#mental illness be damned this boy knows how to write a poem!

[limpfisted]

also i saw the nice messages people sent me but im saving them…. theyre just for me….. im Evil Mode Now…….

[recurring-polynya]

Love your writing! Renruki prompt: Married!RenRuki get into a fight and Renji's acting all gloomy when he goes to work the next day. He accidentally~ shares his woes with Byakuya.

Ahhh, I am not good at writing fights!! I think I am on the record as to saying that I think Renji and Rukia only fight over stupid shit, and I had a heck of a time figuring out something for them to fight over. Anyway, I did my best, at very least, this contains a lot of Byakuya Being Byakuya.

💔   💔   💔

“I think it’s in here, sir,” Third Seat Yuki explained, leading Byakuya into the Officer’s Lounge. “On second thought, you wait out here, I’ll bring it.”

Sixth Seat Taniguchi was sprawled on the floor, groaning. Rikichi stepped over him, and looked around. Fifth Seat Kuchiki had his leg propped up on a table, a bag of ice on his knee. Seventh Seat Shirogane and Fourth Seat Kuchiki were leaning against each other on the couch, snoring in unison. Rikichi picked his way toward the couch and poked Shirogane in the arm. “Hey! Hey, Shirogane! What happened to the training reports on the first-years?”

“Eh?” Shirogane asked, sitting up. “Training reports, right.” She shoved Kuchiki to one side, and extracted a thick binder, bristling with colored tabs from the depths of the couch. It was barely in Yuki’s hand before she was slumped against Kuchiki again.

“Found it!” Rikichi announced cheerfully, waving the binder and picking his way carefully back out.

“What… happened?” Byakuya asked gingerly. “It is not usually like this, is it?”

“Oh, no, sir,” Rikichi replied. “There was sparring after morning drills.”

“Everyone must have had an excess of enthusiasm, to have worn each other out so,” Byakuya observed. He was a bit sorry to have missed it. A spirited affray sounded much more entertaining than the interminable breakfast meeting with Lord Noragashi he had endured.

“Er, not exactly,” Rikichi excused, rubbing the back of his neck. “When I said ‘sparring’, what I meant was, ‘Vice-Captain made everyone fight him.’ He was in a bit of a mood this morning.”

“I... see,” Byakuya drew out. It had been quite some time since Abarai had felt the need to pummel his way through the top ranks. Byakuya had hoped it was a sign that the top officers were improving, but apparently, it had just been the recent improvement in his lieutenant’s disposition. Disappointing. “Any indication as to what precipitated this sudden bout of pugnacity?”

Rikichi paused and glanced around. “I think he might have had a tiff with the missus,” he said, voice barely above a whisper.

Byakuya arched an eyebrow.

💔   💔   💔

Byakuya pretended to be deeply engaged by the newest edition of the Standards for Disposition of Historically Significant Hauntings while taking occasionally surreptitious glances at his adjutant. He needn’t have bothered with the covertness, Abarai was clearly too tightly wrapped up in his own misery to have any sort of situational awareness.

The thunderstorm of ire that had possessed the man earlier had passed, leaving behind a drizzle of gloomy resignation. Abarai had dragged his brush half-heartedly across his paperwork for a while, but now all he could manage was to stare out the window listlessly.

Byakuya was not a nosy man and clearly, this was none of his business. In fact, he ought to chide his subordinate for this childlike behavior. However, Byakuya hesitated. This could very well be pertinent to his sister’s happiness. Now that Rukia no longer resided with him, how was he to know her daily mood, her overall humor? If there had been a row, surely Abarai was the one at fault. It was practically Byakuya’s duty as a brother to discern what had passed between them.

“Lieutenant,” he said sternly.

Renji seemed to come to himself suddenly, and straightened in his seat. “Yessir!”

“You seem out of sorts this morning.”

Abarai swallowed. “Sorry, sir! I don’t… I’ll do better, sir!”

Byakuya folded his hands. “Obviously, I expect only the strictest of professionalism from you, as always, Lieutenant, but you know that I care for your well-being. We are family now. If you have a problem you wish to talk through, you know that I am an excellent listener.”

Abarai’s face was overcome with what was obviously great emotion at this generosity. “Er… it’s nothing, sir. Really.” He grabbed his brush and began writing with great vigor.

Curses. That hadn’t worked at all. “Rukia is in good health, I trust? All is proceeding accordingly?” Perhaps there had been a disagreement regarding their pending offspring. Perhaps Abarai had suggested a ridiculous given name, which Rukia, in her wisdom, had rejected.

Abarai’s eyebrows furrowed. “Uh, yeah. Same as, uh, yesterday, when you asked.”

“You seemed distressed. I wondered if perhaps she had fallen ill.”

“Oh, no, nothin’ like that. She’s actually been feelin’ a little better lately.” He fiddled with his brush and looked back down at his paperwork for a moment. “Look, sir, can I ask your opinion on something?”

“Of course,” Byakuya replied, carefully keeping his face in its usual, disinterested mien, despite the fact that he was, in fact, very interested.

Abarai nodded slowly. “Okay, so, imagine there’s two people, see, a boy and a girl, kids like.”

“I can imagine it.”

“And they grow up together and they fall in love, right? But it’s hard for them to tell each other that, because they’ve been friends a long time. And they drift apart, it’s not looking good for either of them, but then the boy writes the girl a poem. It’s not a very good poem, it’s about how tall he’s gotten, not a great call on his part, but the girl goes for it, and she writes this lucky bastard a poem back.”

Byakuya nodded slowly. As usual, Abarai’s storytelling was circuitous and only dubiously coherent. Byakuya was familiar with the basics of Rukia and Renji’s courtship, although he hadn’t known poetry had played such a key role. He found that rather charming, actually.

“It works out,” Abarai continued on, “and they get married. Now, this woman is basically perfect. She’s beautiful, loyal, loving, the whole package. On the other hand, the guy is a real piece of work. He clearly does not deserve her.”

“I am following,” Byakuya nodded.

“So he’s a huge jerk, he doesn’t know what he’s got, and he cheats on her.”

Wait, what? “Excuse me?” Byakuya echoed.

“It doesn’t make any sense, but that’s what you get for marrying a guy who writes you a poem, I guess. He’s such a scumbag, in fact, that he thinks she’s cheating on him, too, just because she never calls him on this really obvious affair, and that’s how the slimeball mind works, I ‘spose.”

Byakuya tried to perform some mental math. Abarai had only been married to his sister for five months. How had he possibly had time to accomplish all this? Byakuya was beginning to think this was not actually an autobiographical story, in which case why was he telling it?

Abarai was waving his hands around enthusiastically at this point. “So he spies on her, trying to catch him in the act, and get this-- all he catches her doing is writing a poem about how she hopes he’s staying safe while gallivanting around with this other lady! I just bet he felt bad!”

All of this was beginning to sound vaguely familiar. Byakuya squeezed his eyes shut, trying to place this story in its proper context.

“Now, don’t get me wrong, this guy is a sleaze. I am not defending this guy in any way. But it’s not really about him, see? It’s about the lady, and the purity of her love for him--”

Byakuya gripped his head. “Abarai, this is just the plot of Izutsu, isn’t it? The noh play?”

“Oh, you’ve seen it?” Abarai asked. “We went on Wednesday, and I thought we both enjoyed it, but then yesterday, Rukia asked my opinion on it, and I gave it to her, and, uh, a big fight happened.”

“Of course I have seen it, it is one of the classical noh dramas! And Ariwara no Narihira is one of the Six Poetic Genius, he is not ‘a sleaze.’” Byakuya paused. “Rukia had strong opinions on it?”

“The strongest of opinions. She said the lady was dumb for pining over a shi-- poet, and that someone should have konsoued her in the first act. And I think she just really missed the point, I mean, it’s noh, it’s not like anyone’s here for a good time, how are you supposed to have any heartfelt songs about suffering in love if you ain’t got any suffering, am I right?”

Although one would never be able to tell from his facial expression, Byakuya found this entire shaggy dog story interesting on a number of levels. For one, every time he had ever taken Rukia to noh and asked her opinion of it, she had replied that the costumes had been very beautiful or that the dancers had been very skilled. She had never once expressed an opinion on the content. Reason number two was that Hisana had very strong opinions on the content of noh dramas. In fact, Hisana used to refer to Izutsu as the ‘Never Trust a Poet’ play. Byakuya very distinctly remembered her opining that “the husband was bad and he should feel bad; he should be the one who has to come back and haunt the damn well.” Byakuya eventually came to realize that Hisana’s complaints were primarily a ruse for the purpose of getting him riled up, and that the best way of short-circuiting them was merely to start kissing her and then to get riled up in a different way. He would give up his sword before he shared that piece of information with Abarai. The third interesting piece of information, though…

“I would not have expected you to take theater criticism so personally, Lieutenant,” Byakuya observed mildly.

Renji opened his mouth and then closed it again. “It’s just a dumb play,” he muttered.

Byakuya minutely adjusted the position of a paper on his desk. “Art is a reflection of our strongest emotions and a chance to explore the boundaries of concepts like love and forgiveness. It can be quite disconcerting to find yourself on the opposite side of a philosophical divide from the one person in your life whose opinions on romantic love are actually pertinent to you.”

“I just don’t understand why she’s mad at me!” Abarai lamented, throwing up his hands. “I liked the play, she’s one who said it was dumb. I don’t see how you can get mad at someone for liking a thing.”

Byakuya sighed, and reminded himself for the millionth time that Abarai had spent his formative years literally headbutting the humanoid mountain goats of the Eleventh instead of metaphorically headbutting an equally stubborn classical literature tutor. “Clearly, you find ongoing devotion in the face of obstacles to be an admirable quality, and were moved by the wife’s pining, which is, broadly speaking, the main theme of the play. However, consider the perspective of the one who is pined after, presented in this piece as a flawed idol, a cause of agony and suffering so severe that it persists past the confines of mortal existence.”

“Oh,” replied Abarai. There was a long pause. “Oh.” His face transitioned through a number of contortions, but not further words came forth.

Byakuya picked up the Standards for Disposition of Historically Significant Hauntings again, and pretended to flip through it. “Do you need to take an early lunch break today, Lieutenant?”

“Um, ah…” Abarai looked at his calendar. “I got Advanced Hakuda Skills with the upper seats at 11.”

“I don’t think they’re up for it today,” Byakuya noted dryly. “Go ahead.”

Abarai scrammed.

[purplesurveys]

1068

What internet browser do you use?  Chrome. It’s what I’m used to, but I also think it looks the cleanest among the other available browsers.

What brand water do you drink? (Smart Water, Dasani, etc) I never reach for imported water brands like Evian because what is the point?? The local bottled water brands we have like Summit and Absolute work fine and already do a great job of quenching my thirst.

Do you have a job? Yes and I go back tomorrow and I’m cringing thinking about it. I love my job, but I wish it wasn’t so mercilessly hectic for 9 straight hours, 5 days a week. I like to think that I was hired right at the start of all the simultaneous Christmas campaigns of our clients which is why everything seemed busy; so I’m hoping the workload will start to die down a little bit now that all the holidays are over.

Are you full-time or part-time? Full-time.

Are you watching TV right now?  Nope. I was watching on YouTube earlier, but I decided to focus on this.

Or are you listening to music? No. It’s silent here in the living room, just the way I want it to currently be.

Would you go to jail for 3 years for $1,000,000? I don’t think that’s enough money for a dare that big.

When's your birthday?  April 21st.

Thoughts on kids?  I’m a lot less idealistic about them now. I used to want kids with my only formula being “I’ll do the exact opposite of what my mom did with me.” but I realized it’s so much more complicated than that. Raising a kid/kids is a whole damn job in itself and I see that with how my cousins of the same age, but from different families, have been acting. My cousins from one family are really spoiled and entitled, and I can’t last in a room with them for more than a minute; but my cousins in another family are so ridiculously well-behaved I can’t even start to fathom how respectful and kind they are. That observation has scared me away from kids in the meantime, because I still have to figure out how to not fuck such a responsibility up.

Worst punishment you've ever received by your parents?  The worst thing they ever did was take away my laptop privileges for an indefinite period when I was 11, when they caught me being a dumbass on social media and cursing all over the place. It’s a reasonable punishment per se, but that was also a time when the internet was starting to become a resource and requirement for homework and school projects; so my parents didn’t know how many things I failed to submit because they didn’t allow me on the internet.

