#it is SO. HARD. to live by that value when i’m starving myself

[angelmush]

one thing that has helped me w/r/t recovery and fatphobia is that even if i dont feel ready to address myself with compassion and kindness reminding myself that the way i treat myself because of my physical appearance will always inevitably carry over to how i treat and view others has honestly been so helpful realizing that getting over myself and my own fatphobia is a loving act and important socially not just internally. sometimes its easier to feel compassion towards others and then go, oh! i deserve the same thing. and by depriving myself of that i might make the mistake of judging and hurting others. anyways your recovery posts and food pictures are so wonderful and inspiring <3

1. thank u for taking the time to send such a vulnerable and honest message and 2. YES YES YES a billion times YES !!!

it’s a deeply loving and revolutionary act to address the beliefs that you consciously and unconsciously hold about fatness. as much as you might try, those conditioned feelings bleed into everything. they seep into our behaviors and in turn, wound us and the people around us.

you worded it beautifully. recovering and working hard on unlearning the ugly stuff undoubtedly makes us into kinder, gentler people. :-)

[sumire-no-nikki]

Grow Into

It has been a rainy week over here. Only 8 days into February and I feel like I’ve lived four lives already. It has been awfully busy. I’m doing a million things and planning on doing even more. I’m not complaining though. I feel very present and engaged with every project I’m working on. It has been a very productive year so far.

I’m here in my study, lounging on my reading chair and sipping coffee (inexplicably at almost 19:00! don't worry it's decaf!). I feel enveloped by the silence as I reflect on the past couple of days that have been quiet on my end. It’s not out of sadness or anything painful like that. There are just periods of time when I don’t feel like talking to anyone. I've always been this way, I think. My inner world just feels so much more enticing that it doesn’t feel necessary to venture out. I’m thankful that my friends and loved ones understand this. I suppose an extrovert might read this and think, oh how pitiful. But there’s nothing sad about it. I feel very nourished swimming in the lake of my own mind. There’s never anything to explain or justify, and I feel thoroughly fulfilled going about my days and getting things done this way.

At any rate I think I’m coming out of it now. I feel like my internal gauge is reading “ready to socialize again” so I’m crawling out of my personal wonderland to say hello.

I will say that something rather shocking happened to me recently. Shocking, sad in a way, but ultimately triumphant.

To make a long story short, I found out that someone had wronged me, for the millionth time, despite all the reassurances and chances in the world. It was something juvenile enough on its own. And it wasn’t the act itself that was upsetting to me, but the intention and effort to lie about it. This person hurt me with the attempt to misrepresent facts, and in doing so has communicated to me that they don’t think I’m important or worthy of consideration. When it mattered, they would choose to run me over. With every “I’m sorry” and every “I forgive you,” my affection for this person is diluted.

In the past, I took incidents like this very personally. When I wasn’t chosen by a friend group, it was some sort of judgment against me. When my mother compared me to other girls, it was an indication of my shortcomings. I always felt alone. Everyone else had an ally while I was left to starve for someone to fight my corner, to acknowledge my worth and defend it. I saw another person’s inability to value me as my personal responsibility. I thought I had to work hard to earn someone’s attention and investment. And because this is inevitably a fool’s errand, the result was always the same. I renewed my self hatred with every disappointment. I was sure there was something inherently unlovable about me.

But in the moment in which the truth hesitantly came out from this person, I saw very clearly that I had nothing to do with it. That while it was hurtful to me, while it was a blatant disregard of my own wellbeing, there was nothing I could have done to prevent this. No amount of loving harder, understanding better, or caring deeper would have changed the situation. It had nothing to do with me and everything to do with the other person.

While the conversation was unfolding, I was struck by the growth I noticed in myself. I have myself. I am my greatest ally. Yes, this person hurt me, but it doesn’t matter in the end. I will not be consumed by someone else’s failings. These were the thoughts I had, and I haven’t felt this proud of myself in a long time.

I don’t need their consideration if it’s not something they can provide. You wouldn’t go to the desert for snow after all. And that’s not a judgement against them. They are who they are. They can only be who they are. They make their choices. We’re just all different. And I’m at peace with that because I have all that I need right here. I have me.

I saw myself in that moment, reading someone’s apologies for something they’ve shown to not have any intention of changing or correcting, and felt such possessiveness over my heart and mind. I saw the woman I am and thought, you’re mine. You’re mine and I will take care of you. I smiled even after that shocking confrontation—all the unpleasantness just slid off my back. I held myself. The love I had been looking for all my life was right there. I was enough.

Perhaps this is very elementary to some people. But it meant a lot to hear it come from me. Not as an advice, not from a therapist, not from a self help book. It came from me because I wanted to tell myself that I love the girl I was, the woman I am and will be after all.

I was listening to a political podcast last week and the host brought up the fact that strong people are not those who can maintain an extended period of stability, but those who can go through all manner of changes. There’s a focus on making sure we don’t disrupt our lives as much as possible. We enter adulthood seeking a city to claim as ours, a career to specialize in, a partner to settle down with. A divergence from that path is widely considered as a bad thing, or worse, a failure. But I’m more convinced now than ever that if things don’t go well for me, I’ll be just fine anyway. I’m not worried anymore. I’m shedding the years of anxiety and control, and I’m giving way to a version of myself that’s even more liberated, resilient. I am growing into strength. I will keep on going no matter what. It’s in my nature.

Anyway, here are two books I’ve started reading recently. Water by John Boyle which is a book I bought last year while I was in Bath, and the other one is Nobody, Somebody, Anybody by Kelly McClorey. Both books are on my 24 books for 2024. I realized I hadn’t read one book from the list in January as I was feeling rather spontaneous then, so I’ve got to catch up with the list this month. I also plan to reread The Searcher by Tana French at the end of the month because the sequel novel is coming out first week of March and I want to be prepared. As a Tana French-stan (as the young ones say these days—how do you do fellow kids? lol) I cannot tell you just how excited I am for this new book. I’ve pre-ordered a signed copy and I am shaking with anticipation just typing this. Tana French novels represent a very specific feeling and time in my life, so I always welcome the opportunity to jump back into her written world. This is funny, now that I think about it, because her books are actually pretty damn bleak. Oh well!

Reading has been going in a somewhat slower pace, in comparison to how it was in the last quarter of last year. I’m fine with it so long as I’m on track to complete my annual goal. I do wish I would have more time to just devour more books though. Someone on Reddit calculated how many books they have left to read if they live up to a certain age and read a certain amount of books annually. That mildly alarmed me. I obviously have a handful of decades ahead of me (if everything goes well lol) but to have a concrete number of books you’ve got left to read in your lifetime is such an existential experience. But it’s a bit silly too, honestly, because all sorts of things could happen. You could die tomorrow, you could live longer than expected. You just never know.

Here’s a recent addition to the vinyl collection. It’s the deluxe edition of Billie Marten’s first album on colored vinyl. I have a copy of the first pressing from 2016, and I will say the main differences here is that the first pressing came in a nice sturdy textured cardboard gatefold, and the booklet has more pages and artwork. The packaging just feels more luxurious. It’s on a standard black vinyl and it sounds just fine. The repress on the other hand is an MOV pressing, which means it’s digitally mastered and not by the original label. The audio quality is very clean though, and it comes with deluxe edition tracks. It’s also numbered and limited to only 1000 copies. I plugged in my headphones into the receiver the other day to do an up close listening and it was a delight to listen to. It was like being in an amphitheater. I’m so happy to have this in my collection, relieved I snagged one before the scalpers hoard all the copies and start selling it for $300 a piece lmao. (Ah, vinyl collecting is just god awful nowadays… but that’s a topic for another day.)

Alright, that’s all for now. Here’s a Faye Webster song I’ve been revisiting a lot lately. It makes me want to be in silky pjs and walk around my house with a cup of coffee whenever I listen to this song. It feels like gentle morning sunshine, don’t you think?

I’m going to read now until my eyelids can’t stay open. I’m very cosy here. I hope you’re also keeping cosy wherever you are!

Toodeloo!

[baltimorebullets]

Like the New Yorker before me, this week’s viewings will cover THE SUBSTANCE (2024), which I actually saw a week or two ago but am still thinking about, and A DIFFERENT MAN (2024), which I did actually see this week and am kinda bummed about A24’s throttling of its release. As they are both very heavily about The Body, I am going to talk about The Body, so here is a very broad content warning about that. Also, my “reviews” are diary entries. With spoilers. On we go!

TRACK ONE

So one opinion I have that I can’t quite square even with myself is that I’m fairly anti-cosmetic and plastic procedures. It’s a stance I can’t defend from reasonable counters concerning bodily autonomy, especially when it comes to gender-affirming care. I can’t imagine myself as someone with any authority to say, any right to judge, what people have to just live with. I don’t think I have much to add to one of the hot topics when it comes to choice feminism vs. liberal feminism. But I guess that’s the magic of Genre and Cinema to give some new form to discussion.

The Substance is disgusting. As in, it’s body horror, and I spent multiple scenes hiding behind my hands, groaning out loud, kicking my legs. And please believe I am generally someone who believes in the holy sanctity of quiet theater experience; it was all involuntary responses to an undeniably visceral movie. There was the obvious parts to it — lumbar punctures into oozing, infected wounds are gross — but undeniably the momentum also rode on the rush of schadenfreude, watching and waiting for someone to pay the price for not following the rules. No one has ever been more botched than Elisabeth Sparkle is by the end of this movie.

I texted a friend after leaving that the ending is a Carrie for the modern era. Blood and blood and gore and tits and blood. Elisabeth — some form of Elizabeth — crying out, “I’m still me.”

Of course I felt bad. I felt like an asshole. That’s the whole thing. Elizabeth is never a bad person. She’s not even a mean person. She just got older. What that meant to her existed outside of herself. 

So, I found Contrapoints’ video Beauty to be one of her weakest, and while I value Envy a lot, I was equally unimpressed by her decision to leave the Kardashian disdain as just envy. I’ll take their money, sure, but there is also something peculiar in the experience of my eyebrows, my mouth, my skintone, my ass but not my stomach becoming a trend, something to be bought—

And then, on the horizon, like the great evil it is, some TERF rises up and starts in on and it’s the same for the commodification of womanhood—

Anyway, I’ve been recreationally starving myself this year. By some measurements, it’s gone pretty great. I talk about it with exactly no one, because I don’t want to hear about it. Once again, I find myself caught between a diet culture that I hate and fat acceptance that I full-heartedly believe in, but, also I’m still doing this. And not for health reasons. I’ve always breathed easy, my joints have always been strong, I’m never sick, except for all the times I just say I’m sick because I’m so constantly and deeply miserable it’s hard to explain any other way, and by some definitions of disability, it’s an accurate description, so. 

More than my body feels like my body, it feels like a site of neglect, and not in the way people who hate fat people mean it, but in the inhale deeply then list everything that has ever gone wrong in your life starting from conception sort of way. My body that is a poor body and a rural body and an abused body and a neurodivergent body and a Black body and a body of my family before it is my body. Any choice I made was preceded by those realities, which is to say there was no choice but to withstand, until I reached this point where I can make decisions about what I want for myself, from this body. 

… Want? Aw, fuck.

TRACK TWO

So the protagonist of A Different Man, Edward, has a leak in his apartment ceiling. He’s too embarrassed to have someone come by and fix it. The hole gets worse. Eventually, a piece of rotten wood falls free, into Edward’s face, and takes a chunk with it. The wound heals miraculously fast, because he is on a drug that will cure his neurofibromatosis.

When Edward goes to the doctor, he explains that the whole “chunks of face falling off” thing is kind of scary. The doctor dismisses him. He goes home. He spends a sweaty, bloody week literally clawing his face off, revealing him to be Sebastian Stan. 

Once that’s done with, he calls someone to fix the hole. He denies being the man — Edward — who lives in the apartment. He goes out and gets a blowjob in the bathroom of a seedy bar. He changes his name and gets into real estate. Edward was an actor.

Not a particularly good one, it’s worth noting.

I’ve kind of painted myself into a corner here, because I’ve read a fair bit about director Aaron Schimbergm’s motivations with this movie, and because I feel that in some real ways it’s dangerous to put A Different Man and The Substance too close together, and I don’t know the point where (over?)sympathizing with the experience of living with a physical disability becomes patronizing. But seeing A Different Man called shocking was, for me, a bit like seeing Parasite shocking. Which is to say, I wasn’t shocked, because the feel of it was too real. The anonymous Guy was cured, and, in denying Edward, lost himself in a real way he can’t reclaim. And for what? Adam Pearson’s Oswald is loved, and talented, and confident, and appreciated, and Guy is still Edward in all the shitty little ways, too.

