#its just too much and i fucking trigger myself constantly by looking in the mirror and seeing his face staring back

[378262]

dreaming of a nose job lmao

[seafearing]

@palmviolet this question was just too good (and difficult bcos of it) which is why i have been thinking about it for like six days. so sorry for this absolutely unhinged essay you are getting, feel free to. ignore lol

1 in the bleak midwinter, season 2, episode 6

this takes the number one spot because it's one i really remember hitting me upon watching it for the first time. his grave that's been dug out for him for the whole episode without him realizing it, then the acceptance in the mud and the field, the sequence where he actually falls into the grave with the dead bodies on top, i did fucking think he had died for a second there. and then he has to crawl out of it, and. then the realization that he has to keep going is what breaks him, and how that tells so much about his character and how it gets built up on and mirrored constantly the coming years.

oops this got long sorry i am entirely normal about this television series

2 did polly send you, season 6 episode 6

i can't not have this scene high up here. the symbolism throughout, with the crow, the fire, and the horse, his hallucination of his daughter and at this moment, imagining polly as well despite saying that polly would never visit him in his dreams again, that torn ugly heart of family, love and brutality, betrayal

and the sentimentality of spreading all these mementos of his loved ones in the caravan where he intends to die, like a kind of perverted version of him saying to campbell "i have my family". and alfie asking him, when will he stop, and "when i find the man i can't defeat", and that turned on its head and being manipulated into becoming the man he can't defeat, myself talking to myself about myself truly, as well as, most glaringly, the whole mental illness of it all. and, just i don't know i found it good storytelling not to have the main character that's struggled with mental health and suicidal ideation for the entirety of the series, die of suicide at the end for a shock ending of sorts. like i am so very glad that wasn't the twist in it all.

and then the continuation of this scene to the end. him with the gun in his hand once again, that addiction where he feels like god. and this time he doesn't pull the trigger, but it was never about pulling the trigger, it was having the power of being the one to choose. and they end it with him riding away with the white horse encased in fire. the obvious symbolism with how everything started with him arriving on the black horse, and also the mirror of how he blew up his house and walked away from it, repeated at the end. like sorry but this is poetry to me.

3 now you've seen me, season 1 episode 5

this was such a brutal and haunting scene that i really remember well from those early seasons. one of the few times we really see tommy lose it like this. used by the police much like he was used in the war, and then he snaps. and that betrayal, again. they were supposed to come, but they didn't come, the cavalry. and the vulnerability that he has afterwards, you see that it breaks him. that unavailable, closed off man he's become after the war, and you feel like, this is what was hiding underneath it all, these raw guts, the splattered, caved in skull. "now you've seen me," he says to grace, but he's also saying that to the audience. i do really like that their romance as well is always marked by them seeing this violence, the brutality in one another. "this one looks like it was killed by a wild fucking animal," and she marries him.

4 what fucking line am i supposed to have crossed, season 3 episode 6

i can't also not-mention this. i really enjoy pretty much all the characters in peaky blinders, but alfie is truly a wild one. he's sold tommy out again, and this huge rant he goes on after being confronted about it, it's just simply beautiful and so multi-layered that i feel too stupid to analyze it. just something about him unleashing this self-justified anger at tommy thinking he's above it all, and then to go, more softly: "i did not know about your boy, though." also the propensity of tommy always going back to him for more betrayal, just like he went back to grace after she betrayed him. this season, it doesn't even occur to him that alfie might have betrayed him (again): he interrogates his family, first. insane.

5 he just listened. and now he has no face, season 5 episode 4

god i love season 5, and this episode in particular. this whole sequence where the swan dies, in this episode where tommy keeps seeing his dead wife. the whole sequence is just, encapsulating love, betrayal and violence. lizzie going to hold tommy's hand as they watch the ballet, aberama proposing to polly, the reveal of linda and her raw confrontation of the violence and control, fuck. and then polly being the one to pull the trigger, and the swan, she does die. and the whole sequence that unravels afterwards with linda on the table is like something! out of a fucking renaissance painting!! it makes me unhinged!!

nooo and i didn't even include that sequence at the dinner table in s6 where the camera swiwels between the participants, just the cinematography and decisions they make in this show. prove it with your body. wait let me redo this whole thing i'm not doing it justice nooo who cares about season 1 (i do)

[raincamp]

i feel like i might romanticize/glamorize SH too much, as someone with BPD + histrionic traits, romanticizing harmful/self destructive acts that get me attention is just a part of my disorder, and i try to keep it to just myself & not expose other people to it unwillingly, bc i dont believe in encouraging other people to start or to relapse

but i decided to make a post talking about the cons/bad parts of SH to cancel it out

obvious trigger warning

why you shouldn't self harm / the cons

- blood stains on everything. your mattress, your bedsheets, your favorite blanket, your comfy sweatshirt. how bad it feels knowing your whites will never be perfectly white again.

- it hurts. i mean. listen. you can say pain feels good etc etc but be fr our human instincts really don't enjoy it we just like the afteraffects/endorphins that come from it, pain by definition is uncomfortable

- having to get medical attention, or acquire medical knowledge that most people dont have. knowing the layers of skin and where all the arteries are. the fear of hitting arteries. hitting arteries and having to get help. having to pay for stitches.

- the constant need to be deeper, the never feeling like its enough, almost, almost feeling the satisfaction but never actually achieving it. the frustration after you fail. the shame of even trying.

- the addiction. the fact that its going to haunt you for the rest of your life. you could be clean for 10, 25, 40 years and you will still instinctually want to SH anytime something goes wrong and you dont feel like you can cope. you'll constantly be fighting yourself for the rest of your life.

- scars haven't ever really been a con for me tbh. but sometimes i think about the fact that i did it to myself, that theyre permanent, and theyre never going to go away, and it hits me, how a single decision can affect the entire rest of my life. permanently. and i have nobody to blame but myself. and it sucks.

- when you sh for attention and it works, and the shame you feel immediately afterward. and worse, when you get attention/validation from your scars after youve been clean for a long time and you feel like you conned & faked your way into it, and it taints the validation you were recieving.

- "promise me you'll stop 🥺 youre too pretty to do that 🥺 stop for me 🥺" when you roll up your sleeves after making a new friend and they dont get that its an addiction/that youve been clean for a while/ that you cant promise to stop because relapse is inevitable and promising will make it worse/ that its none of their fucking business jfc

- being unable to look at normal, mundane objects like razors, pencil sharpeners, exacto knives, box cutters, knives, etc. without being triggered.

- when you realize its been 10 years since you started and you STILL think about it on a regular basis.

- the itching. the nerve/sensation loss on scars. the weird zapping pains that happen years afterward. infections. the pain lasting for days/weeks. constant aftercare.

- scars fading and being triggered. seeing your scars in the mirror and being triggered. seeing other peoples scars and being triggered. seeing people score bread and being triggered. when people cut normal things and it looks just like sh and being triggered.

- clothes sticking to fresh cuts.

- either urges to relapse during winter because its easier to hide everything or overheating in the summer because you couldnt wait till winter. or both

- other people starting sh because of you. other people shing because of you. this has happened to me multiple times. i started someone's self harm addiction on accident. i can never forgive myself for it.

- forming other addictions to stop relapsing sh. being unable to stop one without leaning hard into the other. or doing both at the same time.

[skiniibuniii]

probably never got fasting insomnia cuz i kept "recovering" before i reached the point im at rn. heres some shit abt me, my history of eds, and why i think and have been told i have EDNOS. added a read more thing so you dont have to read it if you dont want to.

wow someone likes me lmao jk but,,

when i was 9-10 i had to take one of those tests in school for BMI and i was the heaviest person there. all the kids compared bmis and i just stayed quiet when i was asked. so the very next day i did a week long fast without knowing what the fuck i was doing. i barely drank anything, fainted once and couldnt stand up without my legs giving out. yeahh my mom almost took me to the hospital, and i wanted that til my mom said id be poked with needles so i "recovered". off and on over those next few years, i tried to watch what i ate but didnt count cals (tbh cuz i didnt know how).

I started smoking weed around 11-12 and i started binging B A D. my stomach hurt constantly but i never stopped eating. to the point that my mom finally told me that i was eating too much cuz we didnt have the money for me to keep that up any longer than a few months. and my mom saying "youre eating too much", even though she was worried about me and i knew she was just worried, it totally triggered me again. still didnt know jack shit about eds. i tried to restrict and got into a fast-binge cycle for a couple months. "recovered" again.

tried to die right after i turned 13, got sent to a hospital for 2 months and thats when i learned about eds. started going to this LGBTQ club, met my bf and discovered my gender identity (didnt know abt trans people before that either, thought i was just really crazy), and started to learn about how to be safer. aand this is when it stopped being 100% about how i look, but now it was a 50/50 on looks and weight. got back in that fast-binge bull. got my first Tumblr page somewhere around this time too and was in LOVE loved my blog so much. got into ed tumblr for inspo but obvy that didnt last long. stayed on my main for a long while til (i think) i was abt to turn 16. "recovered".

about to be 14 years old, got back into my shit cuz i got pregnant and didnt know it and freaked out about how ugly i was, dropped to 130 cuz the morning sickness made it so easy to purge (i was and have not since been able to purge via vomit) and i barely ate anyway with cal counting, nausea, fasting, and chainsmoking. i did some drugs aside from smoking around this time and drank a fair amount too. found out i was pregnant, "recovered" AGAIN, stopped doing all that bad stuff and was tormented by my body for another 4-5 months. got up to 225lbs, apparently i gained 85lbs from month 5 to birth. popped out a baby, kid was healthy thank god, tried to breastfeed, yo-yoed between 200-225 for about 2 months, breastfeeding wasnt working and made me want to die with the gender dysphoria, switched to bottles, 2 months after that now we're back. didnt do crazy restriction but exercised like a madman. hated myself really bad. fast-binge you know the deal. bf force-fed me regularly. i fucking gave up. reached 175 before i bounced right back to 200.

now we're 16 its the first of june, gonna be 17 in 14 days. i havent been able to look in a mirror for any reason besides to do my makeup in several years. still 200lbs. havent worn anything that could remotely show how fat i am in years. out of nowhere i decided, "imma get back on my fucking shit. I REFUSE TO HATE MY BODY ANYMORE. I DO NOT WANT TO BECOME AN ADULT AND FUCKING HATE MYSELF LIKE THIS"

"hey, youre 17 now! happy birthday. i know your phone just broke, i bought you a computer! it was a great deal and they said it worked for games too! you said youve been wanting to play that java server, right?"

i remembered, tumblr is a thing! i loved my blog, maybe if i get back into that id be happier.

"ghost blog", gone. i cried quite a bit lmao, but lets start a new one!

and here we are. and i am not doing any fake recovery shit this time.

from what i know, EDNOS includes the off-and-on stuff and i was told by a couple people on my og blog that i dont have ana i have EDNOS.

boom thats my ed life story. and if thats kinda bad yall should hear my whole fucking life story. ive been thinking abt writing a book about it cuz it is actually fucking crazy.

[crazylil-lion]

Something that bothers me about getting diagnosed with bpd is how everyone leaves.

So many people post toxic ill-informed options about people with bpd without ever taking a second to understand.

They call us demons, evil, manipulators when statistically we are MORE likely to be manipulated and gaslit because of our emotions and never having a sense of self.

The shame and guilt we feel is CRUSHING for every action we do and people use that to break us down into taking their emotional and mental abuse because we feel either we deserve it or we idolize our partner and are unable to see the problems.

Because our emotions can flip in seconds multiple times a day people call us dramatic. They don't understand why we ask if they hate us or if we are awful multiple times because they don't know what its like to have these intense mood swings and the guilt and abandonment issues that PHYSICALLY hurt.

So we are seen as manipulative because of emotions they don't understand. Yes some people can act out on their rage if they aren't constantly aware of their emotions.

Just because we break down and cry over something you consider meaningless doesn't mean our emotions aren't valid. Doesn't mean we are just overreacting we are in actual distress. We genuinely feel that extreme of an emotion and when people start slapping labels such as overreacting and being childish or too emotional or even manipulative because of those emotions it makes everyone 100x worse.

When you invalidate someone with bpd you make us feel broken. Personally the shame and guilt after splitting even if I internalize it and don't act out towards anyone is so strong all I want to do is self harm. I feel I deserve it because of these intense emotions I know I shouldn't feel over something small.

The truth is we get gaslit so easily because we have no emotional permanence. So we feel one feeling say extremely depressed thats all it is thats all its ever been then within seconds multiple times a day we switch to a new feeling or just out right numb.

I just wish people realized we aren't a demon we are struggling daily with this mental illness that is literally a huge part of your life no matter the therapy and medication yes they help sooooo much by helping you recognize triggers and helping talk yourself through the emotions to handle your episodes but we still feel them. Its logically arguing against something illogical as emotions constantly.

Questioning who you are because most have no sense of self or a personality

We pick up pieces from people that are close we mirror those around us because personally I genuinely don't know a thing.

Everything is empty and pointless

But if my partner enjoys something I normally see their prospective and blend with their personality and enjoy it too.

Yes I have a few likes. Xbox femdom and romantic movies. Thats it I literally don't give a shit about anything else. Idk what I like myself to look like because I don't even feel connected to my body 90% of the time.