Are you the type who is completely against abortion? I am pro-choice and pro-pregnant people should be allowed to make decisions about their own bodies. I don’t like the idea of abortion, but I’ve always believed people should have access to resources to learn more about it, to a healthy culture that embraces it as an option, and to actual facilities that will enable them to receive one if the need be.

Have you ever read a book that actually changed your outlook on life? No, I don’t think so. Not yet at least.

Does your favorite flower hold any meaning to you? Peonies don’t mean anything in particular. I just think they look pretty.

What would you do if your favorite animal became endangered?  I can’t imagine dogs ever getting endangered, but hypothetically I’d be crushed. I’d do the same thing I would do with other endangered animals, which is to spread the word about their situation and what can be done to save them from getting even fewer in number.

Have you ever owned an expensive eyeshadow palette?  No. I never cared for makeup. I’m turning 23 and still don’t feel the need to invest in it...should I be worried?

Do you own a tripod for your camera? We used to, but I have not seen it in a long time.

Are your nails always painted?  They never are.

What's one thing you've had a toxic reaction to? A breakup. < This was true for me too, at least for a time. Another one would be the barbecue that my uncle bought for a family gathering once that was definitely contaminated with something...shit gave me food poisoning at 3 AM and made me think my half-naked self was going to die right then and there in the bathroom.

Which holiday is your favorite to decorate for?  We only ever decorate for Christmas, so I guess it wins by default.

Were you popular in school? By the second half of high school I was hanging out with the popular groups and getting invited to popular kid things, but I never wanted to claim to be popular myself. I still liked letting my friends take the spotlight.

Are there any foods that often give you heartburn or indigestion?  Is there something you intend to buy in the near future?  Is anyone in your family artistically talented? What about musically? What cute behaviors or characteristics does/do your pet(s) have?  What's the screensaver on your computer?  Crossing these out as I believe this survey is a shuffle of questions from many different surveys...? and I have already answered these five in a past survey I recently finished.

What’s the sexiest thing about a guy? I don’t really care for guys, I think... I still haven’t made up my mind about them yet, but all I know is I definitely have not felt seriously attracted to any irl man my whole life.

What’s the sexiest thing about a girl?  THIGHS

Who were you with at midnight on January 1, 2021?  Who was the last person to send you a message on social media?  ^ What qualities does this person have, that you appreciate? What was the last thing that caused you to scowl, or frown?  Have you smiled at any point during the last hour?  What was the last thing you consulted Google for? So, did anyone send you a "Happy New Year" message when midnight hit? When was the last time you were on a carousel?  What is the closest you have ever been to an elephant? Have you ever played Halo?  Have you ever read a National Geographic magazine?  When was the last time you had a pillow fight?  Name somebody who you think deserves more respect: In your own words, define what the word sexy means.  What is the most popular tourist attraction where you live?  Without looking - do you know what brand your underwear is? Are you any good at volleyball?  Have you ever had a water balloon fight?  Same situation as above. What an interesting order of questions, hehe. Still having fun with this though!

Do you think some babies are ugly?  Newborns are super wrinkly and make the strangest facial expressions from time to time. That won’t stop me from cooing at them, though.

Don’t you miss Chuck E. Cheese? I’ve never been there. Is it like a standard birthday party events place for kids?

Do you think Fall Out Boy is gonna be a classic band, like Queen or AC/DC? In time, maybe. 

Do you love stuff-crusted pizza?  Yessssss.

Do you apply lotion after you bathe? I don’t, but I should probably pick it up as a habit seeing how dry my skin can get.

What’s your favorite color? Pastel pink. < Same!

Who did you have your most amazing kiss with? Gabie.

Has a YouTube video of yours ever gotten over 10,000 views? I’ve never even posted a video on YouTube.

Would you ever get a tattoo on your collar bone? Not my spot of choice, so maybe not.

Do you like Robert Frost poems?  I’m only familiar with one and I’m having a little trouble remembering it rn haha.

Do you go to church every Sunday?  We used to go to church, yeah; back when it was okay to. Our local church has allowed face-to-face masses again (but with very limited attendees) but my mom has preferred for us to stay home, so for the last few months we’ve been watching livestreams of Sunday mass every week.

Have you ever been in a relationship on-and-off for more than a year?  I would say Gab and I were on-and-off, but it went on a lot longer than a year. The total time would amount to six years.

If you had to get famous for one of the following, which would you choose: music, acting, writing, modeling? Writing. Or modeling, if I could only pull it off.

What do you think of girls with huge boobs that don’t wear bras in public? I seriously don’t care. I skip out on bras all the time because I honestly personally don’t need them, and everyone should be allowed to feel and act the same way.

What is the last thing you tried on in a store? I never do this. Even before Covid, I’ve felt iffy about trying clothes that many others have already put on and were probably not washed 100% well. I’d rather get something, try it on at home, decide if it’s a good fit or not, and then return it ASAP if it ends up being the latter.

Is sleeping naked more comfortable than in clothes?  My mom doesn’t knock so I’ve always been scared to try sleeping naked (and she also throws a fit if she catches me locking my door, which is like - then why did you even buy a doorknob with a lock??), but I definitely see the appeal.

Have you ever had a dream in which you were making out, or more, with someone?  Yes for the more part lmao, but I don’t know if I’ve ever made out in a dream.

Do you feel as though you have a good memory, or are you forgetful at times? Do you feel that your short-term memory or long-term memory is better? Have you ever had a concussion or some other sort of brain injury before?  Do you have any sort of mental illnesses or disorders? What do they involve?  What’s the longest that your hair has ever been? How about the shortest? When is the last time that you got it cut? What are some ways that you style your hair? Do you use any sorts of products in it?  Who was the last person to truly get on your nerves? What do you think caused you to feel that way? 

Do you recycle? Is this through choice or do you live somewhere where it’s compulsory? Through choice. Waste management is sadly not much of a priority here, if at all.

Do you prefer plain, carbonated, or flavored water? Do you think you drink enough water throughout the day?  I have never tried the latter two. Water has always been tasteless and plain to me, and I never understood the point of customizing something that’s meant to be tasteless and uncarbonated. There are days where I’m able to have several glasses and other days where I unconsciously skip out on water until dinner.

Have you ever needed to call the police, ambulance, or fire department? Fortunately I’ve never had to call any of these.

When was the last time you visited the library? What was the purpose of your visit? I wasssssss maybe having something printed? If it wasn’t that, I was probably returning a book.

Do you see a lot of wild animals where you live? Are any of them dangerous? None of that here, especially since I live in the city. A sighting of a wild animal outside of a zoo or eco-park would definitely make national news, like that time an ostrich was seen running around a private village many months ago.

Aside from when you were born, have you ever had to stay the night in the hospital? Yep, from a dengue scare that turned out to be just a simple low platelet count.

Have you ever experienced a panic attack?  Yes, but they are extremely rare. The last time I had one was maybe two or three years ago. Unfortunately I think all my panic attacks were caused by and involved my mom.

Would you ever want to go into the medical profession? Was your answer different pre-COVID?  For a time, when I was hating journalism in college, I was daydreaming about the idea of shifting to biology and making the drastic swerve to med school. But I knew a love of memorizing and biology topics won’t be enough for me to be successful in the medical field, so I quickly shot the idea down.

Where you live, are people paying attention to whatever restrictions are in place to help control COVID? Many? People are definitely following and have been obedient with protocol in different places. Some cities are also still strict with maintaining their checkpoints and banning tourists from entering their area just yet. It’s the government that hasn’t really been making the effort to put measures to contain the virus.

Do you get a real or artificial Christmas tree?  Artificial. I don’t know if getting real trees for Christmas trees is a thing here.

What’s your favourite type/flavor of popcorn?  Cheddar cheese.

Do you drink oat milk? Nopes. I’d like to try it just to say that I have (and I might end up loving it too), but I have yet to look up what foods or drinks it works best with.

Do you love thrifting?  Sure, sometimes I get good finds from it.

Do you consider using only lowercase letters your aesthetic?  Sometimes I’ll use it in a Powerpoint or a tweet, but I wouldn’t say it’s an aesthetic that defines me as a person.

Do you say “mood?”  Too much.

Do you own fairy lights?  No. I wanted those before, but I’m not so sure if I still do now.

Do you own glass straws because the metal ones kind of gross you out because you can’t tell if they are clean or not? I don’t own glass straws. Most places have changed their cups into a design that you can sip directly from, anyway.

Have you made a TikTok? No, don’t care.

Do you own airpods?  No, but would like a pair.

Are you afraid of Mercury in retrograde? I really don’t care.

Do you make life choices based on astrology?  No, I don’t believe in it. It scares me how much some people rely on it and use it as an actual moral compass or judgment system. It doesn’t harm anyone so I never actively speak out against astrology, but it scares me nonetheless.

How many pairs of converse shoes do you own?  One pair. I used to own another one, but my mom threw it out several years ago.

Number of jeans in your closet:  I would say like 10-12.

What accent do you have?  Philippine English/Americanized Filipino, I guess.

Do you have a big butt? I’d say it’s decently-sized.

Do you count how long you and your gf/bf have been together? Yeah, before.

Have you graduated?  Both high school and college, yup.

Rihanna or Lady GaGa?  I like Rihanna’s music more, but I love Gaga’s outfits, concepts, and stage presence more. Do you use fake eyelashes?  No. I had to use them twice, but I’d never seek them out on my own.

Which was the last book that really captivated you? It’s been a while since I encountered a book like this.

What makeup brands do you use?  I don’t use makeup.

[eldritchsurveys]

641.

Would you convert to a different religion if your fiancé/fiancée was of a different faith? >> Fortunately, this was never an issue. Even if she did have a religion, there’s no obligation for me to share it. I tend to be the one interested in religions (although the jury’s still out on whether I’d ever actually feel comfortable adopting one).

The world is ending, and you can save one group of five people: who would be the five people that you save? >> First of all, if the “world is ending”, then I do not want to be stuck as one of the six humans left to deal with the aftermath and trying to survive in an inhospitable landscape. Also, this is just way too implausible a situation for me to take seriously.

Is happiness a delusion? Is happiness only real when shared? Why or why not? >>The idealisation of happiness is a bit delusional, I guess, but it’s a shared, social delusion -- just look at all the “wellness” “self-help” “self-care [the “buy this thing” kind, not the real, practical kind]” nonsense being peddled to us on a daily basis. Any feeling that is not happy-cheery forced positivity is aberrant and pathological and has to be “fixed”. That’s not a healthy way to think, and I hate that we’re all made to feel that way about perfectly normal ass emotions. I don’t know if happiness is only real when shared. I’ve always had someone(s) Inworld to share my happinesses (and everything else) with, so I can’t speak as to what it’d be like if I didn’t.

What would the cover of your biography (presumably written by somebody else who never knew you, postmortem) look like? >> I... really have no idea.

Write about a really good or creative Tumblr URL that you see frequently on your dashboard. >> inflagrante-delicatessen is a funny one.

If swear words were not things like “shit” and “fuck” what would they be otherwise? >> That’s, like, impossible for me to predict.

Write a very vivid description of what is/would have been your most perfect way to lose your virginity. What is your exact definition of ‘losing your virginity’? Also: will you/would you have liked to save your virginity for marriage? Why or why not? >> I don’t really care about this, you know? It’s not like if my first experience was earth-shattering, it would have somehow made up for all the horrible experiences I had later. I don’t have a definition for “losing one’s virginity” because that’s not a phrase I like to use. I don’t like making a point of dividing people’s experiences into “before sex” and “after sex” to begin with, but also, just focusing on a certain kind of sexual act as a “goal” to reach or whatever is... kind of weird to me. The whole shit is just weird the more I think about it.

Write a six-word fortune cookie. >> I’d rather not.

Why do you think eyebrows exist? >> I don’t have a hypothesis about this, but I’m sure there’s some educated theories out there if I was ever curious (right now, I am not).

If you could only have one contact on your phone, who would it be? >> Sparrow is the only person whose phone number I actually use on a regular basis, so, her.

Your bucket list is limited to three items. >> I don’t have a bucket list, period.

Do you wake up first or do you open your eyes first? >> I assume that I wake up first, and then open my eyes? But maybe it’s the other way around, what do I know.

