was like for a senior scientist and his family in the Soviet system: very different from the experiences of Western scientists.

***

Last year we at last completed erection of a gravestone on his grave. This was with thanks to my son and daughter and a few supporters and colleagues of the Academician who helped to cover the expenses. That day when the sculptor invited me to his workshop and showed me the completed work, Valery returned home in the form of his bronze sculpture. He often had to travel away on business trips, we tried to be patient and wait for his return, but on 27 April 1988 he was transported away, already lifeless, forever. 

On Saturday 26 April 1986, Valery left for an ordinary business meeting where he learned about the Chernobyl NPP accident and that evening he was already 2 km away from the destroyed reactor. Life seemingly continued but terrible forebodings did not allow us to relax and stop worrying about his health. After 27 April our acquaintances began to say that badly irradiated victims of the accident had begun to be transported to Moscow to Hospital No. 6. Nobody could tell me when he would return. 

On the morning of 5 May about 8am there was a ring at the door bell and Valery entered in a borrowed suit of clothes and carrying a polythene bag with belongings rather than his normal case. He was very thin, with a dark face, red eyes and the palms of his hands were tanned black. He only had time to wash, change, breakfast and ask about his two grandchildren before he had to leave at 10am for a meeting. There was no time to tell us what was the state of events at Chernobyl. Then at lunchtime one of his assistants telephoned and said that Boris Scherbina wanted him again at Chernobyl. 

It was only when he returned home later that he was able to tell us that he had personally entered the most dangerous areas in the fourth reactor and how shaken he was at the criminal carelessness displayed at the NPP before the explosion. 

He next returned home on 13 May and it seemed to us that the biggest difficulties were in the past: but we soon understood that we were mistaken. By summer Valery was already in poor health, suffering from frequent headaches, chronic insomnia, nausea and stomach illness. It was difficult to recognize the earlier Valery in this morally depressed man. He was taken many times for medical investigation to Hospital No. 6 of the atomic establishment. Heart insufficiency, serious leukocytosis, problems with his myelocytes and bone marrow were diagnosed, as well as neurosis. But no official diagnosis was made of radiation syndrome, although I had no doubt that it was so. 

He became an Academician at the early age of 45 but some of the leading figures of Soviet science called him ‘A boy from the chemical suburbs’. However, he was interesting to work with and liked jokes, being famous as an amusing raconteur, although everyone knew that science was the principal interest of his life. His private family life was unknown to his colleagues. 

For five years, 1964–69, we lived in a flat of 22 square metres at Nizhegorodskaya Street. Though we could use only communal transportation we often made trips together with our two little children to Kuskovo, Ostankino and Arkangelskoye. In Tsaritsino we enjoyed ski holidays. It now seems that these were the happiest times of our lives. 

Valery was a car enthusiast for the last 10 years of his life and loved driving at very high speeds. He had always wanted a private car and his first, which was also his last, was a GAZ-25 Volga which we bought in 1977 for 9500 roubles when he was a Candidate Member of the Academy of Sciences. The initial capital for the purchase was his quota from his State Prize received for his achievements in the field of chemistry. 

We usually celebrated New Year in the circle of our family, sometimes in a rest house. One of these days a pure bred chau chau puppy appeared in our family and it was assumed that it was my New Year’s gift. Ma Lu Thomas, as she was called, would recognize only Valery as his owner and loved being in our car. She was inseparable from him and died just after Valery’s death. He was also an adoring grandfather to Misha and Valerik and invented little poems for them and played charades. 

As a boy he received a musical education and for many years was interested in listening and understanding classical music: Grieg, Sibelius, Shostakovich and Prokofiev. He was also fond of Schnitke. Over the years we bought tickets for many concerts in the Tschaikovsky Concert Hall of the Musical Conservatoire. Valery’s last concert was in Lithuania in the summer of 1987: for flute and organ. Little did I know that soon afterwards Valery would make a first attempt to commit suicide. He swallowed a handful of Triptizol tablets but that time the physicians managed to save him. 