I feel so fucking unlovable all because people avoid you if you have bpd like you are a demon set on destroying the world.

There are plenty of people that do it without a personality disorder its extremely fucked up and albeist to group us all into this category of evil when everyone is different.

[hollyand-writes]

Just wanted to say that I saw your post about Blond Boy Romance discourse and wanted to thank you for such a succinct write-up about Anders. I got into the fandom in late 2019 and i was SO confused about this huge gap in art and fic. Like, dead links and missing blogs and deleted posts. And I couldn’t figure out what happened because no one was talking about it, and I’m very shy after a mess in my last fandom. So...yeah. Thank you for writing that up, it’s nice to finally know what happened even though it’s really depressing. Also, thanks for staying in this fandom. You’re a wonderful example to others and an amazing creator.

Hello wanderingnork, and a very belated welcome to the fandom! 🙌🏾 Well. Welcome to what’s left of the fandom anyway LOL ❤️ 

Thanks so much for reaching out and sending me this really kind ask message (the post being referred to is my addition/reblog here) but yeah, I guess for those who weren’t in Dragon Age 2 fandom or the Anders side of fandom between December 2017—July 2018 you wouldn’t have seen how horrifying the bullying got. I’ve seen at least 3 people who aren’t friends with me reblog my post saying that what I described was why they themselves quit DA fandom or the Anders side of fandom too. 

And those are the Anders fans who DIDN’T delete their Tumblr blogs. Obviously the ones who DID delete and/or quit aren’t here to confirm that they, too, quit over that Anders wank in 2018. 

The worst of it was that the wank was started entirely by a group of Anders fans who – to my knowledge – still see themselves as the real victims to this day, even though they only stopped their callout posts and bullying (both in public and behind the scenes in private) when they learned that the Anders fanartist they were bullying was considering taking legal action. (You KNOW things are bad when fandom wank gets so bad that it becomes actual harassment that breaks the law.) And like I said, they posted some pretty shitty things about those of us who were friends with this artist too, causing many of us to block them. 

They backtracked like fuck in July 2018, but after seven months (maybe more?) of constantly bullying this one popular Anders fanartist (who’d repeatedly apologised, deleted the NSFW sideblog AND the offending art, and posted how the whole thing had driven that artist to a breakdown and suicidal thoughts), maybe it should never have got that far?

I don’t know how active they are in DA fandom now – but I DO know one of them notoriously posted that us blocking them was “bullying”, and that “bullying is child abuse” for “children” like themselves... despite the fact that they admitted they were 23 and therefore were very much not a fucking minor or child. (They had a lot to say about how WE should have been responsible for their “online safety” as well, and that Anders was their “comfort character” whom they only wanted to see sweet fluff content for, and they regularly triggered themselves by searching out Anders content that was less than fluffy or sweet to complain about on their blog. Not to mention how many of us queer POC Anders creators in our 20s and 30s – including the Anders artist they bullied – were accused of being “white” and “boomer-passing” for defending Anders content they didn’t like LMAO)

I’m so sorry to hear about the huge gap in art and fic you experienced on coming in to Tumblr Dragon Age fandom, but given how many creators took one look at the bullying and thought “fuck this, I’m leaving” and either deleted their blogs or Anders posts/fic/art/meta or simply left for kink-friendlier fandoms, I am honestly not surprised to hear this. I am also sorry to hear that there was a mess in your last fandom too; and I hope that this fandom is better to you. 

Dragon Age fandom is a difficult fandom to be in, but trust me when I say there are lots of good people in it. They’re just harder to find, and often they’re not as prominent or in-your-face as the nastier types. But I know they’re there because I’ve found them, and I treasure them, and I’ve been here since 2014. 

I think really all we can do is block the haters as much as possible, and carry on creating whatever the fuck we like – and tagging appropriately. I learned my lesson from that wank in 2018: if someone(s) is really determined to destroy you and just wants you gone, there is no apology or deletion you can give that will be good enough. Besides, there are so many problematic themes and content in Dragon Age canon that I don’t think it’s reasonable to ask creators to completely shy away from exploring those if they want to, or from making OCs that mirror a canon character’s traumatic background, or from writing/drawing canon characters as anything less than healthy and wholesome and pure (which NONE of them are in canon, anyway) – especially if it’s tagged and warned for. 

I mean... we all paid Bioware to purchase and play this 18+ game with its uncomfortable, difficult and sometimes problematic themes and content. I feel that if the Dragon Age franchise was so terrible and traumatic and problematic for someone when playing, then I do question why they joined the fandom afterwards. And I don’t think the onus should fall solely on fandom creators – who are doing this for free, unpaid, in our spare times – to create perfect, unproblematic, wholesome content that just wasn’t in the games themselves. Different people have different definitions of what is “perfect”, “unproblematic” or “wholesome” anyway. 

(On that last point: look at how the people behind The Mess callout tried to accuse people of being racist for romancing Cullen with pale-skinned Lavellans; back in 2016/2017 you got accused of being racist for romancing Cullen with darker-skinned Lavellans. How times have changed 🤔  There’s a LOT of content in this fandom that I don’t like, or that squicks/repulses me, but as long as it’s tagged in a way that I can avoid it, I’m not gonna police what people create. And if there’s one thing I’ve noticed the Dragon Age fandom IS very good about doing, it’s that most people are careful about handling problematic topics and content in a sensitive way. So that’s not a thing I worry about.) 

Anyway. I’m rambling. But yeah, that recap of 2018 (which several people have confirmed is true now) sums up why there is such a huge gap in Anders fanart and fic, and is why very few people create Anders content anymore – I know I myself abandoned a Garrett Hawke/Anders longfic in 2018 because I didn’t want to create for Handers fans if the only ones around were bullies who believed they were victims. But it’s been well over 2 years now, so.... I might get back to writing that fic. The Gym AU is still very much alive in my brain 👀 

So! That’s what happened... but despite everything I want to emphasise that there IS much good in this fandom, even if it’s harder to find among all the shit there is 💩 and that I hope your stay here is a good one. Thank you so much for saying you think I’m a wonderful example to others and an amazing creator, though! ❤️ I don’t know how many people will agree, but I do try! 

But yeah, if there’s one thing I’ve learned from being here since 2014 – and from surviving several attempts to run me out of fandom (including for having an elf/human OTP) and off this platform – it’s this: The people change, and the characters and subjects being wanked over change, but fandom wank itself never ever changes. 

[goblinmanifesto]

Ive already accidentally deleted this once so fucking kill me (I forgot to save it).

⚠️TW FOR ANXIETY, TOURETTES, SLIGHT SELF HARM⚠️

But this is my post for @doinmybesthere Mental Health Awareness May collab! I will be doing Bokuto Koutarou. To explain a bit, to cope with bullshit that is life, I accidentally made myself a coping mechanism that I loving refer to as the ‘Klaus Hargreeves‘ (if you know anything about that character, you already know where my mental state is) because I can’t remember what my therapist said the actual name for it was. To put it simply, it’s like overactive day dreaming. I act out and create scenarios in my head to comfort myself, most of the time using characters or real people as an enabler for the comfort I wish to gain. Side effects being; if caught, considered crazy, sometimes don’t realize I’m doing it which can lead to awkward situations, sometimes I fuck up what’s real and what’s not. So, in these little stories, I will be retelling scenarios I have created through this coping mechanism that relate to both Bokuto and my mental problems! Each will be labeled with what they deal with so you can skip the one that might trigger you. Enjoy and happy reading! (I WILL ALSO BE MENTIONING AND USING STIMMING) ((I will probably use this to make other fics like this in the future mentioning my other ~stuff~ but in the meantime this is all I want to do so enjoy!))

⚠️LAST TW⚠️

1. ~Anxiety, Self harm, Mentions of Stimming~ He should’ve been home an hour ago! I was pacing in the living room, shaking hands holding my phone. It was 7:13 and Koutarou was supposed to be home at 6:00. I was spiraling and I could feel it, but I didn't know what to do about it. Id sent him text after text, but he was yet to respond. I glanced at my cell, only stopping my frantic shuffling to focus my attention on reading the screen;

Hey, is practice running late? [6:11] When do you think you’ll be home? [6:15] Are you there? [6:19] Koutarou??????? [6:23] Kou pick up your damn phone! [6:27] Did something happen???!! [6:34] Is everything okay?! [6:39] Are you mad or something??? [6:47] Bokuto Koutarou I’m dead serious where are you?!?!?! [6:53] Bo-ku-to!!!! [6:59] Koutarou it’s been hour please text me [7:07] Koutarou!!! [7:12] -Unread-

My eyes scanned the messages again, not leaving the blue screen until until my shin collided with the side of the coffee table. I hadn’t even realized I had started pacing again. I checked the texts I had sent to Akaashi as well, since I knew he was at that practice too, but I hadn’t gotten any responses from him either. Slipping my phone screen up onto the table I continued my pacing, not even processing when my finger nails found their way under my teeth, and how when they left my mouth to scratch at my neck or claw at my shirt, my teeth resorted to gnawing at my lip instead, tearing up the thin skin. All habits I was trying to kill but didn’t have enough brain power to focus on not doing them. My eyes constantly searched the driveway for the headlights of any car, any car at all, but they always came up with nothing. It was 7:24 when my phone struck with the sound of text, the bing of anticipation sent me diving for, and consequently almost dropping, my phone in an attempt to find out if it was Koutarou. It was!

Hey, is practice running late? [6:11] When do you think you’ll be home? [6:15] Are you there? [6:19] Koutarou??????? [6:23] Kou pick up your damn phone! [6:27] Did something happen???!! [6:34] Is everything okay?! [6:39] Are you mad or something??? [6:47] Bokuto Koutarou I’m dead serious where are you?!?!?! [6:53] Bo-ku-to!!!! [6:59] Koutarou it’s been hour please text me [7:07] Koutarou!!! [7:12]

-Read-

Im so sorry!! Yes practice did end up running late! But something else happened and I

wasn’t able to text you! I’m not mad about

anything I promise!! What happened is also

minor and nothing to worry about and I’ll explain when I get home in about ten

[7:21] minutes!! I’m so sorry!! -Read-

I sighed, relieved, the weight on my chest and in my head dissolved and I felt like I could finally breathe again. Though, as I came down from my anxiety rush, I became aware of a lot of things all at once. The first was a good deal of pain. From knocking my leg into a table and pacing for over an hour, to bitten lips and nails, and my scraped neck. I groaned, I need to get a better handle on this.

But that wasnt important. Koutarou was okay and on his way home! I waited at the window, feeling a bit like a dog waiting on its owner (that was a kink joke yes), and leaped to the front door when I saw his car in the driveway. Throwing open the door, I pulled him inside the second I could get my hands on him and pulled him through the doorway. The moment he was inside, I shoved myself into his arms in a tight hug, so glad he was okay. He returned the hug and held me tightly, I let out a shuddering breathe and he let out comforting sounds I sometimes use to stim. “Hey, hey, hey, I’m so sorry to have you worry, it was about Akaashi! We were running extra practice with a handful of the other guys and I literally had half a text to you written out when he a spike to the face! I was the only one left with a car so I drove him to hospital! I’m so sorry you are so worried you sent like 15 texts! I’m so-“ I cut him short with a hand over his mouth since that was one of the only ways to get him to stop talking. “Kou, it’s okay, I understand, it just really scared me ‘is all-“ he pried my hand off his face but held it in his own.

”I know, but that doesn’t mean I can’t apologize for it, whether I was in complete control of the situation or not! Which I was not, by the way, no control what-so-fucking-ever, I had four other guys in the car and one of them was bleeding and concussed, it was chaos!!” His eyes were wide and he went off on the stress of the situation and, for a moment, I forgot that it was 7:26 at night on a Thursday and I had a biology test in the morning, and that Koutarou just got home and I hadn’t even eaten yet and all the other things that werent right in the world. Everything was fine in that moment. But that ended when Koutarou took a good hard look at me. The redness and scratch marks on my neck, the bitten to bleeding finger nails, the small bruise forming on my shin, my blotchy face and my probably-way-too-red lips. He stopped dead in his words and I felt my eyebrows scrunch up.

“Whats wrong?-“

“You did the things again didn’t you?!” He sounded distressed and his broad shoulders sunk. Koutarous hands rubbed my shoulders as he stared into my eyes with the most concerned look I’d ever seen. He pulled me back to his chest again and promised it wouldn’t happen again.

7:46, Koutarou insisted on taking care of my ‘injuries’ since he was who I was having anxiety over anyway. I protested a little, but gave up when he gave me the baby-owl eyes.

First, he had wrapped bandaids on my fingers. Thankfully, they were black, and I made a comment on it was like a 2-second manicure just to hear him chuckle.

Then, Kou applied a moisturizer to my neck. “Kou, I can do this myself-“

”Nope! I insist!”

”I’m not a child-“

”Don’t care, I’m doing it so just shush up and let me do what I need to do!”

Next, he made me apply ice to my bruise even though it was tiny and caused by a damn two-foot-tall coffee table.

Lastly, he gave me chapstick. Again, wouldn’t let me do it myself, so I made several sarcastic remarks to make him blush, all working quite well. Koutarou had to tell me to stop giggling multiple times so I could stay still.

