#look he knows full well he's a mental health catastrophe they need at least one stable adult there

[writingpuddle]

“I don’t remember inviting her,” Aaron snapped.

Betsy Dobson stopped a few feet away in her meticulously pressed blouse and slacks, expression mild. The courtroom hallway bustled with activity, lined by rows of benches where people awaited their turn in front of the judge. “I apologize for the intrusion,” she said. “I assure you, I will be quiet as a mouse. You’ll forget I’m even here.”

Aaron’s poisonous glare swung around their small group, seeking someone to blame. Neil tugged at his collar, high and uncomfortably starched, as Aaron landed, inevitably, on him.

“I never said you could bring a plus one,” he hissed.

---

Borrowed Time chapter 22 is up!!

[overthinkingfandom]

"Something interesting that we may see on c!Wilbur’s side is his admiration turning into idealization. He has a tendency to view things in extremes, a kind of black and white thinking. You’re with him or against him. He’s in the role he wants to be or he’s a total failure. You’re someone to be admired or you’re someone to look down on. There’s little in between." Can you give me some examples? what lead to that conclusion? I really enjoy your posts and I'd love to know why you think this way.

Referring to this post.

The most blatant examples come from the Pogtopia arc, when his mental health was in the gutters and this coping mechanisms went up in flames. His "let's be the bad guys" speech is full of them. To give a few examples:

"Our nation is far behind us, Tommy. Let’s blow that motherfucker to smithereens!"

"If we can't have Manburg, no one can."

c!Tommy says he needs a minute to think and c!Wilbur reacts like c!Tommy argued against him.

And that's without even getting into what triggered this entire thing, which is c!Schlatt declaring a festival to celebrate democracy. AKA c!Wilbur getting slapped in the face with the fact that c!Schlatt being the president is 100% legitimate and that by going against him they would be "on the wrong side of history".

Now, there's a bunch of stuff at play here which makes c!Wilbur's reaction to this so extreme, but his black and white thinking is certainly a factor. He can't process the idea in a nuanced way, at least on an emotional level. He can't just be doing something which is a little bit wrong. Either he's completely in the wrong or he's completely in the right. And as he accepted the fact c!Schlatt's presidency is a legitimate one, that only leaves c!Wilbur the option that he's completely in the wrong. (His inability to process being in the wrong comes from a different place though.)

However, we also see this even before Pogtopia. It's harder to spot then, as c!Wilbur's coping mechanisms are more functional so he can manage his symptoms better, but that kind of thinking is certainly still there.

Take for example his conversation with c!Niki on Aug 10th (19:33). In it c!Wilbur confronts her after he discovers she's been talking to c!Eret and even picked a fox with him. During all of it the underlying emotion is pretty clear: c!Wilbur is jealous of c!Eret because he sees him as better. And because he sees him as better, c!Wilbur feels as if c!Niki is going to replace him with c!Eret if only she's given the chance.

Once again there's a false dichotomy in his thought process - where c!Niki can either like him or like c!Eret but not both - as well as immediately jumping to an extreme conclusion by catastrophizing and seeing a simple friendship between c!Niki and c!Eret as evidence that c!Niki is going to replace him.

In addition, this kind of all or nothing thinking is a pretty common symptom in NPD and just in general c!Wilbur shows a lot of NPD traits. Low self esteem, high dependence on external sources of validation, grand internal narratives (either positive or negative), viewing things in the context of how they relate to himself, etc. At the very least he has a very similar personality structure, so I find it a useful framework to analyze the character through.

[b--tchcraft]

「   ʰᵃᵛᵉ ʸᵒᵘ ˢᵉᵉⁿ 𝓶𝓪𝔂𝓪 𝓶𝓪𝓽𝓵𝓲𝓷 ʸᵉᵗ ᵗʰⁱˢ ˢᶜʰᵒᵒˡ ʸᵉᵃʳ ?? ᵐᵃʸᵇᵉ ⁱⁿ 𝓸𝓻𝓬𝓱𝓮𝓼𝓽𝓻𝓪, 𝓬𝓱𝓸𝓲𝓻, ᵒʳ 𝓭𝓻𝓪𝓶𝓪 𝓬𝓵𝓾𝓫 ?? ⁱ ʰᵉᵃʳᵈ ˢᵒᵐᵉ ʷⁱˡᵈ ʳᵘᵐᵒʳˢ ᵃᵇᵒᵘᵗ ᵗʰᵉ 𝓼𝓲𝔁𝓽𝓮𝓮𝓷 ʸᵉᵃʳ ᵒˡᵈ ˡᵃˢᵗ ˢᵉᵐᵉˢᵗᵉʳ, ᵇᵘᵗ ⁿᵒʷ ᵗʰᵃᵗ ᵗʰᵉʸ’ʳᵉ ᵃ 𝓳𝓾𝓷𝓲𝓸𝓻 ⁱᵗ ᵐⁱᵍʰᵗ ᵇᵉ ᵃ ᵈⁱᶠᶠᵉʳᵉⁿᵗ ˢᵗᵒʳʸ. ᵃᶜᶜᵒʳᵈⁱⁿᵍ ᵗᵒ ᵗʰᵉⁱʳ ᶠʳⁱᵉⁿᵈˢ ᵗʰᵉʸ’ʳᵉ ᵖʳᵉᵗᵗʸ 𝓭𝓻𝓲𝓿𝓮𝓷, ᵇᵘᵗ ˢᵒᵐᵉᵗⁱᵐᵉˢ 𝓼𝓱𝓮 ᶜᵃⁿ ᵇᵉ 𝓶𝓮𝓭𝓭𝓵𝓲𝓷𝓰. ʷʰᵒ ᵏⁿᵒʷˢ, ᵗʰⁱˢ ᵐⁱᵍʰᵗ ʲᵘˢᵗ ᵇᵉ 𝓱𝓮𝓻 ʸᵉᵃʳ !   」

LIGHTNING ROUND

full name: maya ruby matlin

date of birth: may 9, 2004 @ 11:50 AM (16y/o)

star signs: taurus sun, leo rising, capricorn moon

birth order: youngest

gender: cis female (she/her)

sexuality: bisexual

romanticism: biromantic

personality: ambivert, idealist, infp-t

moral alignment: neutral good

temperament: melancholy-choleric

hogwarts house: slytherin

spirituality: undecided, only vaguely spiritual

positive traits: tender, prodigious, visionary

negative traits: naive, intrusive, self-involved

faceclaim: kiernan shipka

AN OVERVIEW

tw: illness (multiple sclerosis), hospitals, overdose, addiction, eating disorder, mental illness, anxiety, depression

this interpretation of maya matlin is a little bit all over the place since i wanted to have her come in on a mostly fresh note (especially since so much is au around here so obviously a lot of her more formative plotlines didn't happen) but i wanted to keep what i consider to be some of her key character traits. so some liberties have been taken not that anyone ever cares xx

maya was interested in music from a very young age while simultaneously always having trouble with making friends. when she was in second grade and her parents noticed that she’d been invited to way less playdates and birthday parties than her older sister, katie matlin, did by her age, they figured getting her music lessons would be a good way to both enrich and socialize her. 

the cello was love at first sight for maya. her parents tried to talk her down to a violin since she was comically small compared to the larger instrument, but she couldn't be swayed. she was also a natural when she got her first lesson as a sort of trial run, and so maya x cello began.

growing up hearing things like gifted and talented, even child prodigy did make her ego grow with her, but it wasn’t without reason—even she could see how much she excelled in orchestra compared to her classmates, to the point where she took up other instruments along the way just to keep feeling challenged. but other than that, she didn’t have much going for her; her overall grades were pretty good, and she was generally nice to the other people at school (even the ones she had no problem telling her family she didn’t like) but no friendships ever stuck. music really was like her one thing. 

so, her parents did what they could to nourish it—including enrolling her in a middle school for the performing arts, which she loved. but in a few years when katie started high school at degrassi and was more well-rounded than ever—having friends, clubs, soccer, taekwondo, etc.—it really did highlight how little maya did outside of her little musical world. mr. & mrs. matlin started to worry that, in allowing and encouraging this, they were only enabling maya to alienate herself from other people and opportunities in the world. so, much to her dismay, the next year she, too, was enrolled at degrassi. 

with lots of cliques and friend groups carrying over from previous schools, maya felt like a new kid in the worst way. luckily for her, one kendra mason noticed how much she looked like a lost puppy and took her under her wing, already knowing her way around despite being in the same grade since she had an older brother in katie’s grade and already knew most of their peers. to say that maya latched onto bonding with kendra would be a massive understatement, and the two have been best friends ever since.

although maya’s made no secret of her disdain for how undemanding degrassi’s music curriculum is, with kendra’s friendship (and the way she has no problem telling maya when she’s being a little brat) she finally started branching out more, joining a few clubs, making some more friends, getting crushes (lots of crushes) and just enjoying being a teenager for the first time, like, ever. so, imagine her heartbreak when she found out kendra was gonna be going away to boarding school the following year. 

despite how much more involved she was now, maya started sophomore year feeling lost all over again. however, she at least knew that kendra’s ex, toby isaacs, would be missing kendra just as much as she did, especially since it wasn’t like they had broken up on bad terms. so the two gravitated towards each other—well, no, it was more like: maya gravitated towards him, which got them to hang out more and actually become closer friends, and that was nice for both of them...but maya also totally developed a big crush on toby in the process that was not only unrequited but unspoken about so that no one would ever know (except maybe katie, who could always read maya like a book). it really wasn’t even that she had any intention of dating him, he had just kind of become her closest friend at degrassi without kendra there and they both bonded over missing her and it was nice, and i mean, it’s toby, he’s nice, and funny, and adorable, and oh my god did maya not want to be feeling any kind of way about her best friend’s ex and had a whole lot of feelings about the whole thing and wrote a whole lot of songs about it that she never wants to see the light of day. but she never did get rid of the journal she wrote them in.

eventually she got over it, at first because the weirdness of it all turned her off from the whole idea of liking him, but then especially when she found out kendra was coming back. whether that had more to do with guilt about ever having crushed on toby in the first place or just the sheer excitement of getting her bestie again remains unclear. she just tries not to think about it too much. 

A RUNDOWN

maya’s trademark savior complex is still very present, having started with her mom; with her dad usually working and katie always busy, maya grew up spending a lot of time alone with her mother, who suffers from multiple sclerosis. while, fortunately, margaret matlin maintained a lot of her independence, some days were worse than others as with any chronic illness, and maya was always checking in on her and seeing if there was anything she could do to help. her compulsion to “save” her loved ones later grew when katie wound up hospitalized from an overdose, and maya learned (from general talk among the parents and medical staff) that not only did her sister have a pill addiction but had struggled with disordered eating as well. 

although none of it had anything to do with her, maya couldn’t help but feel like things might not have gotten so bad had she monitored katie more closely like she did their mother, but she didn’t want to make it about herself, so she just kept quiet about these thought patterns, only internalizing it more. at the fault of no one in particular, this developed into a sort of anxiety, which makes her worry a little too much about her friends and family—often to the point of nosiness or straight-up invasion of privacy in the pursuit of a maya matlin wellness check.  the fact that she goes to degrassi, of course, doesn’t make this any better, by the way, with all of the shit that goes down there all the time.

this habit of catastrophizing has also led to a currently undiagnosed mild depression, which often even seems totally latent in her behavior but does circle back to worsening her anxiety. she tends to fixate on stressors (usually personal, but sometimes as big as world events) and will have racing/spiraling thoughts. her lower points tend to be worsened based on circumstance, so she’s more likely to “look” or “seem” depressed in times of higher personal distress, contrasting the heightened nerves and paranoia that will often come beforehand (and serves as a good warning sign). basically, the girl needs therapy, we’ll get there eventually.

ANYTHING ELSE?

i definitely played up the amount she was affected by her mom and katie (even tho i will argue that those were starting points in her mental health journey) but since we’re in a super au and i was trying to serve fresh maya realness alongside later!maya personality/mentality traits, i kinda had to chopshop her backstory a little. that’s also why this turned out so long, i knew i had some differences that needed some explaining.

(also pls note if we do get a katie who doesn’t want to keep the aforementioned plots OR wants to change it up some, i’m obviously open to that!)

i also figure that maya’s relationship with katie would be figured out more when/if we get a katie, but by default, i like to imagine they’re very close with a pretty clear “wiser big sister looking out for her baby sister who thinks she knows everything” dynamic, like best friends but katie puts on the big sister hat when she needs to.

i’m also trying to be very mindful of her mental health because i don’t want her to be quite the extent she ever reaches in next class, but i did also appreciate and apparently relate to a lot of the nuances in how her mental illness really surfaced and inevitably spiraled. so she’s going to be a little mix of happy lil early day maya and the nervous wreck she became later one, with just a splash of next class’s touches like “disaster porn” and having days where stays home from school because she just feels too down. basically, it fluctuates.

maya kind of always knew that she was bi, but like, quietly, since it’s never really been a big deal to her but she also didn’t want to seem like she was looking for attention (not for that, anyway). she definitely acts more outwardly boy-crazy though.

she is also a serial crusher and goes through them faster than even she can keep up with. other than toby, some highlights of the crushes she’s had include: adam torres, alena montanez, alex nunez, amy peters-hoffman, ashley kerwin (like, right when she started her cool goth look), danny van zandt, dave turner, imogen moreno, reggie dever, sean cameron, spinner mason, yael baron, and obviously zig novak. she’s totally got a thing for cam saunders at the moment, and she thinks that craig is, like, the coolest, but not even in a dating kinda way just in a wow-you’re-so-cool-and-talented-i-wanna-open-up-for-you-on-tour-one-day-pls-notice-me-senpai kinda way. and she’s almost definitely felt some type of way about kendra that’s more than friends, more than once, at some point, but even she hasn’t realized that.

despite the fact that she’s got a song written for almost half the school, maya has never dated anyone or even had her first kiss! obviously nothing wrong with that, but a fun trivia bit.

the basement of the matlin house is practically dedicated to being maya’s studio. it’s like half practice room, half hangout, filled with just about every instrument maya took an interest in over the years (mostly string instruments, some miscellaneous, she’s currently trying to build up a drumset that she’s convinced she’s gonna teach herself, and her next fantasy/goal is to get a theremin) as well as an iMac with a composition and production softwares, a sound system, and then just like a couch and a tv and stuff. it’s a pretty impressive amount of musical equipment that looks like a lot (and it is) but again, it’s really like her one thing and her parents want her to be happy. most of it comes from various holidays and occasions since she only ever really asks for additions to her collection as gifts, so between that and random bits and pieces she saved up to buy herself (and a few her parents just felt like treating her to) it’s built up over the years. 

yeah i literally always play maya with this basement, it’s basically become a staple of my maya matlins, i’ve designed it a couple of times but i’ll probably redo it once more for this verse because it’s her favorite place to hang out.

aaand i’m gonna make myself end there because i’ll just keep going and this is already far too long but yeah welcome to the world my latest edition in maya matlins~ 

[bts-bringthescenarios]

Genre: fluff, hints of angst, hints of crack. Pairing: [romantic] female reader + bts!maknae line Contents & Warnings: multiple career!reader, physical contact, swear words, mention of mental health issues.

*** Park Jimin

It had all started with BTS’ increasing concern over Jimin. He seemed to be getting more and more anxious with time. He was such a perfectionist he couldn’t do anything without feeling an intense sense of responsibility: he practiced all the time, he was constantly dieting, he recorded everything countless times until he felt it was close to perfect. If he didn’t achieve the results he strived for, he would become stressed and testy. 

One night, Jimin stayed at the BigHit dance practice rooms until very late, going over the same choreography until he felt he had mastered it completely. The trouble was the whole band had spent the entire day practicing, and they were worried Jimin might injure himself if he kept pushing himself so far. So this time they decided to ambush him. 

“Okay, music out. This has to stop,” Jin barged in. 

“What are you doing? I’m still not confident with the final step sequence!” Jimin protested weakly. Still, he sat down on the ground. He was drenched in sweat and his hands were shaking slightly. 

“Then you’ll have to live with the uncertainty,” Hoseok said as he kneeled over Jimin, handing him a bottle of sport beverage. 

“You need to rest. Right now,” Taehyung commanded as he sat next to Jimin, eyeing him full of concern. 

Jimin downed the bottle, realizing he hadn’t had supper yet, and his lunch had consisted of an apple. He tried to persuade himself that it was best for him to keep practicing, but maybe his brothers were right. He needed to stop. 

The next morning they all gathered together with their manager to talk to Jimin about not overexerting himself, and they unanimously decided that he needed to find a new occupation beside the idol life, some way to blow off steam and distract him. They wanted to make sure that his new hobby was laid back, messy and improvisational, so that Jimin could not redirect his perfectionism toward a new activity and he could focus on simply doing whatever he felt like. 

That was how BigHit enrolled Jimin in a Clay Sculpting workshop. Horrified, he tried to persuade them to transfer him to any other kind of class: cooking, bartending, painting, expressionist dancing, anything, but BTS and BigHit knew him well, and they knew that anything that meant creating a product or involved dancing would only make things worse. So he began attending the classes, twice a week for two hours. He was not allowed to bring any unfinished projects home, and he had to submit his work every week. This forced him to just turn in whatever he had, regardless of his expectations. 

That was how he had met you. 

“Okay, (Y/N). Could you please tell us about your piece?” the teacher asked kindly, holding up a bulbous shape so that the rest of the class could see it. 

“Well, it was supposed to be a carriage, but looking at it now I’m tempted to just think of it as ‘abstract art’” you scoffed. “I guess I’ll have to name it something pretentious or whatever.”

Everyone laughed, and Jimin felt much more at ease at the fact that the frog that he had been working on looked like a deformed hut with eyes. 

At the end of the class, Jimin stepped out of the men’s room, ready to leave, when he overheard a conversation happening in the next room. 

“Ugh, I wish they’d let us bring our phones in! No one’s going to believe me,” someone complained. 

“No phones allowed, that’s true, but there are no rules over bringing a picture and asking him to sign it. I bet I could sell it for big bucks,” another voice added.

Jimin exhaled silently, deciding to remain hidden until everyone else was gone. He hoped they’d leave soon, Jungkook was picking him up and he was probably waiting in the parking lot already. 

“Oh! Let’s ask him next week, (Y/N)!”

“No.” Your voice, firm and clear, resonated in the quiet room, pulling Jimin out of his thoughts. He pressed his ear to the door. “Look, you can do whatever you want, but I’m not going to be a part of this.” 

“A part of what?” a man inquired. 

“Can you imagine what it must be like?” you countered calmly. “Can you imagine being unable to join a friggin’ clay sculpture class without people harassing you all the time?”

“It’s just an autograph, (Y/N). Jeez,” the same man jeered.

“Yeah, I bet everyone thinks that. And then everyone demands one. All day. Every day.” 

A low murmur broke after your words, and Jimin couldn’t hear anything else. Just in case he walked back into the men’s room and remained there until he was positive the classroom was empty. 

During the weekend, Jimin found himself thinking about you frequently. He appreciated you standing up for him with that group of people, since he knew it couldn’t have been easy to just go ahead and confront the majority. Besides, there was something very genuine about you, like the way you had mocked your own sculpture. Even the way you spoke felt honest and upfront. He wondered if there’d be a way to talk to you during class. 

As it turned out, one of your friends was on vacation and there was a free spot on your table when Jimin walked in. That wasn’t the only good news. It seemed that your words had an impact on the rest of the group, because no one walked to him requesting an autograph or a picture. 

Jimin sat next to you slowly, attempting to play it cool, like he’d chosen that seat because whatever. The way his eyes looked away from you bashfully contradicted that notion.

“Hi,” you greeted him smilingly as you put on your apron. 

“Hi,” he replied softly. You didn’t want to make him uncomfortable by being overbearing, so you began preparing the materials in silence. Jimin watched you awkwardly for a second, then he began preparing his things too. He tried to make conversation. “Um… any idea what you’re going to do today?” 

“Well, I’ll try to do a lotus flower, ‘try’ being the operative word.” 

“I think your carriage last week was pretty good,” Jimin chortled. 

“Oh, it’s not a carriage anymore. I’m calling it ‘The Burden of Constantly Failing Clay Class’. It’s an abstract piece,” you joked, and Jimin burst into quiet laughter. 

Jimin had a lot of fun with you during the entire class, and he soon discovered that when he didn’t take himself so seriously he actually enjoyed himself immensely. He played with the clay, experiencing the feeling of its texture under his fingers, and shaped up a bird with its wings wide open. Your lotus flower was looking pretty good too, and Jimin suggested you combine the two sculptures after painting them next class. 

You walked into the classroom overly excited the next class, and so did Jimin. He had been looking forward to this all week. You worked together again, goofing around with the brushes and joking constantly. When you turned in your final project, the colors were bright and tacky, and it looked quite kitsch. It wasn’t even close to being perfect, but that somehow made you both feel better.

“Why are you taking this class, (Y/N)?” Jimin inquired as you both waited for the rest of your classmates to finish their work. 

“Well… I was struggling with negative thoughts, and I needed something to force me to focus on actually doing something regardless of the outcome,” you explained. You didn’t mean to overshare with him, but he looked genuinely interested in knowing and it just slipped out. Besides, you thought, being an idol meant everyone knew so much about him already, it was only fair to give him some personal information about yourself. 

“Really? So did I!” he exclaimed impulsively, then looked away, abashed. You smiled at him encouragingly, and he continued. “I was actually working myself too hard, and my brothers decided it was time for me to find a hobby.” 

Both of you kept talking until the class was over, and then continued your conversation while Jimin waited for Jungkook to pick him up in the car. 

The conversations and joint projects quickly became a routine. This caused a lot of gossip at first, but it died out as time passed and your relationship didn’t change. In truth, you both liked each other quite a lot, but were reticent of asking each other out for different reasons. You didn’t know whether Jimin could date or not, and you were scared you’d make him uncomfortable by asking him out. 

Jimin, on the other hand, was simply too shy to do it. Of course, he thought about it quite a lot, and he had formed plans to do it a hundred times, at least. He’d fantasized and daydreamed about it countless hours, perfecting it, but when the time came to act upon it, he systematically chickened out: he walked into the workshop determined to ask for your phone number, but as soon as the class was over he walked away empty handed.

His brothers began to lose patience. 

“For fuck’s sake, Jimin, just go and ask her for her phone number after class. It doesn’t have to be a big deal. Tell her you want to send her memes or something,” Yoongi complained. 

“If you don’t do it yourself I’ll do it for you,” Jeongguk teased. 

“Okay, okay! I’ll do it tomorrow,” Jimin whined, trying to end the conversation.

“You make sure he does that, Jeongguk,” Yoongi added maliciously. 

Jimin eyed them suspiciously. Maybe Jeongguk really meant what he said. He would have to act on this soon if he wanted to avoid a catastrophe. 

Needless to say, Jimin was fidgety during the entire class, paying little attention to his clay project. It was supposed to be a mug, but he didn’t even shape it properly and it looked like some sort of tower. As the end of the class grew impendingly close, his palms began to sweat. 

“I can’t believe I even got the handle right,” you boasted, showing your mug to Jimin as you put your projects away to dry so that they could be painted next class. “I mean, if I keep this up you’ll be keeping my best work yet.” 

Jimin looked up in alarm, and realization dawned on him. You had promised to give each other the finished mugs last class, but he’d been so caught up with asking you for your number he completely forgot. He looked down at his mug, beginning to despair. He wasn’t sure the thing could even hold any liquid inside it. 

As your classmates slowly filed out of the class, Jimin said goodbye quickly, excusing himself by going to the toilet. You felt uneasy. He’d acted weird today. He’d barely talked, his mug looked like a pepper mill and he stumbled over words the whole time. Was something wrong? Should you stay and ask him? You decided it was best to leave, perhaps he needed time alone. 

Feeling a little down, you walked out of the building and a chilly breeze tousled your hair, making you shiver. You remembered you left your scarf in the classroom, so you went back to get it. When you opened the door you found Jimin alone, placing his clay mug inside a cardboard box. His eyes darted up and he froze, turning crimson. 

“Hey,” you said quietly. “Er… what are you doing?”

Jimin straightened up, eyeing the box guiltily. 

“Nothing. I mean, I was just packing the mug.” 

“Why are you packing it?” you questioned dubiously. Then you noticed his backpack was open, and he’d made enough space to stuff the cardboard box inside it. “Wait. Were you going to take the mug home?”

“It just needs a few touch ups!” Jimin admitted, biting his lip as you stared at him. 

