#my friend went to class with me once so i could show her the whackiness

[threadmonster]

Sometimes I remember the professor I had for my programming class and wonder how he’s doing... how is his shoe...

[scullysexual]

Gone

If you’ve ever watched Dark (the German show on Netflix) it’s very similar to that. I started watching it and this popped into my head. I can also throw it onto the never ending list of college aus I keep writing. I’ll be some time before the next chapter is posted but I just wanted to see what you made of this.

Chapter One: Goodbye.

The dreams are always the same; a bright light, my sister shouting for me. And there’s somebody standing at the door. I can’t move. I reach for the gun but I can’t shoot. I’m just frozen…like I’m paralysed or something.

The cassette player clicks, the tape pausing. Mulder stares at it. Dr Montague sighs.

“That was recorded a year ago,” the therapist says, looking down at his notes. “After your hypnosis treatment.”

Mulder silently nods, not looking away from the player.

“Are you still having those dreams?”

Mulder turns away from the player, his eyes to the carpeted floor.

Montague looks up at his lack of response.

“I need you to talk to me, Fox,” he coaxes, a slight harshness to his voice. “You need to tell me if you’re still having these dreams.”

Mulder sighs and nods quickly.

“Right.” Montague looks down at his notes again. “And it also says that you were suffering from Insomnia, is that right?”

Mulder nods again. “Guess I didn’t want to have the dreams,” he shrugs.

“And Dr Werber prescribed you with sleeping pills. Have they helped?”

Mulder shakes his head. “With the sleeping yeah, not much with the dreams.”

“Okay.” The doctor scribbles something down in his book. “Well, we’ll review what we’ve spoken about today and I’ll get back to you on how to go forward.”

Mulder nods, wanting nothing more than for this session to be over with.

“I think that about wraps up today’s session then.” Mulder reaches for this bag, quicker than what is probably polite. Dr Montague doesn’t miss it. “I will see you next week, Fox?” he asks.

Mulder nods, already heading towards the door and out.

He runs down the steps of the office buildings, the fresh air a welcome reprieve from two hours in a stuffy office. He unlocks his bike, yanking it from the bike stand, and climbs on. He rides towards the forest, away from the city and the people, and the normalcy they had been able to continue on with during his absence.

A year gone and it was like everything was the same as it was before.

But no, it wasn’t, because just like his sister, another kid was missing.

 .:.:.:.:.:.:.:.

 There’s whispers all around him.

Some people gawk at him as they walk past, others mutter to their friends. He picks up words like Spooky, Freak. Catches sentences as they fly past him; I heard he said his sister was abducted by aliens, Someone told me she was kidnapped by that guy who was selling vacuums, I was told she ran away. Mulder keeps his head down, remaining quiet.

That’s what everyone told him to do; his therapist, his teachers, his parents. Keep your head down, ignore them, don’t retaliate. It’s difficult, he wants to shake them off, knock a few of them around the head. He clenches his fist instead.

They said school was going to be the hardest part of adjusting back.

The latecomers hurry through the gate. Mulder is just about to turn and follow them inside when a body jumps him from behind.

His body smacks into the grass, the window being knocked out of him. The other body quickly moves off him as Mulder raises up onto his hands and knees, coughing over and over towards the ground, feeling like he’s about to cough his guts up.

“Whoa, dude…” a familiar voice says. “You’re guard must be way down today if you let that happen.”

Mulder finishes his coughing fit, standing as Ethan, his best friend (his one and only friend, actually) looks on concerned.

“I’m fine,” he says, getting a few last coughs out.

“Sure,” says Ethan, though he’s still not looking convinced. “I’ll be more careful next time.”

 They find their seats easily: back row in the corner. Mulder hooks his bag onto the back of his chair and sits himself down.

“Have I missed much, then?”

Ethan pulls a face as if to say no. “Not really. Oh, another kid went missing, but other than that, everything’s been pretty much quiet in Dullsville.”

Mulder smiles at the town nickname. “I saw the missing posts all over town.”

Ethan shrugs, “Who cares? Kid has a weirdo anyway, sprouting all that whacky shit about aliens in the corner. Who’d believe all that?”

Mulder turns away, suddenly uninterested in the conversation anymore. Whacky shit, yeah.

Ethan notices and realises. “Dude, I’m sorry. You know I don’t think that way about you.”

Mulder shakes his head, shaking him off. “It’s fine,” he says.

It wasn’t fine, though. All those things Duane Barry would continuously say may have seemed insane at the beginning but maybe there was some truth in it after all.

Mulder looks over to the door, to where the rest of the class filters in. His stomach tingles when he catches sight of curly red hair sat beneath a black beanie. They make eye contact and she smiles- almost as if she’s as happy to see him as he is of her- he smiles back, giving her a little wave, one she returns.

He turns back to Ethan, who now has a big smile plastered across his face.

“I didn’t think Scully would still be here,” he says.

“Dana?” The smile turns into a grin as Ethan leans back against the wall. “Guess she’s got a thing or two to stick around for now.” Scully looks back over to them and Ethan blows a kiss towards her. She turns around, rolling her eyes.

It suddenly dawns on Mulder just what Ethan meant. His stomach drops as he looks towards his friend.

“You and Scul…Dana?” he asks, almost unsure.

The grin still across his face, Ethan nods. “Guess a lot of things have changed after all.”