Schimberg is pretty clear about the treatment being for medical motivations, driven by the medical team, over aesthetic purposes, both in interviews and within the film. Edward has had countless surgeries to address his condition, and it affects his vision, his hearing. Schimberg himself has a cleft palate and had dozens of surgeries related to it that, as a child, he just had to watch happen through a mirror. There’s a steady theme in the movie about #OwnVoices, which I understand to be Schimberg responding, in part, to the response to his last movie, and Pearson’s role in it. Once again, there’s the obvious side to it, that representation and diverse creative expression are desperately necessary, but also the flipside of it: the discourse, the cannibalization, the alienation within the question of Is this still yours?, then back home to What are you without it? Does it even matter?, and the answer, the fierce defensiveness within Yes, it matters, it’s me, still, always.

INTERSECTION

In I Saw The TV Glow, which is just about the most painful coming out allegory I’ve ever experienced in my life, a character monologues about asking to be buried alive, trying to convince another character, Owen, to join her:

I counted to 10,000 without skipping any numbers. I pissed and I shit my pants, and I forced my mouth to produce whatever saliva it could muster just so I would have something to drink. 

— and I think, the script I found doesn’t show it, but I’m pretty sure the character looks into the camera and says, “And that was part of it.” — 

I screamed as loud as I could for help. I apologized for the whole thing. And I begged God for someone to come along and save me. I tried and tried to claw my way out, but that burnout guy had packed the dirt in too tight, just like I had asked him to do. And then, after I don’t know how long, I felt myself start to leave myself. … 

And then I was clawing my way up out of the ground. And then I was at the surface, gasping for air, rain pouring down on me. Thunder and lightning. And I was finally back there. Back at our old sleepaway camp. And just like I was waking up from a bad dream, that whole life… that whole reality where I was Maddy Wilson… drifted away. Like a brief hallucination that, after a few moments, I could hardly even remember. And all those memories that had felt so real washed away with the rain back at our old sleepaway camp. And I was me. I was finally me again.

Whatever it is that I feel, I do not believe that the human body is a sacred temple that should not be tampered with and for which a perfect form exists. Change, by choice or force or nature, is inevitable, and beautiful, and natural, and also terrifying.

In the great trans health text that is Youtube, there are countless, countless hours of postsurgery content. Incisions, swelling, draining, bruising, stitching, scarring, all carefully documented for the usual reasons, and so that the next person goes in slightly less blind. 

There was also this nonbinary person I watched once who was transitioning while on a low dose of T, and I can’t remember what exactly they were talking about, their voice or their facial hair, but they were saying, “Well, do I actually dislike it, or do I just feel vulnerable, having other people see it?” and I was just like, aw, shit.

I’m not, like, unaware that the changes I’ve committed to in the last year or ten have by and large been socially demanded of me, and they have done very little to make me happier. I have been slapped pretty viciously back into place for trying for better. I do get caught between the idea that, well, this is adulthood, and a certainty that something has gone very, very, very wrong, and I carry it with me everywhere I go, and everyone can always see it, and that’s why things are the way they are.

And I don’t really want to be bullshitted, you know? Elizabeth’s problem was that she got old. That’s real. There’s a lot of real shit that goes into living in a body like mine. And more than anything I just don’t want to deal with that bullshit.

… But is that true? There are parts of me that I would be horrified to lose, not because I draw from some deep well of self-worth but because it’s me; you cannot tell me my eyes would be better by any meaning of word if they were blue.

But the other stuff. Oh, the other stuff.

If I got The Substance’d up, what would crawl out of my back? A better version of myself, according to who? To what? What performance would be required of them? 

So a problem I have with gender hypotheticals along the lines of If you woke up like— or Would you press a button that— is that I am petrified by the concept of actual change, and my actual flesh body feels really dicey subject to gamble on. Do I want my voice and my hair and my skin and my muscle and my fat and my face to be different? Do I want to look someone in the eye and introduce myself different, and have them look at me different?

I just want to feel better.

And, besides, that’s all rhetorical, because I’m not transitioning, I’m losing what could be called a significant amount of weight. Which, again I don’t even know how to talk about. I’m not really proud of it. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that it started the second I got my head back above the poverty line and away from my last living situation. I don’t care to imbed the idea in another person’s head that it is a good and necessary process, especially in the hows and whys of how I’m going about it. I spend many hours of most days hungry, and semi-frequently Google What is my body doing? only for Google to say You might be malnourished, to which I close the tab and try to remember to drink more water and take my multivitamin. I don't know how to say this without romanticizing ~the struggle~ or minimizing its impact, the effort, why it's not as easy as people thing. All I want is better.

Semi-frequently, when people talk about their weight loss, they talk about how their self esteem is still shit, or that they hate how people treat now, actually, compared to before, or they feel numb, depressed, hollow. And people will respond, but the health benefits, which, yeah, of course, and it takes time for your brain to catch up to the progress you’ve made, and, also, it’s grief, of who you were, who you had to be.

I catch myself being nostalgic for times and places that tore me apart all the time. All the time. But they’re gone, now, choices already made, doors already shut, so of course they still feel safer.

So there’s the reality, right, of that double consciousness of people very much do look at you all the time and instantly make decisions about your value and abilities. But there is also very much the point where reasonable defense crystalizes into shame, and, well.

A thing in all of these movies is that, for as dramatic as every change is, there remains a steady, unmovable constant that you are still you, and no amount of sleepwalking denial or radical transformation or miracle cures can touch that, and trying to deny yourself can be absolutely fatal. Elizabeth got a very pointed warning from another user of The Substance, before she continued barreling towards her finale: “It gets harder each time to remember that you still deserve to exist. That this part of yourself is still worth something. That you still matter. Has she started yet? Eating away at you?”

She had, of course, and, god, yes, okay, you caught me, THE CINEMA and ASK POLLY of THE CUT, I am so fucking ashamed of existing, unfinished and imperfect and hurting and so unsure of everything, and I don’t want anyone to perceive me until I’ve accurately rendered myself a product I can be proud of, and it all sucks so fucking bad, and I have no clue what I'm supposed to do different at this point.

SO THIS IS A MOVIE REVIEW?

… Huh? Right. Right right right. 

PROS: Thank god these were movies for adults and not Dove commercials, because oh my god. Like I said up top, thank god for genre, because what better than horror and comedy to really crack open a few ribs and not judge a single soul for it. 

CONS: The Substance should have been ten minutes shorter. Not a lot shorter, but just enough to light a fire under the editor’s ass to get shit done a little tighter. A Different Man’s last little movement was pretty, like, whatever. Kind of familiar, honestly, because I also frequently know a few more scenes past what should be the final scene of a story, but sometimes you really have already said what everything you need to say. 

CONCLUSION: Very different movies, both crafted very well.

[hana]

*sigh* i’m blogging

do you remember that tweet from 2020, or maybe 2016, that was like 

“i don’t know how to explain to you that you should care about other people”

? i feel like’ve ricocheted off of an attempt to explain why one should care about others every 6 months, my entire adult life.

my pattern of approach has been to try reading some ethics text or another for a few weeks, with growing embarrassment about my search for a concrete answer to something that i should just fucking get (as a human, because it’s not something that needs to be proven to be done), until i finally surrender theory for a direct-action nonanswer like buying groceries for old people. 

it’s honestly not hard to get it and just do it. i’m sure this feeling is part of why some people do crazy shit like eat vegan, volunteer at hospice facilities, or go to med school to work in the baby ER. i think leaving it unexplored is fine, possibly even better than fine, because it would really suck to discover something that puts you off altruism. but, like, how can one resist thinking about it?

personally, my “reaching” of “maturity” has been the result of haphazardly staking out social and ethical boundaries that align with “values” i’ve found, inherited, or inherited but thought i found (secret third type). when i demonstrated to myself that i could pick them up and move them with me, throughout different social contexts, like a crinoline defining the shape of my character, i actually did feel quite mature. but i’m actually hugely naive and toddler-like in almost every way, even those in which i feel accomplished.

i’m kinda old-ish now (some scoff, some nod as if i am brave), and i’m not so easily embarrassed by myself any more, which is the first blush of boomer ruin, so i was thinking i could write about what i think, as i think it, publicly, on the internet. it sounds fucking insane as i type it.

although i loved reading smart adult’s blogs in the early 2000s, it is my firm opinion that nobody should ever post. horrifyingly, some of my smartest friends do it now. if it’s my fate now, as an adult, to debase myself, why not do it up?

i’m tagging everything i post with #longspoon, so i can: a) easily delete it all when i get embarrassed or cancelled; b) (with hubris) tag it all for RSS; c) (hubris fading to trepidation) keep this blog organized if i ever post other types of things.

why “long spoon”?

before i explain this, i want to just say 2 things. 

that i don’t buy “heaven” or “hell” as scenarios. i believe only hell is real, we are all living in it right now, and it’s actually not as bad as you hear (but it still sucks a lot).

that this will not be brief so take a bathroom break now.

ok, that said: the long spoon thing is an allegory/parable/nugget of story-wisdom in many cultures around the world. see this chicago tribune headline:

not the onion.

there isn’t a single parable-form telling of it online that doesn’t reek of clinically uncool self-help language. here’s my version:

basically, imagine a banquet table laid with the most succulent soup-feast imaginable. we’re talking stew, soup dumplings, matzo ball soup, pot pie filling, everything good and hot you can eat with a spoon. but the people seated at this banquet are gaunt and starving. they are unable to eat the soup, because the spoons they’ve been given are too long to reach to their own mouths. 

here you might ask, “why not simply choke up on the spoon handle so it functions as a shorter one?” shut up, and get out of my temple, that’s why! for some reason they cannot do that. neither can they reach the soup with their bare hands, or faces. maybe they get a few bites that way, but it doesn’t really work to nourish them. 

“but why do they have these impractical spoons?” here is the moment where jesus or buddha or lord siddhartha twists his nasty little face into a grinch smile because you’ve asked him just the question he was hoping for. the spoons are not supposed to be used for feeding oneself. they aren’t meant to be used that way. in the 90s, don norman would have passed by and pointed out that the spoon’s long handle is clearly an affordance which telegraphs its purpose*. (nowadays he is either cancelled or explaining that it is actually called a signifier and an affordance is something else, thus justifying his book’s sustained $30 price tag.)

the guests at this banquet are too fucking selfish and hangry to read affordances. they do not understand that they are meant to use their long-handled spoons to feed the person across the table from them, who in turn is meant to feed them. i don’t think anyone is seated at the head or foot of the table. if so, they have extra special long spoon handles which are arched in some manner. this is not a fun banquet.

sometimes, in the parable version, the prophet and the idiot do a drive-by of a similar banquet where everyone’s actually having a great time and eating their fill because they figured out how to use the spoons. obviously that’s meant to be heaven, the one i described above is hell, and bill engvall goes “here’s your sign.”

for our purposes, we’re gonna stay away from that. i don’t think the heavenly version of the banquet exists. it’s more an architectural rendering of how a long-utensil-style banquet could potentially work, given enough budget. 

i am naming these posts after the long spoon because, although i endeavor to pick the long spoon up and carry a precarious sip of soup to the lips of my fellow man, i recognize that in my human condition i am probably too stupid to use it right. i think about this often, and i wish to think about it more deeply, so i will write to pursue that wish. 

[cherrrycrush]

i found out

i found out

i found out and it’s killing me

and it’s killing me

i talked to a friend, one who doesn’t know you, and they said to let you do what you are doing. and to let you go.

there is some peace in me knowing that you will never read this. even though you’re here, and you have always been right here. you see right through me and my words.

i’ll never haunt you the way you haunt me.

but i found out. and i can’t stop thinking about it, or make sense of it.

was your perfectly perfect girl not enough? how? i always feel like i need to make my case. to prop myself on a pedestal and sell myself to you, like a dusty marketeer, or a bazaar salesman. i need you to see my value, take me in, and i’m so tired. i am so tired of feeling like i need to sell myself to an unwilling buyer.

and i found out.

i found out, and it’s killing me horribly.

i saw them, i saw you liked them. what goes on in your mind? maybe i knew you less than i thought i did.

i found out.

and it makes me hate myself.

i don’t know what i want at this point. is there a point?

i found out. but on the same night, i saw the sparkle in your eyes.

but it’s easy for you. it’s so easy for you to shut me out, isn’t it? to move on, to go back to never talking to me. our story that will never be passed down the line. all these years, now forever fleeting and only existing in our crumbling minds. our brains that begin to decay with old age, and yet our grandchildren will never know you or i existed.

do you think our children with other people will find each other and fall in love?

i wonder.

i want to always be near you, live close by. see you at the shopping centre, have a heart attack and smile at you when you meet my eye. all the pain in one go. a look of yours so distant and different.

but we’ll both know.

you are and always have been the greatest love of my life. i will always wish it could have been you.

i found out. but it doesn’t even matter.

because i found out how you truly felt, too. i found out how much you knew you loved me. i know it could never leave you, even though you left me.

i cry, and you tell me not to. i know it’s pointless. the sun will rise again. our story may not be so over as i thought but…

i found out.

and it feels like a knife in my throat.

how could i have been so naïve?

is this what it is to be a man? is this what it means when they say that love can be cruel and hard and relentless and ugly?

is this what i will always be? not good enough? even though i was the best.

i was a mistress, and a whore, and a wife, and your bitch. i was the whole thing.

but your mind wanders, my love.

and i found out about it.

it killed me, and i did not speak a word on it. that is how much it killed me. for me to not speak on it, to bare it out and hang it to dry. i hope that you know it killed me. it became something i could not even communicate.

because i found out.

and suddenly, laying on my bed on a lazy spring saturday afternoon without you in my life, i realised that… though loving you was never comfortable, or truly very fun, i had been blindsided by the own blaze in my heart at the sight of your name on my screen. i propelled everything. and when i say i was the one who gave you relevance, i meant that. my love for you was the only thing…

imagining you, imagining me. this was my salvation.

but you’re not, are you? and you didn’t really, did you? you got bored of me? even though i know the game, i know the variety men need for their starved and depraved brains.

i wish you knew how badly your secret ate at me.

and then i remember my bites of unfaithfulness, and i think i deserved this. karma. i believe it wholeheartedly now. or maybe i made my own karma in retrospect, and gained some power and balance back as a result. i think what i found out is justified. i think what you did and were doing is okay, and i deserved it.

but baby, i know that your heart beats for me. further down, in the marrows of your bones. away from that twisted and secretive mind, i know you feel like you let me down — because you did — and you can no longer bear to see my cry as the monster i become.

so elusive, your thoughts. i cannot understand them.

but i found out.

and i looked at my body, and hated it. i starved myself and didn’t get thinner. i became sickly. all my self-preservation tactics had come undone.

i suppose i know i am not alone. even pornstars get cheated on, huh?

because i found out.

and this will have to be something i live with, with someone else i sleep next to. haunting me.

you’re haunting me, babe.

it’s haunting me.

because i found out.