“Jimin, you’re supposed to let it go if it’s not perfect, remember?” you protested, your voice soft and understanding. “Are you having anxious thoughts again?”

“No, not at all. That’s not it.” 

“Then why are you so worried about it?”

“Because I forgot we were going to swap mugs!” he confessed. “My mind was elsewhere and I completely forgot, like an idiot. I want you to have something nice. I don’t want you keeping this— this—” he trailed off, glaring at the box. 

You were so touched by his words it took you a few seconds to react. 

You walked around the table to stand next to him and placed your hands over his shoulders, softly holding him in place as you fixed your eyes on his. 

“Jimin, I want you to understand something. I don’t care if the mug’s pretty or artsy or whatever. You know what I care about? The fact that you took the time and trouble to make it for me. That’s it. I’ve been watching you work on that mug, and I already love it. So put it back to dry, or so help me.”

You had meant for the playful threat to make him laugh, but instead Jimin remained still, his eyes burning with emotion. Of course you would have the perfect answer. Of course you would made him feel exactly right. As he pondered this, he discovered this was his chance to take the leap, and he was sure that he wanted to take it. 

Carefully evaluating your reaction, Jimin hesitantly lifted his hands to your back and pulled you just a fraction closer. The movement was enough for you to understand what he was trying to do. Your heart thumped loudly in your ears. You slid your hands up his neck gently, grazing your fingertips over his hair. 

As he held you in his arms, Jimin’s shyness faded away. He wrapped his arms around your waist and pulled your bodies closer together, so close you could taste his breath on your tongue. It lured you in, and for the briefest moment you touched his lips with yours. 

The sound of the elevator doors opening, followed by a series of footsteps in the hallway, had you pulling away from each other hastily. You had just enough time to collect yourselves before Jeongguk strolled in through the door. 

“Hey, what’s taking you so long? Class was over like fifteen minutes ago—” he stopped, his eyes darting from you to Jimin’s unmoving figures. 

“Oh,” he whispered as he understood what was going on. “You must be (Y/N).” 

Knowing that Jimin had talked to Jeongguk about you made your heart flutter. It had the opposite effect on Jimin, though. 

“We were just talking right now. Could you please wait for me in the car?” he snapped, indignation winning over the embarrassment. 

 “Okay,” Jeongguk replied and made to leave. Then he stopped in his tracks and turned around, a bit flustered. “I’m sorry, but I promised Yoongi-hyung I would check...” 

Jimin’s stomach dropped. Oh, no he wouldn’t. His eyes narrowed dangerously at his brother, unspoken threats festering behind them. Jeongguk seemed to reconsider for a second, but then he squared his shoulders and stared at you. 

“(Y/N), Jimin’s supposed to ask you for your phone number. You know, to send you memes and stuff.” 

Jimin learned there and then that it was not possible to die of shame, because if it were he would have dropped dead at that precise moment. He turned to look at your expression to measure the damage Jeongguk had done. For what felt like an eternity you appeared to be confused, your face scrunched up in concentration. Then, to his immense relief, the corners of your mouth quirked up into a wide grin.

“He was just getting to that before you walked in,” you affirmed happily, having realized that he had been so nervous during class because he’d been meaning to ask you out. 

“Oh. Okay. I’ll leave you to it, then,” Jeongguk mumbled, then turned around and walked out. 

None of you spoke until the elevator shut its doors with Jeongguk inside it. 

“So, would you like to take down my number?” you asked innocently, trying to break the ice. 

“I am… so sorry. I don’t even know how to begin to make up for what just happened. Memes...” he whispered to himself as he looked away, overcome with indignation. 

You beamed at him, trying not to laugh at his expression. When he gazed at you again, it knocked the air out of him. You were glowing: your eyes, your skin, your lips, everything seemed to have become even more beautiful. 

Jimin understood then that his chagrin was silly, because your feelings mirrored his own. He grinned at you and held your hands in his. 

“I could begin to make amends tomorrow night. Can I buy you dinner?” he asked, turning a light shade of pink. 

“Please,” you answered, and leaned in to kiss his cheek. 

***

Kim Taehyung

The other members didn’t mind it as much when someone from the BigHit team took their pets to the vet because it was unavoidable, but not Taehyung. Sometimes it couldn’t be helped, but he did the best he could to always be there for Yeontan when he needed his routine vaccinations or when he was ill. He would fuss and get stressed about it all the time, distrusting the vets, until another idol shared with him the number of her favorite vet in the city, who happened to have a home health service. 

That was how he had met you. Taehyung was immediately smitten with you since the first time you stepped on the dorm and all the members’ pets greeted you affectionately as if they’d known you forever. Even Yeontan was happily rubbing itself against your shins in demand of your attention before you had removed your coat. Oh yes, Taehyung had crushed on you instantly, and it wasn’t only because he found you very attractive, but also that you were humble, kind and easygoing. You greeted the boys warmly and set to work immediately, listening to all of their questions and lovingly stroking their pets as you checked them up. And what was even better, you treated them as normal people. 

When it was Yeontan’s turn to have his medical examination Taehyung lingered protectively around him, but he soon realized it was unnecessary: his pup was so comfortable with you he needn’t be worried. So instead he decided to watch you work, paying close attention to the way you frowned when you were listening to Tan’s heart through the stethoscope, or the graceful movements of your fingers as you checked inside his ears. You were so concentrated on Yeontan’s examination that you didn’t notice Taehyung gawking at you admiringly, nor how his mouth was hanging open during the entire check up. 

After suggesting to swap the food brand to make Yeontan gain a bit of weight and arranging to come in a few weeks for his routine vaccination, you asked Taehyung if he had any questions, still holding his pet in your arms as he licked your hand affectionately. 

“Is there a place where I can come see you?” he inquired dreamily, and taking into account your bewildered expression, he added, “you know, if I have any questions or if there’s an emergency.”

“Sure, you can come over to the clinic or just call me at any time,” you beamed at him as you handed him a business card with your address. 

Immediately after you left, Taehyung secured your card carefully in his wallet and made sure to write down your address in his phone as well. During the next week he tried to restrain himself from getting in touch with you, but he couldn’t help daydreaming about asking you out. He tried to content himself by looking forward to your next visit, but the more time passed, the harder it became for him to ignore the little card tucked in his wallet. 

Unable to resist any longer, Taehyung texted you pretending to have forgotten the brand of dog food you’d recommended. You wound up chatting for a while, where he sent you pictures of Yeontan and, of course, a really cute selfie with a wide, boxy smile and his pup in his arms. Then the following day he dropped by your veterinary clinic to purchase the dog food, and he later sent you a video of Yeontan eating his meal happily. Five days later he swung by again, explaining that someone had mysteriously thrown away Yeontan’s food so he needed to buy some more. 

During this whole time you had tried very hard to maintain a professional relationship. Honestly, you really tried. But how was it possible to keep a polite distance when he was so sweet and attentive? You tried to be strong and remain emotionally detached since the idea of getting romantically involved with a worldwide famous idol was scary to say the least, and besides, he surely met a lot of interesting women all the time in his industry. You thought he might get bored of talking to you, or he would eventually be too busy to keep it up. 

Well, that didn’t happen, not even when he left on a tour for two weeks. He texted you regularly, and despite beginning your daily conversations with a pretext, like Yeontan shivering while he slept or not being hungry, every single time he found a way to keep talking to you about something else, bombarding you with questions about your personal life and telling you funny stories of his daily routine being an idol. Eventually, Taehyung gathered up enough courage to ask you if you were dating someone. When you read that text, your hands were shaking with so much excitement that you nearly dropped your phone. That was the moment you finally accepted that you had utterly and completely messed up your plan to remain emotionally detached. 

Needless to say that when the time came for you to go back to the dorms and vaccinate Yeontan, both of you were giddy and excited. Taehyung was head over heels for you, and he promised himself he would ask you out today. He woke up extra early to shower, fix his hair and carefully select his outfit. He spent an entire thirty minutes deciding what perfume to wear, trying them all on the other members, and the last hour before your arrival he brushed his teeth three times. 

“So at what time is the hot vet coming?” Jeongguk inquired, a bit concerned after watching Taehyung rinse his mouth yet again. 

“Please don’t call her that. It only makes me more nervous to remember how beautiful she is,” Taehyung muttered, anxiously checking his phone again. 

“Take it easy, Taehyungie,” Jimin said as he patted his back soothingly. “You’ve been texting all the time for weeks now. I’m sure she’ll accept to go on a date with you.” 

When you finally rang the bell, Taehyung stood in front of the door for a second and took a deep breath to collect himself, energetically flattening his shirt with his hands to remove any wrinkles. And when he opened the door, you looked so pretty you knocked the air out of him and he forgot all the things he planned to say to play it cool. 

“(Y/N)! You look— I mean, I’m happy to see you again. Hi,” he said, picking up Yeontan from the ground and bringing him close to you so you could pet him. 

You were breathless, too. You noticed how handsome Taehyung looked, and for a second it seemed surreal to you that this man had been flirting with you this whole time. Were you absolutely sure he liked you? Maybe you had read too much into your relationship. You had refrained from asking your friends’ advice in the matter because you didn’t want to expose him, but now that you were insecure about his feelings you felt like you should have asked your best friend about her opinion, even if you didn’t tell her who it was you were texting with. 

As he closed the door, Taehyung debated with himself whether he should help you remove your coat or not, but before he knew it you were already placing it on the hanger. He scolded himself for being inattentive and decided to compensate by offering you something to drink, only to realize he had forgotten to boil water for tea. 

Luckily, Jimin walked in at that very moment and greeted you warmly, after which he said he had prepared some infusions and invited you to the living room. As you walked through the door with your back to both of them, Jimin gave Taehyung two thumbs up, silently mouthing ‘I got you covered’. 

The three of you sat down for a few minutes drinking tea and making small talk while Yeontan perched himself comfortably on your lap, after which Jimin excused himself and left Taehyung and you alone. For a second you were afraid you’d be too nervous to talk, but then you noticed Taehyung smiling affectionately at Tan, who had fallen asleep on top of you. Just by looking at him you felt a fuzzy warmth radiating inside you and spreading all over your body. 

“I’m glad he likes you so much,” he whispered, his eyes now on yours. 

“It definitely makes things easier for my job,” you replied, grinning as you softly rubbed behind Tan’s ears. 

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Taehyung interrupted, after which he got up and sat beside you, careful not to wake Yeontan. He thought for a moment, wondering why it was so relaxing for him to know Yeontan approved of you so completely. Perhaps it was because Tan was family, and Taehyung wanted him to like you because he liked you. He stretched his hand to stroke the sleeping pup, wondering how to correctly translate these feelings into words, when his fingers accidentally brushed against you. 

Taehyung’s hand froze in midair, hovering over your skin as he waited for you to react. Without a word, you lifted your arm slightly, and a small smile spread across Taehyung’s face as you pressed your arm to his palm. Encouraged by your advance, he wrapped his hand gently around your arm and let it slide softly up and down, simply enjoying the feeling until he entwined his fingers with yours. Then his other hand delicately lifted your chin as his thumb caressed your cheek. When you looked up, his face was so close to yours his breath ghosted across your lips. 

Taehyung fixed his eyes on yours, wordlessly asking for your permission. You closed your eyes and leaned in.

Yeontan abruptly jumped out of your lap and ran to meet Min Holly at the door. Right behind them Yoongi was silently but frantically gesturing for his own dog to follow him, having realized he was interrupting you in a rather... intimate moment. Yet when he noticed Yeontan had joined Holly, he looked up apologetically and awkwardly waved his hand at you. 

“Hi, doc,” he said, bending down to pick up Holly and Yeontan in his arms. “Sorry for the interruption. Let me just—”

Taehyung shut his eyes tightly, grinding his teeth together. You leaned away from him, fixing a stray lock of hair behind your ear to compose yourself. It was hopeless, though, since you were blushing furiously. 

“Hi, Min Yoongi. Is everything okay? I can examine Min Holly later,” you said, attempting to dissipate the awkwardness. 

“Maybe some other time,” he replied, giving Taehyung a meaningful look, and he shut the door behind him. 

You gazed back at Taehyung, who looked absolutely demoralized. However, you took it as a good sign that your fingers were still interlinked, and decided to place your free hand over his. 

“Are you alright, Taehyung?” you asked soothingly. 

Even though he was brutally disappointed by how your first kiss had turned out, the way his name sounded in your voice made him feel immediately better. He realized you must have been dissatisfied by this whole ordeal too. Taehyung decided to make the best out of the situation and actually continue with the plan he had originally outlined, where he asked you out first and kissed you second. 

Taking a deep breath, Taehyung fixed you with a serious, intense expression. When he saw your encouraging smile and felt the warmth of your hands wrapping his, the words effortlessly slipped out of his mouth. 

“(Y/N), I really like you. Would you go out on a date with me?”

You beamed at him and nodded, nudging his hand. 

“Great,” he grinned. He stood up and pulled you up with him, biting his lips as he drank in your excited smile, then he raised an eyebrow. “Are you free right now?”

Yeontan’s vaccination could wait another week.

***

Jeon Jeongguk

“(Y/N)! I’ll cover you!” Jeongguk yelled, his headset lopsided, as he hammered his fingers against the joysticks. Despite your efforts, you were losing miserably in this game of Overwatch. When you were finally brought down by your enemies, Jeongguk exhaled loudly and slumped against the back of the couch, dropping the Switch beside him. He could hear your sigh echoing from the headset. 

“I’m sorry, (Y/N). I didn’t see Hanzo on time, I was distracted,” he apologized angrily. 

“Don’t be silly, if I had better aim we wouldn’t have lost,” you answered back in your own house as you opened a bag of chips and began munching them down in frustration. 

“What are you eating?” 

“Barbeque chips,” you said in a muffled voice. 

“I wish you were here,” he groaned unhappily. 

“You’re only saying that because you didn’t think of getting your own chips,” you countered. 

“No, I mean it,” he laughed, his good mood disappearing once he noticed it was getting late. “I have to go. I’ll be back home on Saturday. Will you drop by the dorms for supper?”

“Of course,” you chimed, thrilled to know you’d see Jeongguk soon. “I get out of work at seven, I’ll go after that.”

“I’ll get you something tasty.” 

The tour had lasted forever, and even though you’d joined Jeongguk in Europe for two weeks during your vacation, it still felt like the longest time ever. As best friends since childhood you had always been supportive of each other: you knew exactly how to make Jeongguk laugh, and he knew exactly how to make you feel better. Jeongguk was convinced that he wouldn’t be the man he was if it weren’t for you, which was why he was so intent on protecting your friendship at all costs from anything that might jeopardize it, even his own feelings. 

This task, however, was becoming increasingly difficult to accomplish. During your visit to Europe he’d been this close to ruining everything by kissing you several times. He found it particularly hard to control himself when he saw you waiting for him backstage with your arms open after a show, or when you confided in him with tears in your eyes how much you were struggling with your exams. He wanted to be with you so much it almost overwhelmed the terror he felt about losing you. 

You, on the other hand, were not doing much better. You tried seeing other people, but it never lasted longer than a date or two. At first you thought you weren’t in the mood for a relationship, but you eventually discovered that you were constantly comparing your dates to the time you spent with Jeongguk: ‘I’d rather be playing something with Jeongguk’, or ‘Jeongguk would love this place’, or ‘I can’t wait to tell this joke to Jeongguk’. Your friends, tired of hearing you talk about him all the time, already knew what was going on before you reluctantly accepted that you were in love with him. After all, it didn’t take a genius to put two and two together. 

You had travelled to Europe with the purpose of confessing your feelings to him, but when the time came you chickened out. Besides, Jeongguk was always so tired and busy you didn’t have the heart to bring it up. 

On Saturday afternoon, Namjoon walked into Jeongguk’s room and sat on the bed as the maknae unpacked his bags hastily. 

“We only just got home. Why don’t you unpack tomorrow?” Namjoon inquired, stifling a yawn with the back of his hand. 

“(Y/N) is coming over and I want everything to look normal.”

“Oh right, I forget (Y/N) freaks out when confronted with packed luggage,” Namjoon replied sarcastically. 

“I’m not doing it because it would upset her,” Jeongguk answered testily, “I just want her to see that my room is tidy and I have my life together.” 

“I’m sorry, Jeongguk, but I’m not following,” Namjoon insisted innocently. In reality, he knew full well about Jeongguk’s feelings for you. He had tried to broach the topic several times, but Jeongguk had shut himself in like a clam everytime. Namjoon knew Jeongguk was being stupidly stubborn about this, so he hadn’t given up on the subject. 

Jeongguk didn’t answer at first. He just kept putting the dirty laundry in the hamper and folding his clean clothes back in the closet. When he was done, he suddenly felt helpless. He sat on the bed next to his hyung and hung his head in his hands. 

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he mumbled. 

“I know what you’re doing,” Namjoon explained, patting his brother’s back softly, “you’re evading yourself.” 

“Hyung, she is the most important person in the world to me,” Jeongguk mumbled, twisting his fingers in his hair. “What if I fuck it up?”

“That’s a possibility,” Namjoon conceded, “But what if you don’t?”

Jeongguk pondered for a while, allowing the fantasies he’d been constantly repressing to overwhelm him. He saw you smiling as you walked holding hands. He saw you kissing him, your arms wrapped around him. He saw himself pulling your top off, his lips tracing the curve of your neck…

“Listen, you don’t have to figure it out tonight,” Namjoon hinted, interrupting Jeongguk’s reverie, “but I think you should give yourself a chance. She won’t toss you away if she doesn’t reciprocate your feelings, and if she does feel the same way…” 

“Thanks, hyung,” he cut him short, and smiled apologetically at Namjoon. He was grateful for his advice, but he wanted some time on his own to reflect. Namjoon knew when Jeongguk had enough, so he let it rest. 

“I need to think about this. I’ll go have a shower,” Jeongguk stated as he got up purposefully.

In preparation for the night, Jeongguk had placed an order for Chinese takeout and shuffled around the house, tidying up and all in all getting into the other member’s nerves. He was trying really hard not to anticipate the possibility of confessing his feelings, so he kept himself busy until the bell rang. 

The moment Jeongguk opened the door, you pounced at him and hugged him so tightly you were afraid his ribs would crack. Jeongguk lifted you from the ground and spun you around, laughing loudly and forgetting all about his anxieties. You walked together to his room, chatting excitedly and bumping into each other like drunks, just for the pleasure of being close enough to actually touch each other. No more depending on texting and video calls, at least for a while. 

“I’m warning you: I have a lot to tell you about college drama, so you better be ready to stay up all night,” you exclaimed as you sat on top of his bed with your legs crossed. He shut the door and sat opposite to you, grinning widely. 

“Are you kidding me? You better be ready for all the stuff I have to tell you about the tour. If I catch you dozing off I won’t be forgiving.” 

For a long time you both chatted excitedly, and as the exhilaration gradually wore off the conversation became deeper, more emotional. You talked about family issues, about feelings of inadequacy in social situations and about stress from working and studying, until the conversation eventually drifted to a more sensitive topic for your relationship.

“So…” Jeongguk began, unable to resist the morbid curiosity he felt. “Have you been dating anyone?”

Your cheeks flared up and you looked down, suddenly very focused on pulling a loose thread from the bed cover. Jeongguk held his breath.

“No,” you admitted. Jeongguk exhaled in relief. “And you?”

“Nope.” 

“Why not?” you demanded, looking up again. “I bet you meet a lot of interesting people all the time.”

“I do meet a lot of interesting people. I just don’t want to date them,” he answered defensively. 

Why did he have to make things more difficult for you? Maybe if he was dating someone you’d be able to move on. Then again, maybe not. 

“I don’t get you, Jeongguk,” you protested, your cooped up fears and frustration bubbling to the surface. “You have the chance to go on dates with so many cool people, but you decide not to?”

“And what about you?” he fired back. “What about your classmates in college?” 

“What about them?” you challenged. 

“I bet they’re so smart, you could have intellectual debates or whatever—” he began, too aggravated to restrain himself. 

“What on Earth are you talking about?” you hissed, feeling increasingly incensed.

“I know some of them have asked you out!” 

“So?”

“Well, don’t they count as interesting people to date?” 

“I don’t want to date them!” 

“Why the hell not?!” 

“Because I’m in love with you, you idiot!” you snapped, out of control. 

Jeongguk’s eyes widened and his mouth fell open. You panted for a few seconds, your anger sizzling until a feeling of ice cold mortification took over you. 

Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no. What had you done? 

“You’re in love with me?” Jeongguk whispered.

“I— I just...” you babbled, panicking. You weren’t ready for this discussion. You weren’t planning on this. “I’m sorry, Jeongguk, I can’t right now, I— I think I need to leave.” 

You jumped up and pulled the door open, but Jeongguk caught your hand and turned you around before you could walk out. 

“Don’t go,” he begged. You tried to look away, but he cupped your face in his hands. He held you so softly, so caringly that you looked back into his eyes despite your chagrin. And when you read the expression on his face, you stopped resisting.

Jeongguk’s eyes bore into yours, his lips parted, and it felt like you were looking at each other for the first time in your lives. His thumb grazed against your cheekbone, and you both remained still and quiet for what felt like an eternity. You raised your hand and caressed his temple, sinking your fingers in his hair. Jeongguk closed his eyes for a second, enjoying the feeling of your touch. Then he huddled closer to you and lifted your chin, lowering his head slowly to yours so that your lips were level. 

You didn’t hear the footsteps on the carpet. Jimin turned around the corner of the corridor, carrying a bag of Chinese takeout in his arms. Jeongguk and you were wound tightly in an embrace, your faces so close to each other that Jimin knew this was no friendly hug.

As soon as he realized what was going on Jimin tried to walk away quietly before you noticed him. However, as he attempted to tiptoe backward the paper bag crackled in his arms. The sound of of it broke the spell, and Jeongguk and you jumped away from each other. You stared at Jimin dumbfoundedly, too confused and surprised to feel embarrassed yet. 

“Hi (Y/N),” Jimin’s voice was strained. “Um, Jeongguk... I brought you the takeout you ordered.” 

The three of you looked at the bag, then back at each other, like idiots. Jimin clumsily stepped forward and handed Jeongguk the takeout.

“Thanks,” Jeongguk mumbled. 

Jimin stepped back awkwardly, biting his lip. Then he squared his shoulders and crossed his arms over his chest. 

“Look, I’m sorry I interrupted, and I know I shouldn’t say this right now but I’m really glad you both got over yourselves and this is finally happening,” he blurted out, articulating every word so fast it almost made you dizzy. "Okay, bye!" 

Jimin turned around and strode away at an inhuman speed. 

For a few seconds, neither of you said a word. Then Jeongguk gestured you to go into his room. Once you were both inside, he locked the door, placed the bag away and turned to face you, a determined expression on his face. Now that it was out in the open, he needed to say the words, and he needed you to hear him say them. 

“(Y/N), I love you. I always have. I don’t want to date anyone else, only you.”

Jeongguk’s voice was clear and steady, and his eyes burned with intensity as he spoke. It made you feel like laughing and crying at the same time. 

“Jimin’s right, we’ve been so stupid,” you giggled bashfully, and took a step closer to him. Jeongguk pulled you to his chest and began planting soft kisses on the fringe of your hair, on your eyebrows, on the bridge of your nose. You pulled away just an inch to look him in the eyes. “I’ve wanted to tell you for so long, it’s just—”

“I know,” Jeongguk said, and he kissed you in a very non-platonic way.

[purkinje-effect]

The Anatomy of Melancholy, 66: Baggage

Table of Contents. Second Instar, Chapter 33. Go to previous. Go to next. TWs: Body horror, joint trauma, nudity, disability-related deprecation/catastrophization. How we carry ourselves.

________________

The last of the suds fizzled, leaving ‘Choly submerged in cold opalescent bathwater. A similar surfactant quality popped his daze, and he shifted in an attempt to sit up in the tub. The fluid’s inertia instead sloshed him further back against the enameled iron. He grunted with a squint as some water got up his nose. When he opened his eyes again, he saw the real trouble hindering his exit. His joints had fallen as slack as his lucidity. He felt like a marionette without a yoke. His stomach shuddered for him, as the slow continued sway of the water, once more settling, tugged at his arms half afloat.

So it was possible, after all, to relax too much.