”Alright, are you done playing nurse?”

”Forgive me for wanting to take care of you!!” He stuck his tongue out at me with an audible “bleh!” and I cackled.

”You are forgiven, Nurse Bokuto.”

2. ~Tourette’s, Stimming~ My neck painfully popped when it jerked to the left, my tics had been bad all day and I no clue why. Could be exams, or the fucking toaster for all I knew. I hissed, rubbing at my neck and adjusting the water can I almost dropped, trying to continue about my Saturday.

It was obnoxious, really, having to me-proof everything around in case I end up kicking it, dropping it, or hitting it. My joints constantly cracking and snapping and jolting in the strangest ways at any given moment. Sometimes repeating what people say back at them in perfect mirror-like fashion. Though that last one can be kind of funny.

Clicking my toungue to make nice noises to try and stim the tic away, I returned back to my plants. I could feel them chuckling at me and, in that moment, I understood everything about Crowley from ‘Good Omens’.

I heard the door unlock in the other room and I put my can down as a precaution and peeked out of the doorway.

A moment later, Koutarou popped through the door after his morning jog. He called out; “Hey, hey, hey!” as a greeting.

I felt my hands go up behind my head and I thought Oh gods dammit, and then my jaw jutted forward in a very unattractive way and I repeated his phrase in the same manner as him, then immediately dropped, as my body decreed.

I groaned, looking up at him, who looked slightly bewildered at my little madness ritual. His hair laid flat on his head, he had chosen not to mess with it this morning, much to my delight, his amber eyes a little wide and his eyebrows raised. He was barely even in the house yet.

We just kind of stared at each other for a hot second before I awkwardly waved ‘hello’ and cracked a weird grin. He grinned back, his more pleasant than mine. Walking over, he opened his arms for a hug, and I accepted, since he wasn’t all that sweaty this time around, and it was the least I could do since he had to witness that.

Koutarou planted a kiss on the top of my head, cheering “Good morning!”

I muttered a response into his shirt.

“One of those days, huh?” I nodded.

“Coffee? I think we have muffins in the cabinet?” I nodded again and he lead me into the kitchen to set up some breakfast. It was 9:00 am on a Saturday after all. A weird Saturday, but watching Koutarou finagle through the cabinets, it couldn’t be that bad.

That is all for now! Have a wonderful day and I am going to sleep for three years see y’all (edited: June 18 2021, because I can’t spell)

[iluxia]

Unsolicited writing advice???

A ton of you have commented with such kind and complimentary words about my Naruto fic Hiding in the Leaves and its characterization through the shifting POVs. Thank you all! I’m gratified to hear that you’re enjoying it. Some are asking how I shift perspectives and still manage to keep the characters in line. Actually, a fair number of readers have asked for actual advice, so here we go. This is a lot of writing babble, I hope it makes sense but feel free to drop me an ask if anything is unclear! 

(1) I read a lot. I read all the time. Easily a book a day, maybe two days. And when I do, I practice critical reading—or as they say, reading like an editor, so I can pick at techniques other writers use. Writing is an art you learn largely by example. A lot of what I read influences what and how I write, so when I need to change my tone or voice to fit a different character, I usually read something that matches what I want my prose to sound like, on top of using techniques like changing tenses and playing with vocabulary choices. 

I recently had the chance to flex these writing muscles because I went from writing two very distinct human voices (Tony Stark & Stephen Strange) to writing an alien voice (Loki). It was fucking hard; those in the Marvel fandom might know what I mean. Tony and Stephen are both human, born and raised in America, with specific life experiences that inform their daily decisions and personalities. Loki, on the other hand, is an alien: raised in Asgard, stolen from Jotunheim, well-traveled throughout the Nine Realms, and moreover raised as a prince. Just stop and think about that. When your characters do not have the same experiences that you do, they’re bound to not have the same earthbound concerns that you do. Anthropomorphizing non-human (or even non-living) beings is an age-old practice, but to be faithful to his character, I tried my best to twist my writing voice into a different shape—a shape that more befits the prince of a realm that is somewhat humanoid but very different from what we know on Earth. And in order to do that, I did four things: 

I changed my prose from past to present tense; it sounds more immediate and assertive

I read three books, written in present tense, where the prose mimics what I imagine Loki would sound like in his own head

I made a huge spread of everything about Loki (both canon and my own orginal additions) that would inform his motivations, internal concerns, emotional responses, and decision-making processes

I drowned myself in Loki fanwork

Immersion is key! If you saturate your brain in a specific type of rhetoric or style, that’s what’s likeliest to come out of your productive process at the end. So controlling what you read/watch/listen to will help control your writing style too.

 (2) This further breaks down what I just said in the third bullet point above. Before I start writing from a specific character’s perspective, I’ll take the time to brainstorm and build that character from the ground up. This might take a day or two and includes a staggering amount of detail—just as much detail as mine or your life might comprise. Silly little things like favorite colors and foods, hobbies, dislikes. Oftentimes, if you’re a fic writer, this is easier because canon gives it to you. Those amazing wiki-pages exist to make your life easier in this regard. (Bless.) What canon doesn’t give you is where you can dig in. Go deeper. Pin your character down. Think about more serious considerations like emotional triggers, conscious motivations, subconscious motivations, coping and defense mechanisms. When hurt or under stress, are they the type to lash out or curl in? Are they the type to hold on to a grudge, or do they prefer to forgive and forget? Do they get hurt easily or do they have a thick skin? I imagine the character’s relationships in life, I rank them and network them in my head. Who do they run to when they need advice? Who do they like hanging out with when they’re happy? Who annoys them, who inspires them, who scares them, who do they want to be like? Even if these questions aren’t necessarily things you might discuss in your fic, it helps inform this person you’re writing about, so it helps you keep a clearer and more consistent mental picture of them as you go.

But most critical of all, I sit and imagine myself in their shoes and think of how they perceive themselves. That is a major factor when writing, because that’s what their head-voice will sound like. And if the story is written from their perspective, then that means you, writer, are writing in that head-voice!

Here’s a more HITL-specific example (I’ll try not to spoil too much lol):

Sasuke

How he sees himself:

Ordinary; not very impressive as a shinobi, but not absolutely terrible either – just ordinary

Average looking

A slow, impatient learner

Awkward with people, but polite and with good intentions

Emotionally stable

A good reader and listener

How he actually is from someone else’s POV:

Incredibly skilled for his age and level as a shinobi

Actually quite handsome

An intuitive learner, very tenacious and will keep at a task forever until he gets it just right; perfectionist much

Quiet, polite, notices a lot about how others act

Absolutely does not handle emotions well

Selective listener; sometimes only hears what he wants to hear

Rationales:

He’s surrounded by a clan of perfectionists and overachievers who constantly laud his aniki for being a genius while paying him no attention. Of course he thinks he’s ordinary.

No one ever compliments him for his looks in the clan compound, and what he sees in the mirror looks just like a younger version of everyone around him. Of course he thinks he’s average, even though he actually has looks.

Because he’s largely self-taught (except for when Obaa-sama teaches him), he thinks he’s slow. (Ever learned a new skill or maybe even a new language by yourself? I have. I can tell you that my perception of how much time I spent learning ‘basics’ was skewed.) He also holds himself to a higher than normal standard because that’s what gets him positive attention (or attention at all) within his family. Add the fact that Itachi was there blazing through everything before him, and it’s suddenly easy to understand why Sasuke thinks the worst of himself as a student. But he (and Naruto) are actually fast learners—we see this even in canon—and both of them boast high levels of natural intuition, or as I (the neuroscientist) likes to call it, pattern recognition. Some people are naturally better at this than others; there have been extensive tests done to show it. But we also know intuition can be trained, so the more Sasuke works at something, the better he gets, and the faster he learns the next skill—as long as the learning is patterned. Which is why Orochimaru, who has picked up on this trait, walks them through learning each jutsu in a stepwise manner every time.

Sasuke doesn’t have a lot of social interaction outside of his family. The Uchiha clan in this fic is very segregated from the rest of the village, so if you’re not active as a shinobi, you probably don’t get out of the compound much. Interacting with people probably intimidates Sasuke a lot so he feels awkward about it and reverts back to habits of politeness and silence that he was taught from childhood. That doesn’t mean that he’s not paying attention, however; Sasuke is naturally observant and remembers a lot about how people act (and not so much what they say). I have a theory about this related to the Sharingan but I won’t go into too much here because it would be a straight-up spoiler, sorry. :D

He thinks he’s emotionally stable because he doesn’t remember many incidents of severe emotional upheaval in his life. That’s because he hasn’t had them; apart from the whole thing with Itachi, he’s been fairly sheltered his whole life. But he actually doesn’t handle emotions well—something he’s about to find out soon enough—and for the same reason! He hasn’t been exposed to an extensive range of it.

Because he’s largely self-taught, he has confidence in his reading skills. He also remembers all of Obaa-sama’s stories so he thinks he’s a good listener. Well, he is—to an extent. If he wants to listen, he will. If he doesn’t, he’s just as proficient as Naruto at pigheadedness. (I think it’s an Uchiha trait too lmao.)

That was a lot, right? But you can see that if I’m writing from Sasuke’s POV, I have to keep a different set of pointers than if I’m writing from Naruto’s POV about Sasuke. The way I think of it is like changing lenses or shades depending on the light outside.

A few more techniques/guidelines I use:

Stay consistent with vocabulary. Orochimaru is far more verbose than the rest of them, Shikamaru right behind him, and Naruto uses shorter, simpler words. You can even assign particular words to a character, a word only they would use when referring to something. This applies to how your character addresses other people too, i.e. Orochimaru calls them ‘little ones’; Shikamaru calls his dad ‘oyaji’ in front of his peers but ‘otou-san’ in front of his sensei; Naruto is quick to give people nicknames and most of the time it sticks.

Watch the adjectives; different people describe things differently. Orochimaru uses more nuanced words that can mean different things depending on the situation and mood; Naruto thinks in terms of emotions, a lot of how does this make me feel; Sasuke is very visual and notices a lot of colors.

Use speech habits wisely; how your character talks should reflect their life. Just like accents, speech habits can tell a lot about a person. Sasuke always speaks politely because it’s how he’s supposed to talk at home, otherwise there’d be trouble. Naruto grew up in a poorer district and had no one to really teach him how to talk politely, so he’s very casual. Shikamaru cusses at age eleven because his parents and family are incredibly laissez-faire and honest around him, so he thinks it’s acceptable and normal (and he was never reprimanded for it).

Play with your tenses. Writing in past tense sounds and feels very different from writing in present tense. Depending on your character, one or the other might sound more appropriate. There are some expressions and figures of speech that sound fine when written in past tense but awkward when written in present tense, so that will end up inadvertently changing your prose a bit, which can be useful.

Read your work out loud. Cardinal rule of prose-writing. What looks good on paper doesn’t always sound good when read out loud. If you read it and it doesn’t sound like how your character talks, time for a vibe check. You might need to change a few words and move sentences around, or you might need a complete overhaul… an editor (and I mean an editor, not just a beta-reader) can usually help you out.

 A note about editors vs beta-readers:

There is a cardinal difference! A beta-reader is usually not professionally trained but should be experienced enough to point out things that aren’t right. In fandom, I’ve found that beta-readers mostly focus on a story’s general feel, flow and readability, sometimes character consistency, sometimes they point out typos and mistakes. An editor goes further than that. I’m fortunate to have Tria (aventria) who has edited my work for, gosh, 14 years now, fuck, we’re old! I call her my editor because when she goes through a piece, she will fix everything and make my draft bleed and I love it. (I actually get a little upset when she doesn’t fix anything, even if that means everything was good.) As an editor, she does a vibe check and looks for typos/errors, yes, but she also critiques the prose extensively. She can rearrange phrases or entire paragraphs for better flow. She will cut out entire scenes or make me rewrite them if they’re that bad. Like a copy editor, she looks at stylistic inconsistencies, grammar errors, and iffy word use. She’ll usually suggest or replace the offending word altogether. She has a lot of freedom with the work and can actually kick a piece to the curb if it’s really that shitty. She also questions plot progression, character development, and the relevance of a scene. (She’s made me cut out many, many scenes.) – That all being said, it’s not easy finding an editor, much less a good one. It also has to be someone you trust to have this much power over your work. It’s worth it, however, and my writing has gotten so much better because of the help.

If you’ve read this far, wow, thanks! You’re also probably thinking, “Shit, she takes this too seriously. It’s just a fic.”