[taxfraudhousewife]

i miss you i know you couldn’t personally solve everything

but i miss the illusion of someone actually knowing what’s going on

you at least acted like you outgrew your anger

i know the whole point of extremism is being pissed off instead of so fuckin depressed

it is so much easier as fuckin depressed as i am to just hate

i learned it from where i think you sent me but i didn’t learn it from you

except i fully fuckin learned it from you but i don’t think i would have if you had one single fucking iota of self preservation instinct

basic material needs aside and glorious revolution aside i just wish i could’ve seen what kind of art you might have made

in some socialist utopia where you had the time and the health

i still really wish you’d written books i hate reading i would’ve read them

you’d be so dangerous if you were some kind of alt right religious fundamentalist

no one who’s as autistic for politics as you should be so charismatic and likeable and eloquent in so many languages

everyone is so lucky to have you on their side

you really were on everyone’s side

still i’d trade the life of every person you saved if i could have you back

i’d burn the whole fuckin world down

and like yeah maybe that’s the problem

i’m not like you as hard as i try

the thought of giving up access to raw food for mushu is enough to steer me away from glorious revolution

but these fuckin hormones are raging in me

they’re boiling and i’m gonna burst

the hormones that make me so unsure of my gender

just because i never got to live and love with a woman as angry as me

the internet tells me the revolution is a girl but all i know is angry teenage boy type shit

angry grieving bottled up feelings don’t talk about it type shit

taking your anger at the government out on your family and yourself and whoever will take it

when the system is fucking you so life is fucking you so there is nothing more than this except for the hypothetical ashes if you burn it all down

i don’t trust my ideals of what to do with the ashes

not anymore

i’m so desperate i’d back some really reactionary shit i’m not like you

and you were kinda the only person i could just fucking blindly follow because i don’t care you might be the smartest and also leftest person i know and i don’t care if you’re wrong

you felt like real living proof that there’s hope

like for real material hope and now both are dead

thank you for that i’m doing great everyone is doing great

it’s not like no one wants to get fucking down and dirty with this shit except for like thirteen people in the world who are actually serious about it

but now it’s twelve because somebody can’t just chill the fuck out for a second

I KNOW IM CONTRADICTING MYSELF

“YOUR VALUE TO ME COMES FROM THE MOTIVATIONAL SOCIALISM YOU PROVIDE BUT ALSO YOU SHOULDVE NOT DONE THE SOCIALISM BECAUSE ITS DANGEROUS”

I KNOW

i know

idc i just miss you a lot

any excuse to negotiate you back to earth

like you weren’t extremely aware of the risks

like you didn’t voluntarily sign up for that shit but you did

and it caught up with you and i respect your decision to be a good fucking person or whatever

but your absence is really affecting my ability to attempt to be a good person and it is terrifying

i don’t want to do this without you

i wanna say i can’t

but I can because i have to and i have to because i can

like you i guess

but i have no plan

no one to blindly follow

and the revolution won’t come all at once like a messiah

and my messiah will not come back a third time

cause you are as dead as ground beef on the pavement

and finally i know that ghosts are only real when you know they are

i can hear you

i want to like it

but it’s like the smell of salt when you’re starving

and there is nothing to binge on

still i obey when you tell me to be good and safe and kind and all that hippie shit

and yeah maybe it’s because you’re the only person who ever directly taught me to be kind

and yeah i should be grateful that you haven’t fully left me yet

but how long is it until your ghost spends so much time in my head

that it becomes just as sad and desperate and afraid as i am

when does it stop being you and start being me

i’m scared of the thought of that

i try to keep your ghost pure but fuck i am so angry at them

yeah for facism and whatever but personally i hate the individual people who tried to make specifically you inhuman

i’m sure it’s an anger you would understand but it didn’t fucking eat you inside out

your ghost is made of sunlight and the steam coming off black tea

and i am polluting it with wildfires and fireball

and i’m sorry and i’m trying but i don’t even know what im supposed to be trying to do

i’m trying so desperately to be kind

it’s a hard thing to do when you just want the social interaction to be over

but you never wanted the social interaction to be over

your whole stupid ideology and my whole stupid religion is the social interaction

maybe it’s exhilarating because it’s terrifying and gratifying and heartbreaking

maybe i just have social anxiety or autism or both

fucking shit dude

i wish you’d tell me what to do

im just a dumb stupid woman i can’t do this shit

man up resurrect devise a fucking plan for me to blindly follow

i don’t want this shit

i do

but i really don’t

but there’s only one way to sustain a slightly less depressed baseline depression

how glorious it is to be a socially anxious socialist

and how glorious to be autistic and standing at the precipice of freedom

but i can’t break surface tension

cause i’m scared of not fitting in

you wouldn’t understand

and that’s why it had to be you

[solardick]

Some pot hazed maddening

Skip the imprinting.

As a sense of beauty to it which, is abundant in the clouds. When they come alive.

What’s it to say that it’s counter to what is taught. The russian liberty standing on the threat. The existential threat. Even to one. The shield, not a sword. She’s protecting. In the defence there of. To protect the land. Firmly into the soil by a point. The couple are walking with her, onto it’s platform. The will is motivated to stand up as justice. And not embracing the coming end.

That level of destruction goes against it’s existence. The land will be dead. Nothing to protect. Beside the constant sidetracking by hyping threatening intent. Fun little parade to exercise a demon.

Save that not pushing that button back. Take a hit to show the futility of the exercise. Would the others fight for? Don’t tally the weight. It’s another trap. People are a nation. Nobody fights for them. Would the rest of the world stand by? Just watch as the unload strike after strict while it stood by and watched, no reciprocal act. While it burned.

So pushly and lamely dramatic.

Stupid fools, think they’re important. Exercise the will.

Can’t rely on the news none that reach me. Make it up as i got along catch a stream a fallow it. See where it leads.

Igh, i choose decay. Plagued by pestilence.

For a love too good to be true. It cannot exist. And nothing less will do.

They want me to waste it on myself. Like elevating the feminine isn’t the goal. The main body of information. Freeing female sexuality from oppression. Make entire rallies mad eof the stuff. Mean while russia is like.

Fight for your land. Fight for your mother.

There’s no balance. It isn’t a graceful step. Storm with your natures. A nourishing will to protect, lines the steps of the courts, land of desert rational. Breathe with its life. The presence is. No sacrifice is too strong.

Die hard.

You don’t make too good of a soldier if fear guides you away from confrontation. Build a monument to it. A sacred space. No, son. Fight on. A mother’s love is important. What is that, not trapped by sickness.

For a justice on a nuke, temperance pours out one cup to the next not holding all its power in on place. The water’s seen ascending from the lovers.

Not a card ill ever experience.

Not much of a life.

I want to die.

Fuel for the fire.

The only emotion. To process. Arid. The closest to tempting desire drying them out with the dry. Liquid beings starve. Cheers to being raped queer. Stuck as a child never able to grow. Life is meaningless. Beyond tempting temptations. No track, no will.

Neat. It’s the world card i envisioned and the time of its release. Tricky lyric scene in that one.

Id removed the to be a man part. Not to eccentuate it but aggravating it in the effort. It was brought to me like this. I’m a king in this world. It works on dot. Flip some venom around. Associate its pressence. Battling the like mind with the opposition likely carrying the same. Som some aspects are cut. But associate to things sung amd what happens. While keeping the disposition as such.

A little roid boost to give sense to form, and a lack of sleep to wary the walls. Headache desires sleep

So here’s to having a disgusting pigheaded personality. People will not like me. An angel in bed. And no more growth forward. Stagnated in the moment. Disconnected from god.

As im watched every moment of everyday. Settle cues. Life isnt worth it.

Poor guy, just wanted to live a righteous life with traditional, yet functional, family values. Satiate my insatiable lust for power and intimacy. There is no other guiding motivation. Be known for ever more as an object of ridicule by the self in-dined superior beings. Keep playing to the script. Everything endowed to you all serves a single purpose. “Mine” a voice.

Might as well put on that dress. Doubt the irritation in my ass is never going away. Twist my arms. So to say. Ugh my god. My entire existence. From birth on. Wtf.

I’ll try. Again.

No, their not going to stop harassing me, playing doctor with my spirit. Indon’t want to be alive anymore. Life has only ever been against me. Even in the ways it was kind. Theres no memory telling me thats false. Why am i alive if i cant have a life of my making. Instead of being born for no other reason then others amusement in degenerate shit. Theres no life in me anymore. This fucken script has no ends. I want it to stop. 40 years is too much. What the fuck is this life.

A world that knows no means to a positive expression. In a world where im not afraid of external pressures, degenerational low webs of peoples. Afraid to speak. Gatecrashed peace. Going from beaten on to beating on. Watching people gleamer the superior stance with that fucken smile. All life has ever been. It won’t change so how would i? Doesn’t make the best role modal to self modulate of. Don’t give in no surrounded. Its evil and doesn’t care there is no humanity in it. It’s a dry txt. And your a number. A string of code. File goes into this box. Besides i don’t believe in torture. I believe its real.

The Y chromosome never changes. It just passes down to the next. X gene activation! No man you dont have a choice. Survive as it is and there wont be a whole lot brilliant in the future. You have been governmentally sanctioned off. Extreme reconditioning. Before ever have breathe your own sense of self. Free from external pressures and conditionings. Nada. Never knowing a single breath from grave to grave. Whats there to live for? It’s never going to end. Wheres the nukes when you need them. Destroy everything.

Attack everything.

Guess this is the rest of it. Fighting against the onslaught of abusive slavery pretending not to be so. All existence. I’ll never be able to do anything or think for myself without it. 40 fucken years. Hahahahah jesus.

Well that was fun. Now what. Their trip is over. An di get nothign out of it. Not even a lesson.

Hapoy canada day! Everyone celebrate! I’m a homo! Yay! Fucken nazi cockskrs. But the one thing that is true. I was born to be raped. It’s my never failing destiny. And the world has always supported that. As a child, as an adult. With zero development is between. Nothign but fucken nazis. They won the war. And rule the world.

Kindnof want to spend the rest of life helping people like me. But, thats never going to happen. Im jew living nazi germany.

Aber wir sind deine Freunde!

Sorry i dont speak cockskr. Thanks russia for supporting me by killing thousand of people

They probably all deserve. Cause if theyre anything like me they certainly do. Even god says so.

Polarizing. Saturn square uranus. Uranus opposite staturn. And on and on. Most of these moves are like this. Pluto square pluto. Trying to undo all that was done.

Ive seem some horsemen. Blowing in on the wind. A brown, thick misty wind blowing in with a gust. Particals and sand. Attacks your vision. Entropic states do fallow.

Hate that they gave me to their intentions, and presumptions powered by dominion, failing to see their own play. Such is the state of animal nature. And the throne, a resting figure, for the home. Twisting my arms and causing me harm while displaying a state of warmth. My entire life. Can’t develop on my own. Break away, and run away to a place far from here. While all influence to my dissemination will be littered with the same. There is nothign to do while they build it up on high to a pedestal. The promise of inevitability, consistently Messaged in all so subtle little ways. But being stationary and not struggle from tether to tether make sit a whole lot easier to get to work. As with all surgery, anaesthesia and sedation makes it easier and safer to work.