He lay there for some time longer, barely able to string together the thought to devise some plan. His state left him reeling beyond the rationality that he might call out for help. Angel would worry itself apart to see him like this, and Sticks might very well toss him out in the Merrimack, beyond salvage. Besides, they hadn’t come to his rescue when he fell hours earlier, and he managed to get himself to the dinner table and back up here with nearly a nonzero amount of assistance. He could do this himself. He needed to learn how to do it himself--for his own safety, in the event something estranged others from coming to his aid.

He prayed this whatever-was-happening wouldn’t endure. But at least, he could in the moment assess his limitations.

His musculature and tendons remained connected and functioning, but necessitated an entirely other manner of physiological prescience: to not simply manage his own proprioception, but to apply it forward like some telekinetic mess of connective tissue cat’s cradle. It took every scrape of mental faculty to process and focus to where he could grasp himself by the wrists, by the elbows, by the shoulders, and so on, to grip each errant joint in turn, and to administer the force and torsion necessary to right the dysfunction. The bangs and bruises from the citywide chaos of the day before only served to compound how his throbbing body resisted total exhaustion.

He pushed himself up by both hands off the side of the tub, to stand. Instead, he spilled over the side and across the concrete flooring of the balcony. Flat on his back and defeated, he flopped back with a wheeze and stared up into the joints of the patio cover. The string lights burned a reverse image in his eyelids when he shut them.

He could hear rummaging inside through the open door yards away. His Stygian eyes fluttered open. The sight of twin mounted radstag heads hanging over the balcony door choked him.

“--Angel?”

The appellation came out far weaker and more broken than he expected.

When Angel didn’t respond, he bristled, and once more underwent the slow, quiet, deliberate process of summoning himself together. He found the Mister Handy had set out on the workhorse nearest to the tub for him a towel, his robe, and his glasses. He managed the loosest sense of drying off, and draped the towel around his neck and shoulders; then, he put on his glasses, and tied off the robe. Unsure exactly whom had come upstairs, let alone what--or whom--they sought, he grabbed an awl from the workbench and edged nearer the door frame on bated breath.

In the dark of the upstairs room, he could only make out the edges of lime split lighting in contrast to the figure’s lit Pip-Boy screen. He shivered at a prickle of draft. The white uniform with black apron. Symmetrical, if not keloid-riddled, features. Sticks rifled through the secretary as though it didn’t belong to him. Unsure how to even begin to ask what the ghoul could’ve needed, 'Choly meekly closed the door behind himself.

“Need more light?”

Sticks jerked up to look at him.

“...Of course, of course.” He loosed a rumbling, agitated chuckle. “It’s all right, pal, that you, ah. Sealed that negotiation for me like that. It’s all right, because... because we’re partners. Isn’t that right? Partners.”

The ghoul rose to flip the switch for the three overhead lamps strung across the roof beams. Right off, ‘Choly noticed the ghoul’s black eye, and a ripped dishevelment marred with bits of fresh blood. ‘Choly chewed at his lower lip.

“Partners... Yeah.” He swallowed, and rubbed at his forearm with his free hand. He’d only been trying to help. “Are you okay? Could we-- talk? We need to talk. If-- if that’s all right.”

The juxtaposition of the encounter startled Sticks to a cautious desperation.

“Everything’s all right between us, right?”

“Of course. It’s not that. ...I need to sit.” He walked over to the secretary and took the desk chair for himself. Sticks sat on the corner of the bed. “I know I fucked up a lot yesterday, but I think I may have fucked up something else.”

He set the awl down on the desk, and swiveled to face Sticks. Picking what he felt he could afford to potentially damage further, he took hold of his left calf and knee, and purposefully loosed it again with a hollow chain of cartilaginous pops. His breath stuttered as he dangled his leg by the foot, but he kept his cool as he gave the ghoul a sardonic glance.

Sticks looked to him agape, with unfiltered, nauseated fascination.

“The cryogenic chemicals damaged my joints and skin, but I’ve managed for months until today. This is... something completely else.” He worked at resetting his knee as he continued, stifling jolts of revulsion. “I mean, even if it is the condition progressing, why all at once? And why-- this? It would be too much of a coincidence if the X-Cell Squared weren’t related... or the inhaler. That fucking inhaler.” He seethed, cupping his face in hand. “I was so tired when she handed me that stuff last night and told me it was Addictol. Fuck me, I’m stupid--”

“--You’re not stupid. She just knows how to trick people. ...Do you really suppose she gave you something that wasn’t Addictol?”

“I checked my Pip-Boy’s health diagnostics earlier. I’m still in withdrawals from chems I took prior to her giving me the inhaler. I could show you, if I-- if I knew where it was.”

“Hey now. I’m sure it’s safe. It’s just you, me, and the robot now.”

‘Choly toweled at his hair again, only to swivel around and look in the secretary for himself. He produced the Walden Drugs catalogue from one slot, and thumbed through it in search of specific pages.

“My current set of orthotics aren’t doing it. The officer’s gloves help, but that’s just my hands. The ankle and wrist braces, the postural corset--they’re just for sprains and such, not full dislocations. Neither you nor Angel seemed to notice earlier, but I fell down the stairs. I’m struggling to put one foot in front of the other. I’m a liability as I am. You called me wet cardboard the other day, and it just keeps feeling more true.“ He slapped the catalogue down in his lap, and shut his eyes to rub at them under his glasses with thumb and forefinger. “Look, I’m bad at asking for help. So: This is me asking for help. I know you don’t have to help me and that it’s probably prudent to ditch me... but I hope having me in your life means more to you than that.”

He held out the booklet turned to the relevant page. Sticks leaned to take it, and looked it over, uncurling the front half to inspect the cover, then back to the items. He face slacked in earnest as he flipped over to a locations listing.

“The closest one was Nashua, you said? Lexington didn’t have them?”

“I lived in the Lexington Walden’s stock room for months before it went up in flames. What I’ve got is the best I could find. Only the warehouses that stocked hospitals would have what’s on that page. They’re surgical grade. ...The Merrimack swallowed up the Lowell General Hospital, didn’t it?“ He slumped, unable to recall the building in the skyline as they’d passed through Downtown Historic. “You have no idea how badly I want to stay put. I love it here, with the bathtub, with the bed, with the you... But...” The idea of it eroded him to trembling. “I know it’s a long way. Especially on foot. But I can’t do it with just Angel. Especially since it’s out of ammo.”

“No, no. If you need this, then we need this. We needed a good reason to blow this place for a while. The Unfolded may seem to want to continue respecting the history this place has, Glenn Johnny’s included... But Lowell as a whole? They weren’t out here on exterminator duty, Mindy. They were doing recon on the locks and channels equipment. For the General.”

That nearly knocked ‘Choly out of the chair. When it clicked, he paled numb.

“The fuck do they want to-- Oh. Oh no.”

“Yeah. I’m not happy about it, either. Bare minimum, it’s gonna be like when a company puts a new building in. Except you and I both know that wont just be, what was it? Skunks? But worst case scenario? I don’t even want to begin to speculate what they plan to do with the river.” Weary, Sticks circled back to the catalogue. “Have you got a time estimate for this little recon? How long you think it’ll take to get there, and how long you intend to stick around?”

“I’m not sure. Does it matter much? We’re in agreement that a change of scenery’s desirable.”

Sticks traced at the details on the page, distant and in deep thought.

“It’s not just a change of scenery, is the thing. It’s a change of climate. I don’t know if you realize this, but Lowell’s on the southern threshold of the Hinter... and we’re coming up on Nor’easter season. Sure, the wildlife has got all big and wild, but so’s the weather. I’ll be mostly all right up there, being a ghoul, provided our shelter’s sound. But you? And the Handy?” The ghoul waved off his own train of thought. “You know what. Don’t sweat it. We’ll manage this. My experience, your grey matter.”

“Nor’easters? You’re worried over a chance there’s one this year? I’ve weathered dozens of ice storms in my life. Even a few hurricanes. And you’re a native Yankee, so you’ve got to have, too. We’ll be fine.” Denial wheezed from his nostrils, his lips pressed together tight. “I know it will put us even further from New Hampshire, but I do have one obligation first. I have to go to Billerica, to escort someone to the Concord suburbs. I should’ve taken them to safety before getting here, but I also didn’t know what I was getting myself into. They’ve been waiting for the Lowell conflict to blow over, and like me, they’re the last survivor of their location. I would have had to go check on them soon even if we stayed here.”

The ghoul squinted at him.

“Hazarding you’re confident they couldn’t just travel there themselves.”

“It shouldn’t take long at all!” ‘Choly threw his hands up. “One day, tops. We just need to get from here to there to Sanctuary Hills. It’s a Mister Handy. I couldn’t have brought it to Lowell and just left it. And it just feels too many kinds of wrong to just leave it all alone there, when it could be among some normal people again for once.”

Sticks weighed the various aspects about the proposition that didn’t sit well.

“If you’re having trouble just walking, do you suppose you’ll be in any condition to ride Angel down?”

“I, I don’t know.” 'Choly wilted into begging that left his companion too tongue-tied to object all the while. “We’ll figure that out, too! And you know what? This trip to Nashua isn’t just for me. Partners. I meant it, that we’re in this together. The long haul. The Lexington Walden was a smaller location, and even it had a sizable chem lab arrangement, with a large cache of stock. The Nashua Walden was classified as a full regional warehouse: it shipped to a dozen locations in the New England Commonwealth. Olivia gave me all those military chem formulas. That is what you were looking for just now, weren’t you? I’m as interested as you, to see what all I can make from a chem cookbook culminated from two hundred years of research.”

Sticks sat up at once and looked to him knowingly. He swatted his knee with the catalogue.

“Now that, I like to hear! What initiative! We’ll start out for all this tomorrow. You hear me? Let’s get to gathering things up tonight. We can do a once-over in the morning to make sure we’re not leaving anything important behind.”

“You’re not exhausted after all that stuff downstairs? After cooking for thirty?”

‘Choly felt even more pathetic than he sounded. He hadn’t even lifted a finger with a thing, yet was this worn out.

“We’ll go until we pass out, at least. We’ll sleep better that way. Hey Angel!” Sticks called out for the robot. “Set down that broom and dustpan for a bit and help us out up here!” He chortled excitedly. “Ohh, bless it all. You want to cook chems for me. And you want to wear this for me. I could kiss you.”

Something between a grimace and a grin tore ‘Choly’s face.

“You... you could kiss me, you know.”

“You’re not wrong.” Sticks swept him up in both arms and plopped him back on the freshly made bed, only narrowly taking the care to be delicate with him. He leaned down over the top of him, a hand to each side of ‘Choly’s shoulders, to smooch him. “We’re great together. You know that, right?”

‘Choly squinted awkwardly, and reached to turn off the screen light on Sticks’s Pip-Boy. He pulled him into another kiss, and looked him in the eye with adoration.

“Always have been.”

“I’ll have you know I’ve no intention of leaving this place without first cleaning up after such horrid house guests.” Angel scoffed in frustration as it appeared upstairs, oblivious to the pair making out on the bed. “And I hate to be the bearer of such information, but if I’m to carry Mister Carey, we must pack as light as possible. It’s not to guilt you, Sir, but even with the refinements you’ve made to my hydraulics, the added weight does result in a higher fuel expenditure. My ammunition isn’t the only thing running low after this week.”

“So we’ll make more frequent refueling pit stops for you, buddy,” Sticks mumbled over his shoulder, still pecking all over ‘Choly’s face and neck and shoulders where he could get at it. The little creep soaked it all up, squirming like it tickled. “You just worry about carrying Carey here. Anything heavy I need to bring, I’ll carry myself.”

‘Choly grabbed his face to get his attention.

“Hey. Maybe Angel could carry all the supplies, and you carry me? I’ve got to weigh less than that Flamer did, and you hefted that thing all over town without hardly ever setting it down.”

The ghoul melted into dopey chuff.

“Mindy. Babe. You do not weigh less than a Flamer.” He smiled, heavy lidded. “You’re on something, though. Sounds like it might work. I can guarantee you, that everything I’m bringing totally weighs less than you. So if I carry you, and Angel carries everything I’m bringing, that’s less strain on its flame.”

“Can I entrust you with my most precious cargo, Mister Hawthorne?”

He planted one more forceful smooch on ‘Choly before meeting gazes in a dreamy determination.

“He’s my prize, too, ya know.”

Go to Next »»»

[internaljiujitsu]

Five 5 Minute Life Drills To Keep You Going And Growing

I can still remember the innocent optimism of childhood. Each day was a wondrous adventure as life playfully unfolded. I didn’t know about limitations and I could see a bright future ahead. It lasted until I was eight years old.

When you carry around deep unhappiness from an early age, you’re always trying to compensate. Accomplishing things to feed your need for validation becomes a way of staying out of the dumps. You feel worthless if you’re not getting a pat on the back, and when there’s no one around to tell you that you’re OK, you’re bound to listen to the voices in your head.

On May 7th, professional bodybuilder Luke Sandoe committed suicide. Sandoe, by all accounts, was among the most well liked athletes on the circuit. Funny, charismatic, ruggedly handsome yet self deprecating and with a career on the rise, the popular podcast host seemed to have it all. The thirty year old juggernaut succumbed to depression at the height of his fame while quarantined during a global pandemic.

Sandoe’s powerful outward appearance was used to sell supplements, clothing and the fitness lifestyle — But like so many successful people, Luke felt tragically unfulfilled.

Dualism poses that the mind and body are separate — we are not simply self-contained machines. Decartes’ assertion that the mind is non-physical while the body is material flies in the face of those that believe thoughts are simply a function of the brain. Neither group can argue against the powerful effect that our physical and mental wellbeing have on one another.

Outliers are idolized by the adoring public, but the reality is that outstanding achievement in a specialized area will require prioritization. Unless adequate overall balance is pursued, you will always feel off kilter. Something will forever be missing. Pursuing balance, you can strive to achieve more without feeling as if it is an effort to fill a hole. If you feel lack, you feel it everywhere. Like a leech, it sucks the life out of you whether it’s on your ass or your shoulder. Either way, it will bleed you dry — if you let it.

Feeling at ease is impossible when you know your flank is exposed. Shoring up the shaky parts of your life leaves you sturdy enough to confidently leap when opportunity presents itself. While there is always sacrifice for the dedicated, a neglected relationship, poor physical health or constant anxiety are unacceptable prices to pay for success. Ultimately, such infirmity will leave you unable to sustain whatever progress you do make. Something will have to give.

Starting on the road to balanced, overall wellbeing isn’t as hard as it sounds. You don’t need expensive trainers (though they’re great if you can afford one), fad diets or bullshit life hacks. You just need to decide that it’s worth 25 minutes of your time to gain a mental, physical, spiritual and emotional edge.

If you’re tired of feeling like you’re gonna tip over at any moment, here’s my five five minute drills to get you going and growing.

1. Give Thanks For Five Minutes.

In one of Luke Sandoe’s final interviews, he was asked what his first thought in the morning was. He wouldn’t answer because he felt it was too dark for the audience, though the host pressed on. I didn’t have to hear the answer. I had woken up many mornings wishing I hadn’t — thinking I couldn’t bear another day.

What you think about as you drift off to sleep and when you wake up is critical to programming yourself. While affirmations may seem hokey to most people, repeat something enough and you’ll believe it, even if you don’t at first. A started daily morning and evening thanksgiving rituals during the most difficult time in my life. In the beginning, I didn’t feel lucky or grateful — just depressed and hopeless. I gave thanks anyway.

Eventually, I began looking forward to sitting down to review all the good things in my life. You’re setting the table for your experience when your brain is in a theta state — the frequency between conscious and subconscious mind that allows for profound creativity. Manage your words and thoughts carefully during these critical times of the day.

I recommend splitting the five minutes into morning and evening sessions. At night, you can review what went well for that particular day. No win is too small to give yourself credit for before sleeping on it.

2. Shut Up For Five Minutes!

You’ve got a whole day ahead of you to try to get in as much productivity as possible. Everyone gets a piece of your time. But just as “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” author Robert Kiyosaki says, “Pay yourself first.” He’s talking dollars, I’m talking time. Your first meeting of the day should be catching up with you. Check in — with no distractions. It’s amazing how observing your thoughts free from interference can clarify things for you.

Meditation is like setting the emotional pace for your day. You’re adjusting your internal thermostat. Your practice is about maintaining that same level of peace throughout your day, regardless of circumstances.

Five minutes of silence is a way to take control of your mindset from the beginning of the day. Don’t give anything or anyone else the chance to determine your state.

3. Get In Your Body For Five Minutes

The mind/body connection is an essential part of exercise. Focusing on the muscle being worked is a critical component of proper training. Unfortunately, too many people are strangers to their bodies until the moment it breaks down.

If you don’t already have a workout routine that you do in the morning, five minutes of light stretching, a few squats, push ups or jumping jacks can get the blood flowing nicely. It’s a good reminder of what we are physically capable of on a full tank, before getting worn out by daily chores. Your body will feel more awake, stronger and more capable of facing the day’s challenges.

4. Learn Something New For Five Minutes

I don’t mean news about the latest doom and gloom. Take at least five minutes to crack open a book, read an article, listen to a lecture or learn a new word. Get your neurons firing right away, and try to retain what you’ve learned by occasionally reviewing it in your head. Your mind doesn’t stay sharp by accident.

5. Be Creative For Five Minutes

Write, paint, sing or do a little dance — as long as you are expressing yourself freely and honestly for at least five minutes a day. Even if the rest of your life is having to bullshit your way through or pretending to be someone that you’re not, for these three hundred seconds, you are authentic and uncensored. If you don’t stay in touch with who you really are, you may forget all together. I firmly believe in regular therapy, but the honesty you can have with yourself when there is no one to disappoint or impress can’t be done with another person. We are all too judgmental.

Despite the famous words of Billy Crystal’s Fernando Lamas, it is not better to look good than to feel good. Even the most beautiful corpse will quickly rot, deteriorating into dust while hopelessly clinging on. The loss of the material is only catastrophic when matter alone serves as your foundation. These twenty five minutes can serve as the foundation for a more comprehensive approach to wellness. Building habits that enrich every aspect of your life allows for a well rounded expansion that can endure the inevitable instability ahead.

[heartofaquamarine]

DISCWORLD’S DEATH AND YOKOHAMA KAIDASHI KIKO: A FRIENDLY END.

I am terrified of death. That’s not really hyperbole; I have an anxiety disorder that mainly manifests itself in the form of irrational fears of immediate mortality. When I was younger, I would see smoke in the patterns on the ceiling above my bed at night, fearing that the house was in the process of being consumed in flame. Later on, I developed health anxiety to the point that the hospital sent me a letter telling me to stop going there when I was actually fine physically, if not mentally. Even my current academic path has been directed by this somewhat; one of the reasons I went into climate science was because of my fears of global climate change. My default response to this panic is to seek either reassurance or understanding; going to the doctor’s, checking the house for fire, and learning about the physics of the climate. It is the uncertainty, the lack of knowledge that causes me the problem.

This anxiety has been with me long enough that, while it is still there, I can mainly handle it. I sometimes have panic attacks, but normally I can talk myself out of the spiral before I get there. That being said, it is still lurking at the back of my mind, like ivy in a garden. I can pull it up, I can try and rip out the roots, but as anyone who has tried to rid their garden of ivy knows, it will grow again.

One of the powers I think media has, that I think stories have, is that they provide an external framework for us to interact with, much in the way that the real world does. I don’t think it is a particularly novel thing to say that many of these stories focus on death, either the acceptance of it or warping it, overcoming up. Death is just such a universal constant. The very first full book I ever read, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, has the need to accept death as a major theme of the book; “Death, to a well prepared mind, is nothing more than the next great adventure”.

Given what I have said above, you might think my preferred framework for handling death is a world where death is meaningless, where it loses its power. The immortality of Baccano!, the constant respawning of video games where if you die, you just have to try again (and some, like Undertale, make this a core part of their narrative), or just the idea of an eternal afterlife, and while I do enjoy a lot of these, I don’t actually find these to be the most comforting portrayal of death.

HELLO.

There is only one consistently appearing character in GNU Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, and that is Death himself; the anthropogenic personification, the Grim Reaper. Sometimes he is the main character, often he is merely a one scene wonder, but he appears in every single book in the series. We get to see into his mind. It is alien, but understandable both because of the fact that he represents a fundamental shadow in our lives, and because Death himself wishes to understand us. He has a cottage, a garden where he tries to grow plants that cannot truly exist. In Discworld, we are not left with the mystery of death, the question about what lies beyond the grave, but instead Death is also forced to confront the mystery of us. His attempts are well meaning, but clumsy. He attempts to make his adopted grand daughter a Hogswatch card (the Discworld’s version of Christmas), apologising for how damp it is; he knew he was supposed to put snow on it, but it melted, and the robin refused to stay on. Heck, even in that little sentence I dropped the idea that the Death has an adopted grand-daughter. Death and Life are, in Discworld, constantly reaching out to one another, and Death has a deep soft spot for us; he rides out with the other Horsemen of the Apocolypse (War, Famine and Pestilence, as well as the Fifth member who left before they became famous) in defence of life, and steps in to fill the role of the Hogfather when he disappears. We do actually get to see the afterlife of Discworld, or at least the start of it. Death escorts you into a desert. Once you get there, your fate varies, but we get to see very few of the actual outcomes. A golem, having spent millennia working, finally sits down. The abusive leader of a religion discovers that the ghosts of his victims still very much believe in him. But for the most part we don’t see what happens. It is not a reveal of what happens to you after your life, but just a very short glimpse at what lies beyond. The comfort comes not from the idea that I know what lies beyond, but just that there is something, and there will be a friendly, if alien, hand. THE AGE OF THE CALM EVENING

If Discworld presents a comforting vision of a personal death, then Yokohama Kaidashi Kiko by Hitoshi Ashinano (henceforth referred to as YKK) presents a comforting vision of a future without humanity. It is set in a post-apocolyptic world, where the climate has fundamentally changed. The seasons have merged; winters are now milder, while summers are cooler. The sea level has risen to the point that most of the city of Yokohama is now underwater; a recurring, haunting image in the manga is that of the street lights of Yokohama still lighting up underneath the waves, creating an artificial, glowing sea.

And in this world, we follow the everyday life of an android called Alpha, as she runs a café on the edge of a cliff.

There’s no great revelations about the nature of the catastrophe, or even much discussion of it. We just see the everyday life of Alpha as the world changes around her. At first, the world is still very much dominated by human presences. Roads and buildings remain mostly intact, and the characters Alpha interacts with are almost all human. Even the café itself is a remnant of humanity; Alpha has an owner, who asks her to look after the café, but we never actually meet him. He sends her a camera early on, but this is basically the only interaction we see them directly have. The human presence instead comes from a family that lives nearby, and runs a small petrol station, a little distance from the café. Over the course of the story, despite Alpha remaining unchanging, we see these characters move on. The children grow up, and the grandfather dies. The road to Yokohama along the coast becomes sand, and nature reclaims the terraces and plateaus.

Nature is perhaps embodied in story by the character of Misago, an ageless wild woman who lives in the bays and waterways below the café’s cliff. What she is is never explained; it is possibly implied she is the first robot, but I have always read her as a spirit of nature, something that was here before humanity, and is here after we disappear.

Likewise, we also see new things appearing, evolving in forms similar to what humans have created, but at the same time alien. Blue glowing trees like street lamps (a running motif in the manga), strange structures that ape the appearance of buildings but that appear to be some kind of fungus, and plants which grow statues that look like people. Crucially, none of these are actually explained; they are left a mystery, but a comforting one. The end of the world was not the end of the world. Life goes on, even if is not in forms recognisable to us, and the effect we had on the world still lasts, just perhaps not how we expect.

Misago and nature; the world that was here before us, and that will be here after us.

Alpha and the other robots: the children of humanity that inherit the evening age from us.

The flower statues and street light trees: what comes after us.

We see this in reality at Chernobyl. Plants and animals still live in the area around the plant, even when the human population has left. We even see new types of life emerging; bacteria that grow on the interior of the reactor walls, feeding on the radiation. It is not as complete as YKK. Human life is returning to the area, but it shows how the world might behave without us.

The story, without saying so explicitly, creates a structure where my anxieties about climate change can be peacefully projected. Not that it won’t happen, but simply that it will be a lot more peaceful than I have allowed myself to imagine.

A SMALL ENDING

My default method of tackling my anxiety is to search out more information; to search for the fire, to seek out a diagnosis, or to be more precise, to seek out reassurance that it does not exist. Both Discworld and YKK take some fundamental fears of mine and, rather than telling me they will not happen, tell me that it will not be as bad as I think it is. Reading both Discworld and YKK is a strangely calming experience; allowing me to project myself into a world where a friendly hand, an alien smile, on the deck of a café looking over the evening sea, illuminated by lights, with shapes moving in the clouds and water that I do not understand.