I have… gotten into fights in the past before because of this. I feel strongly about the stuff I write. Just because it’s fanfiction doesn’t mean it isn’t a labor of love. I’m a perfectionist by nature, so that’s why I put so much time and effort into what amounts to ‘just a fic.’ And you know what? At the end of the day, writing it gives me satisfaction and happiness, so I will keep pouring into it as much as I can. It’s just a bonus to hear that other people are enjoying it too. (Yes, I’m one of those weirdos who intensely enjoy reading my own work…)

 Aaand the final point:

(3) I double-majored in psychology for undergrad and have by now accumulated thousands of hours of clinical hours spent using the theories and techniques I learned from those classes on real people. I’m also specializing in neuroscience, so a portion of my time is spent in psychiatry. Characterization was actually not one of my writing strengths at first, but I definitely noticed leaps in improvement after my clinical rotation started. People skills are just that: skills which are honed with practice. It’s amazing how much you learn about how people think and what make them tick when you interact with a whole spectrum of examples: from your neurotypical everyday well-adjusted person, to high-functioning neurotics and obsessives, to patients who have suffered complex stroke syndromes, to encephalitic brains burning under septic fevers, to druggies stoned so high they’ve breached the atmosphere, to patients whose brains are growing insidious tumors, to schizophrenics and catatonics and the depressed. My job also allows me the rare opportunity to interact with people from all walks of life. All I need to do if I wanted insight about how life is for soldiers who served in an active warzone, for example, is to hit up Bill at the ICU and ask for stories about Korea and the Gulf and Vietnam. Or if I wanted to know about how to survive the Rwandan genocide, I could sit down with Amida, who survived it as a barely-teenager with her brother and sister in tow while only “losing my innocence and an eye.” Or I could talk to Heather, who is building a life with her husband and two rambunctious children, for a perspective on the daily concerns and delights of a ‘perfectly normal and ordinary’ working mother. (Her words, not mine; Heather is amazing even if she eats the doctor’s lounge out of Tita Annabel’s cookies.) Anyway, you get my point. When I write, I almost always write about people, so it makes sense that a lot of my inspiration comes from people too. A lot of my original characters—and even some that are not—often speak with the voices and inflections of people I know in real life. You probably have people with interesting stories to tell in your life; you just have to work up the courage to ask and take the time to listen. You’d be surprised at what you learn!

A few helpful writing resources: (most of these are classics)

The Elements of Style by Strunk & White

The First Five Pages by Noah Lukeman

How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler and Charles van Doren

And more books that helped me get into people’s heads:

Hallucinations by Dr. Oliver Sacks

The Noonday Demon by Andrew Solomon

Far From the Tree by Andrew Solomon

The Lucifer Effect by Philip Zimbardo

Admirable Evasions by Theodore Dalrymple

I hope you got something out of that. Again, feel free to drop me an ask if you have any questions or want to chat!

[depressed-x-bitch]

!!!trigger warning!!! this is a rant that mentions suixide, if you’re triggered by that please do not read!!! i love you and you matter!

i feel really weird. tomorrow it’ll be 2 years since i tried to kill myself and im not quite sure what to make of it or what to think of it. its weird to think its already been so long, and that i had so much hope for 2020. i had so much fucking hope that was just destroyed in front of me with each passing day that its almost surprising im still here. i dont know what happened. i never felt like i knew myself before, but at least i had an idea. now i look in the mirror and don’t even know the person im staring back at. i feel like im in such a weird phase of my life and i just want it to end. I want to move out of my parents house, i cant stand living with them. it feels like they’re holding me back from becoming the person i want to be. and honestly,, im mad. im mad at my parents. im mad at my parents for not doing their job. they had one fucking job when they brought me into this world, and it was to give me their time and effort to raise me to be a healthy woman, and im just not sure if they did that. i wont sit here and try to paint my parents as complete failures, because i know they love me, i know they care, i know they try, but its just not enough. they weren’t absent parents, they were there, i always had food, a warm home, and clothes on my back, thats not the department they lack in. they lack having and emotional connection with their child. my dad is pretty much oblivious to whats going on with me, he knows i have depression and everything, and always asks how i am or if im fine, but i can never actually tell him how i feel because he’s already ruined that opportunity when i was a kid by getting mad at me and yelling at me every time i didn’t answer him because i was too scared to answer. he got mad over small things because he has anger issues and it always really scared me, he even got mad at me once because he asked how i was and i told him i was fine but he didn’t believe me, and i was still very young at the time. he once got so mad he was screaming at me for like 5 minutes while i hid behind the couch by my door crying, waiting for him to finish yelling at me so i could go to my room and hide away from him while i sobbed. i remember after that, i sat behind my door sobbing, and that was the first time i ever thought about hurting myself. i was 8.. then my mom is, to put it simply, a bitch. she treats me like her little baby, but treats my cousin (who she WILLINGLY took in) like her personal fucking punching bag. then my other cousin she took in (he is very young) gets to call HER mom, but she is virtually NEVER here to take care of him. she doesn’t play with him, she barely does anything with him. but thats not a surprise to me because she didn’t play with me much when i was younger either, yet she was still my favorite because my dad scared me. (my dad is my favorite now because i can actually stand being around him sometimes, unlike my mom) she always has something snarky to say, shes judgy, and god forbid you need or want something in a timely manner. she always tries to hug me randomly and talk to me when im literally just walking around the house or trying to do something. its really annoying to be randomly forced into a hug when im not in the mood and im trying to do something. she forced me to go to psychiatrist appointments where she and the doctor had to try and pull any information out of me, i was made to take anti-depressants because they knew something was wrong, but not what.  i eventually switched doctors and made her stop coming in the room because i couldn’t talk with her around. but there was a time before the appointments where i was constantly trying to stay home because i was depressed and i always had to talk to her about staying home, and she would ask me what was wrong, and i tried to explain it but shes just not a good listener. it felt like all she was trying to do was solve the problem, she kept telling me things i needed to do that would “help me feel better” (exercise, taking vitamins, getting birth control etc, ik these help but you have to realize i was at a point in my depression where it was hard to just get out of bed, its a problem beyond that) and kept dismissing my feelings. it never felt like she listened because she really cared, it felt like she was just trying to get a quick solution, like she was just solving a problem. and then around march 2020 she stopped making my appointments randomly (without telling me!!!!) so eventually around july the question came up about what happened to my appointments and she said “well you seemed fine” so then around september or october i asked her to make me an appointment, she didn’t get to it until like november. got put back on my anti-depressant, so i asked her to go get the prescription for me. she couldn’t get it. and why couldn’t she do that, and why did it take so long for her to make an appointment ?  oh,, she was TOO BUSY. the pharmacy is on your way to work, you don’t work weekends, and the phone call to make an appointment doesn’t even last 5 minutes. but no, you were too busy to care about your daughters declining mental health. if she really hated how i hurt myself so much, you would fucking think she would take me seriously when i ASKED her for appointments. i asked you for help, my fucking MOM, the one person who is supposed to be there to help me no matter what, to help me, and she just couldn’t do it. she wonders why i treat her the way i do, and i have a fucking LIST of reasons. because she disappointed me, because i had hope she’d be there and she just wasn’t. shes too caught up in her own feelings and emotions that she don’t consider how others feel. i understand shes the adult, but she acts like the child. it always about what she wants, not what other people need. everyone thinks they’re good parents from the outside, but once you take a closer look and start to dive in, you’ll see that the best thing you can label them as is “mediocre parents” in conclusion, i can’t wait for the fucking day i move out of this hell-hole i call home.

[ibtk]

Book Review: THE SEVENTH MANSION by Maryse Meijer

(Full disclosure: I received a free e-ARC for review though Edelweiss. Trigger warning for sexual assault, homophobia, violence against animals, and disturbing sexual content.)

-- 4.5 stars --

There is this person I love. And he’s not even a person.

After Xie's parents split and an environmental disaster sends his already precarious mental health spiraling, Xie and his father Erik relocate from California to an unnamed town in the rural south, in search of the proverbial fresh start.

At first, Xie is your garden-variety teenage outcast: melancholy. goth. vegan. an outsider. friendless. forgettable. Yet he's quickly "adopted" by the only other vegans in the school - girlfriends Jo and Leni, who together make up the entirety of FKK.

The group's animal rights activism slowly evolves from leafleting to direct action: the trio breaks into a local mink farm, freeing as many of its captives as they can. Xie is nabbed during the getaway, and suddenly he goes from "nobody" to "that freak who vandalized the Moore farm". Instead of silence and indifference, Xie is met by hostile sneers, gossip, and relentless bullying. He takes a leave of absence from high school, instead getting one-on-one tutoring at the local library. His parents are forced to pay restitution, and Xie's placed on probation.

Xie's only respite is nature: his burgeoning vegetable garden; the small but pristine forest behind his house; and, eventually, the mysterious light, nestled among the branches, that leads him to a tiny church - and his beloved. St. Pancratius, who was martyred in 304 A.D. and whose remains are on covert display in a one-room church in the middle of nowhere.

He traces the image with his finger. The story the same in every version: A boy on a road, refusing to lift his sword against the lamb, losing his head every time the story is told, again and again and again.

Still, all of this comes with a cost: loving nature, whether animal, vegetable, or mineral, means saying goodbye to it one day. Relationships can be messy, even when they're with clean bones. Sometimes we get so wrapped up in our own shit that we're oblivious to what our loved ones are going through. Maybe your tutor shows up to work one day piss drunk and tells you about her abortion. Or your friends drag you to a backwoods meeting of environmental activists, where one of them sexually assaults you. Or you show up to a mass protest that is even more massive than you anticipated, and find you're unable to protect yourself, let alone the 55 billion+ land animals slaughtered for food every year in the US alone (animalclock.org).

The problem is too big, even when it's one of the smaller ones. The problem is impossible.

While disturbing, Xie's theft of a skeleton is not the worst crime he'll commit in his teen years. As FKK becomes involved with a local animal rights group, and Xie's sanctuary is threatened, he careens toward an inevitable (????) collision with the outside world, which neither understands him - nor cares to. (Fuck capitalism.)

THE SEVENTH MANSION is one weird-ass book; I mean, the main character has sex with a skeleton (!). This is certainly the wildest aspect of the story, but it's not alone. For example, take the narrative structure, which has a kind of stream-of-(Xie's)-consciousness vibe. Many of the sentences are fractured, even forced, as though we're pulling them from the depth's of Xie's tortured soul. His thoughts. Are broken. Up. Like this. Conversely, there are no chapters, and so many of the paragraphs are just huge, unbroken blocks of text - almost as though Meijer is framing Xie in opposition to the larger world around him.*

I suspect that THE SEVENTH MANSION is one of those love it or hate it dealios. Personally, I loved it, even as some parts proved excruciatingly unbearable to read.

I don't know whether Meijer is vegan, but she gets so much right; sometimes it felt like she was rooting around inside my head. I went vegetarian my freshman year of college (1996, not to date myself) and vegan about 9 years later. Reading Xie was like having a mirror held up to my own depressive, anxious, vegan psyche. One thing carnists probably don't realize about walking around this world as a vegan is: it takes a ton of mental work, of suppression and dissociation, just to get through the day.

Animal suffering is omnipresent, and largely accepted. From Carl's Jr. commercials to classroom trips to the zoo; leather car seats to team lunches at non-vegan restaurants, where you'll be forced to watch your coworkers and friends devour the corpse of a once-living creature - someone's mother, brother, or child - we are constantly forced to bear witness to the oppression of animals. Worse, to pretend as though it's of no consequence: just to get along, or because doing otherwise would quickly devour your time, your prospects, your relationships. To say that it's depressing is an understatement.

Whether Xie is living through the oil spill that finally made his world "snap," or gazing into the eyes of caged mink, I was right there with him, trying not to cry. Not to break. There's so much suffering in the world; if you try to take it all in, to truly understand its scope, it will swallow you whole.

Speaking of the oil spill, which was the impetus for Xie to go vegan - Meijer's description of this moment in Xie's life brought back so many memories. When I decided to stop eating meat, I was working at a local grocery store. Every now and again, they had an employee appreciation dinner (in lieu of a raise, natch), which basically consisted of all you can eat burgers and hot dogs in the break room. Everyone would stuff their faces, taking in as many free calories as possible. Not because they were hungry, but to get as much of a leg up on our cheap ass employer as possible. The sheer gluttony and waste of it all is what finally did it for me. No one needed to eat seven hamburgers in one night; we did because we could, because not doing so would be to lose out. The working class eating the chattel, and no one eating the rich.

Point being, that's a singular moment in my life that I'll never forget. It stands out in stark relief, right alongside the deaths of my husband and furkids (six dogs and one cat down and counting). If I close my eyes, I can almost transport myself back there, white starched shirt, demo table, 7PM Friday fatigue, and all.

The last time he ate meat he was twelve years old, after the spill: Xie was Alex then. Even miles from the beach, they could smell something off; at first they thought it was the sandwiches, ham pressed hot in the pockets of Erik’s windbreaker, but the closer they got to the beach the stronger the smell became, noxious, chemical. They parked at their usual spot, yellow tape blocking access to the beach beyond. A black ribbon flat against the horizon; that was the water. No trace of blue. On the rocks below the lot a half dozen pelicans huddled together. Coated from beak to foot in oil. Don’t touch them, his father said. Someone will come wash it off. But there was no one. The black sea lapping the sand. Those bewildered eyes. He watched as one of the birds collapsed, its head twisted sideways against its folded neck. His father pulled him away. The fire on the water burned for two weeks; the beach remained black for a year. Sea turtles, dolphins, whales, gulls, crabs, otters, fish, birds rolled up by the waves in the tens of thousands. Oil on meat on sand. No stopping it. Xie got headaches, bloody noses; he was always tired, couldn’t sleep. His mother standing in the doorway, Stop playing games, you’re fine. But his father was never angry. Scared of what he saw. Xie in the dark. Unable to make it from one room to another. The people who used to go to the beach just went somewhere else. Life as usual. Slumped in the backseat as his father fed gas into the truck he suddenly couldn’t stand it. Stopped standing it. He opened the back door, started walking. Alex, his father called, but he was not Alex anymore. He poured out all the milk in the house and fed the meat to the dogs next door and rode his bike everywhere.