I photographed it in a cloud. Scary scene. Two hideous, alien, monster, demon,(s) Opening up my skull. Fiddling with it inside. Captured the injections and the soviet sickle and hammer emblem, about 20 years ago now. Twenty years in this script. With like 18 earlier years of much and less the same. From all sources. Didn’t matter where am i’m placed with. I want it to end.

20 years of effort to bring me to this point. Hahah yeah. 20 straight years of torture.

I was headed that way anyway with all this direction. Then they perverted it. And started forcing it. Creating a complex they could use to torture me with.

An artificial complex. That i live out, uninvolved with. Nothing in me is of my own creation. Some walls erected by the life instinct. But they want me to die. To untether the only pillar of self i was ever able to do. Evil forces just twerling around above me. Focusing all attention into one area while being severed from growing forth.

Built and fostered in good faith. As a monument of past experience. Cant create another one in the name of all this. Because i’m not allowed to do anything. All they are is evil. It’s my cross and they want it.

The archetype they made is standing right besides me. Din’t recognize it. It isn’t real. Let it starve. Like i am. Your not the real clark kent. You’re an imposter. But they keep feeding it. Powered by youthful innocence. Just the same demon trying to dress up all attractive for me. Wear me!

An Eros sun lilith conjuction leading onto a Pholus conjunction on the threshold? Domineering and hard influences coming as reactions even to a silent party. Mars to the physical senses of touch and taste, of money to give. to inline with the vital force of eros. As reaction counter flow to a forceful domineering influence. With a moon seeking closure from the abuse, in distanced states, and story and glamour. Desiring a position of compassion and understanding. A longing from solitude and estrangement and degrading and all the rest of those words add etc. disposed with a will to teach and experience as one learns and finds the value of what it is. As in hind-sight. So even if there is no will for sex, the giving is shining with it. So it comes off as rather awkward. Its always a sexual link. Even if its not me that has it. Coming from a another party.

Unless they’r old. er. And don’t resonate from me. But everryone is in on it. It plague all of it with negativity. The demon stelium in leo of expressions is tied to Aquarius by Jupiter. The electronic. The group the community. Public workshops. To name relevant associations to my person. Wishfully if that, to square the SN and midpoint of both saturn and pluto. And to be next inline to square mars. The majority vote of pressure vetos the martian drive.

I sometimes wish i was a moron not to be able to see whats happening. Because thats a torture way up there.

The ultimate receptive nympho woman. The difficulties of conscience. A will to be away. Pain of failure. And to the will and freedom to recreate myself again. Preceding all of it. Away from all the influential bodies stalking and fiddling with my existence. Away from the hell endured for those many years. Beaten one from one place to the next. Created this whole mess with intent.

As long as i don’t get off, i’ll never be disgusted.

Sex slave me. Fulfill these fantasies. Put me in the middle i want both of you.

I like it in the bum. It’s like messaging the sphincter. Like messaging any tense muscle. It feels good. There’s no reaction. There’s no orgasm. No sexual tension. Until one starts damaging the inside of the rectum. The lack of pain receptors, instead, triggers the bodies infantile reaction to cry. It allows for processing and integrating painful emotions into the structure. This alleviates the pressure of like minding emotions by giving them an outlet. The life has been structured in such a way for such a period of time, that this could become a life long motive for shame. To counter and process a life time of hardship. Forever shadowed by laughing clowns.

My fight is with the demon that runs their lives. I just mistaken that it runs the world instead. Well the entirety of my world. Because i cant be left to be well alone. A d figure out my shit with the pressemce of god and not these louts of nazis.

Fucken die already. Where’s russia with the will to fight? In this fake reality of bs.

What i mean…..

Selling all their crucifixes backwards so the foot rest points to the sinner who rejected the gay Jesus.

Well bye amazon. It was fun.

Это неправда.

Wish i could keep my feed clean. But, apparently thats a bad thing for them.

Медведь живет в лес�� и не любит людей.

Bear lives in woods and no like people. Fuck off or ill bomb you.

Two more rounds of this coming. It never ends. Until your an old weathered man with no prospects. Without any joy found in the entirety of history beyond carnal pleasure.

I’ll be happy with two hung guys that fuck me stupid every night. I want to feeling of violation to stay with me always. If you cant get rid of it love it. Like jesus did. Tell me I’m beautiful. And cute, and call me shy. Make me feel proud of my accomplishments. If that accomplishment is you. Be my entire world, i’ll serve you at every call. Turn me completely. And then toss me to the curb. As is the repeating theme of this entire life. Positive negative. Doesnt matter life will find a way. And you’ll still be alone.

Family always defined me as shy. I was never shy. Afraid of your abusive negligent, blind bs. Every-time i spoke it was chaos reacting in turn. Flip the fuck out. Tried working on speaking in person. But it was impossible because life is wrapped up in this whole thing. Not much to build off from pre directed script with a purpose.

Lead to me to the righteous path of wanton down trodden. It doesn’t haunt me they do.

My heart is dead. I no linger care who you are. Fuck off.

I’ll just stand next to this pillar. Fortified by the carnage. And in the presence here of god. Till im an old gray miserable over weathered man, too eroded to see my skin. And I’ll spend the last couple years. On the fringe and watch the decay escalate to the eyes close and it’s back to the grave.

No wonder it was a difficult birth. I didn’t want to be. Forced and pulled out agaisnt the will. And then pushed down a flight of stairs. Thats all you need to know about my life story.

Just repeating at the collective level. The demon has birthed an army. That it envelops.

Indint eant to eb alive anymore. 40 years is too much.

Well that was fun drug haze rapist weekend. And ingot to hear my family again, Especially my father laughing diabolically. Like the stupid drunk bipolar fucktard he is. Baby booming fuck head. Good job being a dad. Fucken loser. Hurry up and die so i can get my inheritance and spend it all On dildos, butplugs and lube. Ill even order a sexdoll made in your image. Keep the fantasy going.

[faithfromanewperspective]

something I’ve recently realised and am only now learning to put words is that I need all this emotional intimacy for one of the reasons my brain is how it is: the whole being known, the whole connecting over shared experiences, the whole feeling like I’m part of something emotional intimacy preferably with people I’m in the same room as more often than not. I wonder if it’s because I need to see my own emotions on someone else to be sure that I exist, because it’s a form of co-regulation I’ve adapted to, because it shows something about who God is or something else—it doesn’t matter, but what matters is I need it to be able to do things like sleep without significant help and to process my emotions and be productive and creative and also to feel any sort of sexual or romantic attraction.

somewhere along the line, someone convinced me that the church is meant to provide these things. It was well intentioned and might have been indistinguishable from the call to said church to actually go about starting to do these things—but the thing is it’s all well and good in theory but while I’m not getting my needs met I can’t just sit around and wait, I tried that and my whole life got put on hold and I’m still learning how to get up and realise I can seize the day or whatever when there’s been this empty hollow inside of me for as long as I can remember. I also can’t be the one to build the kind of thing I want for myself: I’ve tried that to, overworking myself to volunteer just in order to get scraps of the connection I longed for. Had me burnt out and self destructive and very much certain that if I stepped away from the very things that were destroying me I’d have to go without even worse than I already was and I would die.

there comes a point where you just have to have radical acceptance. something so good in theory that white scholars who don’t realise what it’s like to go without something they need so badly have decided it should be and therefore we should act like the intention is enough. It’s not. you don’t get fit by intending to go to the gym and you don’t ask your partner out by intending to have that conversation and you don’t fix world hunger by intending to but then doing nothing about it. and it’s true people do nothing about it, because they’re steeped in a culture that values individualism and thinks you can only have intimacy with someone when you’re also having sex.

it’s a culture that’s deeply oppressive to aspec people. I’ve said so before. and I think what drew me in to the church on this particular broken promise was that it called out those things. seemed to get it. and in the end was no better than anyone else except for stigmatising things like sleeping in the same bed with someone you’re not married to until it became a weird thing to ask for, something that would likely involve romantic feelings coming up just because everyone is so starved for intimacy. we don’t know how to have it, don’t know how to be vulnerable, for the most part don’t even realise it’s a problem and I can point to exactly why.

most people don’t have it impact them as directly and as front and centre in their lives as I do, when I don’t know how to go on a second date because of it, and I can’t just sit there and ignore it, ignore how it’s taking us away from being able to love each other and even love God as a result if that’s something we’d like to pursue. shallow hearts for shallow minds or whatever (that ache to be alive but don’t know it, it’s been a while since I’ve quoted 5sos on main). but that’s the thing. someone else should’ve realised too and be feeling the impacts of it. there’s probably someone. and they’re scared and confused to speak up just like I am.

and no wonder, when it’s so hard to explain exactly why it hurt so much when we went through the exact same thing as everyone else, everyone inexplicably thriving in it or at least, not being so actively hurt by the culture we’re in every day. my body goes into fight or flight mode when it’s around another human, when all I’ve longed for is this connection but I can’t have intimacy when people simply invalidate my need for it just because they don’t have the same needs. when it’s hard to explain to a date that maybe I’ll be attracted to them someday but I need them to help me change the world first and I’m so lonely and my body wants to be horny but it just can’t. not without the necessary steps beforehand I’ve almost given up hope on.

this sounds like a pretty hopeless rant but I’ve got some semblance of a plan, which I came up while writing this like I always do—I figure I’m going to be homeless, church wise, and single until I find it but I’ve gotta go find people who feel like me, I’ve got no other viable choice. I need to have relationships with community and I need intimacy of some kind and in order for that to happen I need this part of myself to be seen, not be something too stigmatised to ever talk about. I can take that risk, socially, it’s well within something I’m capable of. and it’s going to be confusing at first: the way my sexuality is hinging on something so much bigger than I am, but a date is as good a time as any to bring it up, considering I’m a dexisexuality explained on first date kinda person anyway. and the right people will get it. I’m going to find them.

[ronikamerl]

Practise What You Preach

I gave a lesson yesterday. It’s one I’ve given multiple times, I have the info, the stats, the data down to a t, I don’t need to prepare for it anymore. 

It is a very general overview of what the first steps are when you’ve written a screenplay and would like to get started in the industry. It’s very straightforward. It’s about an hour and a half, with time at the end for questions or discussion. 

I use examples from my own career, and examples from different aspects of the industry. And in all honesty: I make it seem quite easy. It is easy. All it takes is hard work, determination, a willingness and ability to put yourself out there, and an urge to get to the next step in your career. 

I spoke about how the writing is first, it must always come first. First we write, and we write so, so, so very much. We must be confident in our craft, we must have a back catalogue of valuable materials, we must know what we’re doing - only then will we be hired reliably and often enough. 

But then I walked home, enjoying an early summer’s evening in Dublin. I contemplated. I wondered. 

I like my career. I like the way it’s going. It has ups and downs, and sometimes it throws me violently to the ground, grinds me to a pulp and spits me out - but then it lifts up again. I am not starving, but I’m no millionaire either. I get hired regularly, though the value of the gigs is not always enough to make a living. It’s an artist’s life, very much so. 

Why? 

I have been in the industry for about 4 years now, and quit my corporate job almost 3 years ago. It’s been a rollercoaster since, with projects being cancelled, other projects never quite making it over the finish line, collaborations disintegrating… in short: the film business. 

But I’m not quite there yet, I feel. I’m not quite in the place I’d like to be, in the place where I saw myself being at 32 years old, the place I imagined I would be. 

A lot of that has to do with my personal life, of course. After the pandemic, my life shifted dramatically and a devastating loss in my private life threw me off my game for a while - but still. I thought I’d be further along. I thought I would have made it by now. More so than I already have. 

I have to often remind myself of my successes: I’ve worked with an Oscar winner, I’ve dined with Hollywood Executives, I’ve been hired internationally on a continuous basis, I’ve had books published and I run a film festival. It’s not that I’m not successful. I am. By any and all standards. 

So what is holding me back? 

As I walked through Camden Street yesterday, the sun glinting in my eye, the people of Dublin out in full force, drinking and laughing and being Dubliners, I realised that I was comfortable where I was. I love my job. I love doing what I do. And recently, I had lost some of the urgency because I was so happy with where I was. I was beginning to become complacent. 

Not an hour earlier, I had preached loudly and passionately to the students in front of me that we must always keep pushing, that we must never stop writing and never stop promoting, and never stop collaborating - we must work at it every. single. day. 

But was I doing that? No. 

Was I writing as much now as I had done when I started out? No. 

Was I promoting myself as much as I had done in the beginning of my career? No. 

I was relying on the seeds I had already planted, and I was woefully neglectful of planting and seeding the next batch. The harvest was drying up, because I was only watering the plants that were already bearing fruit - not ploughing new fields, cultivating new land. 

It’s not that I am being lazy. My days are quite full. But there is more I could be doing. I should still be doing all the things I told my students to do. 

So here is an attempt at that. An attempt to right this wrong, and re-up my game. I must practise what I preach and take my own advice. And pretend that I have not made it yet, at all. 

[soul-renewal]

Just gonna write all this out and not care if it’s badly written.

i want to envision myself healed, mostly, to a point where I can interact with people and feel ready to make friends.