And I do not need to understand.

It is peaceful.

[lokidiabolus]

Offline Age - Chapter 2

Fandom: Dragon Age Origins

Pairing: Alistair Theirin x Elissa Cousland

Summary:   Alistair was never really a lone wolf or anything, but having a place only for himself had its appeal. He didn’t plan on taking responsibility for anybody in upcoming years, until one fateful night his doorbell decided to wake him up at 2 AM and show him he was so, so wrong.

OR

How Alistair subconsciously harbored mother hen tendencies towards completely unknown person in five minutes and then fell in love so hard it almost broke all bones in his body.

Warnings: Slow Burn, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Tons of overused tropes, Prequel to Online Age

Can be found on Ao3.

Elissa had very little personal belongings to begin with, it made Alistair concerned. His amount of clothes exceeded hers (not to mention lots of her shirts stayed in the flat, soaking the water) and he considered himself fairly uninterested in clothes shopping. It was like she bagpacked into Redcliffe instead of moving in and quite frankly her bag actually looked that way (kind of dirty and battered). She didn’t even have a bed in her flat, she slept on raggedy sofa previous tenants left there and Alistair had so many questions he had no idea where to start.

“I guess you don’t really need a tour in here,” he commented when she entered his home, stopped in the living room and looked around. They had the same layout of the flat but Alistair had to admit his was much more furnished, which definitely raised even more questions.

“I’m good, thanks,” she replied without moving from the spot. She still held the bag and the suitcase and Alistair watched her with worry, because this looked like a speedily approaching meltdown if he ever saw one. He approached her cautiously and when no reaction came, he tugged on her bag and it easily slid off her shoulder to his hand, so he could put it on the floor. He repeated the same thing with the suitcase, leaving her just standing there, looking lost.

“You okay?” he tried. Her eyes had that distant look in them, like she was lost in thought. “Elissa?”

“Huh?” she snapped out of it, blinked few times, and then slowly nodded. “Yeah, sure. Sorry, spaced out.”

“Wanna catch some zees?” he pointed towards the bedroom. The clock showed something past four and if she didn’t sleep either, she must have been exhausted. He knew he was. “You can use the bedroom-,”

“I’ll take the couch,” she interrupted him quickly. “Thanks.”

He had no time to actually say anything else, since she flopped on the sofa like a sack of potatoes and was out cold in three seconds.

“Sure,” he mumbled in aftermath, grabbed the blanket from the armchair and put it over her. He had a feeling she was so far the strangest thing he had ever picked up.

***

He woke up to silence. It was strange how his brain thought it must have been a mistake when up until today there was nothing else but silence every day, but somehow the unusual quiet was wrong, he just couldn’t point a finger on the reason why. He tossed around in the bed for a while, and then reached for the alarm clock to check the time.

Half past seven. Not that bad.

His stomach was rumbling and his head hurt a little when he was crawling from under covers, and when he entered the living room, the why is it so silent hit him in full force. Elissa was sitting in the corner of the couch, awake, and with a notepad on her lap on which she was scribbling something. The blanket was twisted around her legs and waist to keep her warm and her hair was loose from the bun, falling down her face and over her shoulders. Everything else was completely silent, only the pencil movement over the paper made a slight noise.

“Oh, you’re up,” she glanced at him from under long eyelashes and then focused back on the paper. “Thanks for the blanket.”

“No problem,” he shrugged, his mind slowly fitting her into his life like a slot in Tetris. She still weirdly stuck out, but hey, he only knew her for a day – not even that actually. “Feeling any better?”

“Well, at least not like passing out anymore,” she smiled into the scribble, or whatever she was creating there. “I guess we both needed to sleep a bit, huh.”

“Well, I normally don’t hear my bed calling my name so loudly, so I’d say so,” he agreed and walked through the flat until he reached her unpacked bag again. He stared at it for a while, taking in the holes and obvious over usage, and then tilted his head to the side. “So what’s your story?”

“My flat got flooded,” she answered flatly. “It was pretty bad, you know.”

“Wow, really,” he left the bag alone – bad topic, obviously – and continued towards the fridge to feed himself. “Flooding is the worst, isn’t it.”

“Can totally ruin your day. And home.”

The fridge was basically empty, and it shouldn’t have surprised him. He wasn’t grocery shopping for at least two weeks now, basically living on take outs or food he grabbed on the way to or from work, and at this moment he hated his past self so much.

“Chinese it is,” he turned around to find his phone and when he reached the middle of the living room, he couldn’t help but try to fit Elissa sitting curled up on the couch into his life again.

“What?” she raised her head, staring back at him, and then made a face. “Wait. What’s your name again?”

“Again?” he made a face back at her. “How rude.”

“Should I call you Theirin then?” she shot back and the cringe that passed Alistair’s face must have looked pretty out of place. Wait, how did she even know his last name?

“You mean you know my last name but not my first name?” he crossed arms on his chest. “That’s it. We are breaking up.”

The eye roll didn’t come as a surprise. He got lots of those during his life.

“Was on your doorbell,” she gestured vaguely towards the main door to the flat. “Not my fault you didn’t put your whole name on it.”

“Not enough space,” he offered and when she still looked expectant, he lay off the jokes for the moment. “Fine, fair point. It’s Alistair.”

“Alistair,” she repeated thoughtfully. “Kind of a knightly name.”

“I wanted to be a Templar when I was a kid but my nanny didn’t approve, said math comes first,” he sighed dramatically and continued to his bedroom for the phone. “I still feel like it would serve me well. I was never big on studying, but hitting people over the head could have been my true calling.”

“I can tell,” she smirked when he reappeared in the room. “Brawns over brains, hm.”

“Ouch.”

“It’s fine, we all excel in something,” she told him sweetly and returned back to her scribbling. Alistair thought of a retort, but nothing came, so he left her victorious for now, just made a mental note to get back to it later with revenge.

“Going to order take out,” he announced instead while searching for the right number in his contacts. He should have put it in his favourites; they already knew him by his name there. “You want something?”

“Which take out?” It caught her interest. He wondered if she even ate today with all that happened to her or if she fussed around the flat the whole time. It would make sense if she did.

“Chinese.” Her eyes lit up, so it must have been a good choice. “Anything special you want?”

“As long as it’s edible, I’m game,” she put the notepad away and tiptoed towards her bag where she started to dig. “Oh god, now when you’re talking about it, I’m so hungry. Haven’t eaten since yesterday.”

“Figures,” he commented under his breath and the restaurant picked up on second ring. He ordered twice the usual and by the corner of his eye caught Elissa pulling out a wallet from the bag. Somehow it made him uneasy, so when he was answering questions about his health to the lady on the phone that spoke broken but super adorable English, he put a hand on the wallet and pushed it back to the bag, shaking his head. Elissa looked confused and tried to take it out again, which met with his resistance.

Why? She mimicked at him. Let me pay.

No way. He mimicked back. My treat.

She pouted and it looked so stupid he barked out a laugh, which made her pout even harder. He had to refuse the money two more times after the food arrived.

***

Elissa insisted on sleeping on the couch. He was ready to make the sacrifice and let her use the bed, but she refused so vehemently he began to suspect she was either allergic to beds or maybe traumatized by pillows. Either way her loss, his bed was nice and comfortable and the couch was not.

Well, it wasn’t that bad, but still not the ideal sleeping arrangement, even though she made it look like it was the best thing to lie on. He refused to believe it (since he got the couch, he maybe sat on it twice. He had no idea why he let Anora talk him into buying it). She had her own pillow and a blanket that apparently escaped the water catastrophe but her Pooh bear shirt and plaid pants were in worse condition and Alistair took a pity on her and lent her his own shirt with a Griffon on it (but she had to solemnly swear not to drool on it which apparently offended her, since she threw it at him and then demanded it back).

They went to sleep early, despite napping over the day and Alistair somehow managed to completely forget about her in only few deep breaths once he closed his eyes. His unconscious self still remembered to be quiet in the morning the next day, but it didn’t supply why or any other context, so when he staggered outside of the bedroom in his briefs, he was quiet but also oblivious, up until he finally properly woke up in the bathroom and promptly facepalmed with a loud smack.

He was not surprised when he got out of there that Elissa was staring at him from the couch, still bundled up under the blanket but perfectly awake, and he never felt more naked than now (even though he still had the briefs, which offered little comfort. Or cover. Or dignity).

“Let’s forget this happened,” he offered into the rainy morning and Elissa’s lips widened in a grin. “Please.”

“Mkay,” she just told him, which roughly translated to nope, and went back to sleep.

***

“So?”

“I’m sorry, it’s probably on my chair in the bedroom.”

He already knew how disappointment on Duncan’s face looked like, and this was spitting image of it. The unhappy downturn of his mouth and the curve of his eyebrows haunted Alistair’s dreams when he got into the firefighter training at least for a month after he first saw it.

“Why did you even go home in your uniform?” Duncan sighed in obvious defeat and Alistair felt even worse. “Actually, what’s going on with you since yesterday in overall? Is there a problem?”

“Problem? What problem.” In retrospect that really did sound suspicious when Alistair’s voice cracked in the middle of it. But there was no problem, no sir. No problem at all! He expected this week to carry in similar fashion, sure, but that’d be normal with the getting used to period of the new cohabitation. But nobody needed to know about it. Or about Elissa. Or about anything, really, it’s just Alistair’s private matter. The fact he left his uniform at home – or basically even that he went home in it in the first place – was only an unfortunate accident. He blamed the morning’s briefs faux pas for it.

“Is something going on with the house?” Duncan, that good old man, didn’t buy it. Of course. When did he ever. “Or the piping?”

“Nope!” Another not exactly believable response, Alistair was aware. “I was just curious.”

“About the piping,” Duncan’s eyes narrowed and Alistair had an urge to avoid his eyes. But that would mean he had something to hide, so he could not. The battle with his instincts was killing him.

“Yeah, about the piping,” he nodded in frantic search for a viable excuse, but no bright ideas came when he needed them. Just Elissa grinning at him from the couch, obviously ready to serve him the incident in the face when he was going to expect it the least. He knew her only for a day but he could already see she was a worthy opponent.

On the other side, Duncan’s face told him he didn’t believe a single word. That was fine. Alistair was sure he was going to come up with something before another press for answers comes.

“Desk duty,” the older man announced flatly, making Alistair groan. “You brought it on yourself, boy. Now get to it. Bring your uniform tomorrow.”

“I can totally borrow another, why are you doing this to me,” Alistair protested and stubbornly followed Duncan out of the office like a dog. “Duncan, come on.”

“You obviously need to clear your head,” Duncan told him over his shoulder. He was so not getting swayed by Alistair’s puppy eyes anymore, that was not fair. “So you can start there.”

He didn’t need to say end of debate for Alistair to know he lost.

***

The only bright side of desk duty was an earlier leave while not needing to clean up or help with anything in the base. Sadly, for Alistair it was more of a punishment not to busy his hands with anything, rather than taking a breather, so at the end of the shift he was sucked dry of any motivation to even lift the pen for more than abstract sketches in the corner of the paper.

On his leave Duncan still managed to send him a disapproving look and that held onto him all the way to the store, during the grocery shopping and even through the ride in the elevator. It would probably stick longer if after entering his flat he didn’t find Elissa sitting on the floor, surrounded by papers with various pencil sketches on them, looking back at him with a grin.

Oh no, he thought.

“Didn’t lose your pants today, did ya?” she delivered without mercy. Alistair was afraid to look at her work in fear he would find one sketch to depict his morning lemme just saunter through the flat in my undies situation, because quite frankly she was obviously capable of doing that.

“You’re never going to let me live it down, are you,” he groaned and her grin widened even more. One day and she was already on a high horse? Good grief, since when he was such a pushover.

“Could have been worse,” she offered while he finally took his shoes off and brought groceries to the kitchen. The kitchen that never looked so… empty as it did now. Like half of things were missing.

“Did something happen in the kitchen?” he walked back to the living room with confused expression and Elissa was just stacking the papers together from the floor. There was another pile next to her consisting of pencils of all shapes and a case she probably carried them in.

“Not in few years, I wager,” she replied.

Well, yeah, Alistair wasn’t very big on cooking, true. But still. He watched her gently putting the stacked papers in a prepared folder and closing it with a click and his brows furrowed.

“It looks like stuff is like. Gone?” he glanced back towards the kitchen. “Or something. Like, things that used to be there and I usually just pushed them further when I needed space. Those are gone.”

“They are not gone,” she finished with her cleaning and stood up, still in his Griffon shirt and some loose pants of hers. Looked funny. And weirdly domestic, like in those movies about pillow wars. “I washed them and put them in a cupboard.”

“You cleaned my kitchen?” he blinked in surprise and she passed him and entered the incriminated place herself, just to open one of the cupboard doors, showing the mugs and plates neatly sorted inside.

“Somebody had to do it,” she shrugged. “I’ve wanted to make tea but… I thought the kettle was going to walk away from me, obviously alive.”

“Fair enough,” Alistair cleared his throat and she started going through the groceries, putting them on the table, and then carried them to the fridge. Was weird seeing that. Actually, the whole flat was weird seeing right now, because things were neatly put on their places, the floors clean and the pillows on the couch fluffed, and he had never seen anybody doing this in his home before, it made it feel alien. He couldn’t point a finger on the exact emotion, bad or good, it just hovered in grey area, making him nervous.

“Oh,” he heard her suddenly in the hallway and before he could ask what happened, she was back with him. “I shouldn’t have done that, should I.”

“Done the-“

“The cleaning,” she added quickly, her face showing uncertainty. “I should’ve asked first. Oh man, I’m sorry if I overstepped the boundaries or something.”

Alistair had no idea what to say. He looked around again, at the small touches she left over the place he never really thought of doing, and the Tetris pieces in his mind shuffled slightly, making the shapes still stick out, but… less.

“Sorry,” she said again in much graver tone and hung down her head. She looked like a kicked puppy and Alistair couldn’t help but bark out a laugh. It apparently confused her, since she looked back up with raised eyebrows and he couldn’t blame her.

“Let’s make a deal, you minx,” he pointed at her without any power over his smiling face. “You forget about this morning and I will forget about your obvious lack of sense for privacy. How about that?”

“I didn’t go to your bedroom,” she opposed, catching up on his brightening mood, since her face cleared. “I’m not that brave.”

“Oho,” he crossed his arms on his chest. “Afraid of the pillows, are you. I knew that.”

“The pillows?” she waved her hand. “My dear Alistair, I saw the mess in here, where you don’t sleep. I know what you’re capable of. The bedroom should have a biohazard sign on it, I’m sure.”

“Excuse me, my bedroom is a sacred place,” he shot back.

“When was the last time you changed the sheets?” she mirrored his pose and crossed her arms on her chest as well.

“Last week, actually,” he smirked in victory and she smirked back.

“After how long?”

He took a breath to answer, but then he realized it would only prove her point, so he just let the air out again.

“That’s what I thought,” she scored another point, smiled at him sweetly and left him standing in the kitchen.

Alright, he thought, chuckling. Alright. I can work with that.

[donheisenberg]

Top 20 TV Shows of 2017:

So this is the bit where I talk about how difficult it is to write a top 20 list because of peak TV, yada, yada, yada. If you are into TV criticism you have read it all before several over the last few years, the thing is while it might feel like a cliche it is totally true and with every year it become more true. Trying to watch everything out there is impossible and trying to then narrow down what you have watched to a list of 20 is almost as difficult. Every show on this list had an outstanding year as shown by some of the shows I left off of the list. In any other year the likes of Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Americans would be givens even if they just had middling seasons but not this year. It was truly a great year for TV and here are my top 20 shows of 2017.

Shows I Did Not Get Around to Watching/Completing That May Have Made My List: The Deuce The Handmaid’s Tail (to watch) Legion (to watch) Better Things Search Party Difficult People

Honorable Mention: Rick and Morty (season 3): Shout out to Review as well, which was excellent but just had to few episodes for me to really count it. In terms of Rick and Morty it was often in the news (or at least the twitter news) for the wrong reasons this year as a group of its fans decided to act like complete dickheads for a period of time. All of which deflected from the fact it had its best season ever. I’ve always had issues with the show and basically how pro-Rick and his asshole behavior Harmon and co seem to be and this year didn’t necessarily dissuade me of that but on a week to week basis it was crafting, ambitious and well thought out stories, at a rate the show had never before.

No 20: Fargo (season 3): As many observed this was not Fargo’s finest year and it maybe took a while to get going. It is also the case that 3 seasons in it is tougher for a show as idiosyncratic as this one to surprise us. When a seemingly major character dies in episode 1 it is less of a shock than it should be because that is what happened in season 1. Yet at the same time I so enjoyed this season and the performances by the likes of Carrie Coon (more on her later), Ewan MacGregor and David Thewlis and you still had episodes as excellent as The Law of Non-Contradiction.

No 19) Veep (season 6): Similar to Fargo this was a just slightly below average year for Veep, but even then the quality of the ensemble is so far above any other comedy out there and the quality of the writing/jokes/insults is again just of the highest order. There are few shows I enjoy more than Veep.

No 18) Master of None (Season 2): In my review I did write about how aspects of MON did frustrate me. For it’s social awareness, it is a show that wants me to desperately feel sorry for the man with seemingly the nicest/most privileged life in the world. The extent to which the show is essentially lifestyle porn at times can be a problem and the extent to which the show never questions Dev’s actions can also be a little off-putting. Yet having said that the good outweighs the bad and then some. The show crafts so many beautiful fully realized episodes and months after watching it is episodes like Thanksgiving that stick with me, more than the show’s flaws.

No 17) The Young Pope (Season 1): I’m not sure I get The Young Pope. I love it but I’m not sure I get it. Even in this age of weird TV there is something truly odd about this show. So difficult to write about because it does not conform to any conventions or labels and that’s why it makes this list. Having said all of this I’m not quite sure the show ever hit the heights of its pilot (even if it remained excellent throughout) and that’s why it is not a little bit higher.

No 16) Brockmire (Season 1): Brockmire is exactly the sort of gem that can get lost in this golden age, but for those few of us who did see it we know that it was one of the most raucous, hilarious and endearing comedies out there. I don’t know or care about baseball at all but I do love Brockmire and can’t wait til it comes back.

No 15) Brooklyn Nine Nine (season 4/5): Just as Brockmire can get lost in a sea of amazing shows, B99 is the sort of show that you can take for granted so easily but 5 seasons in and it is still full of heart and brilliant gags. More than that though this year on a couple of occasions we saw the show break-out of its comfort zone with episodes about Terry being racially profiled and more recently Rosa coming out to her less than progressive parents. Those episodes showcased a different side of the show and demonstrated how B99 is not just a great sitcom but an important one. Nine Nine!

No 14) Preacher (Season 2): Parts of season 2 of Preacher were as good as anything on TV. The opening scenes of the first two episodes, as well as standout episode Sokosha plus a whole host of other moments, showed how Preacher could execute some of the most ambitious TV out there to near perfection. It was not all perfect and the season might have benefited from being 10 episode long rather than 12 but nonetheless I love this show and it seems to only go in one direction. Bring on season 3.

No 13) GLOW (Season 1): GLOW was sort of the perfect summer show. It was funny and likable and so binge-able. Netflix makes a lot of deeply serialized shows, designed to be consumed in one sitting so as you find out what happens next. Glow was not that. What GLOW was, was a show that quickly established an ensemble of distinct and interesting characters who you wanted to spend time with and for that it was a standout show.

No 12) Better Call Saul (Season 3): It pains me to put BCS at number 12, in any other year this could be a contender for my number 1 spot but here it does quite make the top ten. Part of the reason why it is a little lower than you might have excepted is that at this stage I don’t have to tell anyone how good this show is. Into it’s third season and BCS was possibly better than ever. Certainly episodes like the chilling Lantern and in particular Chicanery mark series high points and some of the finest TV I’ve seen all year.

No 11) American Vandal (Season 1): American Vandal is a curious show. It is ostensibly a parody, yet by the time you finish it you look back and think that was funny but not funny enough to be making this list necessarily. What it was though was the most engrossing show of the year. And it all centred on the question “who drew the dicks?” Yet for the silliness of the premise I could not have been more intrigued. AV found new ground for the most tired of sub-genres, the mockumentary and in the process delivered an absurd but in many ways tragic story of a stupid but well meaning kid in high school whose life goes array for reasons that have little to do with him. Defining the pleasures of the show may not be straight, but boy was it insanely watchable-the Netflix model at its best.

No 10 )Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (Season 3): Similar to B99, UKS is the sort of consistent joke machine that you can take for granted, and that many have, but for me this year there were few shows enjoyed nearly as much as it. I thought the show delivered its best season. The work of Ellie Kemper and in particular Titus Burgess can match any comedic performers on TV. Again though amidst all the laughs is a very human character study piece of an abuse victim and maybe where the show’s genius thoroughly lies  is in the way the show balances these two sides of itself.

No 9) Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (Seasons 2/3): Rachel Bloom’s musical comedy/drama goes from strength to strength. Like many shows of this list it perfectly balances cartoonish sensibilities with discussions on mental health and never more so than in the first half of season 3. In addition to that though are the musical numbers. At times I’m just in awe of how spot on and clever their parodies, my favorite this year being “Let’s Generalize About Men” and for that it had to make my top ten.

No 8) Bojack Horseman (Season 4): In its 2nd and particularly 3rd seasons Bojack became a show that delivered some of the most outstanding individual episodes of television, possibly ever. Escape From LA, Fish Under Water and That’s Too Much Man are just incomparable half hours of TV. Season 4 did not deliver a single episode of quite that standard. What season 4 did do though is deliver quite possibly the show’s most consistent, revealing and hopefully season. Something we all needed at the end of the show’s previous season.

No 7) Catastrophe (Season 3): Okay it was only 6 episodes along, but I ask this question every year, is there a better written show on TV? There might be snappier dialogue out there, there might be more profound existential musings on some other show, but there is no show with more wonderfully naturalistic dialogue on now or possibly ever. Also there is not really a couple of TV I root for quite as much as Sharon and Rob and I really just want to watch the two of them on screen together as much as possible.Plus the final episode of season 3 was just the perfect send-off for Carrie Fisher and for that alone it deserves it place on my list.

No 6) Jane The Virgin (Season 3/4): Now four seasons in Jane the Virgin still has the power to surprise and hit me emotionally as much as just about any show on this list. I would go as far as to stay no episode of television this year hit me as hard as (spoilers) Michael’s death which was absolutely devestating. But when it comes to Jane the Virgin it is not just the big gut-punches that count, it is the smaller moments as well. The other scene that sticks with me most from its episodes this year is when Rogelio (often the show’s most comic presence) opens up to Xo about how he hasn’t been able to grieve properly for Michael, who was his best friend, because he knew he had to be strong for Jane while she was grieving. It is a comparatively small moment but every bit as resonant. I can take or leave all the intrigue concerning the Marbella but week after week the show delivers moments that really effect me, which even in this golden age can’t be said of too many show.

No 5) Twin Peaks (Season 3): It seems to me that Twin Peaks has either been number 1 or completely absent from every critics list. And I can understand both positions. Twin Peaks was fascinating in a way that television and art more generally rarely is. It was also incredibly and deliberately frustrating at times. I’m almost reluctant to point out how obviously frustrating parts of the revival were because I feel like I might be missing something. On the other hand because its Lynch and because he is a widely and rightly acknowledge genius I think some critics have been too forgiving of some pretty blatant narrative issues, that on another show they would have lambasted. Ultimately though it was the TV event of the year and nothing quite engaged me on a week to week basis like it did. More than anything though there were certain moments, particularly toward the end of the season, that were greater than anything else on TV this year. Moments I completely lost myself in, in ways that are quite difficult to explain and for that I won’t be forgetting the revival for a very long time.

No 4) Mr Robot (Season 3): If season 1 was clinically perfect, in a way no show since Breaking Bad has been, season 2 was an over-ambitious, definitely fascinating, mess. I was a bit of an apologist for the largely disliked second season-but even I was somewhat disappointed after the heights of season 1. Season 3 not only got the show back on track but it found a balance in the ensemble that neither season 1 (which was almost all Elliot) or season 2 (which felt like very little Elliot) had. It also starting making sense again and the show successfully battled the urge to be overly opaque or to have unnecessary twists. All of which meant that we got some of the show’s finest hours yet specifically the thrilling fifth and sixth episodes as well as the surprising and heart-warming eight hour, not to mention the finale which had a bit of everything. And for all its pessimism few shows made me happier this year, because I was so delighted to see this great show prove all the doubters wrong.