In one Soviet TV programme is was said that Academician Legasov was a sincere believer. It is not so. From autumn 1987 he began to read the Bible and thought much about what he read. He was not baptised a Christian, but respected religion even though he was brought up an atheist. 

He considered that the East was weak and during his business trips he tried to see as much as possible of culture. He very much wanted to visit one of the sacred Islamic places, the mausoleum of Hoja Ahmed Iasavi, and the monument erected in honour of the ancient Turkish poet who lived in the twelfth century and was an advocate of Sufism. We visited the ancient city of Yami and worshipped at the grave of the philosopher, and Valery often recalled his verses:

Having met a man of another faith 

Don’t be evil to him

The God does not like people

With a cruel heart...

After their death punishment

Waits for them...

On his return from the Chernobyl NPP Valery told very sparingly, with tears in his eyes, about the unpreparedness for the accident. Those days nobody could precisely estimate the number of victims, but Legasov understood better than others, the lack of necessary means of health protection: pure water, food products, iodine prophylaxis. 

In August 1986 Valery Legasov presented a report to IAEA experts at a meeting in Vienna, about the causes and the consequences of the accident. His five-hour report was very well received and he returned home triumphal. But soon his mood changed. During the last two years after the accident he suffered great psychological trauma and his inner strength was broken. 

Twice he was nominated for a high award from the State, and twice the nomination was cancelled. He received a suggestion that he might take up a position with the IAEA in the field of nuclear technology: again, obstacles appeared. There was also the planned nomination for Director of a Research Centre on the Problems of Industrial and Nuclear Safety: this came to nothing. His election as a Member of the French Academy of Sciences was apparently assured and although we went to Paris on 4 February 1988, his last business trip, he did not receive Membership. Also, just after his Paris trip he was hospitalized with acute leukocytosis, pneumonia and severe neurosis. 

Chernobyl was not only a tragedy of international importance but it was also the personal tragedy of the gifted scientist Valery Legasov. 

Source: Chernobyl Record- The Definitive History of the Chernobyl Catastrophe, R F Mould

Notes:

I had a feeling there was more to Legasov than what we see in the written material out there (I read Russian at upper intermediate level so I have access to quite a lot of info, and I have read the magnificent in-depth science-engineering reform articles of him which were absolutely jaw-dropping in their visionary quality. Yet some of the information in this article blew my mind.  Legasov’s intellectual side is far deeper than anyone’s guess, that is evident.

All the documentary films and other material mention Legasov took sleeping pills in his first suicide attempt in 1987, but it turns out it was Triptizol, which is the brand name of Amitriptyline -a powerful antidepressant prescribed for major depression and where SSRI’s don’t work. It has been used as sleeping medicine in the US, but I have no clue if it had such use in the USSR. It is known Legasov developed a serious insomnia problem, but he was also diagnosed with major clinical depression. 

Margarita Legasova was a professor of chemistry, they both graduated from the prestigious Mendeleev School of Chemistry, where they met (as mentioned in the beginning.)

The dog’s name sounds like it’s mistranscribed or something, in Russian language articles written by Legasov’s close friends she is mentioned as Tomka. Poor thing stopped eating after she realized he was gone forever and died shortly after. 

[dreadnought-dear-captain]

You Asked, I Told

Hello, everyone! I will have another  20k chapter of Baghdad Waltz posting tomorrow, but in the meantime, here are answers to some intriguing Asks you sent me. 

CW for some discussion of sexual assault. Spoilers for BW through Chapter 34.

Oh, thank you so much! I love writing these and other secondary characters and giving them life and a backstory that will probably never, ever see the light of day. I have enough head canon to write whole side fics for both Winnie and Rikki. I love Winnie in particular, though I know she can be a divisive character. Winnie has not been a perfect mother, even though (like pretty much every mother) she has tried her best, which is one reason I really enjoy writing her. I usually see Winnie written in fic as either a straight saint or, less often, a villain, so I wanted to give her some more dimension. I will keep up with these characters as the fic continues!