He turns back to Scully trying not to feel so disappointed at it all.

“You know, we’ve been thinking…” Ethan says and Mulder turns his attention back to him. “We’re gonna go to the Wishing Well, see if we can find Barry’s stuff.”

Mulder stares at him like he’s supposed to know what that means.

Ethan sighs and rolls his eyes. “You know, his stuff. His drugs and that. Pretty certain his stash is at the Wishing Well.”

Mulder thinks it over and nods. “What time?”

 .:.:.:.:.:.:.:.

 He sits on a log, waiting, his bike lying on the ground beside him. Above the trees, he sees the sun about to set, half the sky cast in a light purple-orange paint. Is his sister really up there? He’s starting to doubt himself.

“Ethan not here yet?”

Mulder turns around and smiles as Scully walks towards him. He shakes his head, standing.

“Typical,” Scully says, looking up to the sky and back down again. “He’d be late to his own funeral.” Mulder laughs as Scully spins around. “Charlie, keep up!”

Mulder looks behind her to see Charlie Scully walking towards them. He gives a confused look towards Scully.

“He begged to come,” she says as a way of explanation. “Not that I had much of a choice,” turning to Charlie and giving him daggers. She looks back at Mulder. “He said he’d snitch if I didn’t take him.”

“And I want a quarter of whatever you find,” Charlie adds.

“If we even find anything. For all we know this stuff could’ve been cleared out already.”

Mulder stares at her. All day he’s been wanting the chance to speak to her, since that first class when he found out she and Ethan were…something. It had been eating him up all day. He’d hoped, he’d really hoped.

Guess like most of his hopes, they’d all end in disappointment.

“Scully, I-“

“How are you-“

Mulder laughs nervously, Scully pursues her lips together.

“You start,” he says.

“How are you?”

“I’m good,” he nods. “It’s weird being back but yeah, it’s not been too bad.”

Scully nods, a slight smile across her face.

“You?” he asks.

“Okay. I’m been good.”

He nods back. A silence passes over them.

“You know, it was really strange you being gone,” she says, almost shyly.

Mulder looks to the ground, his hands in his pockets. “Couldn’t have been that strange,” he mutters but it’s quiet in the forest and so she hears it regardless.

He glances a look at her, sees her walls going up around her. Can almost imagine her tongue pressing hard against the back of her teeth, her chin lifting and her blue eyes turning to ice.

“You were gone, Mulder,” she answers, all warmth and friendliness gone from her voice. “I wasn’t gonna sit on your doorstep waiting for you.”

He lifts his head up fully, his own eyes turning to steel. “You didn’t have to get with my best friend, though.”

Yeah, that’s good. Make her hurt, too.

There’s a crack in her resolve. A break in her wall. It’s her turn to look away.

Good.

“What are you two just standing there for? Let’s go!” They hear Ethan shout just away from them. He strides up, clocking Charlie on the back of the head as he does so. “Why you bring the Shrimp?” He turns back to Charlie. “Is it not past your bedtime?”

“Fuck off,” Charlie says, swatting Ethan’s hand away when he goes to hit him again.

“I said he could come,” says Scully, turning away from the group and beginning to walk ahead.

“What’s up with her?” Ethan asks Mulder.

Mulder shrugs, not about to get into his and Dana’s conversation. The two start following her, Charlie walking behind them and rubbing his sore head.

“And I want more than a quarter of what you find!”

“Piss off,” says Ethan.

The Wishing Well had been the centrepiece of the forest. When they were younger, it had been a happy place, well looked after by the people of the town. It was a working well, once. Water in it every day, changed regularly, too. They’d throw their pennies in, making wishes, hoping they would come true.

As time went on, the well became overgrown. People stopped caring, kids stopped coming, they even stopped changing the water. Spider webs, wasps nest, ant hills became its inhabitants. The area was overgrown with grass, wildflowers, poisonous mushrooms. It became a place where teenagers would hang about. Nobody ever came here so nobody ever bothered them.

“Where is it then?” Mulder hears Charlie say.

“Bet it’s not even here anymore,” Scully says, annoyance clear in her voice.

“It’s just under the grass,” Ethan says. He walks over to a heavily grassy bit, removes a handful of moss but stops short when he realises that it isn’t there.

“Told you,” Scully says, looking away.

“Looking for this?”

They all turn as Phoebe Green appears out of nowhere, holding Ethan’s prize.

“That’s not yours,” Ethan says, stalking towards her.

Phoebe is quick and tall- taller than Ethan- and holds it above her head, out of his reach.

“It’s not yours, either,” she says. “Finders keepers.”

“Yeah,” says Ethan. What he lacks in height, he makes up for in body mass. He pushes Phoebe, she trips and falls, her head smacking against the wall of the well, dropping the bag of weed. Ethan scoops it up, proudly. “Finders keepers.”

Mulder stands there, unsure of to do.

“You fucking dick, Ethan,” Scully scolds. She walks towards Phoebe and kneels down. “Are you okay?”

Phoebe whacks Scully’s hand out of the way. “I’m fine, I don’t need your help.” She pushes herself off the ground, wipes her hands on her jeans. “Dickhead,” she calls to Ethan.

“Bitch,” Ethan casually calls back. He’s just about to open the bag when a growl emits from around them.

Fear runs through Mulder’s body, a chill up his spine. Phoebe and Scully back away from the well.

“What the fuck was that?” Ethan asks.