Write a love/thank you/appreciation letter to someone you take for granted. >> No.

What makes you feel infinitely sexy? >> Can Calah makes me feel sexy. King Crimson makes me feel sexy. Sexiness isn’t something I feel outworld.

Make a video and talk about something for two minutes. Anything. And don’t edit out any parts of it. >> Uh, no.

Write a poem you’d stick on a refrigerator. >> Also no.

Are you afraid of aging? Why? >> I’m not afraid of ageing. I actually look forward to seeing what the rest of my life will bring, especially internally. What I am afraid of is infirmity, degenerative illness, that sort of thing. I’m afraid of losing my personal quality of life. (I know there’s a lot to unpack in regarding one’s quality of life as diminished if one develops a physical disability or something, because people live full lives with those things all the time. But I cannot predict how a change of that magnitude would affect me, personally, and I worry that I will not be able to adapt.)

Describe one time you basically thought you were the shit, when your self-confidence was soaring through the roof. This is meant to be a positive thing. >> Hm. I can’t remember a time like that right now.

If there was one person you could get drunk with and kiss and then later blame it on alcohol, who would it be? >> I would not do that.

Does perfection exist? If the word perfection did not exist, what word would be in its place? What would perfection mean instead? >> I guess the concept exists, at least. I don’t know if it’s something I can measure and perceive.

The next book you see that has over 300 pages, open up to page 136. Find a sentence you like, copy it down, and then write about it. >> I don’t feel like getting up to grab a book.

Who makes you laugh the most? >> ---

What is one thing that you are proud of, that you think lacks praise/lacks appreciation from the people around you? It could be a simple thing; it could be a secret thing. >> I don’t really seek appreciation from the people around me, so I don’t know.

If you could accuse somebody of being fake/a bitch and not suffer any repercussions, who would you accuse, and how would you do it? >> I’d really rather not. What even would be the point?

What is the funniest one-liner Tumblr text post you’ve ever read? >> Dude, there are so many funny ass posts on this website. I collect them at @officialaynrand.

Rewrite a verse of lyrics from your favorite song. They have to sound good when you sing it out loud along to tune of the song. >> Nope. But I will say that my brain insists on hearing the “heavy metal broke my [heart]” line in Fall Out Boy’s Centuries as “heavy metal Pokémon” and even though I know the lyrics I still sing it like that because it just kills me every time.

If the SATs/grades did not exist, in what way should colleges/teachers evaluate applicants? >> I have no suggestions.

Do you feel at home in your home? Is home a place for you? A book? A thing? A person? What would you want your home to be? >> I feel at home in Xibalba. I feel at home in my room here in the apartment, too. But I guess I’d feel equally at home in any place as long as I have a room of my own, a controlled environment that belongs solely to me.

Write your own eulogy. >> “Mordred Shadow Lastname wishes to inform us, the gathered, that it is just as surprised by this turn of events as we are. Except it actually isn’t surprised, or anything else, because It’s too busy being dead. Surprisingly. The unbelievably-deceased would like to request that if someone asks how it died, it will haunt whoever dares to say something stupid like ‘natural causes’. Make up a good story or pass the mic to someone who will.” Dunno what else I’d put in a eulogy about myself. That’s not really for me to write, anyway. Funerals are for the living, they can write the damn thing.

What is something you felt like you deserved or should have belonged to you, but you never got? >> There is nothing I feel that way about.

Do you feel ‘connected to nature’? Do you frequent outside? Do you believe that a connection with the earth we live on is necessary in the first place? >> I mean... I love to be outdoors, but I also love to be in a server room. I feel the same sense of awe and connection in both settings. For me, there is no real difference between the organic states and the transmuted states of matter. It’s all matter, innit? I don’t believe that feeling connected to Earth is necessary. I believe it’s healthy, sure, and common, but I don’t believe it’s unhealthy to not have that connection, or to feel connected to something else instead. It’s possible that some future generation of Homo sapiens will be born on another planet. What happens to that supposedly-innate “connection to the Earth” then? (Will they feel connected to their home planet instead? Or, something else? Or, nothing?)

Your opinion on oral sex? >> I don’t have an opinion on it, exactly. Just a preference: I prefer not to give or receive it. That’s all.

If one TV show could be real, which one would you want it to be? Which one would screw our world over? >> That is a complex question with a lot of variables and I don’t think I feel like devoting mental energy on it right now.

How many kinds of love are there? >> I… don’t know? As many kinds as people can conceive, I imagine. Or maybe it’s all just one kind, with different expressions. *shrug*???

Which word needs to exist (or be used again)? >> I mean, if I thought a word should be used again, I’d just use it. That’s literally how it works. If it’s been phased out completely enough that no one remembers it and it’s not recorded anywhere, then I can’t want it back, because I’d have to know a thing used to exist in the first place in order to want it to exist again.

What is the absolute hardest thing about staying alive? >> This pesky nag called “death” that keeps asking, “are we there yet?!” from the backseat.

What is a book that has been recognized as ‘great literature’ that you dislike? Why? >> Oh, I don’t know. The only time I ever read “Literature(tm)” was in high school, so I don’t know how I’d feel about any of it now. I'm just not really interested in it.

What is one change that you would make/have made to your life that will make/has made it better? >> *shrug*

Is everything you do for yourself? Can you truly be selfless? >> No, not everything I do is solely for myself. I do things for others as well. But I don’t like doing things for others if doing so threatens my quality of life, survival, or mental health. I don’t think it’s possible for a human being to act without a single note of self-interest. I mean... isn’t the survival instinct an instinct of self-interest?

Are you the same person you were two and a half years ago? >> I’m not the same person I was a second ago. (I also am not the same person I was about... 5 or so years ago, but that’s a... different thing.)

Can you possibly conquer the labyrinth? >> What labyrinth? Jareth the Goblin King’s? I’d try my best to conquer it if only to get to dance in the ballroom scene with him.

As a hyper intelligent pan-dimensional being, what is the answer to the ultimate question, the life, the universe and everything? What is the ultimate question? >> The ultimate question is obviously “how the fuck does CatDog poop?”

[aspiringhorrorauthor]

Hey who wants to hear the miserable story about how I had to deal with loneliness this year? Feel free to scroll on I just need to write it down to, I suppose close the chapter on the story? Read if your curious, or maybe also need guidance, or just want to learn some tips on how to help someone dealing with it. This will be poorly structured it’s just... getting it off my chest I guess.

People talk sometimes about university students often struggling with loneliness, and often going overlooked because they’re not seen as ‘vulnerable’ as other populations. I mean, look! They’re in a city! They go out every night and piss off the locals! They can’t be lonely!

It started back in 2018 (yup, that far back), when my friends decided that it would be better for my mental health if I didn’t live with them. No lie, that was the actual fucking reason. I was heartbroken; I’ve missed out on a lot of typical “growing up! Yay!” Type things because of my mental health, trauma and bullying and the fact that “living with friends” was gonna be added to the list was fucking heart breaking. But I dealt with it, because I had no where else to turn. No one else to move in with. I cried for like 2 hours solid after they so sweetly told me they didn’t want to live with me because I have *anxiety*. Not even one of the quote unquote “””scary””” mental illnesses (which would have been a MAJOR dick move), just plain old anxiety attacks and hiding from people to calm down. I proceeded to have break downs every Wednesday for 3 months while searching for somewhere to live, bc it was always a stabbing reminder that I was so unwanted.

(They planned to move in with 2 other people so it’s not even like they were only searching for a flat to fit *just* them)

I study 300 miles away from home, literally the exact opposite part of the country. Despite not having many friends growing up I was never lonely because I had a great family who would always chase it away. Maybe I was lonely a bit at school, but I could always come home and my parents chased it away. It was recurrent, but not constant.

I got a place for the new academic year. Studio flat, great location, tiny and over priced to Hell but I was in a safe area which was great because *no one was looking out for me anymore*. I didn’t have flat mates to check I was alive everyday, no one to chat to when I got home. If I got sick, I was completely on my own. My next door neighbour is lovely, don’t get me wrong, but she’s a working professional, and I’m a second year student. Everyone else in studio flats are mature students, masters, phD students or working people. And me. I have so little in common with these people it’s tough to start a conversation with them.

My birthday is early in the academic year, so we didn’t celebrate it until about a month after. Half of my friends didn’t even bother, no card, no presents. Okay, fine, I’m not materialistic, but acknowledgement would have been nice I suppose. This is the only time they came around my flat, and they are the cake I baked to celebrate.

But they inexplicably started to just stop interacting with me. There were 5 of us, they’d pair up in lectures and only talk between themselves between lectures and left me sat quietly trying to speak to someone, ANYONE, because hello? I haven’t got FLATMATES. I talk to NO ONE outside of this “friendship” group. They don’t seem to care much, they just keep telling me how wonderful it must be to live in a studio.

They invited me round to celebrate another friend’s birthday at their shared flat. He gets presents from everyone, including the two that left me out. Their flat looks lived in, there’s board games out while I don’t have room for any of them in mine. They’ve got bean bags everywhere it looks so damn nice. “But your kitchen is bigger than ours!” Eve tried to tell me (an absolute LIE), but they don’t roll out of bed and immediately land in the kitchen. They don’t have to chose between watching tv, eating or living the flat any time they want to dry clothes bc there’s no room. I want to cry throughout the visit, I storm off once were done. I don’t know why. I know now.

Loneliness feels like a weight on your chest. It’s a double edged sword where both edges only cut you. You desperately seek interaction but it also upsets you. I wanted to hang out at their flat because I hadn’t hung out with them in nearly a month at this point, but when I got there I realised they hung out together every. Single. Night. While I cried alone in my room. It made everything so much worse. And they laughed it off.

They stopped posting in the group chat, they talked to me even less. Never invited me out, but there’s no way I could prove *they* went out so it was pointless complaining about it. I was meant to go to a concert with one of them, I reminded her about tickets an entire month before, offered to buy hers. She cancelled 5 hours beforehand. I went alone.

It was a Toyah concert. I fought back sobs in the opening song “Good morning universe”, because it repeatedly asks “how are you today?”. I was awful. I finally had it figured out. I was lonely, isolated, and I didn’t know what to do.

Before anyone gets too sad, the story only continues for 2 weeks past this concert.

1st November, they joke about how Blake, friend number 4, practically lives at their flat, and I get angry. Why does HE get to live there? Blake has flatmates, Blake’s not alone! I should be practically living there because there’s NOTHING in my flat but silence. The internet is on the fritz and I’ve yet to figure out the tv, I don’t even have background noise except the kettle! I storm off, vow to never interact with them again.

I go out for drinks with my neighbour for her birthday. She buys me a pint of coke bc I don’t drink. I hate coke, but I drink it all and chat with her friends. It was a great night.

That weekend I bake pumpkin cake and bread for knitting society, and calm down. I overreacted a bit surely. One more chance, that’s all I’ll give them. The cake and bread doesn’t all get eaten at the society so I bring some for them on the Monday.

Tuesday night is bonfire night. I sit in my flat wishing I could go out and see them rather than just hear them, but I don’t know where to go. I have no one to go with.

Wednesday im sat in lectures beside them, and a friend not in the group but still a friend comes over to chat. One of them excitedly tells her about how they went to a display last night “look at these photos I got of (friend in group)!” I ask if they went out last night, the phone is quickly put away, they ignore me. I ask again. The friend outside of the group is confused and leaves before the lecture starts. I spend 3 hours with loneliness ripping out my lungs, because how could they? They could’ve dropped me a message to say they were going and I could meet up, but they didn’t even do that? Why?

After the lectures finished I corner one of them. The first of my friends at university. The first person on my course I befriended. “Did you go out last night?” “Yes” “without me?” Another runs up “it was last minute it wasn’t planned!” Laughs it off. So I rush off. I don’t say good bye. That was it.

I went home and cried. Told my parents what happened. Cried down the phone to them. “It’s time to cut ties with them”. I know it is. It’s still hard.

So yeah. Miserable story. But any sad story should have a happy ending, right?

Yes.

The next day I told someone what had happened. She immediately called it bullshit and invited me to join her friends. They’re really nice. I like them.

I left the old group chat. No explanation, just ���I’m hanging out with X now. Laters” and I left. I wrote my frustrations and explanation in a shitty poem, called it shitty in the poem itself, but also said they didn’t deserve better. They didn’t deserve even that, so I didn’t send it. I think it was a very sexy decision of mine.