So yeah, our circumstances may be different, but Xie's conversion sure hit me in the feels.

Meijer also does an excellent job capturing the heartbreak and urgency of Millennials and Gen Z. As tormented as I might have been in high school, at least I had the luxury of not thinking too much about climate change - at least until Al Gore came along. Xie and his peers, on the other hand, will bear the brunt of their predecessors' unchecked greed. Nowhere is this divide more eloquently laid bare than in Jo's post-march argument with Erik (who is likely around my age):

Didn’t you see how he just folded up out there? He can’t protect himself, he won’t. You don’t know what he was like, before we came here, okay, you didn’t watch him, lying in bed day after day, ready to cut his goddamn throat because of all this shit, this constant litany of doomsday statistics, he just takes it in and he can’t—he doesn’t know what to do with it, and you want to keep shoving it in his face, when it’s—it’s enough! Staring at Jo, who stares back. Look, whatever you’re afraid of, whatever he’s afraid of, it’s already happening, okay? And he knows it, he’s living it, and he wants to do something about it. If there was some other option, some fantasyland where everything is going to be fine as long as we bury our heads in the sand, then believe me, I’d take it. But there’s not. Not for me and not for Leni and not for Xie and if you think you can protect him by denying that then you’re just—wrong. I’m sorry. She holds Erik’s gaze; he nods, the first to look away.

My gods, that scene just cuts me to the bone. As bleak as things are now, I cannot imagine going through all this - climate change, COVID-19, a Trump presidency, Democratic ineptitude/complicity, *gesturing wildly* - as an adolescent. Their elders cut them down before they even started crawling.  

On a lighter note, Xie's scenes with his clueless mom and her equally clueless new husband (Jerry!) brought a(n admittedly wry) smile to my face. If I had a penny for every times this scene has played out in my life, I'd have enough cash monies to start my own animal sanctuary.

Don’t you want some vegetables, Xie? Jerry asks. I don’t eat animal products, Xie murmurs, and Jerry, confused, staring at the green beans, How is this— Butter, Xie interrupts. Butter is from milk, which is from cows, which are animals. Jerry blinks. Gosh, I didn’t even think of that. Sorry. Xie shrugs.

There's so much to obsess about here: I love Jo and Leni together, and their opposing circumstances just make the relationship so much more complex - and potentially fraught. Erik and tutor Karen (I wonder if the name choice was intentional?) are interesting supporting characters, and their relationships with Xie are so beautiful and nuanced; they both support him the best they know how.

Xie's interactions with his phantom lover are a little more confusing and difficult for me to comprehend. Perhaps P. represents Xie's inability to connect with the human world around him, or at least not as well as the more abstract, ephemeral natural world. Possibly P. is Xie's ideal human: one who would rather die than raise a finger against an animal (or one who cannot disappoint you by voicing their own opinions). Or maybe it's simpler than that, and Xie's hallucinations are just that: hallucinations. In any case, it made an already odd book absolutely bizarre, but in a good way, so I can't complain.

* This could just be because I was reading an early copy in need of further editing - but, seeing as how some formatting was already present, I think it was intentional. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3672191091

[floatingcatacombs]

Top 10 Sexiest Mechas

12 Days of Aniblogging, Day 4

Mecha is one of the most intimidating genres for anime newcomers. The plots seem overly complex, the episode counts too long, and the giant robot war settings difficult to relate to. I think that all of these are valid concerns, but that mecha often gets a bad rap when most people don’t even want to try it. What both newcomers scared of the genre and hardcore mecha fans often fail to recognize, though, is that on top of the messages of the series, mechas always represent bodies. They are giant robotic representations of their pilots, the visions of their creators, collective psyches, and/or the work’s central themes. The degree of anthropomorphism, the level of abstraction with which the pilot controls the mecha, the colors and shape and size…all of these bodily elements directly tie back to the mecha’s role in the story. Of course, if mechas are bodies, then they are also vulnerable to sexualization. So let’s take all of that into consideration and chart the top 10 sexiest mechs! I’ll be keeping it capped at one entry per series, and will talk about all media, not just anime and manga.

 10. EQUUS from Concrete Revolutio

Starting off the list we’ve got a pretty weird pick, but I wanted to make sure that I shouted out this show. Concrete Revolutio is a kaiju and superhero-deconstructing delight, but when it comes to mechas it really plays things by ear and aims for the coolest setpieces possible. The protagonist’s mecha is essentially a Transformer that unfolds from a car into a centaur mecha. While the car body middle leaves a little to be desired, overall the design is a very good synthesis of Car and Horse. It’s certainly a better implementation of the centaur mecha design than say, Overwatch’s Orsia, who has a very visually muddled walking pattern because her legs are far too tiny and packed closely to each other. I’m especially a fan of the wheel joints on the knees and hooves on EQUUS, as well as the unicorn horn. Much as a centaur is an identity crisis between man and beast, Jiro is constantly in self-conflict over whether he can be a heroic protector of all superhumans or if he’s just a monster in disguise.

 9. Metal Gear Zeke from Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker

Metal Gear Solid is one of the most iconic mecha series out there, so picking one specific Metal Gear over all the others proved challenging. The classic boxy REX, the smooth aquatic RAY, the upright Sahelanthropus, the arachnid EXCELSUS…there’s lots of good ones to pick from! It was a tough battle, but ultimately I had to go with ZEKE, the first named Metal Gear chronologically. Designwise, the railgun and Z-shaped legs are a nice touch, but it’s the story arc around ZEKE that interests me the most. A lesbian-sourced war crime machine, ZEKE was created by MSF, the nationless nation of soldiers run by Big Boss. It ended up being hijacked by terrorists from within and nearly caused a globally eradicating nuclear exchange, which is as good of a metaphor as they get for why deterrence is a fucked ideology. Accidents happen, stockpiles become more and more sunk costs, and sometimes anime girl triple agents infiltrate your military base and steal your cool robot.

8. Char’s Zaku II from Mobile Suit Gundam

Confession time: I haven’t actually seen any Gundam. I’m more of a Macross gal myself. But I felt like not having any Gundam on this list would be like ignoring Star Wars on a space opera list. Anyways, Char seems like one of the most awful bastard characters of any series ever, so I’m happy to use a spot on this listicle for his mecha. The Zaku II is infamous for being “three times as fast” as its generic counterparts despite its only difference being its red paint, but c’mon – that’s Char’s absolute moral purity buffing his ship. You deserve that stat buff if you’ve Never Betrayed Anyone In Your Entire Life, Ever.

7. Deus Ex Machina from Promare

--Promare spoilers ahead--

Promare ends, as all Trigger works should, with a whole lot of Act 3 Bullshit. Plot twist after plot twist until all of the themes dangled at in the first half no longer matter, with nonstop fighting getting more ridiculous by the second. At our protagonist’s darkest moment, their problems get handwaved away and they are handed a deus ex machina of a mecha literally known as….Deus Ex Machina. A fusion of Lio’s jet black triangle armor and Galo’s knightly firefighter mecha, the design of this mecha represents their connection and understanding of each other. Yes, of course they’re gay. Why else would it be glistening in rainbow colors?

6. Terminus typeR909 from Eureka Seven

Another mecha anime I’ve hardly seen.. but one that I definitely want to get around to! Eureka Seven just seems like a genuinely delightful time, and I’m a sucker for romance-based mecha shows as well. Anyways, the piloted mechas in Eureka Seven are named after Roland drum machines, with the typeR909 is named after the classic TR-909. They’re nicely proportioned and there’s something sweet about the cutesy magenta robot of the fleet being piloted by a 30-year old man. I guess I’m just a sucker for the gentle undoing of gendered associations and music gear.

5. Eva Unit-01 from Nylon Genesect Evangelical

All of the Eva units are quite tall and bestial and wonderful, but it’s Eva-01 in particular that really stands out due to its conspicuous tendency to disobey its pilot and go berserk, fully unhinging its jaw. NGE takes the “mechs as bodies” thing pretty damn seriously, but throws in the delightful wrench of “what if it’s not your body that’s being represented?”

4. VF-1 Valkyrie from Macross

Macross was the first popular mecha series to utilize transforming robots. What makes Valkyries so sexy is that they’re not just limited to Spaceship and Gundam forms – they have an intermediary form. In GERWALK mode, the cockpit remains exposed having not folded into the mecha headpiece yet, and the wings are still popped out. However, the Valkyire has sprouted its arms and legs already, making it capable of landing, walking on the ground, and wielding a gun pod as a rifle.  It’s kind of adorable! Stuffed to the brim with weapons and tech, Valkyries are the perfect blend of stylized and realistic robots. The Itano Circus will live on forever in our hearts as the go-to tactic when you have plenty of talent on your animation team and your mechas are armed with way too many missiles.

3. Jehuty from Zone of the Enders

While the VF-1 mecha is sexy because of its utility and folding form, the Orbital Frames of Zone of the Enders are sexy because…they’re designed with a sexual angle. They’re famous for their literal cock pits, but combined with their broad shoulders, slim hourglass waists, and pronounced thighs, they exude a strong androgynous energy. Jehuty is one of the most recognizable frames simply by virtue of being the playable mecha, but definitely one of the hornier ones too. Case in point: at the end of Zone of the Enders 2, it receives an upgrade after absorbing its sister frame to become Naked Jehuty, a stripped-down but ridiculously powerful mecha with gold sections emulating bare skin. Yoji Shinkawa’s brain is simply too big.

 2. Bohrok Pahrak

Look, I can’t just not include any Bionicle on this list. They’re some of the most formative lil’ robots to me. But which one is the sexiest? That’s not really something I’ve had to consider before. While some of the titan sets such as Roodaka and Axonn have a certain sexual angle to them, it feels contrived, carrying the same kind of creepiness as horny OC designs. The Great Spirit Robot might be the super robot of the series, but its design is rather barebones and reminds me too much of The Iron Giant. So I ultimately settled on the Bohrok, the hivemind villains from 2002’s story. While most Bionicle are a combination of biological and robotic, the Bohrok are strictly mechanical – and piloted by the masklike Krana, making them mechas! You really shouldn’t fuck the Bohrok, but there’s just something so perfect about their design. They’ve got it all – not only transformability and an orb design, but transformability into an orb design. Their hunched-over stature reminds me of GERWALK Valkyries – it’s cute and functional! As for why Pahrak in particular, well, the shields it wields are vibrators. Just ignore the fact that they’re powerful enough to seismically level mountains, and you’ll be set.

1. The Entirety of Heaven Will Be Mine

You can tell that Aevee Bee and Mia Schwartz did their homework for Heaven Will Be Mine. They understand better than anyone else that a mecha is a representation of the pilot’s psyche and body, and that damage to the mecha is indistinguishable from that to the pilot. This is reinforced by the mechas being referred to as Ship-Selves – they are literally an extension of oneself more than anything else. By looking at a ship-self, you can almost immediately infer what kind of person the pilot is, what her position in bed is, and what her fetishes are. The layer of abstraction between pilot and mecha ranges from wafer-thin to nonexistent depending on the character. The side effect of this is that since HWBM is about a bunch of gay girls in space having sloppy ideologically charged hookups, the mechas have to be designed just as sexually as everything else. And by god did they deliver on that front. Some of the ship-selves, such as Mare Crisium and String of Pearls, take clear direct inspiration from Zone of the Enders frames. The Krun Macula takes some inspiration from Char’s Zaku II in terms of color and shape, but its face chimes give it a uniquely divine and powerful feeling with no mecha parallel. This perfectly mirrors Pluto’s powerlevel advantage over all of the other pilots, and her humanoid-but-not-quite ship-self perfectly represents her faction’s goals. On the other hand, the assimilationist Memorial Foundation believes in ending the space program and grounding all ship-selves to prevent the splintering of humanity. Their mission manifests literally in that each member of the faction wears some form of bondage gear to represent their shackles to the Earth, and even their Ship-Self has a spreader bar. Heaven Will Be Mine is ridiculously horny, and it has the vision, design, storytelling, music, and everything else to back it up. Truly, the best of all worlds. And if anyone who worked on the game is reading this post.,.thanks.

[buckysbest]

CHAPTER TWO: NO SHAME PAIRING: ex!Bucky barnes x reader Warnings: Swearing Series Summary: Bucky realizes one can only run from their problems for so long before they must returns home but he sure as hell wasn't expecting her to be there when he did. Word count: 1.2k A/N: This Series is based off the Album “Calm” by 5sos. If you want to follow along in the album, listen to No Shame while reading this!

Series masterlist // Masterlist Coming soon

New York provided no shade from the bright lights of fame despite your relocation from LA. Every time your foot exited your new apartment building in Manhattan, camera flashing swarmed your vision like bloodthirsty hornets. Equally unrelenting were the men holding them, often shouting crude and vicious rumors to get a reaction. It came with the life you were gifted. Being as close to Tony as you were, fame crept behind you constantly, hiding in the deep recesses of alleys and buildings you passed. It wasn't anything you chose, far from it actually. Somehow you went from humble uni student to famous confidant of Tony Stark. 