“Probably a bear,” says Scully, shaking her own fear away.

The growl happens again, vibrating through the ground. Leaves shake and stones tumble about before it stops.

Charlie looks over, his face white. “I don’t think that was a bear.”

Mulder stares at the well. “I…I think it came from the well.”

Scully lets out an exasperated sigh. “I’m telling you, it was a bear!”

A loud thud sounds from behind him. Mulder jumps back, shaking and genuinely scared as he shines his flashlight upon the sound of the thud.

“I don’t think we’re alone,” Phoebe says.

“Guys, there’s something in the well…” Charlie mumbles.

There’s a sudden downpour of rain, the sky darkening. Thuds and rustles and the growling sound happens again.

Mulder’s body propels him forward, he doesn’t even remember choosing to run, his feet just move.

He can hear the others behind him but he’s solely focused upon himself; running and running and running.

Until he freezes, his body falling onto the hard ground, chin smacking against a rock in the process.

A blinding white light forces his eyes closed. In the distance, he hears shouting. A name. Over and over.

Dana! Dana! Dana!

The light goes. He can move again. He hears a shout of Charlie! as the rain continues to pour down him.

[takaraphoenix]

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 6

1. Favorite character of this season?

I absolutely love how they dedicated this season to Buffy's issues. She died. And was ripped out of heaven. She lost her mom and was suddenly forced into being the adult in the house. It's so much and she gets to break about it. Yes, she hurts the people around her, but honestly... it kind of figures? How is one supposed to adjust to what she is trying to adjust to? But over the season, the wake-up calls she gets – the asylum episode, Dawn's stealing, Willow's addiction and then the grand finale that makes her realize she wants to be in this world – it's so great, because it goes... slowly.

My biggest issue with most modern TV is that it's basically torture porn. The main character is put through impossibly traumatizing ordeals but is never even given the chance to cope, to try and deal with it. The issues are never addressed, only glossed over because actually dealing with them would require care and good writing and take time away from all the other drama going on! So characters are only traumatized for shock-value and then are immediately over it, even though it's unrealistic.

This season is a season of trauma. A season of bad coping mechanism, of pushing people away but still seeking someone where she can feel safe – Spike. She slowly has to relearn to open up and let them in, she has to learn to want to live again. And it's hard. And the show doesn't shy away from it, it doesn't shy away from her making the wrong choices, because... there is no one right choice that is obvious when dealing with the trauma she has faced.

2. Outstanding minor character (positive or negative)?

Negative. Jonathan. I just... I really truly hate that Jonathan is in the trio. Of all people, Jonathan. The one who gave Buffy her class-protector award with that heart-warming speech. Buffy was the one person who saved him, personally, when he wanted to commit suicide. Even after the Jonathan Superstar episode, Buffy was gentle and understanding with him. It just... for him, to turn supervillain like that was incredibly disappointing for me.

3. Favorite character dynamic?

I genuinely love the Tara-Dawn dynamic. Tara and Willow raised her for months while Buffy was dead. But the Giles-Anya dynamic is also so great – I'm very soft for the way Anya points out her hair is blonde in the finale like “Buffy is getting hugs for short hair. I too would like a hug”.

4. Favorite canon romantic ship?

Buffy and Spike... in the first half of the season. The way she found him to open up to, he was the only one she voluntarily told about having been in heaven. She finds a connection to him. The way he loves her – that he stayed, for months, even though she was dead, because he had promised her to take care of Dawn and he didn't just do that, he helped the Scoobies protect Sunnydale. He had no reason to and it still... it bothers me so much that everyone continuously belittles Spike's love for Buffy like it's not there. If he was only lusting after her, he would have ditched town after her death, he wouldn't have helped defend Sunnydale and take care of Dawn.

5. Least favorite canon romantic ship?

I'm having flashbacks here but it's a tie and it's because of shit decisions Xander and Willow made.

It's strange, I want to love Willow and – as a friend – she is a great character, but she's just... a shitty partner? She cheated on Oz for weeks or months with Xander and now she used magic to play with Tara's mind. That is so... violating and disturbing and that, after Tara found out and confronted her about it and pointed out how incredibly wrong that was, even more so with Tara's past, Willow just went and immediately did it again. And this isn't something you can blame the addiction for; this was just “I don't want my girlfriend mad at me so I'll erase her memories”. It's... just so bad.

The other being Xander and Anya, even though I love Xander and Anya together, but... the entire season was a steady build-up to “Xander REALLY doesn't wanna get married”, literally from the first episode on. He tried to hide the engagement as long as possible. Then he just... makes these disturbed faces every time someone brings up the married life. They had a whole sing and dance number about their doubts. It's just so very evidently clear that he doesn't want to get married, but he takes until the wedding itself to realize and just... leaves Anya at the altar and then thinks he can get her back? Genuinely thinks they could just go back to being in a relationship? But after leaving her at the altar acting like she owes him something – when he watches her and Spike have sex?

Sometimes, it feels like Xander and Willow really live to sabotage their own happiness.

6. Favorite episode?

Once More With Feeling – it's just one of the most outstanding episodes, really! The songs are so brilliant, the emotional arcs this episode for everyone – from the Spuffy to the per-marital issues between Anya and Xander to Tara and Giles' doubts. It's really brilliant. Many shows after have tried to make a musical episode happen and, with luck, they're fun or comic-relief, but... none have lived up to the standard set by this one.