No 3) The Good Place (season 1/2): Michael Schur has secured himself a place in TV history with The Office, B99 and in particular Parks and Rec, already but with The Good Place he has gone one further. We all knew he could craft wonderfully funny and likable sitcoms, but here he has delivered a show as twisty and as engaged in huge philosophical issues as any prestige serialized drama. The Good Place is not necessarily a sad-com like many of the show’s on this list but it is possibly the most plot driven network sitcom ever. The thing is the plot has real stakes and is completely unpredictable as well. The huge twist at the end of season 1 showed that even in the age of Reddit you could pull out the rug from underneath your audience and I did not think that was possible. I don’t know how much longer they can continue it but as of now The Good Place is just about a perfect piece of television. 

No 2) Halt and Catch Fire (Season 4): Without spoiling what is number 1 on my list, when it aired I thought nothing would come near it but Halt and Catch Fire came very very close. Back in its much derided first season Halt was a jukebox spitting one antihero cliche after another. In some ways it never strayed too far from the conventions of the antihero drama but what made it different was that at a certain point it just wasn’t about antiheroes. Sure all the characters were deeply flawed, none more so than Joe, but their constant strive for something more, for some kind of connection felt so human you could not help but love them. The final four episodes were TV drama at its best and when it ended I really struggled with the notion that I would not be spending more time with these characters, but if anything made it okay it was how well they stuck the landing. Speaking of which..

No 1) The Leftovers (Season 3): No show has ever made quite the impact in such a short space of time. The Leftovers conclude its mere 28 episode run this year, just 28 episodes yet about half of them are nothing short of masterpieces. That includes just about every episode in this final run. It’s tough in just a paragraph to breakdown what made The Leftovers such a transcendent piece of television-so to be glib I’ll say it took the ambition and phantasmagoria of Twin Peaks and combined it with the heart and focus on character of Halt and Catch Fire. LOST-one of my absolute favorite shows of all time-will define Lindelof’s career but The Leftovers is ultimately a more complete and mature piece of work. The writing, performances and direction coalesced to give us something often hilarious and surprising and always deeply powerful. There may never be a show like The Leftovers again and for those reasons it was always going to be my number 1. 

[hopestretchandreiki]

This week it was my pleasure to speak to another human with whom I turn to for pearls of wisdom and insight- my eldest sister- Nikki Hopes.

Nikki has had a tumultuous year to say the least, becoming a first time mother and setting up her own freelance Graphic Design company- HopesCreative, during a global pandemic.

I have wanted to speak to Nikki properly about the year that has just been for a while, and now that it is nearing the first Birthday of her and her Fiancé’s (Darren) son (my Nephew!) it felt like the perfect time.

Nikki has asked if I can keep the name of her son private, and rightly so.

It was quite difficult and emotional writing and reflecting on this conversation, but not nearly as hard as the year has been for Nikki and Darren.  

Nikki has been incredibly brave in sharing this journey and allowing me to share a very personal story with others.

We really never know the battles that people are facing internally, so this piece serves first and foremost as a reminder to always be gentle and kind to yourself and to others.

This one is also for anyone who is embarking on a new adventure- be it in business, motherhood or another personal journey. Be brave, the best is yet to come.

I hope you enjoy x

Nikki, you became a Mother in December 2019 when Covid-19 was just beginning, how has that first year been for you as a first time mum?

Our son was born in early December at 25+2 weeks and he was in hospital for 100 days. So we came home mid-March and lockdown then began on the 23rd March.

Because he came home on Oxygen, he was then classed as clinically extremely vulnerable so we had to shield him until the end of July 2020.

So it’s kind of been a tough year!

For the first four months after we came home, I basically didn’t really leave the house, other than to take him for a walk. We started trying to do a few more things come August /September/October time, and then we’ve gone in to another lockdown.

It has been hard, it’s been scary, it’s been very lonely and isolating, it’s just not what you expect first time motherhood to be. But there is no manual for how to deal with the situation, because hardly anyone has really gone through it.

It’s been sad- because a lot of my family and a lot of Darren’s family still haven’t been able to hold him, see him frequently. It definitely feels like there has been a lot that has been missed out on in his first year.

Do you feel, mentally, that this will manifest itself in some way in the future or that it already has?

I think it already has, In that I have had some really low times; I have had panic attacks.

I have quite an obsessive personality – so with all the being in hospital so often, that has manifested itself in worrying about everyone’s health. And I think there is a lot of trauma that I haven’t really worked through from the time in hospital and everything we have experienced.

Usually I am just a ‘get your head down and get on with it’ type of person - ‘keep calm and carry on.’ This has been a whole different level of trauma- I don’t know if there will ever fully be, at the moment, an end point.

I do definitely think I’m still processing it. With his first birthday coming up, that’s going to be a big point.

I think it is still a process, and because his development is still ‘behind’ (technically he kind of is) until we are fully caught up on that as well, he still feels premature. I don’t think I am at the point yet where it feels like ‘okay, that’s something I have dealt with and I’ve moved on from that.’

What do you think have been the main battles for you since you became a mum, particularly during this pandemic?

I think it’s probably the loneliness. In the first lockdown, there were no groups, no mum and baby classes- no coffee mornings, and obviously because of him being so premature, I didn’t get to do any of my Antenatal classes, which I was relying on to meet mums (because I am not from here) (oxford.)

All of that got whipped away, and also not being able to have the support of immediate family... so that had a massive impact and that was one of the biggest battles...you’re thrust into it.

Luckily they did start doing some online classes and through that I did get chatting to a few other mums, but it’s hard to try and establish a relationship with another mum and their baby when you can’t actually see each other in person.

Those classes did eventually became a lifeline.

We did Baby Massage classes, Sing and Sign and Baby College classes, which we are now going to in person.

I had 40 minutes a day where we could do things together and they helped teach us games and songs to do with him that made me feel like he was getting proper stimulation.

There is a group in Oxfordshire called Birth Baby Balance. I booked my Antenatal classes through them, but then I looked them up and they were running different classes. They started doing Friday coffee mornings over zoom, so people could join in on a Friday.

A year on do you feel like you’re much more established? Do you feel like there’s more out there now?

There is more out there- we are now doing baby college in person. We do that once a week and that’s amazing.

I have been so worried about him not having any interaction with other babies, which he does now. Seeing him look at the other babies and crawling over and stealing toys off the other babies, it is really sweet and I think he does need it, it has been massively beneficial.

Those are now classed as a support group. There was a little bit of an uproar as to the lack of support for mums to be and new mums in lockdown. Having a baby is hard at the best of times, taking away the support system for new mums caused a bit of an issue.

It is different for us now. We have also had parental support in our bubble. He gets a different experience and a place to go and new faces!

I don’t think you ever really know what you’re doing as a parent, everyone is winging it all the time, is what I have learned.

I have a WhatsApp group with everyone that was in the Neo-Natal Intensive Care Unit. We talk all the time. It’s different with a premature baby, a lot of stuff is different, they do things at different times, you have different considerations. We are always messaging each other going ‘how many times a day does so and so....’

I have nothing to compare this journey to. I don’t know how I would feel if we had just had a journey that was ‘normal.’

How is Darren feeling at the minute, how was/ is his journey?

Darren was furloughed when we first came home. He had 5/6 weeks at home, which you can look at in two ways really- obviously it’s awful, but for him, he would never have got that time normally with his son, if it hadn’t been for that.

Most paternity is 2 weeks and you’re back at work so he had a lot of time, which he loved. He catastrophizes stuff less. Because he went back to work, he was more comfortable being out. He was doing food shops. I think he found it easier to adjust.

He is a lot more of an extrovert than me, he wants to go to the pub, go to dinner, see his friends, go and watch and play football and he can’t and he has found that really stressful. I miss doing all that stuff but not in the same way.

You are a Graphic Designer. You’ve gone freelance off the back of everything that has happened and set up your own company Hopes Creative- how are you managing it?

It is something I have always toyed with, and I don’t think I would have made the leap if it wasn’t for everything that had happened. The plan was always to go back to work in some capacity.

My work basically said I had to go back full time, so it kind of made me make that leap and make that choice. Setting everything up, I did it when he was asleep or during evenings.

I really enjoyed getting everything ready and it was really  nice to feel a real passion for what I do. it felt really good to do something that is ‘me.’

I think it is probably going to take off slower than I’d like. I have had enquiries and I’ve done a job – but everything I do (weddings, invitations etc.) it’s not going on at the moment. I need to wait for life to start up again.

I think it’s going to be a slow process, I am starting to promote it more as well. It’s something I still love doing, so it’s not been as hard as I thought.

I can’t imagine how distracting it is having to switch between all these different roles- it’s a lot of hats to wear.

It’s very easy to lose your sense of self when you do become a mum. You’re not working, which is a massive part of who you are- your social and your day to day.

You can’t exercise in the same way for quite a while.

Your entire life switches to their needs, rightly so. It’s finding that balance between who you are and the fact that you’re ‘mum.’

You’re a better person because of the extra person in your life, but it’s still okay to miss the person you were before. It takes adjusting.

What else helps you keep balanced?

I knew I still wanted to work. I recently started exercising again. It’s weird- I couldn’t get my head around finding time to do it, it’s only recently I’ve got my head back in to it- I need to try and do more stuff. Maybe I am coming out of the other side in some ways.

I went for a run, even though it felt disgusting and I hated it. I have done online HIIT workouts. I am really going to try and keep doing that.

The classes we go to, even though they’re for technically not for me, they help me keep more of a balance, being able to chat to people- it’s a dose of normality.

Some mornings it took all the energy I had it to get myself dressed for the day. There was no space in my head at all, even a 20 minute HIIT class.

It has always (exercise) been a big part of me, so trying to get some of that back is a big thing.

Have there been any aspects of motherhood that you have found easier due to the limitations of Covid

I have nothing to compare to but I’ve had time with him that maybe a lot of new mums may not have had because I didn’t have a lot of visits from friends and family.

On one hand I feel really sad we’ve missed out, but on the other, I wonder if it has benefited our bond,  because it has just been the three of us.

Maybe having been in hospital for so long, we only held him for an hour a day for the first few weeks - I wonder if it's beneficial to have him and that time to get to know each other.

Is there anything that you would say to anyone going through a similar process that you have found helpful- from someone who suffers from high anxiety

Trying to take the pressure off yourself. Am I doing the right thing? Is he stimulated enough? It is damaging.

I think that being honest, every mum needs to be more honest with how hard and how lonely and how bloody boring it can be. I love him with my bones, but you give up who you are and you’re at home with this person who can’t really respond to you.

Trying to be more honest about that and not being afraid to ask for help. That’s why my WhatsApp group is so good.

There’s a lot of pressure. To begin with, I was my own worst enemy.

You can’t know everything. Apparently, there’s a stat, as long as you meet a babies needs something like 30 percent of the time, then they’re happy.

What are your favourite things about becoming a new mum?

Watching him achieve things. For us it feels extra special, watching him figure out how to climb the stairs and how to pick things up.

He was so wanted, because he was an IVF baby, so that has been one of the best parts of it, when you bring him in to bed in the morning for a cuddle.

He is funny. He is sassy. From the first minute I saw him, he has just got this inner determination and he’s very ‘within’ himself. He’s got a real strength to him.  

What are your top goals going in to 2021

I would like to get my business off the ground and ideally I would like to get married!

I would settle for not having another lockdown.

To try and worry less. To try and not be so obsessive about bad stuff and focus more on the good stuff. There is a lot of good stuff.

He starts nursery in March! To keep him happy...And to try and run quicker.

[phonebonepranksuniverse-blog]

6 Reasons to Laugh More

I love people who make me laugh. I honestly think it's the thing I like most, to laugh. It cures a multitude of ills. It's probably the most important thing in a person. ~ Audrey Hepburn

I was in a mall recently with my husband when we passed an elderly woman with a serious scowl on her face. (Have you noticed that older people seem to scowl a lot?) There are plenty of studies that prove it takes fewer muscles to smile than it does to frown, although I don't know why. Gravity has been working on our frowns for decades now and it shows!

Anyway, I turned to him and said, "Remind me as I get older to smile more. I don't ever want to look like an old sourpuss."

I don't know why older people seem so out-of-sorts and angry. We've lived through decades of trials and tribulations, raised kids and cared for parents, worked more hours and overcome more catastrophes than I'd care to count, and survived it all. That should be reason enough to grin. Whew!

Age, of course is relative. There are plenty of 'youngsters' who look like they suck on lemons, too. They seem to be so caught up in the drama of their lives that they've forgotten joy and humor. If they would only realize that laughter is one of life's secret weapons. It helps overcome trials at every age.

Bernard Baruch, a businessman and politician, used to say, "I will never be an old man. To me, old age is always 15 years older than I am." He lived to a ripe young age, missing his 95th birthday by just two months. Almost every photo of him shows at least a slight smile on his face, and that is something to emulate.

I remember as a kid, my mom and I played board games at the kitchen table after my siblings went to bed. Some silliness would set us both off and we'd laugh until our tummies hurt. I've enjoyed moments like that with girlfriends, as well as my hubby (who keeps me laughing much of the time). In fact, I laugh much more now than I ever remember during my early adult years.

The benefits of laughter are widely researched, but the bottom line is, laughing just makes you feel good. The more you laugh, the better you feel. Here are some other benefits of laughter.

Laughter soothes stress.

Happy is he... whose hope is in the Lord his God (Ps. 146:5). Did you notice that happy goes hand in hand with hope? Hope and happiness are the opposite of discouragement, pessimism and fear. Laughter is the antidote for every conceivable concern, trial or dilemma. It reduces stress and eases tension by changing the chemicals released by the brain. When things get tough, I've learned to laugh on purpose. (Try it, it works!) And thou shalt be secure, because there is hope (Job 11:18).

Laughter improves health.

A merry heart doeth good like a medicine (Prov. 17:22). Laughter is healing. Physically, it increases your heart rate and oxygen intake. After a good laugh, your body relaxes. Laughing also increases the production of endorphins, which are your body's natural pain killers.

Have you noticed how much better you feel, both physically and mentally, when you laugh? And, the more you laugh the better you feel! Unlike bottled medications, there are no negative side-effects to laughter so you can't overdose. Laughter is a great mood-enhancer. You won't need drugs (legal or illegal) if you'll put more laughter in your life. Hope thou in God, who is the health of my countenance and my God(Ps. 42:11).

Laughter eases depression.

Laughing, both at funny stuff and at yourself, lessens tension and depression. Shared laughter is therapeutic, so much so that laughter therapy is recognized as a valid psychological treatment.

Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth, and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth (Eccl. 11:9). I've heard it said that 'youth is wasted on the young'. Too often, youth is so wrapped up in negatives - what they don't have, what they can't get, 'what's wrong with me', that they ignore opportunities for joy.

Laughter puts things in perspective.

... whoso trusts in the Lord, happy is he (Prov. 16:20). One of the advantages of 'older' is the ability to relax in trauma and turmoil. The angst of my younger years has been replaced by experience, knowing that even the most difficult circumstances usually sort themselves out. You and I are stronger than we believe, but that understanding usually comes from hindsight. The ability to laugh at yourself and your situations makes them seem less dire. In the world ye shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer: I have overcome the world (John 16:33).

Laughter makes you look younger.

A merry heart maketh a cheerful countenance... (Prov. 15:13). The Bible talks a lot about joy and a merry heart. God's commandments (the full list, not just the Top Ten) included lots of feast days with wine and food. Why? Because He enjoys a good party as much as we do! David danced before the Lord. Even their sacrifices were offered with great joy, for God had made them rejoice with great joy... so that the joy of Jerusalem was heard even afar off (Neh. 12:43). That must have been some celebration! And it happened often in both the Old and New Testaments.

Smiling is the quickest, most pain-free, least expensive face-lift available. Don't believe me? Stand in front of a mirror and practice. Your eyes brighten; your face looks friendlier. Actually, I remind myself often throughout the day to smile, whether anyone is watching or not. I just want the practice.

Laughter produces strength.

No matter how difficult your situation seems, find something to laugh about. The Bible proclaims, the joy of the Lord is your strength (Neh. 8:10). Joy is defined as great delight or happiness caused by something exceptionally good or satisfying, keen pleasure or elation. The ability to laugh at yourself and your circumstances helps keep them in perspective. Be strong and of good courage; dread not, not be dismayed (I Chron. 22:13). It's hard to be dismayed when you're laughing.

Solomon, one of the wisest men who ever ruled God's people, recognized there is a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance (Eccl. 3:4). Life's troubles are many. We all know that. But if you will put more laughter in your life, those troubles will seem less... well, troublesome.

You are God's child and a joint heir with Jesus! You've got all the power of heaven behind you! Paul reminded the Philippians, who were dealing with some significant issues: Rejoice in the Lord always; and again I say, "Rejoice!" The Lord is at hand. Fret not about anything... (Phil. 4:4, 6). Instead of being upset or depressed, laugh!

Your attitude is your choice. You can choose giggles or gloomy. So why not laugh on purpose? Laugh because it feels good. Share a smile (or a joke) with everyone you meet. Put more laughter in your life.

PhoneBonePranks Is A Controversial Critically Acclaimed Uncensored Phone Pranking Segment. PhoneBonePranks Is Your One Stop Site For Non-stop Laughs & Entertainment. We Enjoy Manifesting Uncut Unscripted Adult Pranks For Your Amusement, This Content Is For Entertainment Purposes Only, We Respect All Lifestyles & Beliefs. Enjoy PhoneBonePranks, Follow Us @PhoneBonePranks

[brentrogers]

Podcast: How Much Sex Is Psychologically Healthy?

If you were in a perfect relationship with your “perfect” partner, how much sex would you want? Three times a week? Once a day? Never? That number is your “magic sex number,” says today’s guest Marriage and Family Therapist Steven Ing. We all have a magic sex number, just like we all need to sleep a certain amount of hours per night and eat a certain number of calories per day to feel full. But if your magic number is far more or less than your partner’s number, there will be serious relationship problems.

How do you know what your magic sex number is? And how big of a difference can there be between partners? Tune in for an important discussion on how to have a sexually-healthy relationship.

SUBSCRIBE & REVIEW

Guest information for ‘Steven Ing- Sex Psychologically Healthy’ Podcast Episode

Steven Ing, MFT had a seriously messed up childhood. Like, mobster-father-shot-to-death-by-police messed up. So what did he do with this experience? He set out on a lifelong quest to study and better understand human behavior — why good people do bad things. He channeled this research into a Marriage & Family Therapy career with more than 30 years of clinical experience and 20 years of experience in forensic psychotherapy. 

As a leading expert, author and public speaker on all matters related to sexuality and relationships, Steven is fiercely passionate about his life’s mission to shine a light on how society hasn’t even begun to really think and rationally talk about human sexuality. 

Steven is a powerful ally to the LGBTQ community and a regular contributor to LGBTQ outlets such as The Rage Monthly and Adelante Magazine. His work can also be found in HuffPost, SheKnows.com and The Advocate. He was recently on the Betches SUP Podcast and is a TEDx Talk presenter, educating the masses on “Your Magic Sex Number”.

About The Psych Central Podcast Host

Gabe Howard is an award-winning writer and speaker who lives with bipolar disorder. He is the author of the popular book, Mental Illness is an Asshole and other Observations, available from Amazon; signed copies are also available directly from the author. To learn more about Gabe, please visit his website, gabehoward.com.

Computer Generated Transcript for ‘Steven Ing- Sex Psychologically Healthy’ Episode

Editor’s Note: Please be mindful that this transcript has been computer generated and therefore may contain inaccuracies and grammar errors. Thank you.

Announcer: You’re listening to the Psych Central Podcast, where guest experts in the field of psychology and mental health share thought-provoking information using plain, everyday language. Here’s your host, Gabe Howard.

Gabe Howard: Welcome to this week’s episode of the Psych Central Podcast. Calling into the show today, we have Steven Ing, who had a seriously messed up childhood. He channeled this into a marriage and family therapy career with more than 30 years of clinical experience and 20 years of experience in forensic psychotherapy. He’s a leading expert, columnist, author and public speaker, all on matters related to sexuality and relationships. He’s at TEDx Talks presenter, educating the masses on your magic sex number. Steve, welcome to the show.

Steven Ing, MFT: Hi, Gabe. It’s great to be with you today.

Gabe Howard: Steve, I first want to say that I absolutely love your bio. I think it’s important to just own things. And I like that you had a seriously messed up childhood because in many ways I feel like I had a seriously messed up childhood. And I believe a lot of our listeners are looking back on their childhood and they’re feeling the same way. And, you know, sometimes our guests, you know, they really want to tout their professional accolades, but they don’t want to tout their human experiences. So first off, kudos to you for your honesty.

Steven Ing, MFT: Oh, thanks a lot. I just think that, you know, for me, such a huge part of my motivation to help people because I know what it feels like to be in those uncomfortable family situations.

Gabe Howard: It makes perfect sense to me, and that vulnerability, I think is really important, giving that your subject matter is sexuality because people are often embarrassed to discuss sex and sexuality anyway. Now let’s talk about your TED Talk. The magic sex number. What is that all about?

Steven Ing, MFT: Basically, the idea is that we all have specific needs that we’re pretty much hardwired to have and that they aren’t subject to moral suasion or to personal appeal. Like, for example, the number of hours sleep you need to feel refreshed and also the number of calories you need per day to feel satiated. We don’t really talk about sex that way, but everyone I’ve ever interviewed and I mean, thousands of people had an answer to that question. Ideally, if you could be in your perfect relationship, that was perfect in every way. How often, ideally, would you like to have sex? And some people respond with the number at one end of the continuum and other people respond with a very different number. And that represents a range of humanity. We’re all normal and we’re all different. So we just don’t talk about this very much. We sort of presume, I think, in an egocentric way that when we fall in love with somebody, they will want us pretty much exactly the way we want them and with the frequency we want them. And that just isn’t true because of the range from one person to another can be quite serious.

Gabe Howard: When I think about a magic sex number, the first thing that I think is how am I supposed to figure mine out?

Steven Ing, MFT: Yeah, that’s. That is really tricky. And it’s actually trickier than I even thought it might be because there’s a lot of cultural and moral interference with getting an accurate assessment. If people have an idea that there’s a right number and that number is way too low or way too high, they tend to skew their number to what they think is more acceptable or more normal. And in the same way, a lot of people are preset to self-deception because they end up coming up with a number that mentally is actually the number they’d be willing to settle for. And that’s a very different number than the number that they ideally would like to have. So for me, the question is one of sustainability. If we’re serious about getting all of our sexual needs met in one monogamous relationship, then we need to make sure that that sexual relationship is at least a fighting chance of being sustainable. And if we don’t do that, we really haven’t done our due diligence.

Gabe Howard: One of the things that I’m thinking about is when it comes right down to it. How important is our magic sex number? Because it sort of sounds like you’re making sex the end all be all of a successful relationship. Aren’t there other things more important like compatibility and values? So how important is a magic sex number?

Steven Ing, MFT: It’s a little bit like arguing, though, which organ is more important, the heart or the kidneys, because the truth is we need it all to work together for us to survive and have a happy life. And then the same way, if I have the perfect relationship, perfect in every way. But there is a significant problem. It could be something like my mate decides to engage in compulsive gambling. That alone could destroy an otherwise good relationship. So if I’m talking about sex, most of us, we don’t talk about it too much, but we have an idea in the back of our mind of what our future sex life could be like. But we don’t imagine something like what happened to one of my clients when his wife came up to him after seven years of marriage and they had two children by that time. They were a couple in their thirties, and she announced to him that she would not be having sex with him anymore. And he was shocked and didn’t know what to do about this. And for the next 40 years, they did not have sex and it ended up disastrously for both of them. But he never, ever thought that he would be in that situation. And most of us don’t. But we don’t think it through like, well, what would I do? And well, what are my sexual needs? Because if if we think about managing our sexuality intelligently and we have an idea of our magic sex number. You know, for some people, it’ll be three times a week. For some people, it’ll be once a week or less. But whatever that number is, it’s what you need to feel comfortable. Otherwise, you’re facing a catastrophic marital failure where you end up getting so frustrated that you either have an affair or get a divorce or whatever that is. We’d all like to avoid that.