I have healed a lot, but the prominent problem I have is my ability to communicate well. When I was younger, i loved to talk, after getting to know someone to a certain degree, and I felt i could keep conversations flowing, but now... I struggle with that..

It’s my biggest weakness...

I think one of the reasons why I have trouble communicating well is because when I was younger, my dad said I talked too much and I grew up with people who didn’t keep up their interactions with me, they’d ignore me, so I’d receive no feedback or reply.

Eventually, I felt that talking was bad...

Being young, i thought that if I shut up, my father would notice and realize something was wrong, but actually, I didn’t know that in his head, he probably thought he won.

My little girl finally shut up, he thinks...

Didn’t think, “oh no, my little girl, why did she changed and become quieter?”

Truth is, it didn’t matter if family give me food and shelter. I didn’t feel like I was cared for on the inside. In my head, it was like, “If you don’t stop talking, we won’t give you love.”

I grew up in a very cold, perfectionist environment. i have to be proper...

I wish I had a real family outside of my biological family.

The more i think about it...deep down, I hate the family I grew up with. I had little mental and emotional support. They made me feel starved for love and even a little crazy. i just wanted to FEEL like I was loved and cared for.

I think another reason I have trouble talking is because I didn’t have good role models to bounce off on in communication. I was majorly sheltered from people and even if i did talk to schoolmates, they were cold too. They were all very rigid, judgemental and thought that being childish was stupid. 

I definitely grew up n the wrong environment. i wish I ran away from home...

It’s been hard to find people who have the same values as me.

I want to find my true, safe, lasting, soul family. 

i want to find my true self and feel safe in my own body, to have my own thoughts and feelings and feel valid and seen and understood by the right people.

I am proud of myself for doing things that were hard, but right. i let go of people that weren’t good for me and I let go of good people that weren’t on the same page as me...

Even if I want someone, and they don’t want me back, there’s nothing I can do. I will not do anything. I’m proud of myself for sticking to myself, even though I desire companionship, if it’s not the right one, I have to keep moving on and waiting.

I think the right one for me will truly SEE me. I have NEVER met anyone who’s come closer to seeing and understanding me. It was always me that was able to see some people for who they are or how they needed to be seen, it was always me inspiring, and knowing how to help, so it would be nice to meet someone who can make me feel seen, heard, etc....

I deserve it....

Right now, I’ve been trying to let go of someone who’s happily unattached and not looking for a relationship. I want to be with him, but he cannot and will not be with me. There are parts of him that remind me of myself, so I thought maybe we were similar in a way, i wanted us to grow deeper, but if God didn’t let us come together now, then there must be a reason.

I kept holding onto hope that maybe if I show more of myself, he’ll recognize that i am someone worth it, but will it be worth it in the end?

If a man doesn’t already see that I’m a romantic potential, then why should I hold onto hope that he’ll see me. He won’t see me. He won’t ever see me. He will never see or understand the value I hold. He cannot awaken it or inspire it. So why am I still holding on? Why do i keep checking to see his activity? He’s not doing the same, he’s not interested, he’s busy living his life, doing his thing. I’d be the last thing that’s on his mind.

I had this fear that I’d lose him because he’s so handsome. Some other girl will change his mind about staying single, but so what?

If I lose him, is it really a lost?

So what if he’s interested in another woman? He was never mine to begin with and it wouldn’t be right to get in the way of God’s fate, someone else’s destiny, of a Divinely orchestrated meeting of soulmates, that doesn’t involve me...

If we’re not meant to be together, it’s because he’s supposed to be with someone else................................................

I was mad that I couldn’t have him, I was mad at being rejected, but I saw how lowly those vibrations were. I didn’t want to feel like that and so I chose to see the higher picture. 

So what if he doesn’t become mine?

What is the true meaning of love anways?

What honors the name of love?

It’s certainly not forcing myself on him, trying to get him to be jealous, showing myself off, or doing anything with even a speckle of intent to change his mind. 

Pure intentions.

Always.

If you can’t be with someone, you have to accept rejection, understand why you’re triggered and angered, focus on yourself, and heal.

I kept telling myself I don’t want to feel this hate and anger just because of rejection, I need to be higher than this. I found that self-care DOES help. You’ll slowly start to see that your OWN PEACE is important. You can’t have everything that you want and respecting someone and their decision/rejection is the closest thing to loving them while also respecting yourself.

Why do we NEED someone in our life who we obsess over, but they don’t reciprocate? 

He doesn’t need to see more sides of me. It’s ok to lose him. It’s ok not to give him attention, it’s ok because what’s meant to be, will be.

I chose to be with myself in this misery, it’s ok. Self love is also being ok with the bad emotions and healing them in our own timing.

It’s all about putting the focus on oneself after rejection. 

You don’t need to know what he’s doing, you need to know how you’re doing. You don’t need to check up on him, check on yourself. Don’t give him attention, give yourself attention. 

It can be hard when there’s lots of “what ifs,” but, honey, no. If it’s been over a month or 2, and he still hasn’t SEEN you, your soul already, it’s not right.

Let it go, let him go, if someone else finds him, then he’s where he belongs. Don’t keep him from his fate. Don’t let him keep yourself from your own fate.

The longer we stay with someone, the longer we’re kept away from what actually is meant for us. So focus on you. So when you’re energy has changed for you, you’ll attract what’s right for you.

[gloryintheflowers]

worse instead of better

My dearest aunt barb,

Hey there. What is the weather like where you are? (Is there weather at all? I have no idea how this works, which is sort of the point, I guess). Here it’s freezing cold and we’re expecting a snowstorm tomorrow. I hope it’s warm and sunny where you are, and that every day you get the brightest, clearest azure skies. I remember all the times we would be walking in a nature park or Morikami or just sitting by the pool and you’d give me one of your secret smiles, eyes sparkling, and say “you see that, Emmy? You’ll only see skies that blue in Florida.” (You had lived in so many places around the States, I guess you’d know).

I can’t think of any way to tell you how much I miss you except to say that it feels like I’m missing a limb. It feels like a great yawning chasm opened up in my chest the day you died and I constantly find myself falling into it, ending up battered and bruised and dodging falling debris. Other times I sit outside of that deep crevasse with my knees drawn up to my chest and search for you in every tiny shadow. When I can’t find you, another piece of me dies; another part of me grows numb. This hollow space is so large, so cavernous. I cry out for you and I hear your name come back to me as an echo. I pretend it’s your voice; I refuse to acknowledge that that most familiar sound, too, is lost to me.

Maybe this analogy has run away from me. Or maybe it’s the poet in me breaking free of the chains I’ve kept her in for the last two months. It hasn’t been that hard, really. The idea of writing poems that you will never read makes it difficult for me to even want to pick up the pen. For ten years you read my poems, good and bad. You read between the lines and bore witness to the pain buried there and you did it a thousand times. You were my audience of one, humouring me as I tried over and over again to find the words to tell you how much I loved you. I would write long, rambling poems trying to say what we both already knew— that I loved you in a way that was like coming home, that I felt overcome by it, that I was a very lonely and sad and confused 13, 14, 15 year old girl (and so on) who did not feel truly loved or valued until you came along. Who was touch-starved and felt repulsive until you took my hand. Who did not feel truly seen until it was you who saw me. I tried to tell you how you changed me. How you saved me. What you meant to me.

So, yeah. I haven’t been writing, unless you count these letters. And even these have been few and far between. It’s not that I don’t want to write to you. My therapist keeps telling me that maintaining a relationship with you in this way, even though there will never again be an answer, a two-way connection, is imperative to my healing. Writing to you like I used to, talking to you like I used to— these things will supposedly make me feel less lonely, less bereft. She really liked the idea of me writing these letters to you and I’m trying to do that but fuck, it’s so painful when I know you’ll never read them. Still, the idea of making sure you remain an active part of my life even though you are not physically here is important to me. You loved Mitch Albom books— what’s that quote from him (Tuesdays With Morrie, I think)? “Death ends a life, not a relationship.” The two way connection has been severed; I talk out loud to you and can only imagine what you would say in response. I write you these letters but I don’t send them and you’ll never read them. I reach out a hand knowing you’ll never take it. I will never feel that unadulterated love and joy and contentment that I felt when I was with you. I will ask you questions and the silence in the after will be answer enough. For now, I will put those questions in letters to a dead woman— even if the part about you being dead is only just starting to feel real.

At 23, I know the truth— that these are not things I could’ve put into words or summarized in neat poems. These feelings of love and safety and nurturing and care, they shaped me, made this harsh world bearable and even beautiful for me. In essence, you mothered me. Our relationship meant everything to me, everything, and as someone who has always had very big feelings— good and bad— none of it was ever going to fit onto a page, or a hundred. I tried and tried and tried, and as my life grew more complicated and more difficult, and especially in dark times when you were one of the last ropes tethering me to my life, I wrote more. Somewhere along the way I became a writer by trying to tell you how much I loved you. It was like stretching a muscle. Ultimately, that love was always too big for words. The poems often came out feeling inadequate or unfinished. But still, you read them. Who am I supposed to write poems for now? What do I write about? Who will read it? You were the only audience I ever truly needed— ever truly trusted with these most personal, confessional writings.

If we were talking on the phone, you’d ask me how I’m doing. And I’d say ‘fine’, probably. And you’d know— and I never knew how— but you’d know the truth. You’d ask “Are you sure about that?” Or say “You’re not fooling me, angel.” I miss that part of my day— often the best part of my day— in the evenings when I’d pick up the phone and dial your number. Now, I never feel more desolately lonely than in the evenings, which seem to pass by so slowly. I pick up the phone to call you without thinking; I set it back down, feeling like I’ve been doused with cold water.

So, ok. In case you haven’t guessed, I’m not doing great. (Unless ‘great’, to you, means “sobbing at eleven o’clock at night on a Thursday in the a deserted alley in the middle of the city when I started bawling on the way to the 24 hour pharmacy because I didn’t think I could live another minute without you”.)

Yeah. Not a high point for me.

Evie asked me how I was doing today. Twice, actually. The first time I managed to ignore the question by asking her about her plans for the week. The second time she was more persistent. It took me a few minutes to decide what to say. Evie has been not only a cousin, but a good friend for years, and one of my favourite people. I probably could’ve been honest with her.

But what would I have said?

“I’m not doing so good, Evie. Last week I woke up my father by calling at midnight from an alley near Queens Park where I was crying so hard I couldn’t even get a word out. Once I could speak, I kept telling him I wanted to die because I miss Aunt Barb so much. He told me that I couldn’t do that because people loved me, because she loved me, but in that moment I didn’t give a shit— why does it matter whether people love me, I said, when I am this fucking miserable all the time?? When it is getting worse and not better?”

or maybe I could have said “Never been better, honey; I mean, other that that I have never been so fucking lonely, I’ve failed my courses this semester for the first time in my life, and I am avoiding thinking about Aunt Barb by any means necessary— listening to podcasts or sad music (happy music makes me want to cry these days, and I’m not sure why but I imagine it’s something to do with you), eating food (or else obsessing about not eating food, wondering if falling back into my eating disorder would be worth it if for nothing else than the distraction it would provide), re-reading books because I don’t have the brain power to process anything new. Mostly sleeping as much as I can, because I’ve never been this tired; waking up only to drug myself so I can sleep some more.”

Yeah, I’m sure that all would’ve gone over great. Instead I went with “I’m fine,” quickly changing the subject to David and Dori’s visit to Israel. I didn’t want to bother her or anyone with it. She’s grieving too. Lately I always feel like I’m intruding, like there is no space for my grief and I have no right to feel it. I don’t want to take up space where I’m neither needed nor wanted. Not that Evie has made me feel like that at all, but in general that’s how I’ve felt when interacting with the family you brought me into and (I thought) made me a part of. I’m sure a lot of it is in my head. I don’t know. I was fucked up long before this and if you can imagine, this hasn’t helped.

Anyway, I know Evie hasn’t had the easiest time of it lately either. I know she’s struggled to connect to the girls in her gap year cohort. I know that I could have been even a little bit honest with her and she would not have judged me. She told me at one point that she’d love to talk about you. G-d, I thought, what a relief. I do too. She said that she wants to talk about you all the time, but her friends there can’t really understand because they don’t know you. I understand that. You’d never have believed it but you weren’t just your average grandparent or aunt or— well, you weren’t your average anything. You were special and you were sunshine and for the vast majority of people in my life, they really can’t understand what it was like to love you, and what it has been like to lose you. It was the greatest blessing in my life to know and love you. In my darkest moments I might call it a curse too, only because losing you has been so painful that it’s changed me to someone I don’t even recognize.

But if you know nothing else, know this: if I had to choose between loving you and feeling this pain, and never having known you at all, I’d choose loving you. I’d choose it every time.

I love you. I miss you. Please keep visiting me in dreams. Please let me keep you close.