7. Least favorite episode?

Oh, that's an easy one. 6x19 Seeing Red, where they made... Spike, at this point honestly, completely OoC by having him try to rape Buffy. That will never come off as anything but OoC, not after all that has happened between them. Yes, they are violent with each other – but that's a mutual thing, they hurt each other. This was... terrifying to watch as a teen and it hasn't stopped being upsetting and disturbing. And then they top the episode off with Tara being fridged.

I know fridging is technically the act of killing a female character for the sake of a male character's suffering, but... it's gay fridging? It's not even entirely a Bury Your Gay; Tara dies specifically for the pain and suffering of her lover. After everything Tara's been through in life and after everything Willow has put her through this season, they barely just rekindled... and she gets killed off.

8. Favorite Monster Of The Week?

Aesthetically and what he brought to the show? Sweet from Once More, With Feeling.

But I think that Stewart from Hell's Bells also really stood out. The fact that Anya's past came back to haunt her – because she was a demon for a century and she tortured people for a living. She doesn't even remember this guy whose life she ruined and he comes in to ruin her wedding. And in the end... he wasn't even the one to ruin it, the viewer gets one last moment of hope when it's revealed this was a fake-out, that he was not “Xander from the future” but a vengeful demon... but even without Stewart, the wedding didn't happen.

9. Least favorite Monster Of The Week?

Not too many monsters of the week going on, really. Probably Wig Lady from 6x12 Doublemeat Palace, because all the implications of cannibalism in that episode were really very disturbing.

10. Rate the overarching villain!

Brilliant. 10/10. Holds up so well.

Seriously, there is this... frustrating part where Xander's character just does not hold up at all because of the casual sexism and gross over-sexualization of his female friends. Which figures, because that's how a Nice Nerdy Guy was defined in the 90s (and, if you look at modern TV aimed at nerdy guys like The Big Bang Theory, still is). It's just a trope from TV and movies that for some reason really worked back then but nowadays when we look at sexism and the behavior of men toward women with different eyes, it is really appalling and upsetting.

In the case of the nerd trio, this worked out really well for the show, because it only makes them even more effective villains. They are ridiculous losers, total nerds who think they are owed womens' attention. Their schemes are literally straight out of comics but for the dumbest purposes – they make an invisibility ray so they can go into a women's only spa to spy on naked ladies. They create mind-control devices but for the purpose of enslaving women into their sex-puppets.

It is so gross, so ridiculous and inexplicably still somehow funny, because it's straight out of comics. Freeze-rays? Invisibility-rays? Self-destructing lairs? Jet-packs? It is not out of this world, this isn't how Buffy the Vampire Slayer operates, this is a show about monsters and demons and they're turning it into a whacky scifi show and it works.

Then there's the fact that they're just... three dumb losers? I mean, last season, Buffy literally slayed a god. Shows like to escalate. The Big Bads become bigger and badder each season, but... where do you go after you killed a god? Instead of trying to immediately one-up the villain factor, they did something incredibly brilliant. They took all the steps back.

The villains aren't the focus of this season. The focus of this season is what I answered in the first part of this post. Buffy's mental health and readjustment. You can't only focus on that though, you do need a villain and for that, an overarching villain of some loser nerd bois who fail the majority of time are perfect. They're nuisances that make Buffy's life marginally harder at times, but they're not an overall, serious, actual threat that may end the world.

And still they... got Tara killed. In such a... human manner. An angry man-child who hates women comes in with a gun and shoots her. And there's nothing the demon-slaying good guys can do about it. The bullet hits – not the target it was intended for – and takes an innocent life. Just like that, Warren manages what the hellish bad guys from previous seasons hadn't managed; he kills a Scoobie. Angelus killed Jenny, Drusilla killed Kendra, those were the only major deaths at the hands of villains that we had on this show so far and both were minor characters.

Bonus: Other thoughts?

Dawn was so draining this season; she got better in the last quarter of the season but the majority of it... The stealing, the behavior, the blaming Buffy for absolutely everything – Willow got addicted to magic, it's Buffy's fault, they have no money and Buffy has to go and work to earn money and it's Buffy's fault that she's not home, Buffy died to save Dawn and somehow it's Buffy's fault too because she left Dawn. Just... how can you possibly be this self-centered...? It's so exhausting, even more so in the season that has Buffy suffering the most and instead of being a supportive, helpful sister, Dawn acts like she's the victim of everything...

And I understand, Dawn has been through a lot too – losing her mother, losing Buffy, learning she isn't human but just a mass of energy – but there is a difference between suffering yourself and placing all the blame on other people and pretending that the world is against you, instead of tackling your own issues and problems yourself? And stealing from your friends, at that.

And no, being fifteen isn't an excuse for not seeing beyond yourself. Fifteen year olds are sure old enough to be self-aware... This “fifteen year olds only see themselves and only care about their own suffering and everybody else is to be blamed for how shit their life is” is just... another cringey Teen Girl Trope. Seriously, why did they just cram every single bad trope into this character...