A COUPLE OF SHARON QUESTIONS:

Wow, good catch! Yes, this was mentioned one time back in Chapter 17, when Sharon first disclosed to Steve that she was pregnant. As with many of the things like this that I throw in the fic, it serves multiple purposes.

First, I included this biographical information because of how common sexual violence is — at least 1 in 6 women will be victims of sexual violence in their lifetime. I wanted to also show that a) it can happen to “tough” women, which we would likely argue Sharon is/was, as an Army Reserve Officer attending the University of Virginia, and b) even though she still blames herself (at least to some degree) for “letting” it happen, she’s still an overall well adjusted person who can have healthy, intimate, functional relationships, a successful career, and good self-esteem. This hasn’t ruined her life, and I think that’s an important counter message to have in a fic that’s so laden with characters who suffer deeply and chronically with their trauma. Trauma doesn’t always end in PTSD - in fact, statistically, it usually doesn’t. This will likely come up again later in the fic in another context as well.

Thank you! I’m so glad you’re enjoying the read! As to whether Steve feels trapped by Sharon re: fatherhood, I imagine the details are a bit fuzzy to remember, because it’s been so long since that part of the fic, but I doubt he feels that way. He knows that Sharon has always been lukewarm about the family stuff while he has been dreaming about kids since he was, well, a kid. He knows that she didn’t intend to get pregnant and only got that way because her birth control failed due to an unintended interaction with St. John’s Wort (an herb with antidepressant properties she took to avoid going to behavioral health while he was deployed). As for deciding to keep the baby after becoming attached to it while she was pregnant, despite her previous lack of interest in being a mother, he likely wouldn’t have hard feelings against her for that.

If anything, I imagine Steve probably blames himself for having sex with her while he was home on leave, having just cheated on her with Bucky and not disclosing his cheating prior to having the sex that led to this kid in the first place. Had he told her as soon as he got home, she surely would have told him to go kick rocks, and there would be no Ethan. But he was scared and irresponsible and they were drunk... and now here they are. 

And although Ethan certainly feels chaotic and stressful for him because kids can feel that way and because he gets overwhelmed easily, he’s wanted to be a father for so long that he likely sees Ethan as a strong motivator for him to recover from PTSD and the effects of TBI. Certainly a much stronger motivator than Bucky, because in his mind, Bucky can fuck off and cheat on him or abandon him a thousand times over, but Ethan will always be his son. And even though he struggles to be the kind of father that he wants to be, Ethan and fatherhood is at least something very tangible for him to work toward.

Great questions! Thank you!

Ah yes, it’s hard to tell what’s going on with their relationship now, because it’s Bucky, who is at times a horribly unreliable narrator. He’s got so much baggage around the Army and not being part of it anymore, and there’s this piece about Sam having the career he wishes he could still have, and Sam having the personal life he could have had with Natasha in some bizarre permutation of reality. And Sam has been deployed, so he’s probably not able to talk much, and Bucky has terrible attachment problems and interprets behavior… not always very realistically. So he might interpret Sam’s distance (logistical, because he’s busy, because they have less to talk about, because they are moving in different directions) as a sign that their friendship was “weird��� or that Bucky is “gross” or whatever Bucky is assuming because he’s going through his own shit right now. In short, it’s very possible that Bucky is projecting a lot of his personal stuff onto Sam, like assuming that a pretty normal phase of life transition is actually a sign that he’s being rejected.

But there is a separate issue of Bucky’s friendships getting physical and having these blurred boundaries with friendships. There’s yet-undisclosed stuff in the past that he’s referring to, so unfortunately you can’t see that yet, but he’s drawing on that, and he’s looking at this cuddling behavior (the “snack cake” scene etc.), and I’ll go ahead and say it, since it may never make it into the narrative, but Bucky would definitely have fucked Sam, if he showed even the slightest genuine sexual interest. Bucky has a bad track record with making good friendships in general, and almost all of his close friendships end up getting sexual or para-sexual. Take Steve. They had a pretty intensely physical friendship that got para-sexual and then sexual, and, interestingly, the intimacy that they shared in their friendship also took a nosedive when they really got sexual, but that’s another matter entirely.