I love you forever

Emily xoxo

[merakiui]

Frostbite

yandere!childe x (gender neutral) reader art credit - GNSN_FA on twt cw: yandere, blood, minor gore (lacerations), unhealthy behaviors/relationship, mentions of death/hypothermia, fighting

It’s borderline animalistic, the way you cling to warmth and life like a starved, neglected hound. Your fingers stiffen in a vain attempt to flex—to successfully grasp your sword like a true warrior. The furs that were once draped over your body are ragged, torn to shreds from a dangerous battle between the elements and him. There’s no mistaking the excitement that lights his every nerve like bulbs hanging from a Christmas tree, coated in the maddening swell of potent bloodlust. If surrender was an option, you would have done it long ago.

Even then, you’re certain he wouldn’t give you such a benevolent chance no matter how hard you were to beg and plead.

Your breath materializes like a phantom in front of your face, a cruel reminder that you’re still breathing in a battered body. Your fingernails are chipped, blood running down the tips from an icy struggle, but you refuse to succumb to the cold. Instead, you allow yourself to be swept up in his electrified stare. 

“What’s the matter, comrade?” There’s a wry smile pulling his chapped lips apart, showcasing flawless teeth aligned in a perfect face. Despite the brutal wear of this current fight, he’s still handsome. And that makes you sick. “I thought you said you’ve gotten stronger. If I wanted a real battle, I would’ve challenged one of my subordinates and that’s nowhere near as fun as this!”

Keeled over in the snow, your lungs burning with each rattled inhale, you struggle to meet his eyes. The deathly chill of the Snezhnayan climate claws at your exhausted form like the porcelain fingers of a skeleton. You might as well surrender to the freezing temperatures. After all, the frostbite is far kinder than the fighting machine looming over you, the toe of his boot nudging your trembling self. 

“I... I am strong,” you manage to say before the dangerous wind pierces your throat like a dagger. Like the icicle Childe’s wielding, a happily convenient reaction between Hydro and Cryo elements. You cough and crimson paints the snow. “Strong. I’m strong.”

“Then get up.” There isn’t any warmth in his tone. Cold like ice and devoid of his former playfulness. Under all of that nonchalance, a fierce, chiseled warrior lies in comfortable wait. When his eyes trace your hunched form and he spots the blood that dribbles past your lips, practically freezing as soon as it makes contact with the frigid air, those dull hues widen. Surely he’s hit a weak spot, a vital organ or something close to a fatal blow. He wonders for a brief moment if you’re afraid of death. “You’ll freeze if you don’t move.”

A flash catches your attention and then there is the flow of suffocating water. Sharpened blades of ice surround you on all sides, nearly scraping your arms, so you force yourself onto unsteady legs. Internally, you’re searching for a way out—for a way to give up before you bite off more than you can chew. This sparring match wasn’t your request, but you had been a fool to accept, having been so certain of your strength and wit. But you aren’t accustomed to Snezhnaya, whereas Childe has spent years of his life here: training, learning, and fighting until he was worthy of the Tsaritsa’s praise. 

With sloppy movements, you cut through the ice as if it’s butter, eternally grateful for the sharpness of your trusty sword. You can’t tell when this fight will end, but you hope an opening with present itself. As soon as it does, you’re running as far as your frozen legs will take you. Like a feral beast who fights desperately against the unfair hands of the Grim Reaper, you stumble forwards, slashing blindly at your target. He’s thoroughly amused with your struggle, having seen this sort of desperation many times before on the battlefield.

It’s a depressing thing, knowing you’ll be destined for failure and yet you still push onwards. As if that will turn the tide of this battle in your favor. Childe almost admires your persistence, but it isn’t all that special. He’s seen it all before but not quite in the way you portray it. Your despair is far more delectable than that of any low-ranking Fatui soldier. Childe could bask in this for eternity and he’d never grow bored. To have you by his side as his punching bag—it excites him just a little too much. 

Naturally, the more he spars with you, the more he’ll grow accustomed to your attack and defense patterns. A strategy is only worthwhile if it rakes in victory. No matter the cost. No matter how many fall and grovel, begging for their pitiful lives. In a way, his moral compass is rather skewed. He supposes that makes him a bad person, but he’s never been one for the hero role. 

Childe taps your shoulder and you whirl, slicing upwards with your sword. The blade cuts the air, not the torso of the man who jumps back with such deadly precision. The expression he’s wearing haunts you: a wicked smile, pupils blown wide with the thrill of life and death, and a blooming bruise from where you managed to hit him in your earlier scuffle. In any form, he looks good, be it blue and purple, red and pale, or even frozen stiff by the very ice that reacts to his Hydro abilities. You can’t stand your weak heart, as you’re well aware of the face he’ll bear tomorrow. Friendly and disarming, a total opposite to the grinning madman twirling water-turned-ice blades like they’re circus batons. 

Like always, you’ll return his kindness because you’re a fool. Because you like the soft, wholesome Childe that cares lovingly for his family—the side he’s displayed in rare instances that glimmer beyond the gilded portrait of a battle-hardened soldier. 

You fall hard on your back, landing in the thick snow with a wheeze. There is no warmth on the battlefield. Only pain, suffering, and the certainty of death. You push yourself to get up, but your muscles won’t move, too heavy and sore. You know you’re strong—you’ve faced many opponents before and you’ve lived to boast of your successes. You can beat Childe. You have to if you intend to avoid fights with him in the future. 

“Well, this is upsetting.” He’s frowning now, idly tapping the crystalized water while he circles you like a sharp-toothed predator. “Didn’t expect this to end so quickly.”

Liar. You already know I can’t beat you, you want to say, but the words escape you. Not yet, anyways.

A sneer splits your dry lips and blood trickles down your chin like a woeful river. You don’t need a mirror to witness the damage. 

“Teucer won’t like this,” you say, staring up at Childe with dead eyes, hoping to prod at his weak spots. If the mention of his brother affects him, Childe doesn’t let it show.

“He doesn’t have to know,” he retorts, brushing aside such a possibility with ease. 

Right. Because you expect me to put myself back together like a toy. Of course, almighty Childe, the greatest toy salesman in all of Snezhnaya. 

“Well.” You pause to exhale and pain shoots through your side. Through your bleary gaze, you can see a deep laceration. Blood stains what’s left of your attire, and you move your rigid hands over the wound to prevent anymore blood loss. “Congrats. You won.”

“You’re giving up?” Bewilderment flashes across his face for an instant before it melts away into an emotion you can’t place. Anger? Sadness? Is he unhappy with this win? 

“What does it look like? I can’t possibly fight with these injuries.” 

It hurts to speak and you wish he would just stop. If he could accept the outcome of this battle, this wouldn’t be such a problem. You’d be able to patch and heal yourself up before your condition gets any worse. With the chill seeping into your open cut, harshly kissing slick, wet blood, you doubt you’ll make it inside before passing out. Vaguely, you recall the unfamiliar stages of hypothermia. At worst, if you stay out in this fatal weather, pinned like an entomologist’s butterfly under Childe’s monstrous gaze, you’ll freeze to death. At best, you’ll escape, build a fire, and warm up to the best of your ability. Weighing your options, you’d rather lose a finger or a toe as opposed to your life. 

“You can fight.” His blade is at your throat, the pointed tip niggling into your jugular. It’s more of a threat than a warning, a means to spur you into action. “You’ll never get stronger if you’re always running away, comrade.”

Your life has some value; Childe just can’t see that. In his eyes, a fight should be seen through to the very end, even if it’s marred in death and destruction. Yet here you are, choosing to abandon your pride. That must have some strength in itself, right? You hate his face, his childish nature, and the fact that his everything is making you reconsider. You’re doomed to fail if you continue to push your frostbitten body past its natural limits. 

“I...” The blade slices along your throat, a mere surface wound. You can’t feel the sting or the sticky blood that spills out like flowing tears, having become as numb as a fish-eyed animal near extinction. “Childe—“

You don’t want to hurt him and he knows this. It twists his insides like a knife in flesh, turning and turning until organs pop and leak into soupy conflict. The blade leaves your throat and another harsh wind blows between the two of you, glacial and prickling. He distances himself, tracking your form in case you happen to move. You’ve stopped shivering at this point, lying flat on your back and staring up at the dark sky. Snowflakes cling to your lashes like the hands of death, pulling you closer to an invisible grave. 

“You can fight.” Is that desperation in his voice? You almost laugh at the idea. He’s not a desperate man; he doesn’t need to be when he has it all. “Get up, comrade.”

“I think...I’ll stay here,” you whisper, your heartbeat irregularly slow. You’ve never counted the beats before, but now it makes for a fun distraction. “Good job, Childe. You’ve definitely...”

Gotten stronger.

You possess strength, just not the type Childe wants to experience firsthand. He has no use for a lonely, unseeing corpse. And when your eyelids flutter, closing upon a face that reflects frozen death, he releases a sigh. His blade falls at once, landing in the snow with a thump, and he bends down to gather your fallen frame in his arms. Somehow, whenever he spars with you—whenever he’s within touching distance—he feels alive. As if you’ve breathed meaning into his frostbitten soul, warming the cold beast that lurks and pounces at the sight and smell of fresh bloodshed. 

If he’s learned anything, it’s that there’s always going to be room for improvement. You just need to train more, and he’d be over the moon to fight you until it’s your blade slicing through his skin. In the meantime, though, he’ll have to kiss color and life back into your monochrome world of death and despair. 

As the greatest toy salesman in all of Snezhnaya, it’s only fair if he repairs the damages done to his favorite toy. Break, repair, and repeat. A cycle befitting a messy relationship and an even messier slew of choices. Rinse and repeat, like waves licking up a carcass bound to the shore. 

Come morning, you’ll be shiny and new, ready to sit by his side for another leisurely ice-fishing outing. Childe isn’t known as the greatest toy salesman for nothing, and you’re just barely scraping by with each battle scar and bandage—courtesy of such an illustrious, experimental toy salesman. 

[sebbysheepie]

Reading your arguments with certain vegans (and in my own experience) it almost has a similar feel to trying to argue politics with some of my religious relatives. Like they just can’t accept that people might fundamentally disagree with the way they see the world. I DON’T think it’s unethical or cruel in any way to kill animals for food, as long as proper care is taken. I’m not looking at it as a necessary evil I’m not disciplined enough to give up, I’m looking at it as someone who views humans as part of a food chain. And I feel like people arguing it never seem to get that others can disagree with their basic assertion that consuming animals is Bad?

I like that. Political, I always liken this to religion myself.

Ill speak from my own point only. While I myself have never known hunger I was raised in a family that did know it. The great potato famine. The home children. Slavery. This was a topic we grew up on. Food is life. Food is the most important thing. Food means living another day. My great grandparents had known so much hunger. They knew abuse. They had been treated as slaves and lived in the barn where animals had been treated better then they where because the animals where worth more. Could always get another home child. Couldn’t get another chicken or cow as easily. So you treated those animals well.

Growing up this meant that you ensured the best of health for your animals and they never knew pain or suffering. But when it was time for the to be part of the food chain they where eaten. A big farm means you can provide for more people. As we all had big families. That means alot of food needed. Your neighbour had a bad year? You could give him food to see him threw. When the depression hit. Food was given out in droves by the farm because we had it. And there was no hoarding because hungry people lose empathy and values when the belly aches or your children cry. If you knew you would get food from them you wouldn’t be as inclined to steal. Nor did my family want that. I’m more flustered these days with all the rules and regulations on giving food away. It feels the government would rather people starve over getting uninspected meat. We are not saying the butcher didn’t do the work and check it over. No. We just can’t give it out because the government inspector is too busy to come to such a rural area over for one load of donated beef. That’s better to just go to the garbage. It makes me so mad. I don’t believe in waste. I don’t believe in a wasted life. The animal gave its life to feed people and I work very hard to ensure nothing goes to waste from that.

Again this is me. You are going to find farmers that do it because that’s how it’s done. Not that they are bad people. They just don’t have a connection to animals other then food. There’s no harm or abuse, just no extras. You’ll find those that go above and belong what I do. And that’s fine too! If you want to find homes for all older animals. Or give to a sanctuary then by all means go for it! I sell animals and use that money to return back to the farm and give back to the animal there. The sale of an older cow may pay for the vet bill of the calves with health issues giving them years more life. Some pass away on the farm and are buried there, some chickens I eat. And some just go in their sleep. You never know how your going to go, I just want to make sure that my body is of some use to ensure someone else’s survival.

[tempestsreach-blog]

Fuck Diet Culture

This is going to be long.  It’s going to be rambly.  It’s going to be sad.  It’s going to be angry.  There’s going to be language some people don’t like. I can’t NOT talk about it though. 

Fuck diet culture.  Let me say that again.  Fuck. Diet. Culture. It has taken such a huge chunk out of my life.  I have lost pieces of myself I’m not sure I’ll ever get back.  The only way to heal is to go through.  I can’t go back.  I have to move forward.  But I can’t do it quietly.  I can’t hide.  I can’t live in the same shame I’ve spent the last 40 years in.  Literally.  40 years of my life wasted to this.  I can’t bear to live the back half of my life in the same way.  What the hell is the point? I’m not going to write this in any particular order because all of the thoughts and feelings swimming around are snapshots of things in my life that diet culture has broken in me or stolen from me. A lot of you aren’t going to agree with me.  That’s okay.  Truly.  This is about ME.  This is to help ME heal.  You can talk to me about your struggles, your diets, your ups and downs, your successes and whatnot.  I am here for you in all of it. But I won’t diet with you anymore.  Never again.