But most importantly, through the hardest points, most of my weekly socialisation every week came from the two societies im part of: my society (knitting) and the nerd society. 4 1/2 hours a week of socialising isn’t enough, surprisingly. But it got me through.

But more importantly are the people I met there. I don’t want to tell them what happened, I fear they’ll be upset that they didn’t help more, but they helped so damn much. So much more than could ever be expected from anyone. That final Wednesday, when I’d cried my heart out, 2 people texted me out of the blue and lifted my spirits so much I laughed that evening where I’d cried in the day. Stupid texts too. “Baby rabbits and kittens, cos you’re a vet right?” And “I only just got this message, I would have LOVED some pumpkin cake 🙁”. Poor lads probably weren’t expecting the wild conversations we had afterwards but friendships blossomed from it. Sorry new friend, hope you like the cheese scone recipe you definitely did NOT see coming that day.

The society meets on a Thursday, but it was to be a video watching thing more than a social thing. Loneliness was still tearing me up inside, I wanted to talk to someone damnit! But I went because I needed cheering up. I laughed so hard, I sang theme songs with others, and we all went to the pub afterwards. I’d never been before, I planned to leave at half 10 so I could shower and go to sleep in reasonable time for a 9am lab. I got chatting to the cake boy at 22:25. By the time we left the bar and he’d had his fill of chocolate rolls at my flat (I offered, he was hungry and Sainsbury’s was closed) and I was in bed, it was 00:40. Oops.

But I wasn’t lonely anymore.

Whats there to learn? I suppose don’t take advantage of your friends. If someone is living alone, check on them OFTEN. Make sure you don’t just pair up for conversations in lectures. Invite people round more.

And don’t under estimate the power of a text message. The lack of one ruined one friendship, one daft one about pumpkin cake built another.

(And I baked cookies for my new friends and we ate them in front of the old friends. Get rekt).

[norcalbruja]

Hey fam, I am shook right now

So while I was working at the dental clinic, we found out a patient’s wife was a palm-reader and she was offering discount readings for $20.

I keep a distance from palm-readers, despite my lazy love of Tarot cards--the last palm-reader I talked to DID have genuine intuition, but she was also asking me for more and more money, so I’m like “well, twenty bucks isn’t that bad. Let’s try this palm-reading thing again. Hopefully she’ll be talented WITHOUT trying to bankrupt me.”

HOLY CRAP, BRUH.

LIKE

THIS WOMAN. SHE KNEW STUFF I DIDN’T TELL HER, AND STUFF THAT SHE COULDN’T HAVE GOTTEN FROM COLD-READING.

And, like... I GOT GOOD NEWS. Not the generic kind of good news, either.

You know how I post all this depressing/angry decolonization poetry about the Filipino gods, and my loneliness about being a pagan girl surrounded by Catholics and Christians and otherwise monotheistic worshipers? That is the tip of an iceberg of spiritual stuff, and some of it is more literal than y'all think.

Especially the stuff about Haik, the Tagalog sea-god who modern-day Tagalogs barely remember, who I’m constantly writing depressing urban-fantasy love poetry about, and also a huge-ass novel called “The Crocodile God,” where a FIl-American woman discovers she is his reincarnated wife.

So Haik and a Spirit-Dude have been hanging out and saying we’re gonna meet up (relatively) soon. I don’t believe them for two reasons: Haik said he brought Spirit-Dude over because 1) he wants me to be happy because he’s one of my ancestral gods, plus nobody likes seeing one of their community constantly depressed and struggling, and 2) he loves that I’m writing all these new poems and stories about him after five hundred years of colonization, so it’s like “HEY GIRL, YOU ARE CONSTANTLY DOING ME A SOLID AND I’MMA GET YOU A BOYFRIEND FOR THAT.”

I don’t believe Spirit-Dude either, when he says he’s coming over to California in time. See, Spirit-Dude looks like a living person, and that is reaaaaaaally shaky grounds for my sanity. Before now, I only listened to him about nice, safe, not-potential-delusions topics.

But then the palm-reader started telling me about my future and relationships, and how everything was finally gonna work out and I’d be okay soon (just not as soon as I want, which is the frustrating part).

And Spirit-Dude and Haik laughed their asses off and went, “BAHAHAHA WE TOLD YOU ALL THIS ALREADY, BABE. IT’S OKAY THOUGH. YOU NEED TO HEAR IT FROM A PERSON SOMETIMES.”

Like, I have been shook ALL DAMN DAY. I’m just wandering around trying to remember how to feel about, you know, GOOD NEWS.

I’ve been depressed and stuck in a rut for most of my adult life, so when people say things like “It’s all gonna work out” or “keep going with your art,” I just figure it’s not gonna get WORSE. Like, I’ll still have a basic-necessities-covered life, but my ass is still gonna be stuck living at my mom’s place, forever trying to save up while I beg people to read my writing SO I CAN EARN MONEY THROUGH ART, but only getting 1% of a response.

My patron goddess, the Morrigan, is the Irish goddess of sovereignty, war, and prophesy (also infamous as the goddess of VENGEANCE AND WAR-FRENZY AND NO ONE REALLY GETS HER). While she is scary, I trust her with my life, seeing as she yelled at me to get therapy during my rock-bottom point in high school. She also frequently motivates me to keep on trucking with my art, even if it’s from anger, spite, or “my soul will die if I don’t do art.”

Dionysus is the Greek god of art, prophesy, wine/drugs, and mental illness (he, like the Morrigan, has a mythical track record of Bad Stuff because of the last two). He considers himself my husband, and I accepted it after initial hesitance because THIS MAN GETS ME. He is constantly checking in with me about whether I’ve finally gone insane (the answer is usually “No, you’re weird and depressed and a shaman, and society hates all of that.”).

And at the behest of Haik, these two teamed up and got the client with his palm-reader wife over to the clinic.

Brighid (Irish healer-goddess, and a much more moderate artist than Dionysus) came up while I was eating dinner and she went, “Honey, I know you got a lot of big news today and you never believe the nice things anymore, so if you feel overwhelmed, just talk to me, okay?”

Meanwhile: Haik is upset that I can’t take good news very well. I mean, I'm relieved to hear it, but I also don’t know what to DO with that relief. I have no idea if I want to cry or laugh, or cry AND laugh. So yeah, lots of hugs from him.

Spirit-Dude is just hanging out like usual, and giving me more hugs and telling me that YES, RELIEF IS GOOD. JUST BREATHE, HONEY.

Last week, Spirit-Dude told me: “Babe, if you don’t believe in yourself, at least believe in what you do.” And it stuck with me how he knows I’m depressed and sometimes I literally can’t think positive about things, but he figured out a way to make me feel better anyway.

My therapist has actually noted that YES, the spirits are incredibly supportive and they give me a lot of emotional breathing-room, which is 1) not a common sign in the mental illnesses where you hear voices, and 2) very different from the authoritative Western view of deity/spirit.

And I figured after the past few months that even if Spirit-Dude isn’t the specific person he looks/acts like, he’s a very pretty and Soft Boy, and I would love it if I met his real self soon. (Spirit-Dude has countered that he isn’t using a fake identity because he’s not a liar, and that’s a crap way to start a relationship.)

It's 2AM and now I keep reminding myself that the palm-reading was YESTERDAY, so it’s a good thing I work tomorrow instead. I might do a Part 2 for this, in case I need to word-vomit again.

[sanctimoniousscrawlings]

Prompt #1 : Lull of the Forest

 Greenvale is quaint. At least that’s what the townsfolk say. Personally, I’ve never been fond of life here. Half the people here are ignorant and bigoted. They’re nosy and self-serving. Nine times out of ten I’ve found that the thick veneer of kindness and good ol’ fashioned neighborliness is born of duplicity, and to be quite honest it’s exhausting.

 I’ve been saving money to leave since I turned sixteen and got my first job in the town’s only book store- a tiny thing, barely larger than my room back in my apartment. I’ve been thinking of moving to a big city- it may be too crowded for my taste but I’ve found that it has the opposite vibe to small towns. People start out assholish and then turn out to be kind. It’s a pleasant surprise.

  Here I am ten years later with only half the cash I would need to get my own place somewhere I’d actually like to be. I’m scrolling through real estate sites and beginning to reconsider the whole roommate thing, much as I revile the thought of having to live with random strangers when my phone pings. It’s my best friend, Demeter.

 D: omg Riley did you hear  Me: oyg did I hear what?  Me: and are you sure I can’t convince you to come with me  D: Dylan is gone and certainly not, you know I can’t stand urban environments  Me: pls tell me he absconded from the woods with his tail between his legs and the only thing he left behind was a trail of urine  Me: I really don’t want him living next door to me again  D: ...  D: i heard the fairy house is a pretty grizzly scene  Me: wow  Me: guess i won’t have to live next door to him after all. neat.  D: i know he was an asshole but do you need to be so blase about it?  Me: only as much as he needed to chase me with a MIG torch  Me: look, i know you aren’t supposed to speak ill of the dead (but honestly he shouldn’t have been such a dick) and I wouldn’t wish death on anyone- but I definitely don’t have to care that he’s gone  Me: besides, he probably pissed off whatever’s in those woods. haven’t you noticed that when the people who live in that house are super cool, the hidden folk just play (mostly) harmless pranks- and they have never ever attacked children  D: no, they just kill the parents and steal the kids  Me: the bad parents. We both know the Bonners were abusing their kids. And pretty heavily. How many times did you call cps on them?  D: ...monthly. But that doesn’t make it right. Those kids are probably scarred for life- and scared.  Me: maybe. I think I might try buying the place tbh- I don’t even have half the money for a place in any of the cities I wanted to move to but I have more than enough for that place. It’ll be a dent in my funds, but I think it will be worth it.  D: what  Me: hear me out: I’m a misanthropist. They are clearly also not fond of people. Maybe we’ll get along. Plus, I can keep the deed to this place to protect the forest from the idiots in town moving in.  D: First of all that’s a stupid idea. Second of all, you’re too kind to be a misanthropist. You’re just a curmudgeon. A philanthropic curmudgeon.  Me: what  Me: that doesn’t even make sense  D: you’re grumpy af but I’ve never seen you do anything to cause even the people you hate the most harm. Hell, how often did you help Dylan with his homework or share your food with the delinquents who couldn’t afford lunch when we were in school.  D: the whole “I hate humankind blah blah blah destroy all humans” thing is just a front because you always had this complex about helping everyone and it kept backfiring. And then after Ashe...  Me: sorry, Demi, gotta go. I’ve got paperwork to fill out.  D: DON’T YOU DARE MOVE INTO THAT HOUSE I S2G RILEY ANDREW FERGUSON

 I know she cares but I really can’t deal with this right now. I’ve got a house to buy.

 For the next two weeks, I avoid Demeter. I love her but she’s overbearing sometimes and I’m not gonna let her talk me out of this. All the paperwork is taken care of and fortunately, my lease was ending at the end of the month so this should prove to be a smooth transition. All my packing is complete and I get to move into my new place in another few days.  My shift ended at the bookstore so I head back to the apartment only to find a grey slip of a man waiting for me.  “Riley Ferguson, there you are. Your presence is required at the law office of Paz & Squalor. If you have some time to accompany me there, I urge you to.” His voice was strained and gravelly. “It concerns the property in the woods.”  “Sure thing. Let’s go.” I wonder if there’s a hitch in the bureaucratic workings and if there is I’m damn well gonna sort it out.