[aleatoryalarmalligator]

Life Story 2002 Summer Part 20

The whole idea of reinventing myself was paramount to my existence at about this point in my formative years of junior high and I had hoped to make some kind of transformation over the summer that would make me much more desirable by the time I hit 8th. I had always been comfortable living inside of my own head until then. I didn't care that I had so much poofy hair, or that I wore no make up or that my clothing was all gender neutral. I wasn't jealous of anyone. I hadn't been happy – in fact I had been quite miserable, but it was always easier just to retreat into my own imagination. Now I was very conscious of my existence outside of myself. And in that world, I had never had a lot of control. Kyle had gotten pretty popular in the last few months of 7th grade, and there were a lot of girls that were getting chummy with him. I was not the only one who liked him now. I could tell that the days of us frolicking in the grass together was over. I managed to keep his attention, but I had sold my soul to do that. I had to open up the floodgates to every boy in my age bracket to let them know that they could tease me – that I had no boundaries. That was my way of preventing that door from shutting. I didn't have the wisdom to really accept that it was over, and what was once a crush was becoming a fervor of faith and denial.

This was probably the first time in my life that I actually felt like a teenager. Katie, Samantha, Sarah and I would all have sleepovers – I was invited now – and we would look at magazines, draw, listen to the radio and talk about boys and girls we didn't like as we looked out and watched the wind blow through the trees. We all had Neopet accounts then, and we were all really into it. During the day, I would get up, and we would often times hang out down by the pool and people watch on the benches by the store. I didn't dare actually swim in the pool anymore, and besides the place was packed and swimming was more like wading in the lava's of hell along with the million other souls. My friends loved to watch their crushes with their shirts off. Sarah liked Rex, Samantha might have still been into Andy – but maybe someone else. Katie was into this guy who lived in Alaska that visited for the summer named Luke. I felt kind of weird though. I didn't get into the shirtless guy thing. For the most part it seemed really out of sorts with how I liked Kyle. Something seemed a little too deviant about sitting and watching him swim and I never really thought about him sexually. I was mocked by my friends and told that I was lying. Nobody could even imagine what it was even like to not have dirty thoughts. I felt pressured to pretend that shirtless guys got to me so I tried to anyway.

We all had become super obsessed with Eminem. The Eminem Show had come out and at the time that was my favorite. This was a deep shady thing for me though. My dad was opposed to rap, and didn't want me to listen to it. I would have been grounded and punished harshly. So if I did listen to it, it had to be secret. Secondly, Samantha was the only one who initially had an album. Nobody I knew ordinarily ordered things online, and if there were Eminem Shows on the shelves, they would get bought up instantly. I was also not of age to buy the unedited version. Samantha had to buy hers up in Spokane. So what I actually had was a blank tape that I had Samantha tape for me. I would listen to it while my dad was away and when he got home I had to take it out of the tape deck and hide it under my mattress.

One of the first things I wanted to do to fix myself up was to get my hair to stay down. It had never crossed my mind to try. So I got a box from the store that was meant to straighten your hair. It worked for the most part. My hair was long and more wavy. I also noticed that a lot of girls on MTV and at school were into tanning. I have always been a pale one. Personally, I didn't really like being tan. But I was very self conscious about my acne, which I thought would blend better if I tanned up a bit, and the hair follicles on my legs were obvious and spotty. My friends had soft hairless legs. So, I started putting on the fake tanning stuff. I looked a little silly. I mean, you could see where I had not evenly spread it on my skin. I also only had about two nice outfits at the time that I felt were suitable for my new look. In order to not have to wear anything unseemly, I started bathing in my clothes. That way I would never have to change. I would walk out of the bathroom dripping, and people would ask me why on earth I had just taken a bath in my outfit. It was a weird time for me.

I was so proud of myself. I wanted Kyle to think of me as pretty. I barely could admit this to myself but that was my aim. I was everyone's favorite comedian with the whacky hair. I wanted to be more feminine. I was excited and very self certain that my new look would cause him to give me a second glance. So Roxanne helped me get the tanning lotion. She helped me with my hair. And then I got a ride back into Kendrick. I wore my best summer attire, and I walked down to the park with Allison. Kyle was always out and about, so I knew he would be down there. I decided that in order to get attention I would need something that he would think was entertaining. I grabbed some finger nail polish, and I thought – 'hey, maybe I will paint bugs rainbow colors and he will come over to me and want to help. It seemed like something he would have been amused by. I went down to the park area quite confidently and sat down where he would be able to see me. I tried not to act too obvious. But he was disinterested. I tried to play it cool, but I was screaming inside. This had never really happened before, aside from maybe a few times when he had been dating Mary.

I looked over, trying not to be obvious, and there was Melissa. She was all over him. She was getting a piggy back ride from him, and squeezing him. When I looked over at her, she looked over at me, and she knew somehow. She continued to upgrade her flirting and look at me more. She knew why I was there, she knew I was jealous. I doubt she was really all that into Kyle at all. She was just hyper aware of my crush somehow. I was beyond baffled. Kyle was eating up the attention from this small deer eyed blonde so of course why would he bother with me.. He even glared at me at one point when I went into the store to use the bathroom. I was hurt. I wanted to start crying and storm home. I had gone through all this trouble to fix my hair and to look nice, and he didn't notice. And why should he? It took me a long time to look nice, but a lot of the girls in my class simply looked great as soon as they woke up in the morning. I would never be like them. I started trying to paint the some poor beetles that Allison and David found for me on the playground. I felt incredibly stupid doing it now, but I had to keep up the act. The poor dumb bugs who didn't deserve their rainbow deaths squirmed away as I painted them. Eventually Kyle came up to me and looked down at what I was doing “That's stupid”, he looked over at Melissa as he said it. My heart broke in half.