So to answer your question, Bucky and Sam didn’t do anything explicitly sexual, but I think Bucky knows he would have, and now that he’s learning about boundaries in DBT, he’s probably wondering about theirs, and he’s looking at these patterns in his life right now, and he’s also just scrambling to figure out why they’re not good friends anymore. I mean, he also really just misses him and the Army, and he’s mourning for both. He’s kind of flailing around here, and that could be another reason why this doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense. But you didn’t miss anything. He’s mostly wrapping himself around the axil over something that may or may not even be a thing. [sigh]

In other words, is Steve a Buckysexual, so to speak? I also am a bisexual person, and I take my bisexual characters pretty seriously (hoo boy). I can see why this might be a big question in people’s minds, because we haven’t seen a very broad swathe of Steve’s sexuality in this fic. He’s very much a monogamist who tends towards longer term relationships, if he can help it (not a guy who does casual fucks well, obvs). We started the fic proper while he was in a relationship with Sharon, then he went to Bucky, and then his sexuality went into hibernation, and now he’s climbing out of that, and we’ve had references to girlfriends in the past peppered along the way.

I’d classify Steve as a late-blooming bisexual. He graduated high school at 16, so he was really coming more fully into his sexuality after he left that environment, and that’s when his interest in Bucky started to fire up. Bucky was the first male he fixated on sexually, which parlayed into a sexual relationship for almost 2 years but then flamed out. Then Steve went into a long sexual hibernation after his mother died and he felt jilted by Bucky’s perceived abandonment, but then he was at the U.S. Military Academy, surrounded by hot young men at their peak fitness and— I will not say more specifically, because this is probably actually going to be addressed in the fic. 

But let it suffice to say that Steve is not a Buckysexual. One could also look at the way he fantasized about Bucky in the coffee house to see some clues to his sexual interest in other men. He wasn’t just into Bucky - he was into all these other guys too, jerking off while watching, all the dicks on the wall.... you know. He has had more relationships with women, so behaviorally he would seem to lean more toward women, but I would not say that women are necessarily his default preference. If Bucky were not in his life and they split to opposite corners of the Earth, never to speak again, I think he would be pretty open about the gender of his parter. As long as they let him put their genitals in his mouth, he’d be a happy camper ;)

And FINALLY: 

Ah yes, I believe you’re referring to the line “Bucky is still an alcoholic, ‘interpersonally unskilled,’ deeply imprinted from God knows what traumas, and really, who knows how willing to actually change, if change means being honest and shining light in the dark places he’s always kept Steve from, no matter how much he’s begged to see them.” Yes? 

So, prior to them separating in 2002, I would say that Bucky and Steve’s dynamic probably went a lot like this:  

Bucky was pretty contained on the outside most of the time, with periods where the he was a flaming dumpster fire just beneath the surface and brief episodes where he was dysregulated and really struggling obviously. The latter looked like, say, showing up drunk to Steve’s and saying cryptic things like “I’m disgusting” and sticking his hand up Steve’s shirt… or his post-Ground-Zero “fuck me/I’m totally fucking falling apart drunk” thing, etc.  And Steve, after these episodes, was probably like, “You know you can talk to me, right? Please. I just want to help.” And Bucky most assuredly responded with something like, “I’m good thx.”

I think Steve probably suspected for years that Bucky has stuff from his childhood (he would be absolutely dense not to), but I want to say that he probably both wants to know it and is terrified to know it. So his “begging” probably looks like gently imploring in a not too insistent way whenever Bucky does one of these big meltdown-y things. And then when they argue, Steve probably whips out the old, “You keep everything from me! I don’t know who you are! I have to beg you to tell me anything!” because that’s how these things usually go down. And Bucky would never volunteer anything and most assuredly lies about many things overtly and lies by omission alllll the time. So yeah, I would say that this a not-so-reliable-narrator situation but with a strong flavor of truth behind it. If that makes any sense at all. 