 An hour later and I’m in Ms. Paz’s office. She peers across the desk at me with a grave look on her face and I can see that she’s mulling something over. The look of concern in her eyes is disconcerting.  She starts abruptly, clearly having decided to get on with whatever I’m here for. “I’m sorry for your loss, Mr. Ferguson.”  “Loss?”  “Dylan Daniels. You are Riley Andrew Ferguson, correct?”  I nod, but the confusion on my face doesn’t assuage her concerns.  “He left the house to you in his will. And everything in it.” She opens a dwarer of her desk and pulls out an envelope, clutching it to his chest. “He also left you this.” She extends the envelope across the desk. “Sorry it took so long to get this to you. The police only found his will a few days ago- everyone was unaware he even had one until then. I just need you to sign some things.” She pushes a stack of papers and a nice pen across the desk. I’m too stuned to respond. “Riley.” She pauses and reaches a hand across the desk to squeeze mine. “I know this must be very hard for you. Take all the time you need.”  The next few hours are a blur. I find myself at my desk, clutching the sealed envelope. There’s no way this isn’t some sort of prank. He probably has the entire town in on it- they have always distrusted me here. People gossip about what sort of mental issues I may or may have. “He has the autism,” is the most favored line I hear from the elderly ladies at the old rumor mill. I am a hundred percent sure they don’t even know what autism is- and to be honest that gets to me far more than them actually suggesting I’m on the spectrum. There are worse rumors of course. I have schizophrenia and murdered my own family in a hallucination. Or I’m a sociopath and did it in cold blood. Of course, it doesn’t matter that I was asleep in the back room at work at the time- trying to avoid going home. My boss is a little scenile and his word isn’t good enough to assuage the good people of Greenvale.  They’d probably accuse me of doing Dylan in, too, if it weren’t for his proximity to the woods.  Deep breath. I open the envelope. There’s a letter inside. When I pull it out, another piece of paper drifts down to the floor. It’s stained with graphite- the pencil must have been smeared. I reach down to pick it up and freeze before I can. I recognize my own writing on the small paper. What the actual hell?  I pick it up and read it, wracked with anxiety. It’s a poem. It’s a poem I wrote in eighth grade. A flashback takes me back to when I wrote it. My first real crush on a guy. It was a boy I had P.E. with every year of middle school. I had just started dating a girl I rode the bus home with when I realized that I liked this guy and the poem quite bluntly reflected the turbulent emotions I was feeling at the time. I had a firm grasp on metaphors but even now subtly and nuance elude me when I experience emotion- which happens far more often than I would prefer. More importantly, why would he have this?  How did he even- I’m hit with another memory. I wrote that the day that little demon stabbed me in the hand with a pencil. I still have the black mark under my skin. Bastard gave me my first tattoo. He must have taken it from my binder when I was in the nurse’s office. Okay. But why would he keep this? It was fuel he could have used to burn me before I came out my senior year.  I remember the letter. With some trepidation, I begin to read it.

Riley,

 I was really hoping to tell you this in person. Frankly, I’ve been trying to for years but you evaded me at every turn. You can’t evade me at this one, though. My death ensured that- that is unless you’re not reading this and I misjudged your caliber on the whole fairy house thing. I don’t know, I figure you’d thrive there for some reason. I think Walt Whitman said something about the strongest tree in the forest is the one that sprouts against all odds.

 My eye twitches at the butchering of the quote and that he confused Walt Disney with Walt Whitman, but I carry on.

 Anyways, sorry not sorry for rambling. I like you. No, that’s putting it mildly. I think I’ve been in love with your weirdness since we first sat together in that class. I had hoped you wrote this poem about me but was too afraid to ever ask you about it. I know it’s no consolation for the animosity I displayed toward you, but I was just so terrified. Your presence left me unsettled and we got stuck together so much after that. So I reciprocated and instilled the fear in you that you put in me. It was wrong and I really am so sorry. Now you know how I feel, though. I bet the creatures of the forest got me. If I’m right, you owe me a kiss when next we meet, wherever that may be.

         Love,              Dylan Daniels. P.S. And I mean love. P.P.S. I know I got the quote entirely wrong. I bet you did that thing where your eye twitches when you can’t correct someone cuz you’re frustrated. That will be another kiss. P.P.P.S. No dictionaries were harmed in the writing of this letter. P.P.P.P.S. Well, I might have lit one on fire after.

 I feel disgusted after reading the letter. He was an asshole and a creep.  A knock at the door startles me into yelping. I catch my breath to answer it and Demeter pushes her way in.  “Sit. We’re talking.”  I do as she says; I’m still reeling from everything I just found out and Demeter is the last person anyone should ever piss off. She may be a kindly teacher and a great friend but not even the gods can save someone incurring her wrath.  “You got the house, didn’t you.” It clearly wasn’t a question but I nod quietly anyways. She sighs. “Well, if anyone from this town could thrive there it would be one of us, but still. What were you thinking?”  I stare into the nether. “I don’t know anymore. I don’t even want the house now,” I murmur. “It’s tainted. He even ruined the fairy house for me.”  “What do you mean? You knew he had lived there when you made the ridiculous plan to swoop in on it.”  I silently proffer the letter and poem without looking at her.  She lets out an incredulous whistle. “Well... He tried to put his heart in the right place. I think. Ooh, girl, this boy was a mess.” She pauses, squinting at the letter. “Wait. Did he leave you the house? Holy hell.”  Demeter stayed the night.  I woke up the next morning to a note on my bedroom door: I’ve reconsidered the roommate thing. Be back soon, packing my stuff.  If they didn’t already, the townsfolk were about to think Demeter insane, too.

 Days later and we were moved into the house, though I was still uneasy. He left a lot behind- including some nearly new furniture. Probably for the best given how spartan Demeter and I both lived. I brought a desk and computer while she brought house plants and a bed.   The house was old and quirky and had an air to it that we both adored. The rear garden was pressed right up against the old forest; with the fence having rotten away long since the tenants before Dylan had lived there, a new one was half built in its place- and wildflowers had overtaken most of the space. All except for one tree that sat in the center of our new yard, between the forest and the house. The entire rear half of the house had large beautiful windows that faced the forest, as well as a massive section of glass doors that opened up to the rear garden, almost like an entertainment area, thanks to the simple stone porch.  “Oh, I am so fixing this up.” Demeter sounded giddy, standing in the decrepit garden. “We’ve totally got this.”  “I hope so.” I can’t shake the uneasy feeling I’ve had all weekend. “I’m heading in to set up some of my supplies.”  I leave Demeter to her own devices and get to work in the back room with the enormous glass doors. After a few minutes, it feels as though the very air is weighing on me. I open the doors wide, not paying any mind to the dangers of the forest. Let them come, they’d probably make better company than 99% of the good townsfolk of Greenvale. The invigorating scent of the forest fills the room and I’m suddenly in the mood for oil pastels.

 It’s been a week now and I still feel trapped whenever I’m in the house. I feel as though I’m being watched any time I’m on the property. The eyes from the forest seem more curious than anything- it’s inside that I feel I’m in danger. After going on an unnecessary shopping trip for the umpteenth time since moving in, I decide to be productive and prepare a basket of food for those that dwell in the forest. Fruits, nuts, pepitas, and even some actual food I cooked up. I set the basket out back, near the treeline, and go back to the room I claimed for my studio. When next I look outside, the basket is empty and moved closer to the house.  I hope they enjoyed it.

 I get home earlier than Demeter and begin to make a habit of leaving food out for my new neighbors- including a dish of milk on my window sill. Each day, the basket is returned closer and closer to the house. I begin finding gifts of seeds, flowers, and odd trinkets in the returned basket. Demeter joyously nurtures the seeds into all manner of strange and exotic plants.  One day, when the house is feeling particularly stifling, I decide to go to the forest edge to get away from it. I find a cozy spot beneath a tree and start writing. I hear the basket being moved but I’m too in the flow to pay any attention- that is until I notice a curious fox looming over my notebook. I don’t want to spook it so I continue writing. Eventually, the fox lays its head on my wrist, watching the pencil soar across the pages. I suppress the urge to make a high pitched noise in joy at this blessing.  My trips to the forest edge became more frequent- as did the fox’s joining me. I started bringing treats for my new friend who cozied up to me as I worked. One day, when Demeter was out later for student conferences, I went out to the back porch- still outside but sheltered from the storm that had rolled in. I mistakenly drifted off to sleep to the sound of rain- and far more easily than I could have fallen asleep inside the house.  I awakened to find myself wrapped in a fine silk cloak lined with the softest fur I have ever felt in my life- and I pet a lot of cats. I also note that I am now inside and the doors are shut. It’s already morning, as well.  Demeter is in the kitchen, making herself a quick breakfast before she heads off to work.  “I’m glad to see you made it home safely. Did you bring me inside?”  “What? No, you were asleep on the floor when I got home last night. I feel like it’s the first time you’ve slept since we got here.”  I grunt noncommittally and leave the room.  Later on, I return the cloak, folded in the basket with yet another assortment of tasty goodies. This time I'm reading rather than working on one of my projects. The fox returns once more and- to my joy- curls up in my lap. I stroke his soft fur while I read and eventually I can hear the soft contented snoring of my vulpine buddy. I'm so comfortable that for the second day in a row I make the mistake of falling asleep outside.  This time, as the beams of morning sunlight drift through my eyelids, I’m in my room. The luxurious cloak is covering me once more and the fox is curled up next to my head. The Prompt Next

[aroworlds]

Aro-Spec Artist Profile: Luthyx

Our next aro-spec creator is @luthyx​, who also goes by Petrichlorine and MUSE-42. They’re better known on this blog for sharing snippets from an in-progress work called Sanction the Skies, celebrating all things a-spec and dragon!

Luthyx is a transmasculine, agender aro-ace creative with mental illnesses, specialising in speculative fiction and digital art, the latter both original and fancontent (primarily for How to Train Your Dragon). You can find their gorgeous art on their DeviantArt account and their writing at @sanctiontheskies​, currently featuring artwork, maps and a wealth of worldbuilding and characterisation teasers. Lastly, if you enjoy Flight Rising, you can check out their dragons under the name Luthyx!

With us Luthyx talks their confidence in their aromanticism, the need to live an authentic life on their terms, the way their characters and worlds become part of them, and writing spec fic as an aro. Their determination to craft and make as they need sparkles in every word and dragon scale, so please let’s give them all our love, encouragement, gratitude, kudos and follows for taking the time to explore what it is to be aromantic and creative.

Can you share with us your story in being aro-spec?

My tale is a fairly straightforward one. By the time I was of the age that most people started experiencing their first crushes, I’d moved to a different state and begun taking an online school, free of the peer pressure that lies ever-present in most traditional classrooms.

Even then, as I began to develop my skills and passion for writing, I’d already begun to see the influence of the omnipresent Romantic Subplot. It was everywhere: books, film, music, poems. I couldn’t so much as flip on the radio without hearing a disillusioned, autotuned cry for help healing a broken heart. I hated it. I still do.

It quickly became apparent to me that I wasn’t like the others. Every once and a while, my mom would drag me to her church, where I’d be forced to endure the company of undisciplined tween boys and catty, Twilight-obsessed girls. It was the girls especially that caught my attention: the sheer passion and fervency with which they discussed who they found hot, what Hogwarts house they were in, and their critiques and praise of The Hunger Games. I found it absurd to objectify people, fantasy or real, like that.

I think this was probably about the time I began to realize that I was agender, too, but that’s a story for another day. Thankfully, I’d already become a headstrong, independent teenager, and I was proud to say that I was different, that my interests were in something that, in my head, was much more important and much more intense than those of others my age.

I can’t recall the first time I heard the term aromantic or the first day that I applied it to myself. I think, deep down, I always knew, and I’ve always been astoundingly proud of it. To me, romance isn’t the be-all-and-end-all of things, but just another life experience I haven’t had, like owning fourteen chihuahuas or going on a warm summer vacation to the Middle East. Not everybody wants to experience those things, and society is completely fine with it - I see no reason as to why they should feel differently about romantic relationships, but I suppose they do. Dealing with the fallout of that bias is their problem.

I am me, and the me I know will not be held down by stereotypes, will not conform to any sort of life script I am handed, will not feel sorrow or remorse for a single experience lost. I’m here for a good time, and my idea of a good time involves doing what I love. Romance is not on that list.

Can you share with us the story behind your creativity?

My creative streak started young. For as long as I’ve known it, I’ve been drawing characters and writing stories. Mind you, the first stories were about Littlest Pet Shop figures and were written with the help of my parents, but it was a start nonetheless. Art, in its many different forms, has always been my form of self-expression. I often wandered off into my imaginary world when I got bored, and when I went to sleep every night, I’d often spend hours just imagining characters doing as they do before drifting off to sleep. I still do that every night - like clockwork.

I think it was when I was in my early teens - thirteen or fourteen, maybe - that I decided I wanted to be a writer. I recall turning to my mother one night and saying, “I wish I could write a book,” still believing that I was too young to attempt such a thing yet. “Nobody says you can’t do it right now!” were the words she gave back to me, and then off I started.