It is true he took you under his wing, but it wasn't your fault he viewed you as his own daughter. Yet despite this, you were the one who had to deal with the fallout of it. The paparazzi, the vicious fans, the lack of privacy. A bit of you reveled in it because occasionally, it was nice to be the center of attention. Occasionally. You were lucky that Tony set you up with a lovely PR team, predicting the outcome of the growing friendship between the two of you. This meant you were trained for these things. The paps, the interviews, the tours. It is what came with the life. At least that's what you kept repeating to yourself as you put on a brave face and walked through the crowd with a gracious confidence and a kind smile, surrounded by brute security who did not mirror your compassion for those around you. As soon as you collapsed in the car, the smile fell from your face faster than Icarus fell from the sky. Fittingly too. It wasn't too long ago you had true happiness. Being lifted from a less than glamorous life and shoved into the spotlight had its perks. Having a team with you wherever you went meant you were never hungry or worrying about paying rent or struggling to pay off student loans. But when you fly too close to the sun….

“Hey Max, would you mind turning on some music?” 

“Of course Miss. Y/N” His hand momentarily left the wheel to turn on the radio and returned just as quickly. Swells of some band you didn't quite know filled the all-to-empty compartment of a vehicle meant for 6. Opening your phone, you swiped through social media until you arrived at the compound. Max opening his front door triggered a fake smile upon your face as he wrapped around the car to let you out. Your hand was taken by Max and your Sophia Webster heel graced the pavement of the compound driveway as you exited the car, poise dripping from your every movement. This facade was dropped immediately when you entered the safety of the compound doors. Immediately taking off your heels, you quickly lost Max at the door and quickly moved to the safety of your room to avoid any unnecessary interactions. Collapsing into your prestigiously decorated room, you found a pair of leggings and a loose tank top to change into. You were home momentarily but you couldn't let that make you lazy and unpracticed according to the schedule your PR team sent you.

5:45am - Arrive at Compound

6:00am - Yoga in Training Studio

7:00am - Breakfast

7:25am - Meeting with Mr. Stark to Review notes 

8:45am - Nail fill

And the list droned on and on until too late in the evening for your taste. You groaned, grabbing your yoga mat at its designated corner and burying your head in your phone, looking for a playlist to suit your next hour.  Sliding in your headphones and clicking on the closet album, your bare feet quickly and quietly pattered down the hallway before you collided with someone significantly taller than you causing your phone and yoga mat to drop rather dramatically on the floor. Removing your ear buds, you froze reaching for your belongings as a laugh rang in your ears. “Here, let me help you wi-... Y/N?”His blue eyes pierced your heart as they met yours, at a distance too close for your liking. You could feel the color draining from your face like paint peeling from a wall. A wash of nausea hit you at full force, almost knocking you off your feet. Your eyes searched for an escape plan as time slowed around you and there it was in, its full body guard glory. 

“Max! I’m over here!” The suit-clad man popped his head out from the crowd of identically dressed cronies and a look of relief washed across his middle-aged face. He quickly rushed toward your position, parting Bucky from you like Moses had the red sea. The same relief grabbed hold of your face as his little squad surrounded you, escorting you to the studio.

“Miss. Y/N, You know you're not supposed to leave my sight! I’m supposed to make sure you stick to your schedule and you don't make it very easy” You pushed a chuckle from your lips as you peered over your shoulder to the super soldier frozen in the middle of the hallway. 

“If it was easy, everyone would do it Max,” you once again tried to play along, struggling to gain any sort of emotional footing under you.

                                                        •••

You could feel them looking at you despite you being the only one in the studio. The downside to the plan you had concocted was you couldn't escape the gaggle of security placed on you. It was infuriating that you were an adult and yet, you still found yourself surrounded by babysitters. To be fair, you weren’t known to handle stress very well and seeing he was back, you now understand why you had Max and his friends glued to your side this morning. 

You exited the studio a tad more relaxed than when you entered. Your shoulders dropped a bit lower and a small smile found itself upon your face. “Alright Max, whats next?” 

“Miss. Y/N, your breakfast has been prepared downstairs. You only have 25 min-”

“Max, I’ve told you… I can fend for myself ok?” you sighed, a small smile still on your face because you knew he was well-intentioned. You were welcomed to the sight of a large, hearty breakfast consisting of an assortment of organic and nutritious delights. While you would have rather sported a doughnut this morning, you were thankful you had people who cared for you this much. “Ok Max, I need you to get lost and let me enjoy myself while I’m home ok? I know it's your job so how about you walk me to where I’m supposed to be? Fair?”

“Miss. Y/N, You know I’m not supp-”

“Come onnnnn, Max! Please!” 

The exasperated whine apparently struck a chord on his heartstrings because he agreed to your terms if his team watched you on the cameras.You took your bowl full of fruit back to your room and collapsed on your wonderful, wonderful bed. Your phone vibrated in your pocket as you flipped on the tv.

Bucky: I didn't know you were going to be here...We should talk?

Your heart dropped into your stomach and even the small amount of fruit you consumed seemed to spoil in your stomach.

Well Fuck.

[buzzworddotie]

A little (not quite) Anxiety Ramble

Do something! Do SOMETHING! Don’t stop doing something!

Welcome to 2020.

It won’t stop, my brain will not shut off. We’ve been in lockdown for… to be honest off the top of my head I can’t even get dates right but I’ve been in isolation mode, working from home for about 4 weeks now maybe?

On week 2, I became more lethargic than I ever have in my life, I withdrew from any contact with other people, my brain was in a fog, I couldn’t focus. My muscles were tired and refusing to function and my energy was entirely zapped.

I managed to pull myself out of that by attempting to not guilt myself for eating that bowl of carb loaded cereal or allowing myself to rationalise that it’s OK to just watch a movie.

But here I find myself in that cloudy little place again. My anxiety is in such a way that my brain refuses to shut down and my motivation is becoming a precious commodity that I’m unsure of how exactly to keep it in a steady flow.

When the anxiety kicks in like this for me, I stress and worry about every and any thing. Things entirely out of my control, other people, how I am perceived, why I am not now or have ever been good enough for anything or anyone. 

My rational brain packs its bags and heads for the door as I stare in the mirror and hate everything I see looking back. My doubts, my insecurities, my shame - every dark little voice that can be mustered up gets louder and louder.

And so I overthink every action I make, I try too hard to impress a version of myself on people. I try too hard to force anyone who might give a shit that I am in fact OK! And you know there’s nothing saner than someone screaming “I’M OK!!” directly into another person's face manically.

Sleeping is the worst, or in my case not sleeping. It doesn’t matter how tired I may or may not be, I can be assured that as soon as I lay my head down that anxiety demon comes alive.

I cannot remember the last time I slept for a solid 7 - 8 hours. I can recall what it feels like to be at complete odds and ends at 4am because it’s happening every goddamn night!

Is this a symptom of what is happening in the world right now or is it just an exemplification of how screwed up I might actually be? These are the beautiful thoughts which haunt my brain in between scrolling through Twitter or Reddit, telling myself to not scroll through Twitter or Reddit and then, you know, casually reminding myself that I will never be good enough for whatever the fuck I think I should be good enough for!

I’ve always been a bit of an introverted extrovert, or am I an extroverted introvert? I’m not sure, the point is I’ve never had a problem being a bit “isolated”. I’m quite happy in my own company and just pondering about, in my own little world doing whatever silly things I decide to do with myself. However, that world of mine was always interrupted with everyday interactions - people I work with, the ability to visit someone and general activities which we just take for granted.

I’m starting to even question if I am as introverted as I liked to think I was at all! I told myself that being locked down wasn’t a big deal for me, not a massive shift in my life. I’m single, I live alone… Just a real wholesome and healthy picture there! “I’m OK!!!”

First World Problems.

One thing about me I’ve known since childhood is that I love my independence. I was told by my parents growing up I was the most independent of all my siblings. There is a sense of freedom that comes with independence and I think losing that is throwing me for a bit of a loop.

The freedom and independence to just make a decision to do something in the moment and being able to just do it. Even the smallest, stupidest of things like going for a browse in a shop. Such a boring and mundane activity but an activity that clearly ticked some kind of box for my mind.

Of course, I am wary of banging on about this word “freedom” but allow me to state, I do not mean freedom with the gusto of some hardcore, right wing, gun toting Murican (Or the Irish lady, she whom shall not be named… We all know).

No, I’m not trying to suggest my first world concept of freedom is being threatened on some conspiracy level, I accept the merit in the fact that for a period of time we have to do what’s best for the greater good. But jaysus, it’s not easy at times is it?

Without the fundamental freedoms which I take for granted as everyday life it’s as if my brain is being withheld vital nutrients for it to operate full steam ahead. Don’t get me wrong, this anxiety trip isn’t a new phenomenon for me, I know the bitch well, but I had such a great grip on things and I think the hardest part for a minute there was trying to figure out how I was allowing it all to spiral so ferociously when I know I have the tools to not do that.

It also bothers me because I am, by nature, incredibly laid back and positive. I flip between Energizer Bunny, Everything is Awesome and easily passing for a hippie stoner on my good days. So seeing myself behave erratically at times now makes me not recognise or like the person I am having to live with during this lockdown! Her neediness and desire to please is very, very off putting to me.

But maybe I just need to let her be a little bit, maybe I just need to let her know that it is fine. It is fine if a momentary lapse in the mind causes a mini freak out which embodies itself as wanting to just shut down, it is fine if she does just go a bit OTT at times with people to overly compensate for how weak and low she is feeling. It’s fine.

It is fine. Once you recognise that that’s all it is, it does not lessen your worth to behave in a way you might later regret and it does not lessen your value if you allow your insecurities or vulnerabilities to sneak through every now and then. You just have to hope that whoever is lucky enough to get the brunt of your vulnerability can appreciate the value in getting a taste of it at all. Because that right there, that vulnerability, that is a precious thing which is not afforded to many, if any at all. 

It is the most beautiful aspect of humanity, to be vulnerable. And it is really fucking hard to let go of. Vulnerability takes an incredible amount of strength, it’s a feather that keeps on floating through regardless of how much dirt and debris gets attached to weigh it down. It is delicate and strong all at the same time. 

And for me, it is terrifying to let that wall down. It feels frightening to think for a moment I let someone see weakness or gave a hint that I, with all my positivity and strength and being there for other people, could have a moment of weakness. It cracks the veneer of who I want to pretend I am.

Meet my friend, Anxiety.

Anxiety has been an under current which has existed within me since my childhood but something I only recognised as I began to get older and, yes, get help. Speaking to a professional allowed me the opportunity to begin to understand myself and learn about myself, gain self awareness.

Where I am now compared to where I was back then are completely opposed. At its worst, I was consumed by my anxiety and all the other little niggly things which tortured my brain. It all manifested in self-hate usually, maybe hate is a strong word but certainly a really strong dislike of myself! I would allow that to spin in circles in my mind until I was lost in it and trying to fix a million and one things about myself and others which really, was all very surface or non-existent.

The difference today is that I can, at last, recognise it. I can see the signs, at times I am deep within them and it takes a step back to shake it off and see it but at least I can find it within myself to rationalise and take that step back.

It doesn’t make it easy, there is nothing easy about managing mental health in the same sense there is nothing easy about managing physical health. If I want that toned stomach I will have to feel the burn and it has to work the same for mental health too!

Jesus, it is not easy at times. I will always remember an episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race in which the contestant Katya suffered severely from debilitating anxiety. During a walk through Ru asked the Queen if she was, in fact, addicted to the anxiety. This registered with Katya and as time has gone by and that interaction replays in my own mind, I realise it often registers for me too.

When it is all you know, you can easily become all consumed by the anxiety, the worry, the stress and you can get sucked right down into it. And you can find a level of comfort within that discomfort, it’s recognisable and it can feel easier to submit yourself to it than seek out the light and pull yourself back from it.

When I break it down I can see the various triggers for my anxiety:

Opening up and being vulnerable = Opening myself up for rejection.

Feeling like I cannot help = Opening myself up for failure.

Failure, rejection = Not good enough. 

Attempting to improve and increase my self worth is really something that I never understood was such an issue for me, mostly because the concept of “self worth” was never something that even showed up on my radar. But guess what? It’s a thing! 

Self love is not about having an over inflated and delirious ego, it is about recognising that you do have worth as a human being. Recognise yourself as a human being.

Oh god, she’s going to talk about her childhood...

So, why is it that I may not have always recognised myself as a human being, worthy of care and love? Well, I will refrain from the details that will cause my very being to quiver but I was raised in a home in which I received a lot of love, but it was unstable. Arguments, raised voices, depression and a lack of seeing love between my parents. A tumultuous family backstory which, while I was not in existence for much of it, carried a heavy cloud over all proceedings. I was in existence for difficult times with siblings and parents who butted heads constantly. 

I was a witness, I was shielded from being on the receiving end for the most part but I still stayed awake at night waiting for things to take a turn for the worse. I jumped at nothing and everything, like a scared little mouse. I was reserved and private with friends, I held the problems into myself and did not expose anyone to it. 