Thank you so much for the wonderful questions!! What a joy to receive them. More tomorrow. 

[inmyheadspace-alexis]

Feb. 2020: Goals

I have many goals for myself. The most important thing is to make my parents proud. My education has been everything for me. I was an officer for every committee in school, I was eighth in my class, and I had a job while keeping straight A’s. I was expecting college to be a walk in the park compared to high school, but boy was I wrong.

At Pineywoods Community Academy, Freshmen got to enroll in college courses at our local community college. This was incredible, as we were ahead of everyone else in our district. I graduated from college with an associate’s degree before a high school diploma. This time was worse mentally as I have always stressed about everything in life. At the age of nine, I had chronic stomach ulcers caused by stress. I remember my mother saying to the doctor “how does a nine-year-old have stress ulcers”. I am always hard on myself naturally because I saw how unmotivated my older brother was and I knew that was not going to be me. My parents always looked at me like the golden child, and it was hard living up to their expectations of me. My brother started to resent me, which lead to years of not interacting with one another.

In my junior year of high school, I knew I wanted to be a teacher, and help people. I had such influential teachers who made me into who I am today. I want to help kids reach their full potential and shape them to be incredible men and women. I want kids to remember me and were thankful that they had me as teacher, the same way I remember my teachers. My favorite subjects in school were always History and English. For some reason, those came so easy to me, unlike the math and sciences. I would struggle so hard to understand math especially, as I always felt like I was the dumbest in the class. My favorite class was always theater. I loved being on stage and being a different person, in which you can do that in front of a group of students. After every performance of every show, I would have an anxiety attack. At the time I did not know what it was all I knew was that I was scared. I could not catch my breath, I would burst into tears, and almost faint. My fellow castmates were incredible friends and learned how to calm me down after the attacks. My mom never believed me, as she said I was overreacting as an actress would. I felt hopeless that even my mother doesn’t believe me. Since seventh grade, I have always hated myself. I never knew why but there was always an underlying hatred towards myself. When I realized I knew how I would kill myself, I finally told my mother everything. From hating myself, self-harm, to wanting to commit suicide. My mother took me to the doctor where I was diagnosed with severe clinical depression and anxiety. I liked knowing that I was right that there was a problem, but I also felt like a freak. I was put on antidepressants immediately and felt out of my own body. I was feeling better as the weeks rolled by with medicine and therapy.

August 2019 was when things changed, as I entered my first semester at Mary Hardin Baylor. I was so excited to be three hours away and to start this new adventure. Slowly but surely, I was getting into my old habits. I didn’t want to leave my dorm and I felt scared of the outside world. I would get physically sick at the idea of walking into a classroom while everyone stares at me. I just kept thinking “well what’s the harm in missing class”. I would get dressed for class and start bawling as I reached for the door. I didn’t want to tell my mom, as I know she was already worried about me being away. She did not need to know how rough I was mentally. I felt all the girls in my classes call me a slut and all the boys call me ugly. I felt disgusted with myself and I couldn’t go. I failed three of my classes in my first semester. I went from having a 3.7 GPA and being on the Dean’s list to having a GPA of 1.14. I was even more ashamed of that number than I had ever been ashamed of before. I promised myself that I have to change everything in this second semester. This second semester I am passing all my classes right now and have been to them every day. My parents told me that my first semester was my “trial semester”. I was hoping that to be true and that college life would look more upwards now. It has, which I am pleasantly surprised by and welcomes with open arms. Most people would think that I should be a guidance counselor, but I want everyone in my class to know that it gets better. Not everyone with problems will go to the guidance counselor, but everyone sees the teacher. I will be able to teach History, which I love, and maybe be able to help people in need.