The project I started then is one that’s still ongoing now - a series of books I call Sanction the Skies, featuring dragons, wars, and a good hunk of divine intervention. I’ve worked and reworked it ever since that fateful day, improving the lore, changing the characters, watching my perspective of them evolve and change alongside me. They are a part of me, through and through.

It hasn’t been the easiest journey, but I’m still chipping away at it, ever-determined. It’s been doubly hard to follow my dream because of all of the messages about how impossible it is to be a writer in this day and age, and that you can’t do it without a well-paying side job. My stubborn self says, “To hell with you!” and works on it anyway. I want to write, to draw, to forge, to craft, and the world be damned if it tries to stand in my way.

Are there any particular ways your aro-spec experience is expressed in your art?

The only way it’s expressed is in my writing, where almost all of my characters are explicitly aro. The Romantic Subplot is a tiresome, often badly-done trope, and I’d like to steer away from it altogether. I want to show that a friendship is not worth less than a romance, and that a good story can still be told without the boy getting the girl - or the girl getting the girl for the sake of progressiveness.

What challenges do you face as an aro-spec artist?

Honestly? Not much, at least not yet. I think I may face a bit of pushback in the future because my novel features no romance, but overall, I’ll probably be fine in that regard.

How do you connect to the aro-spec and a-spec communities as an aro-spec person?

I rarely connect with them at all, honestly. Most of the discussion I see is either people screaming about amatonormativity or people asking, “Am I asexual/aromantic if…?” Alternatively, there’s people discussing their experience being partially a-spec or aro-spec, none of which I can relate to. All I want is a place to revel in my identity, to be able to talk about anything BUT romance, to form strong friendships.

Sometimes it hurts me to think that the friends I have now will soon find romantic partners, and I’ll be left behind in the dust as a third wheel. I hope my friends won’t do that, that perhaps I can still make myself heard - but who knows? I’ve had no luck with finding any other aro-spec people in my region at all, unfortunately, so the internet is all I’ve got in that regard. I’ll just have to wait and see what the future holds!

How do you connect to your creative community as an aro-spec person?

I find I connect somewhat decently. I write fantasy and sci-fi, which generally seem to be more acceptable genres to have a lack of romance, especially when a pair of dragons are the main characters. It is alienating from many fandoms, though, because they often focus so much on the romantic partnerships and shipping. Almost every blocked tag in my dash concerns ships, kissing, hugging, romance, children, and anything related to those.

Can you share with us something about your current project?

Ohoho, this is a fun one! Well, right now, I’m working on re-writing Chapter One for the trillionth time after giving the town it takes place in a complete and utter overhaul. I’m also working on making a short comic that takes place in the universe of the book but is unrelated to the main plot, though it features characters and locations that may be explored in future books. I want to do the comic in the hopes of gaining some traction and interest in the books, since I’m rather horrible at advertising at the moment.

Have you any forthcoming works we should look forward to?

Again, the comic! It’s about a con artist who incurs the wrath of the demigodess of misfortune after a con resulted in the death of a sick hatchling. There’s also some stuff with an ancient, precursor species of dragons and one of their final remaining sanctuaries.

[davidjjohnston3]

Wish I could deliver top-shelf right now... I feel almost as if I will be left with naught but the notebooks, like Flaubert's "Sentimental Education" working notes.

1."You're too philosophical" - it turned/s out he is trying to become conscious of something. 

2.The damn thing is, 2010 Korea is not a warped society.  People are ignorant or naive about some things; and they have a w/Way that worked/s for them.They are trying to help; they want to be mothers and fathers and daughters and students and sons faithful.Great nation.

3.He is unaware of women.  The beauty of the office-buildings at night, when everyone is still at work, captivates his doesn't educate entirely as he's unaware of women and girls and boys at home; he thinks, "family unit."  It's Americanism / mental Americanness.  He has no sense / conception of man, woman, child, m/Mom, p/pop.

4.Abortion-culture, abortion, abortion, abortion."Our point is that we have no point; post hoc ergo propter hoc, you have no point because God isn't real and we are God.

"5."In the Valley of the Butterflies" - a meditation or reflection on how to some people fantasy and unreality are closer to [Adonai] than are their own parents, "parents," friends, "friends," teachers, "teachers.

"6."Minima Moralia Covidiana: Reflections on a Mentally Ill Era from North Korea Policy and NK Studies to Obama to Metascience, Metatheology."

"It's not Houellebecq that's depressed; it's the world that's depressing." - Marie-Pierre Houellebecqa) 

Everyone suddenly became their "brother's keeper, neighbor-lover" but it's more like judge thy neighbor and teach thy neighbor according to crypto-communist evaluations of wokeness.  Also, no qualifications to teach + primitive tools + no mechanism for assessing performance or firing incompetents or the morally depraved.

b) Biden obviously, POTUS, one of the most powerful men in history, says so many right things or right-sounding but at bottom I feel he neck-kneels me in the name of his political macro-economy and is more than willing not just to despise Afghans and throw them away but to silence anyone who registers an eloquent-enough complaint about American throwaway culture, anti-religion, anti-belief, anti-truth, anti-child-ism, anti-Otherism.God love him and give rest to his soul!

c) I am in trouble for being Christian and Christianist but not Frank McCourt or the guy from "Calvary" who gets kilt on the beach.  Jesus / Yesunim was not thrown out or casually murdered by disturbed victim of someone else's crime.  He was arrested by the greatest empire in human history - the last empire - interrogated by a magistrate, sentenced by the religious right and institutional ecclesial / synagogic supreme prestige of his time, and subject to formal capital punishment with full ceremony.  He was also buried with honor and gifts by women and men who loved Him.  He was and is King with all authority on Heaven and Earth and many grown men - in some places - have authority.These people saw too many movies.  

d) Taeyeon Kim's "Circus."We are supposed to take up our Crosses and follow Jesu but Milwaukee's a waterpark / flush-toilet .  "Circulation."

e) David J. Johnston's recurrent wish to write that get-out-of-Babylon bestseller but it'd take 2 years to process through the publishing industry "irregardless."

f) David Cameron's "Life Chances" speech influenced by "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother," a book which kept me awake for some 36 hours the first time I read it despite already knowing what Chinese mu'ai (mom-love) was like in its outlines.

"I'm not against the welfare-state."  - Si.  It's far different to show material as well as spiritual charity to the poor than to to tell them they're all victims who deserve Santa Mao's grab-bag and a guillotine or torture or Xinjiang vivisection and serial gang-rape forced abortion bonanza to boot.

"Family is the basic welfare-state."  - Sadly assuming sincerity, faith, veracity on the part of Anglo-American relationality and family-roles.

g) Saint John Paul II, "Papa Karol."  Humana Vitae / Human Life.  Again and again again and again and again, from the city to the world, generation after generation.  Abortion, euthanasia, rampant Medicalism and Scientism.  If I were to extend JP2's observations through "Theology of the Body" as well I would say that Man's contemporary despising of the soul and Spirit have also infected American literature with the twin outcomes of a) censoring the Spirit and b) despiritualizing and ultimately robbing of all sacredness the material and physical.  In my view this might lead to what I called "liquefaction" or "deliquescence.'  I feel as if communitarian Catholic theologian Charles Taylor might find this idea relatable to "ontology of flesh not bodies" from "A Secular Age," suggesting that Covid-19 and the policies and souls and wills responding thereto led out to a "state of things" (R. Dienst Rutgers) at which people began to actualize a madcap hostility to the physical integrity or integrality or wholeness of the Other.  Part and parcel of this disintegrationism or disintegrationisticity (sorry) other than structural inefficiencies and wasted lives characteristic of socialism / communism, moral confusion, is the outsourcing and supply-chain-disruption and -invasion (is that a Huawei chip in your X-1 or are you just cannibalistic to see me?) or distally "sparagmos" (Gr. "tearing apart; rending limb from limb") of human bodies, but particularly culturally Other men, women, and girls.  Americans not even aware of their own psychopathically malevolent spirits.

g-i) Korean American Literature, though / / Yoon Choi.I don't know if I should be this "medical" but I rem. something about those "This is what a feminist looks like" shirts which were sort of like rainbow-colored Soviet cluster-bombs in the Soviet-Afghan War that attracted women near to toxic (and/or unprepared) men then harmed them... I kept thinking, "Yeah well this is what a semenist looks like" just b/c I was in a bad mood dealing with ideology while trying to "become the man" but it turns out Man would have been better-served to reflect on the characteristics of seed than to devise mechanistic and deterministic monster-murder-Moloch-machines and that's not even "Dreiserian or neo-Dreiserian Naturalism," it's literally part of the intelligence design of the body.  g-ii) If anyone knows of a hole in the ground in Los Angeles preferably with a mirror so I can shave...

7.I keep remembering the lines from "Lincoln" - the only good lines that that bourgeois bench-warmer Kushner perhaps wrote - "millions now unborn... now, now, now."  Human trafficking, abortion, beyond-awful schools and teachers...

8. DJ is always trying to improve his platform without realizing that he has a voice.  He takes the bait again and again and again, both in terms of finding a wife / girlfriend / "coming to an arrangement with _" in the Victorian sense and being baited into a defensive crouch for what he stands to lose.

9. Ownership, "so yu kweon."

10. Everyone taking advice from SF / special forces soldiers on YouTube and a psychologist who deliberately dealt with extremes, Jordan B. Peterson, such as Marxism, Nietzsche, &c.

11.

"Everlasting Consolation."  

"Stepfather."

They are watching TV, reading memoirs, being "Episcopalian" in the old-fashioned regard of having the Bible and the newspaper both, the "Cross of Lorraine" maybe kind of.  But his parents are Democrats and democrats to the core and want to character-assassinate any leader they don't like; they will do anything to reduce a king to a doctor even if this ruler wanted to serve God.  They love nothing more than to find out the ways in which someone is hypocritical or labors under astheneia (weakness), whether monetary of social (no friends, antagonistic sideways deflectionistic teach-you-everything-(to-become-me) / push-me-pull-you neighbors)

12.

I want to exchange poems on Twitter with Pastors Timothy Keller NYC and John Piper BCSMN Bethlehem Baptist Church Twin Cities.

[brutallyangelic]

MY HONEST POEM.