Gabe Howard: The first thing I thought of as you were telling that story is 40 years of no sex. That doesn’t seem like a marriage to me. That seems like a friendship. How did they survive? Forty years in a sexless marriage?

Steven Ing, MFT: For her, her discomfort with the idea of having sex with him was not replaced with anything other than a deep dove into alcoholism. So she relied on booze to get through the rest of her life for him because of his religious upbringing. Divorce was an unacceptable option. And I live in Nevada where prostitution is legal. And he never availed himself of the services of a legal prostitute, nor did he ever have an affair. Instead, what he did is he spent the next 40 years trying desperately to take care of his sexual needs simply through masturbation. And of course, that was not a successful effort because our sexual needs are far more complex and diverse than just orgasm alone. So even if I were, let’s say, masturbating as frequently as I wanted an orgasm, that’s not going to take care of my needs for companionship, conversation, humor and play. So it just doesn’t work.

Gabe Howard: I’m starting to think about our magic sex number and I’m thinking, OK, clearly if one person is zero and you’re at one, that’s too big of a gap. But maybe if somebody was at 10 and you were at 12, that might be a gap that you could work with. All of this to say, how big of a difference between the numbers becomes significant or becomes a dealbreaker? Now, I know in the story that you just told, apparently there was no dealbreaker. But myself, and I believe many of our listeners, would probably not be willing to stay in a marriage that was sexless for 40 years. And even in that story, it did seem like the outcome was disastrous for both parties involved.

Steven Ing, MFT: So typically, a magic sex number wouldn’t be a number like 7. It would be a number like oh, from 6 to 8. And that way there’s a little bit of give and take or leeway. And what we’re talking about, of course, I hasten to say this. We’re talking about the norm. We’re not talking about, oh, if my mate is ill or has gone through a deep tragedy and I need to be there for her emotionally or she is away on a trip or something like that. We’re just talking about the day to day typical marital situation. You know, clearly if somebody says 8 and somebody else says 11, there’s quite a bit of room to work with that. But I like your example of if one of them says once a week, that’s really comfortable for me. And the other one says zero and I’m looking at a lifetime of sexless marriage, that’s really not going to work. But actually, zero is the preferred number for a definite percentage of the population. There are asexual people in our population who quite sincerely want to have companionship and they want to have marriage and all the benefits of the partnership, but they’re completely disinterested in sex. And for them, an ideal number is zero makes perfect sense. At the top end, I have had people who are happily married because they found someone who is just like them and the number, their number was four times per day.

Gabe Howard: Wow.

Steven Ing, MFT: and then they shared that number in common.

Gabe Howard: I am stunned and it.

Steven Ing, MFT: Well, it’s.

Gabe Howard: Is this atypical? I mean, this would have to be atypical.

Steven Ing, MFT: I think what we need to all remember is that human sexuality falls in virtually every aspect on a continuum. I think that’s what we’re learning more and more about sexual diversity as we as a culture get more comfortable talking about sexuality. So the old binary of hetero versus homo even that has Kinsey pointed out back in the 50s occurs on a continuum. Some of us are more or less heterosexual than the person standing next to us. And when it comes to a magic sex number, if our listeners could imagine that a bell shaped curve that includes all of humanity and that one end, let’s say the left hand side of the curve would be the asexual who prefer a number like zero. And then on the far right would be somebody who, like my client, has an extremely surprisingly high number and they’ll be in that little shaped curve. The vast majority of us somewhere in the middle.

Gabe Howard: So once the two numbers have been established and they’ve sort of figure out where they are now, the partners have to negotiate and they have to discuss sex in a meaningful way. But that’s not the easiest thing for couples to do, especially if they feel that they’re on opposite ends of the spectrum. Many couples feel that if they don’t immediately give the identical answer, there is a sex problem. And whenever there’s a sex problem, people tend to shut down and get defensive. Why is it so hard for couples to discuss sex in a meaningful way?

Steven Ing, MFT: I think part of that is because nobody around us is having this kind of a conversation. So when we’re raised in our family, our mom and dad at the breakfast table, don’t typically read a newspaper story and then start talking about sexual preferences and ideal numbers. We never hear people talking about this kind of thing in church. When we talk the little that we do about sexuality and then even in sex ed classes, the focus is mostly on anatomy and physiology, how pregnancy occurs and how to avoid t.i.’s. And it really isn’t presenting sexuality in a human context relationship. So what I like to do with my clients, I like to encourage them to think about going on a date and eventually getting to some point in the conversation. And it could be a first date for the advanced or it could be something like the third or the tenth date. But eventually most of us want to ask the other person we’re interested in, so what are you looking for in your life? Which leads to talks about being single or getting into a committed relationship. And from there it’s really easy to ask. So what do you visualize your future sex life looking like? I know that may seem intimidating to some people, but if you’re seriously thinking about partnering up in a committed long term relationship and the person you’re dating can’t talk about sexuality in a safe way, that alone for me would be a dealbreaker. Because we need to talk about this before we commit. It’s like talking about finances before we jump into a business partnership. If my prospective business partner were very shy about talking about money, I think go look for another partner. And when we’re talking about magic sex numbers, I think what I would encourage people to do in that fantasy version of a date is to introduce the topic the way I said.

Steven Ing, MFT: And then looking at the uncomfortable expression on the other person’s face to say, tell you what? Let’s each write our number down and then we can turn our napkins over at the same time and share our numbers with each other. Because you’re quite right. You know, a lot of us approach relationships from a position of neediness or loneliness. And so if she asks me what my magic sex number is, I might be very tempted to ask her, well, what’s yours? I’m going to try to guess what it is I think her ideal number is going to be, and instead just to write down what we honestly think is our true number. Flip those little cocktail napkins over and then kind of blink at each other because the numbers are going to be closer or they’re going to be far. These things don’t fall into place automatically or without some effort at laying the foundation. So finding out, you know, we all know those stories of people who got married only to find out after long after the wedding that their partner wasn’t really of the same sexual orientation they were. And part of that was failing to have the appropriate conversations and making it safe for people to disclose who they really are. And some of that’s due to family pressure, some of it’s due to the crazy personal pressure we put on ourselves and for others it’s because of our religious upbringing. But even if we’re needy and lonely, we have to admit it’s not going to do any of us any favors to get together with someone whose appetite for sex is so much different from our own.

Gabe Howard: We’re going to step away and we’ll be right back after these messages.

Sponsor Message: Hey folks, Gabe here. I host another podcast for Psych Central. It’s called Not Crazy. He hosts Not Crazy with me, Jackie Zimmerman, and it is all about navigating our lives with mental illness and mental health concerns. Listen now at Psych Central.com/NotCrazy or on your favorite podcast player.

Sponsor Message: This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.com. Secure, convenient, and affordable online counseling. Our counselors are licensed, accredited professionals. Anything you share is confidential. Schedule secure video or phone sessions, plus chat and text with your therapist whenever you feel it’s needed. A month of online therapy often costs less than a single traditional face to face session. Go to BetterHelp.com/PsychCentral and experience seven days of free therapy to see if online counseling is right for you. BetterHelp.com/PsychCentral.

Gabe Howard: We’re back discussing your magic sex number with marriage and family therapist Steven Ing. One of the things that always confuses me about our society is that when it comes to marriage, sex is so important that you must only have sex with your marital partner. However, sex is so insignificant and not important that you should not make sex the basis of said marriage. It’s kind of weird, right? It’s.

Steven Ing, MFT: That’s very weird.

Gabe Howard: It’s a bit, but

Steven Ing, MFT: That’s very weird.

Gabe Howard: But, this is our system.

Steven Ing, MFT: I think intuitively, I think you’re right. I think we know that it shouldn’t be the basis because that kind of reduces us to just a sexual object alone. But to deny its importance, I think, is really to ignore a major dimension of our experience. So obviously, I’m going to have some spiritual needs and some social needs and some financial and physical needs. But it would be odd if we if we talked about sexuality as if it were the one dimension of the human experience that had no needs related to it, because that’s just not true of any other part of our lives.

Gabe Howard: When it comes to understanding sexuality and relationships, I am obviously an amateur compared to you being an expert. And that’s one of the reasons that I want to pose this question to you from. From my point of view, as goes sex as goes the quality of the marriage. How do you as an expert feel about that statement?

Steven Ing, MFT: I have to agree with it. I’ve never said that sentence, but I think that the sex life is definitely a barometer, if you will, about the health of the relationship. And that goes deeper than we might think at first blush, because even if two people are having sex daily and they both agree that that’s the right number, but one is very present and the other one is emotionally checked out. That, too, is part of their sex life. Right. So that’s a real problem because sex itself is a metaphor for how much acceptance, affirmation, approval and affection. I’m going to get in that relationship. In fact, they’re so lined up that a lot of people substitute sex for intimacy and for intimate relationships because it’s so closely mimics those emotional needs that we’re trying to get met. But once you’ve been with a person for years and years and you can tell that they’re just going through the motions and they’re not really present with you. Like one of my clients years ago, she said, well, I don’t know what he’s thinking, but I know it sure as heck isn’t about me. And she told me that with sort of an acceptance of her fate. She was an older woman, but she was accepting yet miserable, if that makes any sense.

Gabe Howard: It does.

Steven Ing, MFT: Yeah, OK. She wasn’t comfortable with that answer. So when we when we talk about sex, you know, I have to add a P.S. or some kind of a note here, because usually when we talk about sexuality in a relationship, we’re talking about intercourse. And I would argue that that is only a small part of the sexual dimension of intimacy. And I think our sexual needs are far more and diverse than that. And they include things like simply feeling safe. You know, if we don’t have our needs for sexual safety net in a relationship, it’s a disaster because everything follows from that. And if we don’t have our needs for appropriate sexual information met in a relationship, we’re not going to be able to make very intelligent choices in that relationship. So our needs are pretty diverse. And again, a problem in our culture and it’s a major, major hole in our education of the young. How am I supposed to manage my sexuality intelligently when I have no idea what my sexual needs are? In our culture, we don’t really do this. It’s a very squeamish and uncomfortable subject for most people. It’s a question. It’s not like we’re foolish or we’re stupid. It’s just that we’re uninformed and we don’t have the vocabulary. There was a philosopher, one of my favorites from the 20th century named Ludwig Wittgenstein, and he said something that really applies here. He said, if I don’t have the words to describe a thing, then I really don’t understand that thing. And I think that is more true of sexuality than anything else.

Gabe Howard: It’s very fascinating to me that anybody would be uncomfortable discussing sexuality, considering how it permeates our culture, we use sexuality to sell gum, but we’re uncomfortable discussing what makes us happy sexually, even in the context of committed relationships, in the context of marriage. We’re uncomfortable about this, but there will absolutely be a woman in a bathing suit holding gum, telling you how, if your breath smells good, your chances of a sexual encounter increase.

Steven Ing, MFT: Right.

Gabe Howard: But talking one on one with a potential sex partner becomes very embarrassing. And it’s fascinating. It’s absolutely fascinating to me. And I imagine, again, as somebody who has studied this for 30 years, it’s got to be fascinating to you as well.

Steven Ing, MFT: Well, one of the things I’ve been just delighted to do is in my last public speaking event was with the American Advertising Federation, and they were just a great audience and very aware of the phenomenon you were just talking about in terms of selling gum. And that’s we reviewed advertising history. You see that advertisements involving sexuality are almost always about titillation. The pretty girl, the arousing moment, the suggestive comments or look. But when you get past titillation and I think titillation is great and I’m not against titillation, I think it’s an important part of our sexuality. But until we actually cross over to including the conversation on intimacy and what it would take for us to feel safe with each other, I don’t think we really understand sexuality. And I think it may be because we’re just simply not ready for it culturally. But I think as individuals, again, the people listening to this, they can get there. It’s just embracing the idea that I need to and want to learn to manage my sexuality intelligently, whether I’m committed to a monogamous lifestyle or I’m really into casual hookups or something in between. I want to do it intelligently and then to begin having conversations with intelligent people who are respectful and can listen to you without judging you. I think that’s really how we get smarter with each other is having these kinds of conversations like the one you and I are having, Gabe.

Gabe Howard: Steven, I really appreciate you talking to me and the audience about this, and I hope that more people will have conversations with their spouses and their partners about the type of sex that makes them happy and get all on the same page, because I think ultimately sex is great, right? It’s something that we biologically crave. It’s something that we’re all doing. And I feel that that can only be enhanced by having these conversations with the people that we’re having sex with.

Steven Ing, MFT: Yeah. Or the people were thinking about making lifelong commitments to. And I think it’s such an important conversation to have to accept that none of us are really very good at it. When we get started and to be patient with yourself, to let yourself take a little time, even if it’s just sharing a magazine or newspaper article or paragraph with someone and discussing that. So it’s not really about you and the here and now, but it’s about someone else just kind of getting your brain going into working on that I think would be enormously profitable for everybody out there who is a sexual being. Oh yeah, that’s everybody.

Gabe Howard: Steve, thank you so much for being on the show. Where can audience members find you? What’s your Web site?

Steven Ing, MFT: Super easy if they can spell my last name, I N G. It’s StevenIng.com. So if they just go to Steven with a V, StevenIng.com, they will find out more about me than they ever wish they knew.

Gabe Howard: Steve, thank you so much for your candid talk about sex and sexuality, it’s necessary and it’s needed, and I appreciate having you on the show. And listen up, everybody. I have a personal favor to ask all of you. Wherever you downloaded this podcast, rank us. Use your words and tell people why to tune in. It absolutely helps. Share us on social media. Email us to your friends. And we have a private Facebook group. Just go to PsychCentral.com/FBShow and sign up. You can suggest topics and get show details before everybody else. And finally, remember, you can get one week of free, convenient, affordable, private online counseling anytime, anywhere simply by visiting you. BetterHelp.com/PsychCentral. We’ll see everyone next week.

Announcer: You’ve been listening to The Psych Central Podcast. Want your audience to be wowed at your next event? Feature an appearance and LIVE RECORDING of the Psych Central Podcast right from your stage! For more details, or to book an event, please email us at show@psychcentral.com. Previous episodes can be found at PsychCentral.com/Show or on your favorite podcast player. Psych Central is the internet’s oldest and largest independent mental health website run by mental health professionals. Overseen by Dr. John Grohol, Psych Central offers trusted resources and quizzes to help answer your questions about mental health, personality, psychotherapy, and more. Please visit us today at PsychCentral.com.  To learn more about our host, Gabe Howard, please visit his website at gabehoward.com. Thank you for listening and please share with your friends, family, and followers.

  Podcast: How Much Sex Is Psychologically Healthy? syndicated from

[erraticfairy]

Podcast: How Much Sex Is Psychologically Healthy?

If you were in a perfect relationship with your “perfect” partner, how much sex would you want? Three times a week? Once a day? Never? That number is your “magic sex number,” says today’s guest Marriage and Family Therapist Steven Ing. We all have a magic sex number, just like we all need to sleep a certain amount of hours per night and eat a certain number of calories per day to feel full. But if your magic number is far more or less than your partner’s number, there will be serious relationship problems.

How do you know what your magic sex number is? And how big of a difference can there be between partners? Tune in for an important discussion on how to have a sexually-healthy relationship.

SUBSCRIBE & REVIEW

Guest information for ‘Steven Ing- Sex Psychologically Healthy’ Podcast Episode

Steven Ing, MFT had a seriously messed up childhood. Like, mobster-father-shot-to-death-by-police messed up. So what did he do with this experience? He set out on a lifelong quest to study and better understand human behavior — why good people do bad things. He channeled this research into a Marriage & Family Therapy career with more than 30 years of clinical experience and 20 years of experience in forensic psychotherapy. 

As a leading expert, author and public speaker on all matters related to sexuality and relationships, Steven is fiercely passionate about his life’s mission to shine a light on how society hasn’t even begun to really think and rationally talk about human sexuality. 

Steven is a powerful ally to the LGBTQ community and a regular contributor to LGBTQ outlets such as The Rage Monthly and Adelante Magazine. His work can also be found in HuffPost, SheKnows.com and The Advocate. He was recently on the Betches SUP Podcast and is a TEDx Talk presenter, educating the masses on “Your Magic Sex Number”.

About The Psych Central Podcast Host

Gabe Howard is an award-winning writer and speaker who lives with bipolar disorder. He is the author of the popular book, Mental Illness is an Asshole and other Observations, available from Amazon; signed copies are also available directly from the author. To learn more about Gabe, please visit his website, gabehoward.com.

Computer Generated Transcript for ‘Steven Ing- Sex Psychologically Healthy’ Episode

Editor’s Note: Please be mindful that this transcript has been computer generated and therefore may contain inaccuracies and grammar errors. Thank you.

Announcer: You’re listening to the Psych Central Podcast, where guest experts in the field of psychology and mental health share thought-provoking information using plain, everyday language. Here’s your host, Gabe Howard.

Gabe Howard: Welcome to this week’s episode of the Psych Central Podcast. Calling into the show today, we have Steven Ing, who had a seriously messed up childhood. He channeled this into a marriage and family therapy career with more than 30 years of clinical experience and 20 years of experience in forensic psychotherapy. He’s a leading expert, columnist, author and public speaker, all on matters related to sexuality and relationships. He’s at TEDx Talks presenter, educating the masses on your magic sex number. Steve, welcome to the show.

Steven Ing, MFT: Hi, Gabe. It’s great to be with you today.

Gabe Howard: Steve, I first want to say that I absolutely love your bio. I think it’s important to just own things. And I like that you had a seriously messed up childhood because in many ways I feel like I had a seriously messed up childhood. And I believe a lot of our listeners are looking back on their childhood and they’re feeling the same way. And, you know, sometimes our guests, you know, they really want to tout their professional accolades, but they don’t want to tout their human experiences. So first off, kudos to you for your honesty.

Steven Ing, MFT: Oh, thanks a lot. I just think that, you know, for me, such a huge part of my motivation to help people because I know what it feels like to be in those uncomfortable family situations.

Gabe Howard: It makes perfect sense to me, and that vulnerability, I think is really important, giving that your subject matter is sexuality because people are often embarrassed to discuss sex and sexuality anyway. Now let’s talk about your TED Talk. The magic sex number. What is that all about?

Steven Ing, MFT: Basically, the idea is that we all have specific needs that we’re pretty much hardwired to have and that they aren’t subject to moral suasion or to personal appeal. Like, for example, the number of hours sleep you need to feel refreshed and also the number of calories you need per day to feel satiated. We don’t really talk about sex that way, but everyone I’ve ever interviewed and I mean, thousands of people had an answer to that question. Ideally, if you could be in your perfect relationship, that was perfect in every way. How often, ideally, would you like to have sex? And some people respond with the number at one end of the continuum and other people respond with a very different number. And that represents a range of humanity. We’re all normal and we’re all different. So we just don’t talk about this very much. We sort of presume, I think, in an egocentric way that when we fall in love with somebody, they will want us pretty much exactly the way we want them and with the frequency we want them. And that just isn’t true because of the range from one person to another can be quite serious.

Gabe Howard: When I think about a magic sex number, the first thing that I think is how am I supposed to figure mine out?

Steven Ing, MFT: Yeah, that’s. That is really tricky. And it’s actually trickier than I even thought it might be because there’s a lot of cultural and moral interference with getting an accurate assessment. If people have an idea that there’s a right number and that number is way too low or way too high, they tend to skew their number to what they think is more acceptable or more normal. And in the same way, a lot of people are preset to self-deception because they end up coming up with a number that mentally is actually the number they’d be willing to settle for. And that’s a very different number than the number that they ideally would like to have. So for me, the question is one of sustainability. If we’re serious about getting all of our sexual needs met in one monogamous relationship, then we need to make sure that that sexual relationship is at least a fighting chance of being sustainable. And if we don’t do that, we really haven’t done our due diligence.

Gabe Howard: One of the things that I’m thinking about is when it comes right down to it. How important is our magic sex number? Because it sort of sounds like you’re making sex the end all be all of a successful relationship. Aren’t there other things more important like compatibility and values? So how important is a magic sex number?

Steven Ing, MFT: It’s a little bit like arguing, though, which organ is more important, the heart or the kidneys, because the truth is we need it all to work together for us to survive and have a happy life. And then the same way, if I have the perfect relationship, perfect in every way. But there is a significant problem. It could be something like my mate decides to engage in compulsive gambling. That alone could destroy an otherwise good relationship. So if I’m talking about sex, most of us, we don’t talk about it too much, but we have an idea in the back of our mind of what our future sex life could be like. But we don’t imagine something like what happened to one of my clients when his wife came up to him after seven years of marriage and they had two children by that time. They were a couple in their thirties, and she announced to him that she would not be having sex with him anymore. And he was shocked and didn’t know what to do about this. And for the next 40 years, they did not have sex and it ended up disastrously for both of them. But he never, ever thought that he would be in that situation. And most of us don’t. But we don’t think it through like, well, what would I do? And well, what are my sexual needs? Because if if we think about managing our sexuality intelligently and we have an idea of our magic sex number. You know, for some people, it’ll be three times a week. For some people, it’ll be once a week or less. But whatever that number is, it’s what you need to feel comfortable. Otherwise, you’re facing a catastrophic marital failure where you end up getting so frustrated that you either have an affair or get a divorce or whatever that is. We’d all like to avoid that.

Gabe Howard: The first thing I thought of as you were telling that story is 40 years of no sex. That doesn’t seem like a marriage to me. That seems like a friendship. How did they survive? Forty years in a sexless marriage?

Steven Ing, MFT: For her, her discomfort with the idea of having sex with him was not replaced with anything other than a deep dove into alcoholism. So she relied on booze to get through the rest of her life for him because of his religious upbringing. Divorce was an unacceptable option. And I live in Nevada where prostitution is legal. And he never availed himself of the services of a legal prostitute, nor did he ever have an affair. Instead, what he did is he spent the next 40 years trying desperately to take care of his sexual needs simply through masturbation. And of course, that was not a successful effort because our sexual needs are far more complex and diverse than just orgasm alone. So even if I were, let’s say, masturbating as frequently as I wanted an orgasm, that’s not going to take care of my needs for companionship, conversation, humor and play. So it just doesn’t work.

Gabe Howard: I’m starting to think about our magic sex number and I’m thinking, OK, clearly if one person is zero and you’re at one, that’s too big of a gap. But maybe if somebody was at 10 and you were at 12, that might be a gap that you could work with. All of this to say, how big of a difference between the numbers becomes significant or becomes a dealbreaker? Now, I know in the story that you just told, apparently there was no dealbreaker. But myself, and I believe many of our listeners, would probably not be willing to stay in a marriage that was sexless for 40 years. And even in that story, it did seem like the outcome was disastrous for both parties involved.

Steven Ing, MFT: So typically, a magic sex number wouldn’t be a number like 7. It would be a number like oh, from 6 to 8. And that way there’s a little bit of give and take or leeway. And what we’re talking about, of course, I hasten to say this. We’re talking about the norm. We’re not talking about, oh, if my mate is ill or has gone through a deep tragedy and I need to be there for her emotionally or she is away on a trip or something like that. We’re just talking about the day to day typical marital situation. You know, clearly if somebody says 8 and somebody else says 11, there’s quite a bit of room to work with that. But I like your example of if one of them says once a week, that’s really comfortable for me. And the other one says zero and I’m looking at a lifetime of sexless marriage, that’s really not going to work. But actually, zero is the preferred number for a definite percentage of the population. There are asexual people in our population who quite sincerely want to have companionship and they want to have marriage and all the benefits of the partnership, but they’re completely disinterested in sex. And for them, an ideal number is zero makes perfect sense. At the top end, I have had people who are happily married because they found someone who is just like them and the number, their number was four times per day.

Gabe Howard: Wow.

Steven Ing, MFT: and then they shared that number in common.

Gabe Howard: I am stunned and it.

Steven Ing, MFT: Well, it’s.

Gabe Howard: Is this atypical? I mean, this would have to be atypical.

Steven Ing, MFT: I think what we need to all remember is that human sexuality falls in virtually every aspect on a continuum. I think that’s what we’re learning more and more about sexual diversity as we as a culture get more comfortable talking about sexuality. So the old binary of hetero versus homo even that has Kinsey pointed out back in the 50s occurs on a continuum. Some of us are more or less heterosexual than the person standing next to us. And when it comes to a magic sex number, if our listeners could imagine that a bell shaped curve that includes all of humanity and that one end, let’s say the left hand side of the curve would be the asexual who prefer a number like zero. And then on the far right would be somebody who, like my client, has an extremely surprisingly high number and they’ll be in that little shaped curve. The vast majority of us somewhere in the middle.