I was so lost in my own disappointment that I didn't even quite remember walking home. I felt this lonely sense of failure. I felt embarrassed and stupid and shaky. And  of course it started to rain. Also, this strange feeling of rage was growing in me. I had never actually been jealous of another girl before this point. Even when Kyle dated Mary, I had understood it as a necessary evil. I was truly jealous of Melissa. She was smarter than me, more gorgeous than me, tiny. She knew how to get to people in just the right way to influence them. She was some kind of mastermind. It's like she could look at people, and get exactly what she wanted out of them, and it didn't even matter. She got from point A to point Z with ease. I however, was stumbling on C, and nobody had any real hope for me getting past H if I am to be honest with myself. She seemed insatiable, and it all went mindlessly smooth for her. I am sure on the outset that Melissa was full of her own self doubt, her fears and such. But it came off so smooth. Everything that bothers me shows. I have always felt a bit like I was covered in honey surrounded by insects. Everything affects me – and there is no escape. I have to make things work as I go along for this reason. I went home, and for some reason I went into my father's room – he wasn't home – and I cried on his bed for several hours.

Sarah's grandparents on her father's side came from Arizona up to Idaho to visit family. They liked to camp at this place at the end of Clarkston called Chief Timothy – which was a little island like plot of land with camp areas, a sort of marked off swimming area of the Clearwater River, and it is always bustling in the summer. It's off the highway that would eventually take you to Portland or Seattle if you were inclined to keep going, depending on an eventual left or right fifty miles ahead. This area is the beginning of the Washington desert, and it has it's own unique dry rockiness to it that will be with me till the day I die. It's honestly not impossible to get well over 100 degrees in this area in the peak of summer. Sarah agreed to stay with her grandparents for the weekend on the condition that I was able to come along. It was a terrible and memorable weekend. Her grandparents wanted us to sleep in a tent outside. I have never liked camping at all, but we went along with it. We brought a boom box with Eminem of course. We got our drawing stuff so we could draw, and a lot of coca cola. We intended on making the most of it.

Sarah's grandfather on her dad's side was probably the most typical retired old man that you can have in your mind. Think of the stereotype of this sort of person, and you have him. He was overall pretty nice but he didn't really stand out to me at all. Then there was his wife. She was actually not biologically related to Sarah. She was not very smart. In fact, I could barely stand her the whole weekend. She said snotty things. She made rude comments, and almost everything she asserted was incorrect.

The first thing that I remember going wrong is that she would not let us cool off in their air conditioned motor home they were camping in. She had this 'children go out and play and leave me alone attitude'. And it was very hot. We just had to find ways to stay cool until it would finally cool off, but that wouldn't even be till after ten o'clock at night. We got to come in to eat bologna sandwiches for lunch where we watched jeopardy with her briefly ,and then we were sent out into the heat. Sarah is allergic to everything. We were getting pretty sunburnt and she insisted that regular old skin lotion would block the sun. The skin lotion that she had for us was Jerkins and Sarah was allergic to it. She laughed at Sarah and was very rude when she tried to tell her that she was allergic, saying Sarah was a lying teenager. So on top of being third degree burnt, Sarah also had rashes from the lotion all over her skin. I was also burnt horribly by the end of it. I remember my skin blistered and cracked. It even bled in a few places. That dumb woman though.

Her grandfather cooked raw hamburgers on a grill, which were not cooked correctly. We had to resign eating these burgers. This offended Sarah's grandfather and grandmother who were very proud of their rare burgers. Swimming was nice at first. We started kind of going crazy being there for four days. We would swim around the netted area singing Superman by Eminem over and over for  hours. On a side note, that is a horribly sexist and annoying song that kind of makes me ill just thinking about – actually a lot of Eminem songs are sexist and all of them are annoying – but I didn't know then and Sarah and I didn't really get what sexism was back then partially because it was permeated in our culture so heavily that it seemed normal to blame the women for being the losers in the relationships, the unfun ones, the bitches. There was definitely some internalizing a sense of self loathing at my own girlishness for me at this point in that impossible double standard where if you are too girlish you are a dumb ninny, but if you are too outgoing or proud you are some kind of a hostile man hating bitch.

The really strange events happened at night though. I shall try to explain. I had for years been fascinated with cryptozoology and had I not wanted to be a comic book artist, I was set on somehow making it as a cryptozoologist – which for those who do not know what that means is by internet definition “the search for and study of animals whose existence or survival is disputed or unsubstantiated, such as the Loch Ness monster and the yeti.” Particularly, I was fascinated by The Jersey Devil, which is this mass hysteria hoax creature with the head of a mule, the body of a kangaroo, the hooves of a goat, and the wings of a bat that some religious people claimed to see back in the 18th century, but somehow gets spotted by people in New Jersey every blue moon. Of many of the possible unknowns out there, I don't think that the Jersey Devil is very likely to ever be proven as real for obvious anatomical and environmentally sound reasons. So it could be said that as I sat there in the tent one of the nights talking about it, we had gotten ourselves a little jumpy, probably thinking more about our haunted houses and the like. It was late, and there was nobody on the little island walking around. We started hearing this strange sound that sounded like a shopping cart being pushed down a hill, along with the this clomping sound of horses. At first I sort of freaked and got jumpy about it because it was just odd. I made this joke that it was the Jersey Devil pushing a shopping cart. We kind of listened to it, and I think we both kind of started looking for a logical explanation. I mean, surely there had to be some good reason why there was this crazy sound at midnight on this island.  But it really made no sense. There were no horses allowed, and no real reasons for someone to be pushing a shopping cart, so as the noises got closer, we started getting kind of nervous.