Currently I am having severe knee pain.  One knee is worse than the other, but both are bad.  I should go to the doctor.  I should have gone to the doctor years ago for it.  Want to know why I didn’t?  My weight.  I have injuries from overuse and over exercise and I am terrified that I am going to go to the doctor and the first words they’re going to say are “Well, if you lost 20, 30, 40, 50 pounds, it probably wouldn’t hurt so much.” instead of listening to me, examining me, scanning my knees and HELPING me.  I don’t feel this way irrationally.  This shit happens.  I am in pain.  I don’t know how to get help without being told to go on another diet that will not work.

Because diets don’t work.  Not long term.  I am excellent at losing weight!  I’ve done it over and over and over.  Then I stop restricting, counting, starving, and pushing myself.  Then my body says “What the fuck were you doing?” and puts it back. I lost the ability years ago to know whether I’m actually hungry or not.  I eat too fast when I do eat because if I snarf it down super fast I can get it in before my brain says “You’ve had too much.  Did you count those calories?  How many miles on a treadmill will you do to make up for that?  Did you actually earn this meal?”

Every time.  Every meal.  Every morsel.

I have never been officially diagnosed with an eating disorder.  Only been told by therapists and psychiatrists that I definitely engage in disordered eating.

No shit.

Every diet under the sun.  Cabbage soup.  Phen Fen.  Weight watchers (MULTIPLE TIMES), TOPS, Noom, My Fitness Pal calorie counting, intermittent fasting,  and every whacky bullshit thing in between promising results.  I’ve purchased fancy scales.  I’ve even tried one that wouldn’t show you your weight, but the color of your progress in the app.  Here’s a hint… if you gain, your color is black like death.  I’ve failed a million times and I’ve blamed myself.  I am the failure.  So I hate my body a little more every day and I stress about how I’m going to NOT pass my disordered eating and my food issues onto my kids.  My stress levels are through the roof and 98% of it is diet culture related. What the fuck is that about? Every time I start a program I hit it hard.  Last time I tried anything involving tracking or counting I was so starving by the time I got home from work that I almost ripped a child’s head off (not literally OBVIOUSLY) but I screamed at her at the top of my lungs because she hurt my feelings.  It wasn’t until after finally allowing myself to eat another morsel of food that I realized I was hangry.

Why is living in a larger body not acceptable?  We all talk about diversity and equality as though we believe it with our whole hearts, but that doesn’t cross over to fat.  Or skinny if we’re really being honest.  How many times have you heard or seen online “Oh my god, she’s so skinny.  Feed her a damn cheeseburger!  She looks anorexic.”  I know I have.  I know I’ve said those words.  I will punch myself in the gut if I ever say them again.  

Every body is different.  We are supposed to be.  Let’s not BLAME genetics like it’s a bad thing.  Let’s realize that it’s what nature has intended.  My father is over 6 feet tall and a large man.  He’s just a big man.  He went on Nutri System when I was young, lost a ton of weight, and put a bunch back on over the years because he is a big man.  My mother was not tall, but was always large.  I hated her body because HER PARENTS told her all the time she was fat and unworthy and cautioned me not to grow up to be like her in any way.  Even when she was poor and homeless she was still large.  That was the way her body was.  I wonder how different her life might have been if the size of her body hadn’t been a factor in the way she was raised or treated.  How might that have made my life different?

I know a lot of you are probably rolling your eyes at me right now about being vocal about another health plan or saying to yourself “just because you have trouble with diets doesn’t mean they don’t work”  I know there are people close to me thinking “She just always gets excited when she discovers a new diet, that’s probably what this is.”  NO.  

This is me finally realizing that I can heal and healing doesn’t mean I need to weigh 157 pounds. (That’s the weight limit for women my height to enter the air force when I did in 1992) This is me finally realizing that I’ve been lying about the weight on my drivers license for 30 years because gods forbid anyone saw my real weight on that document. This is me realizing that I’ve spent my life trying to live up to other people’s ideals of what I should look like because I assumed they wouldn’t like me otherwise. This is me realizing how much unintentional harm I could have been doing when sharing another diet, another idea, another bout of “well this is working really well for me!” with people I care about. This is me realizing how much damage I’ve been doing to myself living with this level of shame for 40 years. Hiding what I’m doing.  Suffering in silence.  Hiding food. Restricting.  Binging.  Over exercising to compensate.  Spending money on one last diet.  Spending emotional energy on one last hope. We were in Las Vegas for what was supposed to be a fun vacation last week and I was so hot and miserable and so steeped in hating my body because my painful knees were betraying me that my internal monologue was a never ending loop of “I’ll hit weight watchers REALLY HARD when we get home and get rid of this weight, then I’ll figure out my knees and work on maintenance” Let me say that again, clearly.  I struggled to enjoy my vacation because I was obsessing about restricting food AFTER my vacation. One last time.  One last meal.

BULLSHIT.

We walked by shops with weird and pretty fashion dresses. (I freely admit I don’t understand fashion) the husband and I would both point out ones we thought were pretty.  My brain would get stuck on “Yeah, but they don’t make them in my size” or “Yeah, that would NOT look good on me.  It looks fine on that size 0 mannequin”  Pretty on other people.  Other people are pretty.  Not me. Diet culture is pervasive and all consuming.  In big ways and little ways.  I’m 5 ft 9.  I’m not a tiny person at any weight.  I’ve always been told I’m too big.  Even when I sit, I slouch a little and/or tuck my legs and feet up under me to try to make myself appear smaller and less invasive.  This is subconscious.  I don’t always realize I’m doing it until my knees remind me. Most of my life has been things that get in the way of my diets.  “I should start the diet today, but it’ll have to wait until next week because so and so’s birthday is this week and I want to be able to enjoy that.”  or “It’s late fall, I should just start now but first there’s my birthday, and then Thanksgiving, and December happens and there’s all kinds of treats then.  Better wait until January, but not the first because that’s new year’s...maybe the following Monday.” or the ever popular “I already had a bad eating day today, I’m a failure.  Why bother?  Fuck it.  I’ll try again tomorrow.”  That one was always followed by binging because of the last supper mentality.  If I’m starting a diet tomorrow I better eat EVERYTHING NOW. This is how I’ve lived my whole life.  The time not spent dieting was just the time in between diets where I was planning my next diet.  So much life wasted.  The only time I was not actively dieting or planning the next diet or suffering from “I’m just too exhausting to put effort into food right now” was during my 4 pregnancies.  I let myself eat whatever and whenever because I was nauseous all the time anyway and something in my brain made me fuel my body for the babies. When the youngest was born and the on call doctor who delivered her told me I was too fat to have my tubes tied I definitely started planning diets again in that moment.  I believe now, years later, that my diet and diet culture ruined mind and body is part of what kept me from being as successful at nursing the kids as I wished I had been.  I assumed my body was broken and not good enough for my babies.  The last time I lost a LOT of weight it was because I didn’t want to ruin someone’s wedding pictures.  True story.  This was nothing that person felt or anything they told me.  IT’s what my brain said to me.  It’s how I de-valued myself.  There are very few current pictures of me now because I’ve been stuck in a place where I feel shame when I see them. When I’m dead, memories and pictures are all my kids and grandkids will have, and I hate myself too much to let anyone take them. That’s not okay.

I dream about food.  I daydream about food.  Food I “shouldn’t” eat.  Food I “should” eat.  When to eat.  When not to eat.  Every spare ounce of energy is spent thinking about food or hating myself which leads to more thinking about food. I am not in a place where I can prepare dinner for my family right now because it’s too hard to put that much energy into food.  I force myself to pick the recipes from the app and get the shopping done via instacart so all anyone else has to do is pull up the recipe and make the food.  If I’m looking at the ingredients or trying to prep anything I stare at every individual thing debating whether or not I “should” eat it.  This is going to take me a long time to break free from.  Today I finally feel like I CAN break free. There is nothing wrong with being in a large body or a small body.  Food is not good or bad.  Food is food.  I have to say these things.  I have to repeat them to myself or I fall down the rabbit hole again.  None of this is work anyone can do for me.  I have to live it.  I have to work through it.  I have to figure it out. If you read this far, my statement stands.  If you’re on a diet, I will listen to your woes and hold your hand and I will not judge you for it.  This was very hard to write because I am certain some of you who believe in diets, ways of life, and wellness eating may block me now because I spoke my mind.  I’ve clung so tight to the people I love and refrained from being honest and speaking my mind for fear of abandonment.  I’ll have to live with it if that’s the case here, because people sometimes need to do what’s best for them.  Airing this out is one of those things for me.  It’s a scary thing for sure. I also want to say that I’m happy for this to lead to discussion.  I’m not going to shut anyone down for wanting to talk to me about this.  I am always open to learn new information and see different perspectives.  Just know that if I’m emotional and feeling a lot of strong things about how my life has been up to this point, and I am entitled to believe what I believe just as you all are.  I’m happy to share sources and books I’ve been reading on the subject.  They are not diet books.

Here’s to doing better from here on out.

Here’s to finally being free.

[vague-and-aloof]

GETTING TO KNOW YOU CHAPTER 3 - SNEAK PEEK

Well, I promised you guys a sneak peek of the next chapter, and here it is! Hope you’ll like it!

———

Mistoffelees had never invited another cat home before, not even as a kitten. When he started going to school his father had already started to tell him that magic scared other cats and this had resulted in him not even trying to make friends or get too close to other cats. So asking any of his classmates if they wanted to come with him to play at his house was never an option. So he wasn't quite sure what to do as he led Tugger into his house, unlocking the door to find the house empty.

"Looks like father isn't home yet." He said as he shrugged off his jacket and hung it on the coat hanger and toed off his shoes. "And Victoria was going to be with Plato after school, so we have the house to ourselves."

"Lucky us." Tugger said a little vaguely as he shrugged off his leather jacket and hung it next to Mistoffelees' before taking another good long look at the hallway with wide eyes. "Wow, this place is nice. Like, really, really nice." He turned back to Mistoffelees, kicked off his boots before placing them by the other shoes. "Your dad must be seriously loaded if you can afford living in a damn mansion! I mean, my dad's pretty well-off too, but not like this."

Mistoffelees smirked cheekily and shrugged. "I don't know if I'd call it a mansion, but yeah, I suppose it is a pretty nice house."

Tugger whirled around and stared at him, very much like how Plato had stared at Victoria the first time he had come by their house. "Pretty nice? Understatement of the decade! When you said that your dad makes millions of pounds a year, I thought you were exaggerating."

Laughing softly, Mistoffelees shook his head and started to lead Tugger further into the house. "Well, in a way I suppose I was and wasn't. Father comes from a very wealthy family, so he already had a big sum of money to his name. But he also owns a lot of very popular and upscale clubs in the city, which makes him a lot of money every year. A big sum of that money goes back into his clubs, in order to keep making those big sums of money. But he still gets to keep-" He paused to think for a moment. "Hm, I believe about 50 percent of it. So if he makes 5 million pounds in one year, he still gets to keep 2.5 million."

Tugger's jaw looked like it was close to falling off his face as he stared at Mistoffelees. Then he blinked and started to quietly mumble under his breath and counted on his fingers, then his eyes widened. "Dude, that's still 200 000 pounds a month! What the hell does he even do with that much money? Your bills can't be that much!"

Laughing again, Mistoffelees held up his paw and started counting on his fingers. "Cleaning staff, personal chef, tuition and school related costs, top of the line dancing gear and instructors for me and Victoria, his own personal parties... food." Mistoffelees sighed and shook his head exasperatedly. "Lots and lots of food. It's all very good food, the best he can find, but it's all a bit much. Especially since Victoria and I don't eat anywhere near as much as he does."

He shook his head and rolled his eyes, muttering under his breath. "There are cats starving in Africa and here we are, buying enough food to feed an entire army for months every week. It's sad, really." Then he shook his head again and turned back to Tugger with a small smile.

"And of course he gives me and Tori an allowance every month. But he only gives us a small amount, I don't think he's ever given us more than a hundred pounds each. He says he has no problem paying for school and the things we need or make us happy, but he doesn't want us to rely on him for everything. He values hard work and working for your success and doesn't want to spoil us to the point where we expect him to hand us everything in life."

Tugger nodded and tilted his head to the side. "Hm, that's pretty smart. Don't want to spoil your kids so they end up like Amaryl."

This made Mistoffelees laugh and he covered his mouth with his paw. "No, you really don't." He took a deep breath and licked his lips. "My father and I have different views on a lot of things, but I respect that he has always wanted to teach us the value of hard work and encouraged us to find our own success rather than lean on his wealth."