Gabe Howard: So once the two numbers have been established and they’ve sort of figure out where they are now, the partners have to negotiate and they have to discuss sex in a meaningful way. But that’s not the easiest thing for couples to do, especially if they feel that they’re on opposite ends of the spectrum. Many couples feel that if they don’t immediately give the identical answer, there is a sex problem. And whenever there’s a sex problem, people tend to shut down and get defensive. Why is it so hard for couples to discuss sex in a meaningful way?

Steven Ing, MFT: I think part of that is because nobody around us is having this kind of a conversation. So when we’re raised in our family, our mom and dad at the breakfast table, don’t typically read a newspaper story and then start talking about sexual preferences and ideal numbers. We never hear people talking about this kind of thing in church. When we talk the little that we do about sexuality and then even in sex ed classes, the focus is mostly on anatomy and physiology, how pregnancy occurs and how to avoid t.i.’s. And it really isn’t presenting sexuality in a human context relationship. So what I like to do with my clients, I like to encourage them to think about going on a date and eventually getting to some point in the conversation. And it could be a first date for the advanced or it could be something like the third or the tenth date. But eventually most of us want to ask the other person we’re interested in, so what are you looking for in your life? Which leads to talks about being single or getting into a committed relationship. And from there it’s really easy to ask. So what do you visualize your future sex life looking like? I know that may seem intimidating to some people, but if you’re seriously thinking about partnering up in a committed long term relationship and the person you’re dating can’t talk about sexuality in a safe way, that alone for me would be a dealbreaker. Because we need to talk about this before we commit. It’s like talking about finances before we jump into a business partnership. If my prospective business partner were very shy about talking about money, I think go look for another partner. And when we’re talking about magic sex numbers, I think what I would encourage people to do in that fantasy version of a date is to introduce the topic the way I said.

Steven Ing, MFT: And then looking at the uncomfortable expression on the other person’s face to say, tell you what? Let’s each write our number down and then we can turn our napkins over at the same time and share our numbers with each other. Because you’re quite right. You know, a lot of us approach relationships from a position of neediness or loneliness. And so if she asks me what my magic sex number is, I might be very tempted to ask her, well, what’s yours? I’m going to try to guess what it is I think her ideal number is going to be, and instead just to write down what we honestly think is our true number. Flip those little cocktail napkins over and then kind of blink at each other because the numbers are going to be closer or they’re going to be far. These things don’t fall into place automatically or without some effort at laying the foundation. So finding out, you know, we all know those stories of people who got married only to find out after long after the wedding that their partner wasn’t really of the same sexual orientation they were. And part of that was failing to have the appropriate conversations and making it safe for people to disclose who they really are. And some of that’s due to family pressure, some of it’s due to the crazy personal pressure we put on ourselves and for others it’s because of our religious upbringing. But even if we’re needy and lonely, we have to admit it’s not going to do any of us any favors to get together with someone whose appetite for sex is so much different from our own.

Gabe Howard: We’re going to step away and we’ll be right back after these messages.

Sponsor Message: Hey folks, Gabe here. I host another podcast for Psych Central. It’s called Not Crazy. He hosts Not Crazy with me, Jackie Zimmerman, and it is all about navigating our lives with mental illness and mental health concerns. Listen now at Psych Central.com/NotCrazy or on your favorite podcast player.

Sponsor Message: This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.com. Secure, convenient, and affordable online counseling. Our counselors are licensed, accredited professionals. Anything you share is confidential. Schedule secure video or phone sessions, plus chat and text with your therapist whenever you feel it’s needed. A month of online therapy often costs less than a single traditional face to face session. Go to BetterHelp.com/PsychCentral and experience seven days of free therapy to see if online counseling is right for you. BetterHelp.com/PsychCentral.

Gabe Howard: We’re back discussing your magic sex number with marriage and family therapist Steven Ing. One of the things that always confuses me about our society is that when it comes to marriage, sex is so important that you must only have sex with your marital partner. However, sex is so insignificant and not important that you should not make sex the basis of said marriage. It’s kind of weird, right? It’s.

Steven Ing, MFT: That’s very weird.

Gabe Howard: It’s a bit, but

Steven Ing, MFT: That’s very weird.

Gabe Howard: But, this is our system.

Steven Ing, MFT: I think intuitively, I think you’re right. I think we know that it shouldn’t be the basis because that kind of reduces us to just a sexual object alone. But to deny its importance, I think, is really to ignore a major dimension of our experience. So obviously, I’m going to have some spiritual needs and some social needs and some financial and physical needs. But it would be odd if we if we talked about sexuality as if it were the one dimension of the human experience that had no needs related to it, because that’s just not true of any other part of our lives.

Gabe Howard: When it comes to understanding sexuality and relationships, I am obviously an amateur compared to you being an expert. And that’s one of the reasons that I want to pose this question to you from. From my point of view, as goes sex as goes the quality of the marriage. How do you as an expert feel about that statement?

Steven Ing, MFT: I have to agree with it. I’ve never said that sentence, but I think that the sex life is definitely a barometer, if you will, about the health of the relationship. And that goes deeper than we might think at first blush, because even if two people are having sex daily and they both agree that that’s the right number, but one is very present and the other one is emotionally checked out. That, too, is part of their sex life. Right. So that’s a real problem because sex itself is a metaphor for how much acceptance, affirmation, approval and affection. I’m going to get in that relationship. In fact, they’re so lined up that a lot of people substitute sex for intimacy and for intimate relationships because it’s so closely mimics those emotional needs that we’re trying to get met. But once you’ve been with a person for years and years and you can tell that they’re just going through the motions and they’re not really present with you. Like one of my clients years ago, she said, well, I don’t know what he’s thinking, but I know it sure as heck isn’t about me. And she told me that with sort of an acceptance of her fate. She was an older woman, but she was accepting yet miserable, if that makes any sense.

Gabe Howard: It does.

Steven Ing, MFT: Yeah, OK. She wasn’t comfortable with that answer. So when we when we talk about sex, you know, I have to add a P.S. or some kind of a note here, because usually when we talk about sexuality in a relationship, we’re talking about intercourse. And I would argue that that is only a small part of the sexual dimension of intimacy. And I think our sexual needs are far more and diverse than that. And they include things like simply feeling safe. You know, if we don’t have our needs for sexual safety net in a relationship, it’s a disaster because everything follows from that. And if we don’t have our needs for appropriate sexual information met in a relationship, we’re not going to be able to make very intelligent choices in that relationship. So our needs are pretty diverse. And again, a problem in our culture and it’s a major, major hole in our education of the young. How am I supposed to manage my sexuality intelligently when I have no idea what my sexual needs are? In our culture, we don’t really do this. It’s a very squeamish and uncomfortable subject for most people. It’s a question. It’s not like we’re foolish or we’re stupid. It’s just that we’re uninformed and we don’t have the vocabulary. There was a philosopher, one of my favorites from the 20th century named Ludwig Wittgenstein, and he said something that really applies here. He said, if I don’t have the words to describe a thing, then I really don’t understand that thing. And I think that is more true of sexuality than anything else.

Gabe Howard: It’s very fascinating to me that anybody would be uncomfortable discussing sexuality, considering how it permeates our culture, we use sexuality to sell gum, but we’re uncomfortable discussing what makes us happy sexually, even in the context of committed relationships, in the context of marriage. We’re uncomfortable about this, but there will absolutely be a woman in a bathing suit holding gum, telling you how, if your breath smells good, your chances of a sexual encounter increase.

Steven Ing, MFT: Right.

Gabe Howard: But talking one on one with a potential sex partner becomes very embarrassing. And it’s fascinating. It’s absolutely fascinating to me. And I imagine, again, as somebody who has studied this for 30 years, it’s got to be fascinating to you as well.

Steven Ing, MFT: Well, one of the things I’ve been just delighted to do is in my last public speaking event was with the American Advertising Federation, and they were just a great audience and very aware of the phenomenon you were just talking about in terms of selling gum. And that’s we reviewed advertising history. You see that advertisements involving sexuality are almost always about titillation. The pretty girl, the arousing moment, the suggestive comments or look. But when you get past titillation and I think titillation is great and I’m not against titillation, I think it’s an important part of our sexuality. But until we actually cross over to including the conversation on intimacy and what it would take for us to feel safe with each other, I don’t think we really understand sexuality. And I think it may be because we’re just simply not ready for it culturally. But I think as individuals, again, the people listening to this, they can get there. It’s just embracing the idea that I need to and want to learn to manage my sexuality intelligently, whether I’m committed to a monogamous lifestyle or I’m really into casual hookups or something in between. I want to do it intelligently and then to begin having conversations with intelligent people who are respectful and can listen to you without judging you. I think that’s really how we get smarter with each other is having these kinds of conversations like the one you and I are having, Gabe.

Gabe Howard: Steven, I really appreciate you talking to me and the audience about this, and I hope that more people will have conversations with their spouses and their partners about the type of sex that makes them happy and get all on the same page, because I think ultimately sex is great, right? It’s something that we biologically crave. It’s something that we’re all doing. And I feel that that can only be enhanced by having these conversations with the people that we’re having sex with.

Steven Ing, MFT: Yeah. Or the people were thinking about making lifelong commitments to. And I think it’s such an important conversation to have to accept that none of us are really very good at it. When we get started and to be patient with yourself, to let yourself take a little time, even if it’s just sharing a magazine or newspaper article or paragraph with someone and discussing that. So it’s not really about you and the here and now, but it’s about someone else just kind of getting your brain going into working on that I think would be enormously profitable for everybody out there who is a sexual being. Oh yeah, that’s everybody.

Gabe Howard: Steve, thank you so much for being on the show. Where can audience members find you? What’s your Web site?

Steven Ing, MFT: Super easy if they can spell my last name, I N G. It’s StevenIng.com. So if they just go to Steven with a V, StevenIng.com, they will find out more about me than they ever wish they knew.

Gabe Howard: Steve, thank you so much for your candid talk about sex and sexuality, it’s necessary and it’s needed, and I appreciate having you on the show. And listen up, everybody. I have a personal favor to ask all of you. Wherever you downloaded this podcast, rank us. Use your words and tell people why to tune in. It absolutely helps. Share us on social media. Email us to your friends. And we have a private Facebook group. Just go to PsychCentral.com/FBShow and sign up. You can suggest topics and get show details before everybody else. And finally, remember, you can get one week of free, convenient, affordable, private online counseling anytime, anywhere simply by visiting you. BetterHelp.com/PsychCentral. We’ll see everyone next week.

Announcer: You’ve been listening to The Psych Central Podcast. Want your audience to be wowed at your next event? Feature an appearance and LIVE RECORDING of the Psych Central Podcast right from your stage! For more details, or to book an event, please email us at show@psychcentral.com. Previous episodes can be found at PsychCentral.com/Show or on your favorite podcast player. Psych Central is the internet’s oldest and largest independent mental health website run by mental health professionals. Overseen by Dr. John Grohol, Psych Central offers trusted resources and quizzes to help answer your questions about mental health, personality, psychotherapy, and more. Please visit us today at PsychCentral.com.  To learn more about our host, Gabe Howard, please visit his website at gabehoward.com. Thank you for listening and please share with your friends, family, and followers.

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[timeflies1007-blog]

Doctor Who Reviews by a Female Doctor, Season 6, p. 1

Warning: These reviews contain spoilers for this and other seasons of the reboot, as well as occasional references to the classic series. 

Previously on Doctor Who: The universe ended, but then it didn’t. (Hurray!) Last season ended on the most unequivocally positive note of any season of the reboot, in which nobody died (at least not permanently), nobody suffered a catastrophic fate, and everything concluded with a lovely wedding. This season is a very different kind of story; in spite of the numerous deaths that don’t stick, this season is full of consequences, and of the dark side of the much brighter narrative that we got in Season Five. “Dark side” is the easiest term to use in describing this shift, but it doesn’t get at the entirety of what is going on here. I would argue that this is, in some senses, among the most hopeful seasons of the show, and certainly one of the most redemptive character arcs. Problems are awfully hard to fix this season—much, much harder than in most previous ones and certainly than in the immediate predecessor—but our heroes try so strenuously to emerge from these problems that I wind up with feelings that are a lot warmer and fuzzier than one might expect from the relative bleakness of this narrative.

This season has a reputation for devoting too little attention to Amy’s feelings, particularly in light of her pregnancy and subsequent separation from her baby. It’s a widespread view, but not really one that I get. To me, about 90% of the season is about Amy, to the point that I can understand criticisms that it’s too closely focused on her feelings more than I can understand the opposite. I do think that the season is better at representing her feelings of loss and grief than it is at exploring her bodily experience, but overall we get enough detail about her mental state that I only very rarely feel like she’s being underwritten. A more complex issue is the methods by which Moffat portrays Amy’s crisis. This season is pretty thoroughly wrapped up in concepts of silence and, to a lesser extent, vision. This raises the possibility of ableist metaphors, the kind that develop when writers use blindness, deafness, muteness, etc. as ways of making a point about moral failings. For the most part, I think the season avoids falling into this trap. As I’ll explain in more detail later in the season, I think that the inobservability of certain forms of trauma, as well as the difficulties in communication that stem from them, are very real parts of Amy’s circumstances, so that while there are metaphorical treatments of these issues, they are tied to very real mental health issues in which sight and speech play integral roles, and so it doesn’t come across to me as using disability as an analogy for unrelated experiences. It’s a difficult issue, though, and one that I’m trying to be attentive to as I write about these aspects of the season.  

There are so many ways to interpret this season, and this can lead to questions about what Moffat actually meant this narrative to be about. It’s certainly a question worth considering, but I’m not terribly invested in the answer. Amy’s story this season means very specific things to me, grounded in my own experiences, and I’m not particularly concerned with whether or not Moffat completely intended the story to function in the way that I see it. I do think that at least pieces of the story seem to have been intentionally composed in the ways that I understand them, but there are so many pieces to this narrative that my interpretation of some of them might be completely different from what Moffat meant. Explaining how this season comes across to me is especially difficult because it’s so dependent on how the episodes fit together with each other; it’s hard to articulate the importance of individual episodes, sometimes, and so this season’s review may be more than usually centered on the review of the season as a whole at the end.

This is also the season in which we get a pre-credits voiceover sequence, a.k.a. Amy Pond telling us “When I was a little girl, I had an imaginary friend…” and then going into a tiny synopsis of her friendship with the Doctor. I’m not really sure why this is here or who it was intended to be useful for, because anyone who’s seen the show before knows this information and anyone who jumps into the show in the middle of this season is going to have a lot of questions that aren’t answered by this segment. It’s pretty annoying, but if you watch on Amazon the fast-forward button is a very helpful friend whenever this voiceover comes up. Given the unusual amount of connection between this season and its predecessor, though, something of a recap of what has gone before is appropriate, particularly as a way into Amy’s mentality. A more accurate and useful version might go something like this: “When Amy Pond was a little girl, she had an imaginary friend, and she spent much of her childhood struggling to keep believing in him. He came back, and so did Amy’s belief in his capacity to rewrite time. He’s done so many wonderful things that even death seems rewritable. Amy’s particular brand of faith ran away with her, and they’ve been running ever since.” And…here we go.

A Christmas Carol: There are about sixty billion versions of A Christmas Carol, but to my knowledge this is the only one with flying sharks. This episode features a lot of whimsy, both shark-related and otherwise, but it’s deceptively serious as well. Some Doctor Who Christmas episodes are integral to seasonal arcs on the show, while others function more as standalones. This one is unusual in that it looks like the latter, but turns out to be much more connected to the season than it initially appears. In fact, it’s connected to two seasons, and one could see it as Season Five’s endpoint almost as much as the start of Season Six. In some ways, it functions as a sort of bridge between the two seasons, but I see this primarily as our first foray into the odd combination of light and solemnity that characterizes much of Season Six. “Halfway out of the darkness” could be seen as the theme of this season, and so the Doctor’s use of this phrase to define Christmas is our introduction to an important concept.

           It’s also our first step into the troubling side of the “time can be rewritten” idea, which is hugely important for Season Six. At the end of the last season, the Doctor basically rewrote the universe, fixing at least some of the pieces of existence that disappeared through the time crack and rewriting time on a very large scale. Here, this happens on a much smaller, more personal level, and while it brings about Kazran Sardick’s redemption, it also comes across as invasive and potentially destructive. Season Six devotes a great deal of time to the human cost of miracles, and it’s pretty concerning that, while Kazran might have wound up a better man because of the Doctor’s interference, he’s also a different one, to the extent that his technology no longer recognizes his brain. The ethical implications of essentially rewriting a person, even if the rewrite is morally superior to the original, are not really discussed here but this moment of his brain literally becoming unrecognizable highlights just how much of an impact the Doctor’s actions can have. It’s such a dramatic change that it’s difficult to avoid thinking “Would the Doctor really be all right with just giving someone an entirely new backstory, complete with memories of experiences and connections that had never existed before?” and this question persists until we go back to the honeymooning couple and remember that last season’s happy ending pretty much depended on exactly that happening to Amy.

We also get the season’s first mention of silence—not, in this case, a scary monster, but an aspect of loneliness. I didn’t really listen to the lyrics in Abigail’s song the first time I watched the episode, but they’re eerily appropriate for the upcoming season. Lines like “When you’re alone, silence is all you know” and “Let in the shadow; let in the light of your bright shadow” are awfully cheesy, but Christmas episodes can get away with a little bit more cheese than usual, and the song is just so pretty that it gets away with the lack of subtlety. Given the rest of the season’s attention to Amy remaining steadfastly silent about a lot of her problems and refusing to acknowledge the shadow in her life, in retrospect it seems like a song about the growth that she needs to do this season. Because the episode feels like a commentary on Amy’s arc this season, I’m ok with her relatively small role in this episode, and even the return of the kiss-o-gram outfit only annoys me a little bit.

I am more bothered by the treatment of Abigail herself, even though I love her and I’m happy whenever she’s on screen. It’s sort of weird to apply the concept of fridging to a character who is so vibrant and lively throughout the episode, and who doesn’t actually die in it, but if you’re going to have a female character’s impending demise operating as an important plot point, it’s probably a good idea to avoid literally putting her in a giant freezer. There are quite a few rankings of Christmas specials on the internet, and while there are of course fluctuations between the lists, this one is the clear favorite. I do think that it’s the most creative and possibly the most fun, but I would rank it behind at least one and maybe several of the other specials on the grounds that Moffat doesn’t manage to give Abigail a storyline that’s meaningful to her (as opposed to being a motivation for Kazran’s narrative) to go along with the dynamic personality and gorgeous voice.

           When it’s not putting Abigail on ice, this episode is thoroughly delightful in spite of its serious attention to the season’s darker themes. The production design brings together exactly the right combination of quirk and genuine beauty in creating a stunningly gorgeous planet. The fish/sharks are brilliant—the whole scenario is weirdly believable as the basis for this planet’s economy and power structures, and young Kazran’s account of the bonding that he missed out on when he was away from school during a fish attack gives us an intriguing glimpse into the role that the fish play in this culture. The Doctor reacts charmingly to them, particularly in his optimistic assertion that “I bet I get some very interesting readings off my sonic screwdriver when I get it back from the shark in your bedroom.” Even beyond the goofy charm of the fish, the episode is a strong adaptation of Dickens’s novella. This is partly because of Michael Gambon’s strong performance as Kazran Sardick—a name that nicely exaggerates Dickens’s proclivity for character-appropriate naming. What’s most impressive, though, is the way the episode works with the past/present/future structure. Much of the episode weaves smoothly between the first two, allowing us to watch the older Kazran remember the memories that didn’t exist until the Doctor showed up. I fully expected the future part of the story to involve a trip into Kazran’s near future, as the TARDIS would make it easy enough to get him there. Just when the episode looks like it’s going to do a pretty conventional take on Christmas Yet to Come, it does something thoroughly unexpected; this season is pretty plot-twist heavy, but few of the later revelations startle me quite as much as the sudden appearance of young Kazran, staring fearfully into the old man who has become his future. I can’t quite articulate why this works so well, but I was so surprised by this approach when I first saw the episode that it completely took my breath away.

While Abigail’s literal fridging diminishes my enjoyment a bit, I’m incredibly impressed with how well this special brings together serious psychological issues with a truly fun, entertaining story. We get a lot of attention, in this season, to the rewriting of time, and to the presence of Silence—in most cases, these are part of big, complicated, large-scale stories. Seeing them operate as pieces of a much more intimate, personal tale of loss is an important introduction to how one should think about the events that lie ahead. The episode isn’t without missteps, but a beautiful set, stunning character work, and flying sharks all in one episode are a pretty fabulous Christmas present. A-

The Impossible Astronaut: This is technically the start of the major arc of Season Six, but it picks up so many ideas from “A Christmas Carol” and from the end of Season Five that it feels like the opening number of Act Two rather than the beginning of a completely new story. Watching the Doctor die a few minutes into the episode is a shocking moment, both because it’s the protagonist’s demise and because of the unusualness of the murder method—namely, being shot by an astronaut who has emerged from the depths of an American lake. It’s pretty clear that the Doctor isn’t really dead, as the show can’t exactly move forward without him, but trying to figure out exactly what happened and how he wriggled out of what looks like certain death is fun even in the certainty that it won’t stick.

           There is an immensely enjoyable sense of silliness at work here that erases any sense of self-importance that might otherwise come from appearing to kill of your lead character in a season premiere. The Doctor’s attention-getting historical forays at the beginning of the episode are a bit hit-or-miss for me, but the scenes at the White House are sublimely funny (with the very brief exception that we definitely didn’t need the Doctor referring to his companions as “the legs, the nose, and Mrs. Robinson.”) The shocked reaction to a big blue box turning up in the oval office is particularly well done, as is the dialogue in the ensuing scene: the Secret Service officer yelling “Do not compliment the intruder!” is probably my favorite line, but the Doctor trying to requisition a fez and some jammy dodgers is a close second. Canton is an immediate delight, coming across as smart and snarky and just a little bit bewildered about all of the sci-fi material that is suddenly unfolding around him.

           The episode’s considerable humor competes with quite a lot of serious material. This is due in part to River’s increasing consciousness of the difficulties of her relationship with the Doctor, who knows less about her each time they meet. Even more importantly, Silence has been threatened, foreshadowed, and even sung about, but this is the episode in which it finally becomes monstrous. I don’t think I’d get a lot of agreement on this, but to me, the Silence are Moffat’s greatest monsters. Yes, I like them better than the Weeping Angels. The idea of a monster that you forget when you’re not looking at it is inherently frightening, offers a lot of potential for really interesting subtext, and works incredibly well in a visual medium. Watching the characters go back and forth between terror and total ease is fascinating, and the music underscoring some of these scenes helps to make these moments even more effective.

           The monsters aren’t the only things creating emotional imbalance in this episode. Amy, who is finally in an outfit that no one could reasonably interpret as an attempt to over-sexualize her, goes through quite a lot of turmoil here. After the events of the previous season, it’s unsurprising that her ability to process grief in a healthy way is slipping. She does react tearfully to the Doctor’s “death,” but her immediate reaction to it also essentially involves rewriting it in more palatable terms in her mind—“maybe it’s a doppelganger, or a clone,” she insists, as she frantically tries to piece together the version of this story in which things will turn out okay. Even after she sees the Doctor alive again, she starts thinking about how his eventual death can be unwritten. This reaches its climax when she grabs a gun and shoots at the astronaut, which is shot in crazy slow motion that should be awfully cheesy but somehow is marvelous. There is a lot of focus this season on Amy’s disillusionment with certain aspects of her relationship with the Doctor, and this is the first moment that she turns away from his principles, even if it is brief and she misses. (I would see this as a cop-out if the events of the season finale didn’t happen, but they do and so I don’t.) “Time can be rewritten” is a hopeful expression, sort of, but it’s also one that takes away the possibility of closure, that stops one from recognizing the need to move on. Amy’s willing to do anything to rewrite time here, even to the extent of pointing a gun at a stranger and pulling the trigger, and for all the excitement in this episode, it’s her psychological state that I find most chilling. A-

Day of the Moon: Sometimes, Moffat has a tendency to write something stunningly brilliant and then distract from its brilliance by including one or two really annoying things, and this episode is one of the most prominent examples. This story, and particularly this second part of it, is terrific, and if it were not for a couple of glaring missteps, I would put this episode well within the top 30 of the reboot. Its ranking plummets, however, (to, I think slightly outside my top 70 in the eleven seasons so far) because of a couple of brief moments that draw attention to their own stupidity and distract me from how fabulous the rest of the episode is.