Hi, my full name is Nicole Dawn Druchen. I was born on August 16th at around 5:30 pm. I am always the loudest person in the room when I feel comfortable enough because most of the time the rooms I am in are not loud enough to vibrate with my own noise so I choose to stay quite. I love making people smile and telling them how beautiful it is. My eyes are a mixture of both of my parents and one of the most beautiful things anyone has said about my eyes is that yes “ they are the window to the soul so my soul must be so fucking beautiful. “ They say that the most honest people are the best liars well since we’re finished with the introduction of this poem, I might as well start with ripping my mask off. Wait. Please stay for the rest of this poem. I am aware that I have many scars. And bruises. And broken veins. But they are healing. I mean wait no just stay for the rest of this poem. I have a really bad habit of letting go to pieces, parts and sometimes people. Wait no I meant was that I have really bad parts that people left but they let go of pieces of me so - No! I meant that there are pieces of me that people took and made me think that I wasn’t enough of a whole part to become part of them. I also ramble. A lot. I was born a month early and I was the smallest baby my family had ever seen, they told me I could fit in a shoe box. I like to believe that I was just so ready to show this world love that I couldn’t wait. The world was never ready for me and I know that it never will be. When I was about 13 I was diagnosed with a mild case of Depression, Severe and Extreme Performance Anxiety, ADD / ADHD and later learning disabilities. I’m now 17 and I’ve learnt that my illnesses do not define me and God made this learning processes long but sent me angels that made it meaningful that I am forever grateful for. I really fucking hate the education system and how it makes me feel as if my worth is defined by how well I can vomit back information. I really fucking hate that most times when I have to write an exam it feels as if I am writing my suicide note again but the demons from the previous night make it the same thing. I really fucking hate how I struggle to focus when I get anxious and when my hands shake or when my body shakes. I really fucking hate when I am told to “ relax “ or “ calm down” or that “ I wouldn’t be who I am without my mental illnesses.” , as if the scars had made it easier to love myself. No. It made it easier to find fault within myself and i am still showing myself the love that was absent. It made me realize that I have a pretty bad habit of taking my anger out on my body so many times that my body does it without thinking and hands it’s thank you by giving me anxiety attacks that last for weeks and weeks till I cannot get out of bed because Depression was unhappy that I am taking my medication and decided to remind me that They are the only relationship that will never leave me, stress ulcers in my mouth because everyday I speak my name into light and my mental illness just won’t have it. I fucking hate speaking about my acceptance of my illnesses and having the venom of a neuro-typical saying that, “ my struggles made them appreciate their lives” as if sharing my pain in confidence made you appreciate the comparison to what others go through. I fucking hate when the voices argue so damn loud and I am forced to deal with an outside noise and I am told to smile. Or to “ handle it”. As if I can convince my situation so it is not too much work for you and then you still have the audacity to tell me to get out of bed in the morning. As if myself wearing this mask is not enough. As if myself looking exhausted from this system I did not want to be in cannot be found to be just because my eyes do not feel like looking bright enough today. My brain has this habit of being so excited that I am in this world that it needs to explore everything and do everything. This is both a blessing and a curse. I decided to just let it be and it’s been okay so far. I love being alone so much company feels like a third wheel. Being so in love with myself and who God created me to be has made me reject anybody’s energy that does not serve me for a queen only encounters with other queens but true goddesses fixes other goddesses crowns, right ? I have been heart broken so many times by boys who are still trying to make their mistakes better but do not realize that I was always better, without and with them and I made my true self come out of her shell and she is beautiful. I like to read books that are as thick as my thighs. The amount knowledge that can knock my cortex out and diving into the vortex as deep as my own forbidden fruit. I am constantly striving to be better than the woman I was yesterday. The woman in my family are warriors and everybody I feel myself bringing justice to this prophecy. I take my music as seriously as the mundane white male takes his privilege. I have this fear of heights and that’s most likely why I hate falling in love because I never know what the fuck will happen if I hit the ground because I’m scared all of the fears will be dripping out of my head and when you look into my dying eyes you’ll see everything I want us to be and be so afraid and leave me. You can say that I’m a hopeless romantic and that’s precisely why I stay away from boys like you because God taught me enough times that something as pure as my love should never be splattered on the floor then forgotten and you didn’t even ask if you could clean up the mess you created. I adore looking at the stars so if I ever choose to look at them with you, know that we are from the same galaxy and you are part of the constellation in my heart. I told my therapist in our last meeting together that I am at the place that I have always dreamed of being at. By this I mean that even though with all of the bullshit that I am still fighting and I refuse to allow anybody to make me feel like my worth or loyalty is meaningless. I love any form of kissing, holding or showing admiration for another. I trust in my shadows because without them I wouldn’t be able to see the reason the light was facing me in the first place. Hi, my full name is Nicole Dawn Druchen. I was born on August 16th at around 5:30 pm. I am always the loudest person in the room when I feel comfortable enough because most of the time the rooms I am in are not loud enough to vibrate with my own noise so I choose to stay quite. Thank you for staying for the whole piece. Thank you for accepting my scars. . And bruises. And broken veins. I promise you that they are healing. I pray yours are too. - Nicole Druchen.

[5questions]

Peter BD

as the young man gazed up at the eclipse

he thought

“damn, i’m looking at

the

eclipse”

So begins acclaimed poet Peter BD's dizzying journey into the depths of the textual Self, in which reflexive phrases play off one another like a thousand points of light shining through a fifth of cognac and illume the striving and conniving which defines our current moment. From treatises on chicken to the moral quandaries of Winona Ryder, touchstones of the Now seep through Peter's verse like osmosis like milk through lace like the blinking of your fifth eye. Buoyant humor and steely irony mix together to form a wild combination which goes down easy but lingers with you for the rest of the day.

BUY IT TODAY FROM INPATIENT PRESS

How many of your famous/infamous email letters have you sent out? By your estimation, what's the ratio of positive to negative feedback you have received (could also throw in neutral)? Or is it hard to categorize them as such? What are the most wild responses you have ever gotten? Define 'wild' as you will. 

i'm not sure how many stories i've emailed people. i've never kept count. in the beginning i'd write a lot of people things but don't do it now as much as i used to. all i can say is that it's probably a big number overall. or maybe not. sorry for not being able to answer this one. feedback to the stories is either positive, neutral or no response at all. i'd say it's about 60% positive and 40% neutral. this is just going on my responses in my inbox. i don't have any social media besides twitter so unsure what the overall reaction is, if there is any. no one really replies to me in a negative way. i remember one person corrected my grammar once which was funny. i think my most memorable negative response came from you. i sent you a 3 part email and here was your response: FUCK YOU ASSHOLE STOP SENDING ME YOUR FUCKING EMAILS ITS FUCKING FICTION I HATE YOU PEOPLE JUST KIDDING ABOUT ONE OF THOSE PARTS NOT ALL OF THEM FUCKING ASSHOLE I AM UNIMAGINATIVE I STALK PEOPLE GIRLS BOYS WOMEN MEN ANIMALS PLANTS SO FUCK YOU DID YOU HACK MY EMAIL PLEASE DONT IM SORRY I  LOVE YOU PLEASE LOVE ME BACK this was one of the most memorable responses because it's around the time i first started doing this and also because it's wild. i guess it's more wild than negative. whatever it is i enjoyed it. i don't receive too many wild responses but one i did enjoy was when this artist named jacob sanders wrote a song about me. i was working this shitty job and was up at 5 am when i received it. it just talked about how i can accomplish whatever i want or something like that. i was really happy at work that day haha. it made feel really good and humbled that someone would do that for me. i think someone sent me a dick pic once. that was wild. another person responded to one of my stories with a story of their own about me that was thousands of words. that was wild as hell.

What was the writing process like for your recently released book? How did you decide on your publisher? 

i don't think i would've written these poems if i hadn't gotten sick last winter. i had a lot of down time and just began writing a bunch of short poems/stories every day. i saved them in my drafts not thinking anything would come of them. i probably wrote hundreds of them. then one day, over the summer, i was eating a burrito somewhere and mitch anzuoni from inpatient press approached me and asked if i was writing anything he could publish. he saw me read at an event and guess he thought i was book publishing material. we talked for awhile and that's how this 'milk and henny' idea came to life. i didn't even have a finished work to present him and we already got to the point of discussing a second book. it was really weird and serendipitous. so i went back in my drafts, put together some things i liked, and presented them to mitch as a powerpoint presentation a couple of weeks later. i didn't even know if anyone would like the poems except me. it was all pretty random haha

What's your day-to-day life like? Will you answer this question?

my day to day depends on what day it is. either i'm at work, or recently, going to see some doctor. i've been feeling ill again but anytime i go to get checked out they tell me i'm 100% fine so maybe my illness isn't easily traceable or it's all in my head.

i write some days. other days i just read. i think i'm gonna meet a friend to get drinks in a couple of hours. life is pretty random these days. i'd like some stability. being alive is strange and hard as you know.

How do you find your online persona to be different than your real life personality? Is there any separation between these two or just different gradations and systems of perception that make the two seem separate? 

at this point i think how i present myself online is similar to my real life personality. i went from thinking i'd just do this for a couple of months and then go to grad school to it becoming who i am completely. it probably sounds dumb, but creating this fake internet character brought me closer to myself. most likely, i would've gone to medical or pharmacy school if i hadn't began writing when i did. being in the sciences seems crazy to me now, even though the money would've been nice. this is a hard question to answer completely because i think we all show people certain aspects of ourselves and hide others. i don't feel any different than anyone else in terms of persona presentation although what i do might seem strange to some. 

my family and a couple of my friends still don't know about whatever this is that i do. maybe i don't think it's important enough to tell them or maybe i just want to keep it to myself. probably the latter. there's some shit that you just need to have for yourself, ya know? especially when it comes to being creative. i think growing up i was steered away from the arts and told that i had to do something practical. but now that i'm a grown up i can be as impractical as i want to be 

What are the best things you have read in the past year? Why? 

a read a lot but i didn't read as much in 2017. trying to change that this year. i really liked this book by ralph ellison called living with music. it's a collection of his jazz writings but it's mostly about music in general. a lot of what he says applies to music of today and how people react to it. he's very good at criticism. i picked up rome poems by pasolini off my roommates bookshelf and enjoyed it. ed mullany gave me man and his symbols by carl jung. i'm enjoying it thus far because certain topics that he discusses interest me lately. it's strange how you can begin a book and it ties into what you're going through in your life. there's nothing like a good book to take you somewhere else for however long you're reading. it's like a instant mental vacation. 

i read twitter daily. that's where i get most of my news. i want to read more richard wright this year. and octavia butler. i want to read a lot of the books i saw on your bookshelf. excited for your upcoming book. there's never enough time to read all these good ass books that exist.

[wildgrave]

what do u love about ur friends

idk which one of ya sneaky bastards sent this but i’m not gonna complain b/c i will take any possible opportunity to gush about my friends.

update: this got entirely out of hand and i just wrote about like... everyone i talk to. if u talk just ctrl + f ur name (but don’t feel bad if you’re not in here b/c i’m doing this off the top of my head and can’t remember everyone!! also a lot of these are hs friends who don’t have tumblrs but u asked anon so)