As well as this, I faced a level of mental, physical and, like so many other girls and women out there, sexual abuse. I won’t delve into all the details but it seems like some sick, twisted joke that once you are forced to be subjected to this as a child, you do not recognise the issue with it which leaves you vulnerable for it again as you mature into an adult and set off on your own.

This is because your self worth has been destroyed. So when you see ladies coming to the fore as part of #MeToo or another movement, or no movement at all, don’t be so quick to judge. These ladies have likely held their tongue because their self worth has been so low that until they became exposed to others discussing it they didn’t even realise what had happened to them.

I won’t dwell too long on that, I could spend a long time dissecting it but it isn’t for now.

I will note, neither of my parents were responsible for that abuse. However, what my beautiful, kind and lovely parents were responsible for was me and as much as it absolutely kills me to have to admit, there were failings. Aside from generally being exposed to an unhappy home, as a child I was used to bridge the gap. Something which ran into my adulthood.

If my father was angry, upset or, as I now reflect and realise, in a spiral of depression it was my responsibility to pick him out of it. From a young age, I was the fixer - a tool to try to make things better. 

Until I actually discussed this with a professional I never saw the problem here, everything was normalised to me, but apparently not great! It’s a lot of pressure to put on a child!

Add into that a complex / chip on my shoulder of never being as good as an older sibling, whom I perceived as the ‘golden child’, feeling like I had to keep things hurting me hidden for fear of disrupting an already disruptive home for which I felt responsible for keeping the peace or holding together and well, you get yourself a nice little stew that is a recipe for absolute fucked up adulthood!

Honest Reflection.

How could I ever expect to grow into a well developed individual? The balance of genuine love I did receive from my parents is what I believe kept me from falling down an even more desperate track, a track which I pondered along on many occasions. A dark road with flickering lights where the allure of escape was often far too real.

However, my internal commentary of having to be responsible for others actually kept me from ending it on many occasions as I could not release the feeling of not wanting to let anyone down.

Jesus, unpack this shit and it’s an absolute shit show! But I don’t claim to be special or unique, the sad reality is how many people went through a similar journey or worse and are now in their early to mid adulthood and attempting to get to grips with it all. And that’s only if they managed to find the tools and resources to recognise it in the first place.

Recognise that 1. You are not mental and 2. You are not a terrible human being. 

I can’t speak to anyone else but clearly I have lacked the tools to manage or cope with my emotions. Anything outside of my control freaks me out and I lose the absolute run of myself! I panic, I seek out approval and validation and often in unhealthy ways. I have had eating disorders which I have been in denial about, I have drank too much, gone off the rails and slept with far too many people! 

What now? What triggered my writing, which has evidently turned into an unintentional essay about myself (fair play if you’ve made it this far, you’re a better person than me).

I recognised irrational behaviour and a deep dip in my mood as well as an increase of self critical behaviours. That was when I began writing, this is now the future, or present, or wait, is this inception? I’ve incepted myself, just know as you read now a couple of days have passed.

And it took those couple of days for the lightbulb to click on but better late than never! 

Let there be Light!

I began writing this aimlessly as a means to just put my thoughts down and that was a step in the direction of realising I had to do something. I am now slowly picking myself back up from it all.

First step, I went to the chemist and I just asked what can you give me for anxiety, I am not sleeping, I have not had a proper night sleep in close to two weeks or more - I asked for…… Help!

Gulp, scary, try it sometime.

The Pharmacist gave me a product called “Avena Sativa” (check it out). I added 20-30 drops to a little bit of water and it immediately relaxed and eased my mind. I took more before bed and baby, when I say I slept! Pure, deep, joyful sleep - all the z’s.

But wait, there’s more! Thinking I might as well hit this from all angles, I also grabbed some Vitamin D supplements and began retaking my B-12. I don’t know if one or all of these things did the trick but I can certainly feel the easing effects.

So that’s the taking stuff, but that isn’t all I did - Oh no, that would be too short for me!

I knew I really needed to hit this hard if I wanted to pull myself out of the hole I could eventually be down deep within. I’m a fan of meditation, I get that some skeptical people might huff it off as new age hippie nonsense or whatever, but it can work. Youtube has a host of wonderful meditation videos and for me, switching off from the world and onto one of those helps me massively. 

Additionally, I stopped hanging out of my phone, for the best part at least. I have a bit of anxiety with my phone (of course I do). I went through a period of time where my phone was a bearer of bad news, any phone call could have been bad news and eventually, it was. I realised I find it hard to let go of that, the idea that if I do not have my phone on me and with sound on 24/7 I risk not getting an important piece of news, I risk letting someone down or not being there as I should be.

Should = dangerous word. Don’t let ‘should’ govern your life or mind. Every ‘should’ is an expectation and additional level of stress you are putting on yourself. Best advice I received was to replace ‘I should’ with ‘I want to’ and see what the end result becomes.

Let’s wrap this up.

All in all, this is a time that can lead those susceptible to anxiety, and even those who are not typically, to find themselves in the mental trenches. It’s imperative to look at yourself from the outside and attempt to recognise what might be the deep rooted cause of what is effing you up. Do you really hate your body right now or is your self worth a bit low because of some other reason that deserves to be addressed?

Maybe consider going a bit easy on yourself? Don’t beat yourself up over that response or message that you regret. Don’t assume you can control others, just be yourself. Speak your truth at any given time and allow yourself that beautiful release of scary, scary vulnerability. 

Don’t run from it or beat yourself up over every and any little interaction or negative thought, give yourself a break and pull yourself out of the addiction of dark thoughts. Seek out help, ask for help - even if you are just asking yourself. Make healthy choices that will have a knock on effect of making you feel good about yourself or happy in your decision.

It is far from easy, but again, nothing worth having in this life is ever easy. But then the end result, when you push through and put in that effort - it is so, so very worth it to be able to have that moment of that day when you actually don’t doubt yourself or hate yourself.

I will keep motoring along with my own work and efforts and I ask that you do the same, if you find yourself in that dark place. Push through and don’t give up on yourself, you’re all you’ve got and that’s a pretty amazing thing to have.

[taylornock]

how cell phones made our lives better while simultaneously ruining them

hi fam!! it’s me, again. are you tired of hearing from me? me too. that’s why I’m here to rant about social media / phone / technology. bc i hate it… but in a loving way???

everyone remembers when they got their first iPhone. seriously. why is that such a monumental moment in our lives? i can hardly remember what i felt like freshman year of high school but can pinpoint the feeling of sheer glee unwrapping my iPhone 6 in eighth grade. i have this thing that is attached to me 24/7 - when I go anywhere (even downstairs) without my phone i feel weird. that is f***ing SAD! PATHETIC. i hate feeling that dependent on what is essentially a pocket robot.

for what it’s worth - phones have done INCREDIBLE things for the world as we know it. for example, this quarantine shit has been testing all of us; and our phones are helping us get through it in so many ways. our phones let us see the faces of those loved ones we are missing, our phones provide us with stupid tik tok content to keep everything light hearted, and our phones let us check in on each other. all amazing things! when we are at school, we have instant access to our lives at home . being able to call my mom whenever i want is something i definitely abuse. “mom, I’m on my way home from Thompson right now and i think i have a brain aneurysm but my bio final is at 11am tomorrow will i make it” … an actual conversation i had with my mom at the end of freshman year. needless to say i was medicated shortly after THAT meltdown. I am such a brat that i don’t know what i would do if i couldn’t text my dad and have him immediately get me the password again to our Uverse account…… god forbid i miss an episode of the bachelor. i have this phone, and that’s what i do with it? abuse its powers to ask my parents for medical advice or a password i forgot? have we lost sight of everything here?

throughout life and especially throughout quarantine… my phone is the definition of a possession that is a blessing and a curse. I’m so grateful to have the ability to bother my friends - whenever i want! the options are endless! i love keeping in touch with people i thought id never hear from again, and being able to talk to so many people in my life and make my heart swell. now, when a conversation with someone other than my two roommates (shoutout parents) is so rare ⎯ that phone is my weapon and i use it to help flatten the curve: flatten the curve of covid19 and flatten the curve of my mental illness 🙃 [humor is a coping mechanism okay let me live] but like, i KNOW i’m not the only one that looks at my screen time and immediately wants to die. how can i honestly be looking at my phone for that long? picking it up THAT many times?????? my phone is the best distraction and also the most toxic - it makes me feel better but has a tendency to bring up all my issues and blast them into the reflection of my blue light glasses...... its called fashion look it up.

to give some examples - let’s open up my most used app: snapchat. I go on snapchat with the best of intentions - to see a memory from a year ago that makes me smile. to respond to my friends and see what their mood today is based on the look on their face. to creep on snap stories and see what everyone’s cooking and doing with their lives. somehow, tho, after spending a few minutes on the app.. i end up with a pit in my stomach most of the time. the person i want to respond hasn’t responded in 4 hours. oh god lets overthink this- they don’t like me anymore and are no longer interested in speaking to me and only respond every once in a while out of pity or because they are uncomfortable. everyone hates you. oh and GOD FORBID someone leaves me on open??! I am not funny nor interesting nor worth a reply - suddenly, i have equated my value to receiving or not receiving a photo of someone’s blank stare. this is extreme, and this is dramatic. but trust me —— this is the hamster wheel always turning in my head. I’m not even going to touch on snap maps; that feature is pandoras box and someone better fucking shut it.

second most used app is instagram. i scroll for hours, i have time limits set for the app acting like i’m actually going to listen to them and get off. lmaooooooooo. i love looking at aesthetic stuff and dogs and food and recipes and my friends’ beautiful faces. but you know what i don’t like? constant nudges to compare myself to others. oh look at her having a party with all of her friends even though we aren’t supposed to be. am i a loser for trying to be safe? oh look at her washboard abs, i’m never going to look like that and will never live up to the standard of beauty society has set for me. look at all of these people in their happy relationships. why can’t i have that? it goes over and over and over. its not like i sit there and think of these things just like that, its a precedent in my mind when i stare at everybody else that i am going to size my own life up against theirs. for years i followed every single elite model / VS angel on instagram to motivate me to do better - to start being psycho about what i did to my body so i could be as gorgeous as them. what kind of fucked up mindset is that? i would literally watch their footage of them eating rice and vegetables once a day and try to copy it. i would watch their runway walks obsessively trying to recreate them in heels alone in my house - like that was all i could imagine doing with my life. did i ever stop for a second to look at that photoshoot of gigi hadid and wonder if she was happy? wonder if the constant pictures she saw of herself ever made her insecure? what was i doing? the day i unfollowed those girls was a monumental day in my journey to a better self image. i didn’t realize the people i thought were my “motivators” were actually my triggers. i have grown to a point in life now that i would much rather eat a stack of chocolate chip pancakes that make me dance in my chair like an infant than practice my runway walk and shame my body in the mirror. and i am so freakin happy! 

i could go app by app for hours. but moving on to the next thing i hate about cell phones - how they have destroyed our biological methods of communication. you hear about those psychos who think the world is destroyed by technology and we are going to be overrun by robots. but hey, I’m with the psychos on this one. i have this amazing friend, Trevor Wright, who without fail at EVERY dinner announces “phones off friends on” and collects our phones into the center of the table. yes, we are 20 year old adults. yes, we hand our phones over to Trevor and let him yell at us for trying to see if ~that person~ snap chatted us back. i have so much respect for him because of this. there is nothing worse than staring at your phones when you could be having a good conversation about life, about love, about laughter + memories, about “do you think hellen keller is real?” anything, bro, anything. anything but snapchat messaging your hoe of the week or mindlessly playing tetris to twiddle your thumbs. we all need to start loving a little harder, and the first step to doing that is to communicate better. communicate smarter. I’m guilty of alllll of the above, don’t get me wrong. and I am ADD asf and constantly playing mindless games just to stimulate my brain. but i need to stop that! even writing this is taking some time away from the dumb shit on my phone - and encouraging me to communicate how i     r e a l l y   feel to my homies that will read this. communication - especially body language - is fascinating. I’ve studied it in  psych, I’ve learned the neurological bases of behavior and why we do what we do. I’ve learned how much our life experience impacts who we are as a whole...and it! is! fascinating! i also think that’s why i love film so much. because it can capture the raw moments of your friends just being your friends, of you just being the person you are, and the world around you just existing as it exists. i love the raw moments; and not just because indy blue posted one youtube video of her slow mo laughing and now thats the only footage i find myself shooting. 😚

im not quite sure what this post is, lol. but - just a rant on technology. so listen to me:

take advantage of technology + social media! it CAN BE GREAT. for so many reasons. but, don’t let technology + social media TAKE ADVANTAGE OF YOU. stay true to you - know how to communicate with yourself and your loved ones without the use of a robot. remember that feeling when you setup up your first iPhone? imagine if you could feel that again, with your phone nowhere in sight. if you don’t know how to communicate with yourself yet, start by journaling. WRITE! TYPE! SPEAK! do what you want. getting your thoughts down even without an audience is so crucial to understanding yourself and others. if you don’t like to write, reflect. breathe. meditate. make art. do what makes you feel at peace, and do whatever makes you feel like the world makes a little bit more sense than it does. 