           I’ll get into the things that bother me in a little bit, but let me first say that what definitely doesn’t bother me is the plot-driven nature of this two-parter. It is inarguably the case that a LOT is happening here, and the sheer magnitude of the plot is one of the things that puts a lot of people off about this season. There are definitely some aspects of the seasonal arc that suffer from the narrative twistiness, and while I do think that there is far more character-driven work this season than it tends to get credit for, this episode is one of the plottier ones. The thing is, plot twists are usually intellectual devices grounded in being flashy and impressive, but sometimes events come together in such a perfect way that I do wind up reacting emotionally. Watching what looks like chaos be revealed as order carries with it a sort of surprised sense that things look nicer than what I expected, sort of like suddenly seeing a kitten. My heart just goes, “My goodness, I wasn’t expecting you!” and pieces of this episode bring out that kind of reaction in me, to the point where, if I were a person who tended to cry at television shows, I’d be sniffling about how lovely the narrative structure is.

           We begin the episode with precisely the kind of giddily brilliant scenes that I’m talking about, as Canton appears to hunt down and kill the entire Pond family, while keeping the Doctor locked up in a familiar-looking prison. (And yes, you could see this as a bit repetitive, but I kind of love that there was pretty clearly an offscreen exchange in which Canton asked the Doctor how to construct the facade of a perfect prison for containing him, and the Doctor just described the Pandorica. It’s nice when he’s willing to get ideas from all his worst enemies. I hope the Doctor did impressions of all the monsters while he was explaining the plan to Canton.) The invisible TARDIS suddenly coming to light, the Ponds complaining about a lack of airholes in their body bags, River falling backwards off a building and into the TARDIS swimming pool…it’s such a stunning bit of goofiness and I love it. The show can’t spend too much time on hijinks like the swimming pool business or it would start to look awfully self-indulgent, but in small doses it’s just incredibly charming.

After the delights of the opening sequence, we learn more about the Silence and the efforts being made to remember them. The lines drawn on the skin as a memory technique never fail to scare the hell out of me this season, but I also like the implanted voicemails, which are nicely creepy ways of getting across just how much is being forgotten. The children’s home is a solidly atmospheric setting, and while I get a bit annoyed about the amount of time spent on a kidnapped Amy pleading for help, her initial wander around the house is a strong introduction to her role in the little girl’s life. The notion that the Silence have manipulated humanity into traveling to the moon so that they can get access to fancy spacesuits is also pretty frightening—this whole episode really emphasizes just how much influence the Silence have had on Earth, and their input on space exploration is a good example of how far their impact has extended. I do have a few qualms about the role that they have played in influencing human affairs; there are moments in this episode that seem to lurk pretty close to just removing human agency altogether through the suggestion that the Silence have been manipulating us into almost everything we’ve ever done. The depiction of 1960s America is so vibrant in this episode, though, and the characters are so full of purpose and energy, that it doesn’t come across as a brainwashed world.

The entire plot is captivating, but the Doctor’s defeat of the Silence is the clear high point, and is one of my favorite resolutions ever on this show. A couple of factors make this work, the first being how suggestible people are when they are looking at a Silent. The Doctor makes clear—by having Canton look at a Silent and telling him to adjust his bowtie—that people can be influenced by what they have heard while looking at a Silent, even when they have forgotten the entire experience. The quasi-hypnotic possibilities certainly play a role here, but I would say that the pattern of remembering and forgetting associated with the Silence also makes the Doctor’s plan work. It has been established that everyone forgets the Silence only when they are not looking at them; Amy, for instance, remembers seeing the Silent at the lake when she sees another in the White House bathroom. Everyone who ever watches the footage of the moon landing will therefore see the “You should kill us all on sight” message, immediately forget it once the image has passed, and then remember it only if they happen to come across another Silent. The proper version of the moon landing thus stays intact in everybody’s memory, but if they find themselves in the company of a Silent, they will suddenly regain the knowledge that they need to see the Silent as an enemy. In spite of the hypnotic influence of the Silent’s words, this doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone will actually try to kill them—I can imagine that some would be too frightened to take them on, and others would just be incapable. The increased presence of human knowledge and aggression, though, means that the Silence face a world that is more hostile and dangerous, and have a legitimate reason for seeking a new planet to rule. What’s especially brilliant about the Doctor’s plan is that because of the general state of forgetfulness, it doesn’t push humanity to hunt down the Silence and try to drive them away; whether the “kill us on sight” line is functioning as hypnotic influence or people are remembering instructions when they see a Silent, the impulse depends on being in close enough proximity to the Silence that they are actually visible. This gives the Silence the information that their safety has been compromised, thereby giving them the incentive to go somewhere else, and so if they’re careful about not being seen, they should be able to get away. (They’re good at appropriating human technology, so I can imagine that they would be able to get themselves to another planet.) It’s a revolution by warning, in which nobody really needs to get killed, and the whole notion of uploading cell phone footage into a 1960s video in order to let scary monsters know that they need to abandon Earth is just such a creative way of resolving things that I absolutely love it. You could make the argument, and many have, that Moffat can get too clever-clogs for his own good, but watching the narrative click into place like this—I don’t know, the world just looks a bit sunnier for a while. It’s not often that you want to hug a cell phone, but I really do by the end of this story.

The surprises don’t stop there, as we conclude the episode with the revelation that the little girl that they have been looking for is regenerating. We know so little about her at this point that I don’t have that much of a reaction to the character’s experience, but it’s such an unexpected moment (at least it was to me) that it makes for an extremely strong ending to the story. There is as much genuine surprise in this episode as almost any other in the episode, and these twists are incorporated so beautifully into the story that it’s a joy to experience the rush that comes from realizing just what has happened.

In spite of the fabulousness of much of this episode, it doesn’t make my all-time favorites list because of a couple of smaller pieces that lower the quality of the entire episode. One problem with this episode is the brief and thoroughly unwelcome return of the Amy/Rory/Doctor love triangle. It’s present only as a miscommunication—Rory hears Amy say something to him that sounds like it could be addressed to the Doctor, and worries that she is regretting her choice to marry him. She also tells the Doctor that she’s pregnant without telling Rory, suggesting that she places more trust in the Doctor. Of course, everything is resolved by the end, but while her explanation that she didn’t want to tell Rory about her pregnancy because she’s worried that her baby will be born with “three heads, or like a time head” is believable enough, this whole element just comes across as extremely contrived. Amy’s use of the “fell out of the sky” language to describe Rory doesn’t really accord with the notion that they’ve been friends since childhood, and so it just looks like Moffat made her say intentionally confusing things in order to create a space for marital drama. The interaction between the Ponds at the end of the episode is awfully cute, though—I particularly liked Rory’s jubilant exclamation that he’s “never going to stop being stupid!”—so while I did not enjoy this throwback to last season’s most irritating subplot, I was still happy with the Ponds as a couple by the end of the story. The larger problem is the exchange between Canton and Nixon in which we learn of Canton’s sexuality. I really, really like Canton; the actor is great, the character’s combination of obvious intelligence and befuddlement about what on earth is happening is endearing, and he’s a solid source of support for the Doctor and Ponds in this story. I’m glad that the show is making more of an effort to include LGBT characters this season, after not doing at all well in this regard in Season Five, and Canton was, I think, at this point the second-most screentime for an LGBT character, after Captain Jack. Given that for both Captain Jack and the soon-to-debut Vastra and Jenny, their sexuality is a defining element of their characterization, it’s sort of a nice bit of variation to have a character who is primarily known for his work in the monster-fighting plot, and whose sexuality emerges as a minor part of his background. However, while getting across Canton’s sexuality in just a line or two is a reasonable move on those grounds, the actual lines are completely misguided and deeply problematic. Nixon’s reaction that the moon is “far enough for now” just comes across as laughing at the sixties for being a homophobic time period, which is blatantly unfunny both because of the tremendous discrimination facing gay couples in the 1960s and because in many ways that discrimination hasn’t stopped. Nixon’s inability to accept such a relationship is the punchline here more than Canton himself is, but it’s a completely inappropriate piece of humor. Even the soundtrack emphasizes the jokey nature of the exchange, making this even more grating.

If you took out the five seconds devoted to Nixon’s reaction to Canton’s sexuality, you would have a very, very strong episode; I would put up with the brief return to the Pond Relationship Drama in exchange for all of the fascinating stuff that happens to them here. There’s just enough that annoys me, though, that I don’t love the episode as much as its stellar plot warrants. In a way, this makes this two-parter a fitting opener to the regular season, as Season Six is, in general, a giant mass of brilliance that wanders off into total stupidity at intervals. Overall, this two-parter is a mostly glorious, intermittently frustrating opening to a season that is full of both wonderful and terrible things. B+

The Curse of the Black Spot: It’s a shame that this utterly boring episode happens here, in what is otherwise a terrific string of episodes. A few questionable things in “Day of the Moon” aside, the string of eight episodes that starts with “Vincent and the Doctor” and ends with “The Doctor’s Wife” is full of glory—except for this episode, which manages to make pirates dull. I do like the setting for the episode, which is what keeps it out of my bottom five episodes of the reboot—watching the characters run around on a pirate ship is entertaining enough to lift the episode above the slog of unimaginative plotting that otherwise characterizes this story. Still, for an episode that has the automatic fun of featuring pirates on a pirate ship, this is a huge disappointment.

           There are some decent moments here; the beginning of the episode, in which pirates react with terror to extremely minor injuries, is relatively intriguing, and Lord Grantham from Downton Abbey does a good job as the lead pirate suddenly forced to take responsibility for the son he abandoned. The whole Siren story is just so inane, though, that the poignancy of the father/son narrative gets completely overshadowed. The Doctor interprets events incorrectly over and over again, which is an approach that appears to good effect in a number of other stories but is mostly just annoying here. The usually delightful Ponds are reduced to yet another silly love triangle, this time with the mysterious Siren: Rory spends a significant amount of time being spellbound by her beauty, leading to extremely tiresome jealousy on Amy’s part. The Siren herself is sort of a fragmented version of the sexy nurse cliché; she spends part of the episode nurturing sick and injured pirates, and the rest of it trying to sensually lure men to their deaths, or at least so it seems. Nothing makes me quite as angry as Ursula the paving slab in “Love and Monsters,” but this episode probably spends a larger amount of time on sexist nonsense than any other in the reboot.

           There are some nice pieces of continuity here with the rest of the season; I like that a season in which magic eye patches are a major plot point has a pirate episode in it, and the episode provides one of several installments in the season’s thematic focus on the inseparability of parents and their children. Otherwise, though, this is an awfully pointless episode. C-

[justanothercrazyfangirl]

The Tree

The Tree

I regularly went to the tree, to look back on my past, to search through my memeories, to escape from the world for just a short while. It wasn’t until a miserable rainy winter day, where I had the whole day to myself, where I came across one particually significant memory that I hadn’t watched before, a memory I avoided at all cost. My emotions were very jumbled when recapping my own memories, they felt so real, but they were far in the past. I could feel the happieness and excitement inside of me, as well as the pain and sadness, I could see and feel all things around me as if it was the first time witnessing it, I could taste and smell the air like I was back there all over again, my senses were enhanced more then usual so I could feel the whole extent of my experiences, so at times it almost felt too real, those were the times I would need to use my emergency exit button, but I didn’t use it often.

The dreaded memory I had chosen to finally go and visit took place on may 10th, 2015. It was the day I became famous, this was only the beginning though, the whole memory went for many years. It was lots of luck really, It’s certainly not common for a 15 year old girl to get so famous, and all it took was one music video. Within 24 hours the video had gone viral. Within months I had already been signed, playing at concerts, modelling, releasing more music and becoming more and more famous by the minute, within 1 year I became one of the top artists in the world, I had released several albums, had millions of fans and followers and the attention of a large percentage of the world.

As I was recapping through this memory I could feel all the emotion I had back then, I could hear the crowds screams, the tears when people got to meet me, all the stories I had been told, all the big and little things I had experienced, all the emotion from these past events all came at once like a catastrophic tsunami. It has died down a little bit now it has been a few years, that doesn’t mean im not famous of course, I'm still unable to leave my house without being swarmed with fans and paparazzi. I can handle it a lot better these days compared to when I was only 15, but it sure would be nice to be able to live a normal life again but then again what is “normal” anymore. From a young age singing had been my passion, singing in the shower, in the kitchen, for my family, and the attention I got from it was mesmerising. Having grown up influenced by the gorgeous singers of my time, your only options were perfect or nothing, that was until I came along of course. I remarked the whole world of music and modelling, having been someone who wears baggy, ill fitting clothes, who “dresses like a boy” as some reporters said, who doesn’t have your typical stick figure, model body, it was something the world couldn’t grasp at first, it caused lots of controversy between everyone really, but I certainly caught peoples attention. I was new and fresh and after a while I was the new ‘normal’. There many battles that I had to fight throughout my journey to fame, to modelling and of course the dreaded battle with myself. Mental health has always been apart of my life. Since a very young age I have always suffered from anxiety and as I got older it got worse and worse until I was on medication for it, but it never really helped. The older I became the more self conscious I grew, therefore becoming more and more closed of, to my family, friends and then myself, this closure pushed me into having what the doctors told me was “depression”, such a serious word for what I thought wasn’t even serious, but in reality it was very serious. For years I took part in the battle with my own head, some days were worse then others, where I was unable to feel anything, not even sadness, just nothing. Other days were good, where I would be in a good mood and an actual be a fun person to be around, over time those days started to become a rare occurance. The darkness begain to consume me like how a snake consumes it's prey, taking me further and further away until there wasn't much left.

At this stage I knew what was coming in the memory, I had lived this before and this was a memory that would be branded into my mind for many years to come, I knew the outcome, even if it wasn't the possible outcome it could have been, it still scared me in more ways then one, the thought of how easily it could have been so different, how quickly it could have ended.

The night was approaching rapidly as I was still surfing through the same memory, because it was the duration of a few years it took some time to watch the entire thing even if it is majorly sped up.

It was August 3rd, 2019, it happened to be my birthday, everyone around me was so happy but for some reason it was the least happiest day of my life, I tried to stop the thoughts that were taking over my body, they were just too strong for me to handle, the constant screaming of the words in my side my head... "your worthless" "no one cares for you" "the world would be better off without you" "end it all". Those words were so much more then just words, the emotional and physical pain they brought me was unbarebale, like nails on a chalk board but 10 times louder and right in the back of your mind. I can't believe it was my birthday, the one day I should have been happy was the day I finally surrended to the screaming words inside my brain, it used to be only my mind hurting me, my heart was the thing that kept me going but my heart couldn't carry the weight of my mind any longer, it gave up like I had done long ago.

The emotions were taking over my memory at this stage, I could feel the shivers running down my spine as they did those years ago, being able to see my own thoughts, the horrible thoughts in my own brain that I somehow managed to think for myself was the most emotional thing I've ever experienced. The emergency button was looking really nice at this point but I knew, to move on with my life I needed to face this memory just one time and that would be it.

After being out all day for my birthday I was absolutely exhausted, I got Brandon (my body gaurd) to take me home around 10pm after being out for dinner, when we got home I told him he should take the night off and I'll see him in the morimg, little did he know I had no intention of seeing him in the morning. I walked through the door of my home, but even though I lived there it didn't feel like my home any more, no where did, I didn't belong here anymore. I put my bags on the coffee table and proceeded to the kitchen, it was a beautiful night outside, the full moon illuminated the entire house, especially the kitchen because of the floor to roof windows, the light reflected all the utensils in the kitchen, creating an array of stunning light spots around the room, unfortunately I was unable to appreciate the beauty around me, all I could see and feel was the darkness, I went upstairs and changed my clothes, I found one of my old shirts, it was my favourite when I was younger for so many years, it had a lot of meaning to me, I put it on along with some old trackies and went back downstairs to the kitchen. I walked through and stopped in the middle, I could feel a coldness creep over my shoulders, down my back, up my neck then into my head, at this point tears were streaming down my face like an endless river, but that was wrong it was soon to come to a dreadful end. I fell to the floor, my legs went numb and I couldn't stand any longer, I looked up to the bench, there was a particular utensil that caught my eye, I gained the feeling to stand up, I walked over to the bench and picked it up, it was cold with the night air and as sharp as a sword used in an ancient war, as I picked it up the blood through my body was pulsing as fast and hard as ever, this was the only option I could see, the only way I could see myself gain happiness, the esacpe I needed and wanted. As I brought the blade closer to my body the darker and darker my thoughts became until there was nothing, my thought process had stopped, it would now it would all be over. The warmth of my blood ran down my arm, onto my hand then to my finger tips, slowing dripping on the floor, it would soon be over, I then felt a burst inside me, I had no idea what it was but it made me jump and I dropped the knife, I took a few steps back out of shock, I didn't know what was happening to me.

As I watched this memory there were tears once again running down my face, not nessacarily sad tears but tears of relief, myself in the memory didn't know what was happening, but future me did, it was my heart, it's always my heart, it had been my saviour before and it once again came to my rescue, the darkness inside of me was telling me to give up but the spark inside my heart was telling me to fight this battle and try one more time.

As I sat inside the tree, emotions were over whelming me, I didn't know whether to feel sad, happy, disappointed or all of it, I don't know how I managed to get myself to such a disgraceful state of mind, where I thought my only option was to leave my life behind, but how I was wrong. Out of all the different forms of conflict, physical and emotional and all the rest, the conflict with yourself and your own mind is one of the biggest battles you will ever face, but anything is possible and if you have faith you can overcome anything.

[airoasis]

Having problem with Lack of Inspiration, Low Energy or Despair? This may be your answer.

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/realestatecoaching/2018/05/22/revolutionary-new-treatment-makes-you-smarter-beautiful-effective-sleep.mp3

What if you knew for sure that something we all pretty much ignore all the time, that we take for granted, could make all the difference in your productivity, your profitability and the speed in which you meet or exceed your goals? I wanted to get find out just how important sleep is, not just from a ‘yea, duh, of course we all need more sleep’, aspect, but with some real research behind it, so we could help all of our clients with this as well as our podcast listeners!

Mathew Walker, Ph.D., and his book Why We Sleep offered both an amazing and enlightening read. Humans are not actually sleeping the way nature intended. In fact, I love how he explains this so succinctly:

· “Scientists have discovered a revolutionary new treatment that makes you live longer. It enhances your memory and makes you more creative. It makes you look more attractive. It keeps you slim and lowers food cravings. It protects you from cancer and dementia. It wards off colds and the flu. It lowers your risk of heart attacks and stroke, not to mention diabetes. You’ll even feel happier, less depressed, and less anxious. Are you interested?” (Yes, it’s sleep!) (p. 107)

That’s right, SLEEP is the ‘revolutionary new treatment’! How many agents, brokers, salespeople who you know (and it may be YOU), go around saying things like, “I’ll sleep when I’m dead… I don’t need more than 5 or 6 hours a night!” It’s almost a badge of honor amongst the most successful among us.

I’ll never forget a closing I went to (in the Eastern half of the country, you attend ‘round table closings’ where everyone is there; you, your client, the other agent, their client, title / closing agent and sometimes even the loan officer). At this closing, I remember that the other agent came blustering in, 15 minutes late, with her hair disheveled, her file folder all messed up and her shirt un-tucked like she just got out of the bathroom or something. Her client looked at her with a bit of annoyance on his face, and she made it worse by saying, “I’m so sorry I’m late guys, I had to stop for lunch on the way – I haven’t eaten in a couple days or slept for a while, I’ve been sooo busy!”

Now I’m sure in her mind this was supposed to reinforce that she was professional, with lots of happy clients, but that’s not how it came off. I thought to myself, “I wonder if I sound like this sometimes too…after all, we do order a pizza after a long day of chasing deals, I’m at least 10 pounds overweight and I certainly don’t follow any sort of sleep regimen!”

In fact, the agent I was referring to actually was and still is a great broker, who actually DOES have happy clients and a great reputation, but I wonder about the toll that the lifestyle has had on her, as well as many of you…

All this leads me to share with you some facts from Dr. Mathew Walker’s book, Why We Sleep. The facts he discovered through his research effect nearly every one of you reading this, so check this out:

· Studies have shown that mortality from heart disease increased between 37-60+% when napping was eliminated in healthy (p. 70)

· Sleep before learning refreshes our ability to initially make new memories. Sleep after learning effectively clicks the “save” button on the newly acquired information. (p. 108)

· Practice does not make perfect. It is practice, followed by a night of sleep, that leads to perfection. (p. 126)

This I can personally attest to on two levels. One, when I was a practicing classical musician, I can recall many, many times where a tough piece of music was worked out overnight through getting significant sleep time. It was so much easier and made more sense in the morning. I remember feeling like this was some sort of mental miracle at the time! Secondly, when learning real estate scripts for presentations, the same thing happened…it all seemed to ‘gel’ after a few nights of allowing my subconscious to noodle it out.

· Microsleep (complete blindness to the outside world for a few seconds) makes drowsy driving more dangerous than drug and alcohol induced driving, combined. (p. 134)

How many of you are wondering right now as you read that about dangerous driving….has this ever happened to you?

Even our kids are effected:

· Sleep deprivation dramatically works against the developmental phase of life when adolescents are most vulnerable to developing psychiatric disorders. (p. 152)

· Teachers work against their intentions (to have students retain learnings) when they end-load exams in the final days of a semester, thus encouraging short sleeping or all-nighters. Instead, there should be no “final” exams at a marking period, but rather more frequent, formative assessments(p. 156)

Dr. Walker lists

· Key factors that have powerfully changed how much and how well we sleep: (1) constant electric light, (2) regularized temperature, (3) caffeine, (4) alcohol, and (5) alarm clocks. (p. 265)

To Sleep or Not (p. 340)

Within the space of a mere hundred years, human beings have abandoned their biologically mandated need for adequate sleep—one that evolution spent 3,400,000 years perfecting in service of life-support functions. As a result, the decimation of sleep throughout industrialized nations is having a catastrophic impact on our health, our life expectancy, our safety, our productivity, and the education of our children.

This silent sleep loss epidemic is the greatest public health challenge we face in the twenty-first century in developed nations. If we wish to avoid the suffocating noose of sleep neglect, the premature death it inflicts, and the sickening health it invites, a radical shift in our personal, cultural, professional, and societal appreciation of sleep must occur.

I believe it is time for us to reclaim our right to a full night of sleep, without embarrassment or the damaging stigma of laziness. In doing so, we can be reunited with that most powerful elixir of wellness and vitality, dispensed through every conceivable biological pathway. Then we may remember what it feels like to be truly awake during the day, infused with the very deepest plentitude of being.

Dr. Mathew Walker’s ‘RULES’ if you will, can be summarized in his 12 Tips For Healthy Sleep.

Stick to a sleep schedule. Go to bed and wake up at the same time each day.

Exercise is great, but not too late in the day (no later than three hours before bedtime).

Avoid caffeine and nicotine.

Avoid alcoholic drinks before bed. (It erodes your REM sleep.)

Avoid large meals and beverages late at night.

Avoid medicines that delay or disrupt your sleep.

Don’t take naps after 3pm.

Relax before bed, such as reading or listening to music.

Take a hot bath before bed (to drop your body temperature the necessary 2-3 degrees F).

Dark bedroom, cool bedroom, gadget-free bedroom (anything that might distract your sleep).

Have the right sunlight exposure. Wake up with the sun or bright lights.

Don’t lie in bed awake (get up if you can’t sleep).

Now that you know, without a shadow of a doubt, that taking sleep seriously effects virtually everything you do, what will you change? What’s the cost of NOT changing?

Are you going to be one of those dorky sales people who thinks it’s impressive to brag about how much you suck at sleeping? That’s what you’re doing when you say ‘ah, I don’t need any rest, I’m a stud / studette!’ Dr. Walker’s study showed that you’re literally doing the opposite of what you think when you operate with no sleep. You think you’re pulling more out of life, when in fact, you’re quite literally headed faster for death.

“the shorter your sleep, the shorter your life. The leading causes of disease and death in developed nations—diseases that are crippling health-care systems, such as heart disease, obesity, dementia, diabetes, and cancer—all have recognized causal links to a lack of sleep.” ― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

Ultimately, you have a lifestyle choice to make. Follow the sleep rules and live longer, happier, more creatively and of course as a result help more people thus making you more profitable….or….keep on ignoring sleep. It’s up to you.