i honestly love them all for different reasons tho!! i’m not going to tag everyone but: thanh is great for a straightforward answer & we have the same awful sense of humor which is basically 8 years of memes to reference (also she says no romo a lot which i find rly funny for some reason??). hannah is super loving and supportive and always looking out for me. jessie is wry and clever and honestly has every reason to get annoyed at me 24/7 but somehow doesn’t. whitten i talk to every day and is super rational about my problems which is helpful when i need solutions (also dank memes). gaby is great b/c we both have a lot of the same interests (feminism, art, fashion, shit-talking ppl, etc) and gets riled up about my problems which is great when i need someone to get angry with. colette also gets angry, usually angrier than me, about my problems and is the best person to offer to beat boys up (b/c i know if she gets drunk enough she will fight anyone). kathleen is great b/c we always end up doing something ridiculous and it’s fun and makes a good story. brooke is the fucking funniest person i have ever met and thinks she’s punk rock but is secretly boujee as fuck. amber also thinks she’s punk rock, but has the softest, purest heart of gold of anyone i’ve ever met (also she comes up with the most ridiculously hilarious ways to proposition me). claire and i can talk about absolutely anything and send each other close ups of pimples but also take nudes of eachother and honestly if thats not true friendship then what is?? sofie is honestly brilliant and always has clever comments to make and i’m lowkey in love with her to this day and i mean, if you’re not a little in love with your friends wyd?? mila is so sweet and i can have fun with her doing anything, like we don’t even need to go anywhere we can just have philosophical talks on my bed and it’s chill. sammy and i have only chilled irl once but she’s really quiet and nice but occasionally makes rly snarky comments about straight ppl which are hilarious. lucy is never on skype but when she is we have a fuckin field day and she’s so petty but like... in a funny way? i’ve only hung out with andie once (which i’m trying to change before she goes back to vegas) but she’s so into musical theatre and i love reading her tweets about it b/c i love how passionate she is! dylan makes awful decisions on the daily like... blowjob competition? rly dyn? and it’s so funny to hear about and he gives ridiculous but funny advice and is super australian and always says “bruv” which is super funny to me. jenna i’m p sure is going to be running the world in two years (also holy shit she’s graduating college?? my bb girl is growing up :’)). adja is so funny b/c i thought she was super by the rules in hs but now she’s a wild child. aidan (as in the senior in hs, not the one my age) sends me #relatable memes and even tho we don’t talk often it gets deep as shit when we do (but i lowkey don’t trust him b/c of his opinions of iron fist smh). allie is in my race & ethnicity class and is just nice all around and we DM eachother on twitter sometimes like ‘what was that awful presentation in class’). nick from polisci is so knowledgeable about politics but makes the issues funny w/o being offensive and shannon (also from polisci) dresses rly cute and we have fun conversations & the three of us have a funny group chat for our presentation. quinn is such a wannabe edgelord but is honestly so pure and a good friend. asmaa is the sweetest possible person and we always tease quinn together. ricky continously gives me a hard time about everything but in a funny way and patiently explains WoW lore to me. JT is also fun to play WoW with and makes me feel like a baby b/c he’s and old man. rebecca’s steadfast belief in drarry makes me smile and i love her writing. harri is one of my many wives and her snapchats are amazing (as are her boobs). kinzie i rarely talk to but i can still hit up sometimes like whats up bitch today i had sex while listening to wtnv. cassie, becca, and eleanor are all rly cool and super pretty and nice to chill with and i love their art and photography and general personalities. georgie gave me the sweetest poem and letter last summer when i was feeling down and we have similar aspirations and i’d love to work with her in my career sometime! marko and henry are married istg but anyway marko is such a genuine, honest person and henry is an amazing writer and i loved english with him and it’d make me happy if we were closer. lena is my protege and i am an awful mentor b/c i never see her since i graduated but she is my child. layla is the baddest bitch i have ever met, her nails are always amazing and we can be catty together and blast nicki minaj. sarah is so funny b/c everyone thinks she’s reserved and studious and stuff (and she kinda is) but once you get to know her she is the sassiest person you will ever meet. my sister and i fight sometimes over me stealing her clothes constantly but we bond over how our parents drive us up the wall and also she cooks a lot which means i can steal food. the entire volstovic cycle fandom (dani, scarlett, anna, crystal, etc) are all amazing creators of things and honestly an inspiration. rimsha is the hardest working person i have ever met and i love hearing about her succeed. brady is my fellow gay (tho tbh 90% of the ppl on this list are gay b/c we flock together) and i love him for his snarkiness. all the boys i sat at lunch with in high school (garrison, rex, arun, etc) are such memes but i didn’t realize how cool they were until we graduated and now i’m like, damn i should’ve paid them more attention even tho i saw them every day. my boyfriend is my friend and he’s the most politically active person i have ever met, and he’s such a dweeb, and he makes me smile whenever we’re together (even when i’m trying to be angry at him). feihong acts like a fuckboy but is pretty dang cool if i’m being honest; he’s rly dedicated to what he does. carly and i don’t talk but i appreciate her paintings and selfies and funny tweets from afar. morgan and i were at a fidlar concert once together and we both couldn’t survive the mosh pit (also her instagram captions are fuckin hilarious am i right or am i right?). kelly is a goddamn klepto but we always have fun together drinking coffee and talking about pens and i love and support her art and she does the same for mine. charlotte is chill and i miss just hanging out in her basement b/c she’s such a gemini but in a good way. the ppl i sit with on campus (sumaiya, alex, zuri, etc) are always having interesting convos and share food and it’s a good time. my cousin and her husband (nat and ron) are the most punk ppl in their 30s and they introduced me to the punk scene and i miss them b/c they moved back to kansas. shakey’s photography on insta makes me feel pensive and i want to go to philly just to meet her. miki i’m not super tight with but her writing is a+ and makes me cry and i love rping with her. rina is such a cool mutual and her art is dope. lea is also a cool chic and i love her hair and want her to bake my wedding cake. mousse is so nice to everyone. ellie and i only talk like twice a year at family parties but we can always dive back in and pick up where we left off. the ppl i party w (other aidan, jakob, justin, etc) are dumbasses (i use that term endearingly) but i’m 98% sure they’ve all carried me to the toilet when i’ve been puking my guts out at a party. marley was that friend that ended up going to yale and no one was surprised so i admire her success but also she was always kind to me and always asked how i was doing with my mental illnesses. renee and maria and i bonded over ib art and sga and generally being over-worked by our sponsor. alanna was another one of my proteges who i need to keep up with better b/c she’s badass and funny and has the best eyebrows ever. i don’t talk to sidney anymore but we went thru so much together and supported eachother a lot a few years ago and i still love em for that. eddie is such a dweeb, everytime i see him (which is a surprising amount considering he lives in miami) we act like nothing has changed and go at eachothers throats. rachel m & galen have both grown so so much since i met them and i’m proud of them. rachel s is so fun to talk about hoe things with and laugh at eachother. marco has the best finsta of anyone ever. danny and i talk over snapchat every so often (like every month or so) and we have the weirdest convos like?? let’s name your imaginary lizard. zamzam (from my creative writing class last semester) was super fun to hang out with when she came over and actually everyone in that class (xander, leah, olivia, will, etc) were excellent writers and hilarious and we all bonded. victor is such a bro honestly he’s funny and is very attentive (actually listens) and is fun sober or not. sandra i’ve known since i was a baby and never really talked to until recently but she’s so nice to talk to about small things. alyssa i stalk obsessively on goodreads b/c who else can read that much, istg girl you’re a cyborg (but like a pretty one). rp buds that i haven’t mentioned so far (mario, mackenzie, etc) i value a lot for their companionship and writing. there are tons of ppl from hs that i wish i had gotten to know better when i was there (julia, drea, tina, both erins, bridget, etc). 

and yeah there are more ppl but those are mostly ppl i talk to at parties or dm occasionally or wish i was friends with but admire from afar. anyway. this got long. I JUST LOVE PEOPLE!!!!!!!!!!!

[kurlykayaker]

Reflection. 4-2-19

Tonight - marks the first day, that I have ever shared some deep, deep poetry with a room full of people I do not know; I did not know one single person in that room and I arrived to the location alone, unaccompanied by a friend. (Looking back, maybe a stupid idea? Haha) It was unplanned. I was studying there and decided to “just do it.” “Fuck it, I thought. What do I have to lose?”  And in some ways, in the back of my head, whenever we make some decisions, we have everything to lose. I entered that coffee shop - slightly moody, tired, and unmotivated to study; but the tones and vibes of the place always motivate me to study, to work harder - and to stay calm. I shared 3 poems total - one about the boy with Down Syndrome (on here), and two other trans related poems- both pretty intense (re: how you see me, and 11-7-2014).  I was nervous and I imagine that’s something I could get past if I wanted to keep sharing my poetry at events like this. I used to get very nervous just talking to people and giving speeches, but lots of college and time has weathered me well. I guess I thought sharing my poetry would feel liberating? That somehow, the deep dark intensity of what I’ve experienced in life would melt through the Earth and turn into something more beautiful?...As indicated by the question marks, I did not feel that. I did not feel that.   I stayed a bit awhile after reading, to listen to other people share.  I’m a big believer in courtesy and I think leaving right after I read would an act of selfishness.  Eventually, I did leave and a bucket full of feelings kind of washed over my semi-nervous being.  Guilt, an awkward surge of indulgent guilt and maybe shame?  For sharing such deep emotions - with power and eloquence- when most people don’t have to go through such things.  I asked myself, “Why did I impose these feelings on others?” A knee-jerk reflex. (Nerve root L3-L4, Quadriceps muscle).  Haha.  Seriously, though.  The only “safe” places for me to share such emotion is on an “anonymous” website like this, in a counselor’s office, sometimes on the phone with a family member,...and on night walks with myself and the presence of my father.  I guess it is no surprise that I feel an overwhelming amount of self-indulgence about a) sharing these emotions and also b) the intensity and depth of them. There’s been a lot of beauty that has come from writing pretty much everyday, but there’s also been a lot of tenderness, vulnerability - which I can handle.  Perhaps at some point, especially with trauma, we arrive to a point of pain?  In physical therapy, we talk about pain so much - nociceptive pain, phantom limb, musculoskeletal, referred - and we do talk about psychosomatic pain to some degree too.  Psychosomatic (which I don’t like this word usage) - possibly the hardest to “treat.” As my post yesterday was pretty heavy-dark-intense, very similar feelings of social isolation/being “alone” (in my context of the word) emanate from me tonight - sitting on my couch, short-clad, fan blowing - listening to calm music, taking some deep breaths. Have you ever cried dry tears?  Tears that come, but no fluid. Since being on testosterone, this is a common thing for me. It’s hard to explain. Often times, mid-way or multiple mid-ways, I get caught up in a Netflix series. I haven’t had a moment that like in the semester.  Partly, I am a) writing and working out more - (choosing more wholesome “well being” activities), but also I am b) really really enjoying my classes this semester -especially Chronic and Progressive (a neuro class) and pediatrics. Before deciding on PT school, I was between 3 professions - a) counselor b) a nurse and c) a physical therapist (in no particular order). I chose not to be a counselor, because I felt that working so closely with other people’s emotions would spark my own - in a negative aspect. I wouldn’t be able to keep myself safe emotionally and mentally.  Sometimes, I think I regret not being more open to the career?  It’s a mixed regret. After working in an ER for 5 years now, and seeing how *some* physicians treat nurses, I knew it wasn’t for me.  Once again, maybe I could have learned to go on autopilot - some?  <<I don’t think that’s possible for me.>> Haha (if you know me) Here we, are - option c.  I like that my future career affords me the ability to a) use science-based techniques and principles to help someone reach their goals - some of them very visible when they reach them b) moments to offer mental and emotional support (while not the crux of my job) and c) neurologically, an avenue for recovery, compensation, and prevention (there are terms we use in my neuro class).   It’s the fundamental science aspect of counseling - rehabilitating neuro patients; (Re- I firmly do believe that psychology is a science.)  A physical therapist is helping their brain literally make new synaptic connections. A PT is helping a patient believe in themselves - sometimes learning a completely new way to do something.  Sometimes, these goals can be met in relatively brief treatment sessions - sometimes, they takes weeks and weeks of long treatment sessions.  Regardless, I’m in and I’m devoted....and that brings me such inner motivation and joy to know that this could be so rewarding for me. (Re- my second full time clinical is in an inpatient neurological setting). When I was 13 years old- the semester after my dad passed, we had to write an English paper about “how if we could go back in time, how we would change something.”  It was like a creative paper based on past facts. I recall writing a paper about how I would have gone back in time, drove my parents’ car to my dad’s house, and got him to the hospital - for emergency care.  I remember rereading that paper as a high schooler and being amazed that little 13 year old Jordan understood - on a fucking deep level - what suicide was and how serious it was. When I was 15 years old, I thought I wanted to study English in college. My father had a Ph.D. in theology, my mother has a Master’s in Divinity and my stepdad does as well.  Smart fucking family, that loves words and God- basically. Haha.  I recall despising my English sophomore teacher; she was strict, she cut the room with her strained voice and constant frown.  We constantly had pop quizzes and she loved to remind us how hard it was to get a college scholarship unless we worked hard.  I felt the need to impress her?  Maybe?   We had to write a research paper our sophomore year; it was the first “research paper” we would do in our high school career.  I wanted to chose something that was interesting and meaningful to me, but at that time - I hated most science things.  What did I chose?  I wanted to write about Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) and their impact on teenagers who were suicidal (re: increased risk of suicide during first few months of taking).  I recall my crabby uptight teacher looking at me and my topic and saying, “Are you sure you want to do this?  That’s pretty heavy.” All I did was nod, and say, “Yes.”  I laugh at that 15 year old kid; despite my overly shy, diffident personality, I knew what I wanted when I wanted to do it.  My mother stands by the same statement.   I suppose the reason this came up organically for me, is because suicide is more common than we realize.  The number of patients that come into the ED with suicidal thoughts- is a lot to say the least- of all ages (as young as 9 years old and up to 80+).  And, I and you, don’t have to be a mental health counselor to help someone.  We don’t have to go through a Master’s / Ph.D. program and get a license to be a positive influence on someone. Forms of trauma -> Brain injuries, Spinal Cord Injuries, unexpected neurological illnesses that occur for the myriad of reasons we don’t completely understand yet. The weight, the gravity, the intensity, damn.  Then, THEN - teaching them how to stand up again, how to use the toilet in a new way, how to get dressed, how to walk with these weird ass crutches (aka Loftstrands), how to not give a shit when you’re out in public (easier said than done), helping them understand what’s going on pathophysiologically without being a fucking robot.... I picture my father holding my hand and telling me to keep going...   because it’s so weird to be this close to being done with PT school - 1 year left (mostly clinical) and still have moments of such emptiness.  I guess I thought the feelings of “being alone” and feeling empty wouldn’t be *as bad* or perhaps less intense?   .....My mother says, “it’s an ebb and a flow.”  This is the one phrase I like, because having kayaked the whitewater rivers of the Earth and rafted, I identify with it so much (there’s really a literal meaning). there’s been so much ebb my kayak barely floating on this dry river, running into rock upon rock, the bank of the river is many feet worth inward, because the river and i     haven’t seen rain / for so long, “flow, flow, what is flow again?”, my heart asks. flow shouldn’t have to equate to working my ass off to get an 87.5 on a neuro exam, flow - organic, raw, rooted flow in the world we call “life” should bring moments of downpour happiness, excitement, connection so much of artificial flow is motivating myself, someday hoping i can find flow outside myself #oldsoul-lostmillenial