Eventually it became distant again and went away, And then, this light that had been above us went dark. For just about the entire time we had been sitting in the tent for that few hours, there had been a light outside of our tent that beamed straight down that had made it relatively easy for us to see inside of our tent, such was it's brightness. It seemed benign and I hadn't thought of it at all. But when it went out when it did, I commented to Sarah' 'Hey, the street light just went off” and then Sarah sat there in stunned silence and told me in this somber quite sense of  realization and horror “Renee, there was no street light there.” I argued in horror and denial that there must have been. By this time we were squeezing together nervously in our blankets. We suddenly felt watched and at several points we thought we could see this shadow outside of one or the other side of the tent– and perhaps that was our fear playing tricks. But there was honestly no light source to be found to account for that big bright light that had been above us.  It was very bright. Eventually we fell asleep out of fear. Sarah sort of turned off when she had gotten frightened. I was suppressing a rushed need to run into the motor home and hide. When we woke up that morning, there was indeed no overhead lights just above our tent at all. There would be no real way to get one above our tent unless it had been suspended from something in the air.  And of course, all the adults thought we were making it up. To this day, this situation really has made me scratch my head. I wouldn't take it into as much consideration, but Sarah was with me and experienced and saw the whole thing take place as well. It was definitely bizarre.

A rule to anyone who ever thinks it may be a good idea to swim in that water by Chief Timothy – don't. I have known a few people who got Beaver Fever in that area. And I ended up getting an ear infection from the dirty water that was miserable. My father was in denial that anything needed to be done. He didn't want to pay the money to have me go into the emergency room. He simply assumed that this infection would go away by itself. But each day got worse and worse. Eventually I couldn't sleep. My jaw ached. I couldn't touch my ear or hear very well. I was miserable for a few weeks. He went to see our grandma Betty down in southern Idaho, and I had to stay behind for five days – with the notion that eventually this infection would go away. It did not. I stayed at Jodi's house on her couch. I started feeling more like a ball of sweaty pain than I did a girl. I watched hours and hours of music videos. It was the summer of Nelly's annoying 'It's Getting Hot In Here'.  Finally when he got back I went into the doctor, who have me a pill and some numbing stuff that worked immediately. The inside of my ear began to crackle and gross stuff started dripping out, but it was so relieving.

On the fourth of July, I made the error of telling Roxanne I would spend it with her,  since I had nowhere else to spend it. The 4th of July before had been pretty terrible, if you read previous entries to the life story blogs I write, and I was weary of getting involved with something awful. Roxanne's 4th of July ended up being horrible. She went out with Jody's family, the Browns. They were all rednecked and hammered. The firecrackers they had weren't even very good. Roxanne became too drunk to drive. And as became clear then and in later situations, Roxanne is a wretched drunk and should never drink. She was screaming and crying. I was seven miles away from home, and nobody was sober enough to drive. I was under dressed and cold.  Roxanne said that I would just have to stay the night at the Browns because their house smelled like vomit, and I vehemently refused. This made everyone drunkenly annoyed at me. Eventually Jody drove me home. It was yet another annoying 4th that I in no way enjoyed.

I went home, and I remember getting that tingly sense of joy knowing I was alone at last in my home. Most of the time, being in my house alone was frustrating and made me a bit nervous, but there are also several times where even to this day, I come into an empty house and it is very satisfying. It has this leveling calming element to it conditioned into my being after days where I was overstimulated or depressed or needed space from friends or my father and needed time to myself. I made my bed on the couch and listened to the cracking of the fire crackers outside. I could see Kyle dancing up and down the street with a sparkler in hand, and it made me happy. At least someone was having a good time. I turned on the radio, and it was one of those rare situations where a radio station that ordinarily only plays pop music decides to put on a song that isn't of that genre. I had never heard Bohemian Rhapsody before. It's a well known song I know, almost too cliché, but honestly, when you listen to it for the first time – really listen to it, it is theatrically impressive and completely original. There is no song even remotely like it. I remember being blown away and quite impressed. I teared up I was so mesmerized. It was probably the best thing that has ever happened on one of my 4th of July's.

Maria moved back into Lewiston. She had gotten an apartment in Juliaetta. But she had a severe nervous breakdown. She had taken a can of peas and smashed it against her head very hard and needed stitches. I remember feeling really bad. At the time, I didn't know what it meant to feel that awful. She had just had Ian and perhaps it was postpartum depression mixed with the depression that she already had.

And also, Roxanne's dad finally died. I didn't go to his funeral, and I am not even sure if he had one or not. There was a big thing about money. Roxanne instantly inherited 90,000 dollars. Her other two way older brothers she didn't know very well also inherited quite a lot. I've said it before, but by god, I really wish I had that kind of money. I'm not mad, but that kind of money could really be the thing that turned things around for me. I could go back to school. Get my health under control. Roxanne did nothing of the sort of course. She was drunk for the entire time and the second she got that money everyone was her best friend. My mom borrowed money, Jody used a lot of her money, she was constantly surrounded by an entourage of people. There was no budgeting or I think even conscious awareness of what was being spent. Free drugs for everyone. People started doing a lot of meth with Roxanne. She had dabbled with it before, but now that she had all this money, there were drug dealers looking to make a profit.  My mom was in on the meth. Everyone was getting pretty crazed about meth. I wasn't completely aware of this, though I sensed the instability and frenzy of it all.