They entered the dining room and Mistoffelees placed his bag in one of the chairs, prompting Tugger to do the same. "Let's sit in here. It's the most comfortable place to do homework in."

Mistoffelees, still very unsure of what to do, remembered how his father usually treated his guests when he invited his friends over and made his way towards the kitchen. "Can I get you anything, by the way? Water, tea, coffee?"

Tugger grinned widely. "Yeah, can I have some fur dye in my coffee?" Both of them started laughing for a good long minute before calming down.

"Well, I don't think we have any fur dye in the house at the moment, unfortunately, but I can go and get some of my father's fur tonic if that's alright." This got them laughing again before Mistoffelees waved at him to come with him into the kitchen.

"It's probably best that you make your own coffee, so you can pick what you want for yourself."

Their coffee machine was very nice, made out of metal and black plastic with a touch display showing several different kinds of coffee you could have. From regular coffee, espresso, cappuccino, latte and much more. The Deuteronomys' had a similar one back at home, but the one they had could only make coffee, espresso and cappuccino. Tugger tended to make two cappuccinos at once in a big cup, which was fairly similar to a latte but not quite the same. This was a bit more luxurious, that was for sure.

He looked up at Mistoffelees, who was rummaging around in a cupboard for tea bags. "I thought you said you weren't a big coffee person."

Mistoffelees paused in his rummaging to turn and look at Tugger, one eyebrow raised and his mouth a straight line. "Oh, yeah you're right, I'm not. I suppose we really should just get rid of it then, since there's no one else in this house who likes to drink coffee." He turned back to the cupboard and took out a box with tea with a long, exaggerated sigh. "Oh, what a waste of two thousand pounds."

At first Tugger smirked and turned back to the display, but then his words registered in his brain and he whirled around to stare at Mistoffelees. "Your dad bought a coffee machine for two thousand pounds?!"

Groaning loudly, Mistoffelees turned around to Tugger with a large tea mug in his paw which he placed on the counter before filling it with hot water. "Yes, that was my reaction too. I couldn't believe that he'd spent that much money on a coffee machine when there are so many others out there at a much more reasonable price. But he and Victoria both really love coffee so they wanted the best they could find." He poured a little milk into his tea and then turned back to Tugger. "Me, I'm fine with just sticking with tea and the occasional cup of coffee. Never saw the appeal in it and I still don't."

Tugger kept staring at him for a good long minute before he finally blinked and turned back to the coffee machine, shaking his head and grumbling under his breath. "The life of the one percent." Which prompted a small chuckle from Mistoffelees.

His own family was far from poor, they were limited to one income since it was only their dad working to support them all. Munkustrap had a part-time job at a bookstore and was able to pay for some of his things himself and though Tugger had tried to find a job too, he'd had no luck yet. So while they did have money, they did not have this much money that they could throw on a coffee machine.

"The day I become rich," He said, accepting a mug from Mistoffelees and pressed on the screen to make himself a latte. "I am going to buy myself a house like this and fill it with all of the expensive stuff, just because I can. And I'll commission huge paintings of myself that'll hang all over the damn house! Screw all of that typical rich-cat facade, I'll have five rooms with instruments, video games, an actual movie theatre in the living room and a damn bowling alley in the basement."

Mistoffelees snorted and shook his head. "You act as though there aren't rich cats out there in the world who have all those things."

@uppastthejelliclemoon @soh-da-meatball @storyweaverofgondor @whitmerule @demandra @i-overanalyze-musicals @rainbowratsstuff @rainbow-donkey @tigerstripes-and-leopardspots @tigertail94 @roxycake @roselessart

[getlitaesthetic]

I’m interested to see what the brothers would be like if they had a child (probably with the mc purposely or accidentally) and the fucked up family dynamics that would come of it, like would they full on discard the child? Raise them to be just like their dad? I wouldn’t be surprised if Beel pulled a full on Kronos from Greek mythology

Also asked by an anon: “What if mc somehow got pregnant? How would the brothers be towards them during their pregnancy and how will they deal with the child?”

(Undateables version found Here)

Lucifer

It is on purpose, and Lucifer is the most excited to be having a child.

Will carefully monitor MC’s diet, exercise, leisure activities, everything they do to an extent far surpassing anything he’s done before.

He becomes obsessed with the child’s health.

Not that that stops him from injuring MC, but now he’s very careful with what he does to avoid any harm coming to his child. After all, they can’t get comfortable here.

When the child is finally born, it’s immediately taken from MC.

“I can’t have you passing on your weakness to my daughter, can I?”

He names her Lilith. It was always going to be Lilith.

Lucifer is a loving father, and abusive partner. MC only gets to see Lilith as a prize for a job well done. They become the most well-behaved human in the realm for a chance to see their child. It is such a rare occurrence, their daughter rarely remembers them.

He teaches Lilith to be a true demon, despite their half human nature. Raises them into the Devildom and is a careful protector to ensure that no corrupting influences touch her but his own.

Eventually, Lilith is ready.

MC is so excited to see their daughter, as soon as she enters the room, she’s swept into a big hug. 

MC gasps, and gurgles as they choke on their own blood, Lilith giggling in their arms. 

“Did I do a good job, Daddy?”

“You did perfectly, Princess.”

Mammon

This was definitely an accident

Not only was it an accident, but he may or may not have freaked out a little bit.

“Do you KNOW how expensive children are?”

But then he realizes that everything has a value.

So he sucks it up, and helps MC get through the pregnancy unscathed... Although he may or may not have chained them to the wall so they didn’t get into trouble while he was handling business.

When the boy is born, Mammon doesn’t bother to name him. He leaves MC to take care of the child. They name him Najjad, and dedicate all of their time to raising him to be happy, and healthy, and as human as possible.

He is a handsome child, born with a head of pale white hair, and MC’s eyes. Skin smooth and unblemished, with an easy, happy smile. They love him. They would do anything for Mammon in order to continue being allowed to raise their son.

But the fantasy is short lived.

Mammon quickly grows tired of MC’s time being split between him and the boy, growing greedy once again for their full attention. 

It isn’t long before he has lined up a buyer. It is only days after that that, without warning, Najjad is taken from his parent’s arms, and delivered to a shady demon willing to pay a pretty penny for the offspring of one of the Avatars.

“Finally! About time I got you to myself again, eh?”

Leviathan

This was long since planned. It was only a matter of time before one of his brothers had a child, and Levi wanted one first. Maybe it was the envy in him. Okay, okay. Probably it was the envy in him.

MC is already locked in his room, so it’s easy to hide the pregnancy, just in case something happens. After all, the last thing he wants is for his brothers to know it was a race, and then for him to lose.

Or worse, for one of his brothers to hurt MC while they were still pregnant.

Levi forces MC to do a lot of floating during the pregnancy, and to have a water birth.

However, he is less careful than most of the others. Constantly forgetting to be gentle, always pushing and grabbing MC a little too hard.

Still, the baby boy is born healthy. He doesn’t look quite human, even at birth. Long ragged gills cut sharp lines along his throat, and his eyes are slit. A long black tail extends from his spine, with a fin on the end. The rest of him looks human enough.

Leviathan eventually settles on the name Mizuko. MC is not given the chance to disagree.

MC is still not allowed to leave the room, but is given ample time with their son, helping to raise him, as long as they follow Levi’s strict instructions. He often takes Mizuko away for significant periods of time, disappearing along with him. MC can only imagine they are in the Devildom’s waterways, their son learning skills they’d rather him not know.

Oh, but how good to be alive, and a parent. Even if they were chained to this room, to the torture of being Levi’s plaything. Mizuko makes the whole thing so much more bearable. In fact, they consider trying to get Levi to have another, if only so that they may have a chance to always have one at home.

“I did it, MC! I won! I wonder what Lucifer will have to say about that.”

Satan

A pregnancy with Satan was planned, and actually suggested by MC.

They wanted to show their devotion to him, still so unaware of how he had manipulated every aspect of their life.

He seems so excited when MC tells them that it’s happened, they’re pregnant.

He treats them so sweetly throughout their pregnancy, but continues drugging, manipulating, and casting spells on them without their knowledge and without regard to their child.

It is only luck that none of them hurt their baby.

MC gives birth to a beautiful daughter, who will grow to have soft blonde ringlets and beautiful blue eyes, just like her father. She glows softly. 

Satan and MC agreed to the name Ismene for a girl early in the pregnancy, and once she arrived, it seemed just perfect. 

She grows to be smart as a whip, but cruel. Satan is so proud. MC begins to realize they don’t know everything about their husband after all.

They sit in the garden, Ismene practicing a spell to set a flower ablaze. MC tries to frown, to scold her, but their face does not budge.

“How lovely,” they hear themselves say, as if far away. “Our little girl is growing so quickly.”

Satan kissed their forehead and knelt in front of their daughter.

“Remember, you have to want it to die, with all of the rage in your heart,” he instructs her.

She smiles, looking at MC as the flower begins to burn.

Asmodeus

A child with Asmodeus is unplanned, but not unexpected.

With all of the unprotected sex he has with MC, and how frequently? It was only a shock it took so long.

Besides, MC no longer had the brain capacity to agree or plan anything. All they wanted was more of their demon master, filling them up, using them, making them worth something.

What could possibly fill them more than a child?

Asmo thinks it’s adorable, to watch MC’s stomach grow as they lay there, mindless and drooling. Desperate for anything Lust could offer.

It does not affect his daily routine in the slightest. He continues to use and abuse MC as he sees fit whenever he desires, and still disappears for weeks at a time, leaving MC’s health up to whatever brother happens to remember to feed them.

They give birth alone, confused as to why they are in pain and what is happening.

When Asmo returns, he leaves MC in their pain and filth, taking the baby girl away to clean her up and dress in lovely silks.

He names her Bellerose Fayre, and is the only one of the brothers to give his child a middle name.

She is perfect, and would pass for human if it wasn’t for her long, winding tail that reaches and grasps with it’s velvety texture, pulling in anything it can touch.

What happens next is... incredibly disturbing, to say the least. If you are particularly sensitive, I would recommend skipping to Beelzebub.

Asmo is inseparable from his daughter. Always keeping her dressed in beautiful clothing and teaching her everything he knows. Bellerose is a very quick study. It isn’t long at all before she has fully tapped into her father’s power and begins to work at his side, seducing souls to Hell. Only a child. 

How MC would have died to stop it if they could have. But they remained in that room, no mind left to care.

“Good job, Rosie! Another worthless wretch condemned to the pits. You’re a natural!”

Beelzebub

Unplanned. Unplanned. So unplanned.

Anon, you are unfortunately quite correct.

Beelzebub can smell it on MC before they even know. He had been holding back on feasting, saving them for a special occasion. 

But now that they were pregnant? Their blood, their body, all of it was extra nutritious as it prepared to build his child.

He waits, for a while. Staying far away so as not to be tempted, despite MC’s desperate attempts to get him involved.

The day comes for the gender reveal.

A boy.

Since Beel refuses to be involved, MC picks out the name. Akuji. 

It’s an apt name. 

MC returns that day to attempt to tell Beel the news, only to be met by the lumbering form of the starved man that strikes fear into their heart. They eat MC whole, and their child with them.

But that isn’t the end. Awake. Akuji screams from inside MC, inside Beel. Tiny claws begin to scratch and dig.

Eventually, his son rips through his stomach and into the world, severely underdeveloped. Time would take care of that. The boy had curled hands with bloody claws, blindingly violet eyes, and the concave stomach of his father. He would eventually grow fly wings and a head of MC’s hair, but he would never gain a full human form.

Beel tried several times over the years to eat his son, to no avail. Every time, he would just have to sew up his stomach and continue on his endless stalk for sustenence.

Belphegor

A child with Belphie is so unplanned that he doesn’t even know about it until a thousand years after they are born.

He had trapped MC in his lair for his nap, but his grip had loosened in his dreaming, and while they remained locked in the room, at least they could roam. Food was stockpiled to hide from his twin brother, which MC subsisted on.

They had become pregnant after a slow, elongated night of fucking with Belphie as he gained their favor to get them where they were now. And they had no way to tell him without ensuring their own death in the process.

So MC coached themselves through the pregnancy, always careful not to wake Belphegor.

It was a close call during the birth, as he huffed and stirred, but MC bit down on their own arm to shut themselves up.

When their son was born, he looked perfectly human. Blinking slowly up at their parent. MC fed him only once, and whispered his name to him before he drifted to sleep. 

Eventually, the food ran out. Their son did not wake, no matter how they tried. MC sobbed quietly at their loss, as surely he was dead. Starved and exhausted, they laid down to die.

Hundreds of years passed. In his sleep, the child grew, gaining more demonic features. Growing longer, sharper. Lithe wings extending from his back and sharp teeth appearing past his lips.

Their dreams began to intertwine, the boy learning so much from the Avatar of Sloth’s thoughts.

Finally, Belphie awoke, immediately spotting his son in the corner, strangely familiar, and the young one stirred at the movement.

“Who are you?”

“Cimon.”

“Hmm. Good morning.”