IF YOU ARE READING DOWN TO HERE, I LOVE YOU. I LOVE YOU, SAY IT BACK! LIFE IS A FUCKING HIGHWAY. AND IM SO GLAD YOU’RE ON MY INTERSTATE. <3

xoxoxoxo

gossip girl

[perksofbeingasinner]

I want to share my experience about something I don’t talk about often. I’m going to add a warning as well because I don’t want anyone to be upset or triggered by my words because that is never my intention. I have had many addictions over the years. Some are easier to talk about than others, and some have been easier for me to overcome than others. Six years ago, I was coming off of heavy medication. One of the side effects of this medication was weight gain and at my highest weight I was around 170 pounds.

I hated my body and I was bullied for being “fat”. I had friends who were thin that I compared myself to, I had family members giving me bullshit and snide “weight loss tips” and honestly I was done with hating my reflection once I was finally able to register it with my newly unfogged mind. For Christmas of 2013 I was given a tablet and one of my favorite apps at that time was Tumblr. I dove deep into the rabbit hole of “thinspo” blogs and “ProAna” hashtags and became “inspired” to lose weight the “quick and easy way”..

Now, I joke about my eating disorder sometimes. I say things like “you know, one day I woke up and said, ‘fuck I’m hungry’ and never deprived myself again.” but when push comes to shove eating disorders are not a laughing matter by any means. I can live without drugs and my other reckless behaviors, but I can’t live without food. At least 30 million people, of all ages suffer from an eating disorder in the US. It has the highest mortality rate of any mental illness. One person dies every 62 seconds as a direct result of an eating disorder. It’s a silent and slow killer, and there are times it isn’t easy to spot. Today, if I mention my history of disordered eating and addiction to diet pills, my family and friends say that they had no idea it was something I’d ever struggled with. I harmed my body in small, but very significant ways. I had put myself in danger using behaviors that to the average person would be deemed healthy. When I ate, it was nothing but salads or healthy food. I would do hundreds of sit-ups before I went to sleep and often times was commended by my parents for “doing so well with working out”. I remember being on vacation after I had lost about 40 pounds and putting on a bikini for the first time. Everyone had something positive to say about me getting myself in shape.

But behind closed doors there was an entirely different picture and mindset I was in that had brought an immense amount of self hatred and unrealistic, dangerous expectations I brought on myself. If I ate anything that wasn’t green, I had my head over a toilet for the rest of the night. I had pages of my journal scribbled in on the bus ride home expressing how scared I was to run out of diet pills because if I ate too much I wouldn’t know what to do. My back and hips were constantly sore because I would be up until 3 am doing sit ups until I physically couldn’t anymore. Every time I looked in the mirror I saw myself at my highest weight and knew I could never be like the girls I saw online no matter how hard I tried. I have looked back at some of my journals from that time and they genuinely scare me. The drawings, the poems, the “thinspirational” quotes and rules I forced myself to live by are absolutely terrifying.

I am beyond lucky that this demon is not one that I struggled with for a longer period of time, because I have seen the path of my own self destruction in many lights, and I am glad I had the willingness to overcome what could have been a lethal one. There are times I recognize my eating disorder popping its ugly head into my life. A lot of times when I eat I need to be watching something on my phone or have some sort of distraction. To this day I can’t step onto a scale and see the result for myself. I can’t wrap my fingers around my wrist or look at blogs that might get those gears in my head turning. Exercising, in any form, is a big trigger for me as well because I don’t know how to stop.

I recognize these things and I understand them. This year I will have 6 years clean from my eating disorder. I genuinely can’t sit here and say I’m happy with my body today, but I am glad that I have the RESPECT for my body that I do to give it the nourishment I need and not dwell on my size. If anyone is struggling with a eating disorder, there is help and there is hope. You can overcome this demon and just know that you are BEAUTIFUL the way that you are.

[unapologeticallybella]

I Don’t Look Like J-Lo but Someone is Gonna Love Me Anyway

TW: Body Dysmorphia/ E.D   

   I’m going to go ahead and say, I am so happy I am not a notably attractive person. I’m not saying I’m ugly in the slightest but you know what I’m talking about. Those people where their attractiveness is one of their defining traits. Like you mention their name and almost always someone responds with, “Oh, the pretty one.” Yeah that’s not my story and that probably won’t ever be me. What I’ve noticed about those kinds of people is that almost always their personality suffers in some way shape or form. I’m not saying notably pretty people can’t have a good personality but basically yes, it’s rare. So when you don’t get to lean into your beauty, you tend to lean on other things like humor, kindness, intelligence; Oh, did I mention humor? One of my earliest memories is being around six years old, waking up in the middle of the night in a god damn panic. I ran to my mom hysterically crying. I said, “I don’t wanna be ugly.” I couldn’t really tell you what she said because I genuinely don’t remember. Obviously it didn’t make me feel better because here we are sixteen years later and I still wake up with that panic from time to time, only now I just don’t wake anyone up to hear me cry about it (that sounds a lot darker than I intended for it to.) Anyway, what I’m saying here is that I’ve always struggled with the way I look. 

   We all have that voice in our head that tells us we look like shit, that we shouldn’t post certain pictures, and that everyone else sees what we see; I swear sometimes I’d just rather stay home. I know everyone looks back at their old pictures and thinks “Wow, why was I so insecure, I looked fucking amazing.” It’s a pretty common thing, I know. For some of us that voice inside our head is a bit louder and a lot more persistent, mine was very cruel and eventually it just kind of took me over. I’ve never really talked about what I dealt with because I did it so privately; partly out of guilt because I knew I was harming myself and secondly because it was something for me to control and I didn’t want to lose that. I think I was eleven when someone else commented on my weight for the first time, I was 115 pounds. That’s when it started. I would go through these spells of not eating, restrictive diets, the obsessive calorie counting; no one noticed. This continued on and off for years, I love food so fucking much that it eventually turned into bingeing and then starving myself for the day, then bingeing again. Eventually I gained weight because my hunger would just build up, my cravings would just get stronger and I would lose every time; I’d binge. I would eat so fucking much. I could eat entire pizzas within 15 minutes, boxes of Oreos, bowls of cereal, tubs of ice cream, blocks of cheese; it’s absurd how fast I could eat it all. I was obsessed with diets, skinny detox teas, meal replacements were my favorite, and I loved watching my fitness pal tell me how much I could lose if I maintained the low calorie intake. My junior year, I tried making myself throw up for the first time. It was such an easy way to get rid of the guilt I felt for eating that much food, it helped me maintain the weight for a while. I really wasn’t under the impression that it was a problem because I wouldn’t do it often, only when I lost control and ate enough for me to feel fucking disgusting.

   You could say it might be emotional eating but what I’ve come to learn is that sadness absorbs my ability to feel hunger; it’s kinda great if you have a fucking problem like mine. My first breakup, I couldn’t eat solid foods for a few weeks; I genuinely only ate a cup of yogurt a day and Cheez-its when I felt like passing out. I lost weight immediately. It made me feel so powerful; I loved the feeling of hearing that I looked good. What’s crazy is that the power only lasts so long before that voice inside tells you still look like a troll. I look back at these pictures where I clearly look small and tiny but in that moment I promise you; I didn’t see that in the slightest, I couldn’t. My senior year, I got better for a while. I was the biggest I had ever been, and I felt like everyone could notice; I thought my curves looked weird and the way my body just held fat in the worst places made me want to die sometimes. I did crash diets on and off that year; I was extremely self conscious and hated the way I looked. I moved to New York, and I had started taking Ritalin (prescribed okay kids.)  Three weeks in, I forgot to eat for a little over two days. I genuinely did not feel hunger in my body. I was outside a hotel during fashion week, waiting for Kylie Jenner to show up when I had a full blown paranoid delusion. I called my mom thinking a bomb was going off. “Mom, I’m looking right at this cop and he looks fucking worried, Mom. Get me on a plane I need to come home right now. Something is happening, there are loud noises.” Then she tried to calm me down, she asked when the last time I ate was and when I tried to think back I was like, “Oh shit that bagel I had was literally two full days ago.” Yeah, so I stopped taking Ritalin, I think that would have been a dangerous combo for me.

   I struggle to call it an eating disorder because I never looked sick; it didn’t ruin my life; it didn’t hurt me (I don’t think) but I definitely wasn’t healthy. I think that was my turning point; I was tired of feeling weak all the time; I was tired of obsessing; I was so burnt out from all of it and I decided I wanted to stop it all completely. I eventually gained over sixty pounds over two years, it’s been a fucking nightmare let me tell you. Every day, I struggle with my body and what goes on inside my head. I tell myself awful things; I know that it’s not good, but it doesn’t really go away. I fight so hard to not fall down that path because I don’t want that for me; I don’t know how bad I could get and that scares me. I went out of my way for the past two years to prove to myself that I didn’t have a problem anymore by constantly treating myself with food. It’s like every time I ate a shit ton and I didn’t throw up was a success but then at the same time it wasn’t. Turns out that guilt manifests in different ways and it’ll find its way to you. I’ve gotten to the point where I know the weight gain is noticeable, I feel like people think the awful things I do; So I did the only thing I knew how, laugh it off. Humor baby! Self deprecation is my middle name, sweetie. 

   I know I joke a lot about the way I look and the weight I’ve gained, it’s all light-hearted, but it actually gets pretty dark in this neck of the woods. Body dysmorphia is a mean bitch; She didn’t even allow me to enjoy my skinny days, talk about a shitty time. I used to do this thing where I would wash my hands on the right side of the sink just to avoid being in front of a mirror; “I just don’t wanna ruin my day, ” I’d always say. Anyone who knows me knows I’ve always used the same 2 inch mirror when doing my makeup because “looking at my whole face all at once is overwhelming.” You did not want to be around me when I couldn’t find that mirror, now that was a full-blown panic attack. I’m trying to be kinder to myself, now that doesn’t mean I won’t still make self-deprecating jokes but I’m trying to unlearn that shit. I go through body positive phases where I force myself to look at myself and find things I like. I unfollow Instagram models sometimes but it doesn’t matter; pretty people are everywhere baby. Every day is a god damn battle with myself; I can look at in the mirror and say “Hey you look good today” out loud but that bitch inside my head is screaming “You look like Shrek dumbass.” Having a past where men weren’t all that nice to me; I have an inherent feeling that if I was prettier, a lot of the things that happened to me maybe wouldn’t have (Come to find out even the hottest people get cheated on too, sick world we live in.) You know I’ve spent so many years comparing myself to other women because of something some asshole did to make me feel insecure; I always fall short so I’m done doing that now. Sometimes I worry that even if I lose the weight or if I cosmetically change the things I don’t like, that voice still won’t go away. Then what? What if I’m never happy with myself regardless of the ways I can change my appearance, I mean there’s a pretty good chance that could happen. So I’ve decided that I need to find a way to fall in love with myself the way I am right now. 

   People always preach “love yourself” and all that shit, but it’s so hard when it’s just you alone with your thoughts. Feeling love for yourself is arguably one of the most difficult things you’ll ever learn to do, it takes a kind of strength I’m trying to find. I will say, I do think the way I feel about myself has projected itself onto my relationships and in-turn sabotaged them. I have always required a certain amount of reassurance and affection from my partners which I’m sure can be draining but I forgive myself for that now. I have so much love for others that it just pours out of me uncontrollably and somehow I can’t find a way to feel that love for myself; it’s quite the problem to hauve. I’m learning to protect myself from that voice inside of me; I avoid things that I know will trigger me and cause me to spiral. I’ve been trying to lose the weight I gained these past two years, but for the first time I’m addressing the inner work. I acknowledge my weaknesses, I know my vices, I know myself better than ever now and that makes all the difference. Last December I forced myself to pick a form of exercise and like it, so I picked cycling. The first time I took a class, I actually catapulted out of the bike. I felt like the biggest idiot, but I tricked myself into enjoying the class. I just told myself that I would feel like one of those people who thinks spin is equivalent to a morning cup of coffee and eventually that’s how I genuinely felt.  Now it’s been almost a year since I made that choice and I’m so happy I forced myself out of bed. After the breakup, my mom really wanted me to start yoga to “soothe my anxiety” and it did surprisingly. It’s amazing what you can do for your body by just taking time to just sit there in silence and think about nothing. Sometimes when it’s that quiet, feelings come up and before you know it you’re on the beach on a yoga mat crying in the arms of your yoga instructor. These past six months, I have healed things inside of myself that I genuinely didn’t know where there. It’s been a mixture of therapy, cycling, yoga, listening to my body, forgiving myself, forgiving others and learning to love the parts of me that I don’t (oh and just not eating Chick-fil-a so fucking much.) This picture is me in my favorite pair of jeans, I bought them almost exactly a year ago and when I bought them they were snug and now this is what I’m working with. Is it sad that my favorite pair of jeans don’t fit me anymore? Hell yeah but I can finally say I can feel and see a difference in my body now. 

   So no, I probably won’t ever look like J-Lo and that’s okay. I’m probably always going to struggle with these issues and I will probably have that voice inside of me forever. But someone is gonna look at me and feel so fucking lucky; and it won’t just be because of the way I look. It’s going to be because of the way I make them laugh and the way love just pours out of me uncontrollably. Most importantly, when that love pours, it will be for me too.