Roxanne was staying at these apartments at the time called Adam's Lane.  For a time, my mom didn't have a place after we had left the trailer behind so she was there as well. My father would drop us off on the weekends. They really were kind of crummy. I remember there was this bench that had all these women's numbers soliciting sex and prostitution right next to the playground. It was all either in sharpie or etched into the wood. It would say – call this number if you wanna fuck , some women's names and the like. Before you let your kids play in the playground you had to get the needles out of the park, and though we didn't know it at the time, there was this creepy old man who would sit and stare at the kids and we found out later that he was a pedophile. Someone chased him off, but the landlords did nothing.

Since Roxanne inherited that money, she was absolutely never sober at all. She was completely out of it. Nobody ever took the garbage out, so the entire downstairs was littered with bags of garbage, and it didn't smell too nice. There was one weekend where my mom was staying there, and Roxanne was at her absolute worst. I have never seen her this drunk before or since. She had been drunk for over a week straight. At one point she had walked off into the town and had come back two days later, still completely wasted. Some guy had given her a ride home, and she didn't even remember what happened – though it didn't seem like she'd been raped. She was screaming and crying and I was trying to stay away from her because she would go through bouts of rage and laughter and crying and in every case she was prone to getting physical and had no filter at all. I remember my mom was cleaning and trying to look after her nervously. We were all just trying to calmly live around her until she sobered up. She decided that she was going to tickle attack me. I don't remember what made her get to that point where she thought of this, but it crossed her mind and she went for it. I hate being tickled even lightly. She threw her entire body on me, and I could barely breath. She was digging her nails into me as hard as she could frantically like a lunatic. I felt suffocated and helpless and I realized that I was going to have to viciously fight back if I planned on getting out from under her. I bit her hair, which made her let go of my wrists. With a free hand, I punched her, but she didn't stop. I punched her then as hard as I could, and she fell to the floor sobbing miserably.

She started crying how sorry she was for being cruel to me when I was young. I don't hold it against her, but Roxanne really did make life hard for me when I was young. She was in some ways extremely abusive. So her guilt about that came pouring out. My mom actually understood why I had done what I had done and didn't give me any grief for it. She told Roxanne that she had had it coming. Then she led Roxanne to her bedroom where she sobbed herself to sleep. In the morning, believe it or not, she wasn't even hung over. I don't understand why not – but she just wasn't.

Katie spent half her summer pursuing this Luke guy before he went back home up to Alaska. He had this sister named Coty that became Katie's best friend outside of our circle. I didn't really like Coty or Luke from what I knew. I met them by accident in Lewiston. Everyone was walking behind the houses on the hillside, sometimes traveling through people's back yard for the sake of adventure, and it was strange to see Katie in the same town my mother lived in, but there she was behind the Adam's Lane Apartments. I went with them. I didn't really like them, but I can't now remember the reason. There was this situation with Whitney involved (mentioned previously) that made Katie a forever enemy of Whitney's. Katie became infatuated with this Luke person, and he saw Whitney noted her beauty, and like an annoying foolish man of medieval times, decided to attempt to win Whitney's heart by standing outside of her house until someone had to tell him to leave. This made Katie enraged. So for the next year or so, Katie would spent at least an hour each week drawing pictures of Whitney being skewered by horned animals, be it a unicorn or an elk. She would draw her being disemboweled. She would draw close ups of Whitney's nose. It was pretty hilarious actually. Somewhere I believe Sarah still has one of these drawings kept. I wish I had kept more of Katie's artwork. It was actually pretty funny.

Here is what i have written thus far of my life story.

PART 19 - http://tinyurl.com/rfhbms8

PART 18 - http://tinyurl.com/ycrznrwk

PART 17 - http://tinyurl.com/y77unlng

PART 16 - http://tinyurl.com/yadpsv8c

PART 15 - http://tinyurl.com/yb3lt6k5

PART 14 - http://tinyurl.com/yb4cfedq

PART 13 - http://tinyurl.com/yalanq9s

PART 12 - http://tinyurl.com/yc79mw94

PART 11 - http://tinyurl.com/yc9qhj84

PART 10 - http://tinyurl.com/yb734w24

PART 9 - http://tinyurl.com/yc2t6vfw  

PART 8 - http://tinyurl.com/ybl37utq

PART 7 - http://tinyurl.com/ybvo283g

PART 6 - http://tinyurl.com/kbc9dwu

PART 5 - http://tinyurl.com/msnz4am

PART 4 - http://tinyurl.com/k9x8esg

PART 3 - http://tinyurl.com/mwp9atx

PART 2 - http://tinyurl.com/lbt6xq2

PART 1 - http://tinyurl.com/l8xbvg8

[amethystiridescence]

I am so happy.

My life has always been very relatively fortunate. I know there’s no comparison to all sides of a spectrum so its only with my limited perspective and subjective opinion that I can reflect on my circumstances. Its just for the sake of juxtaposition that I mention any of my subjectively negative life-affecting things. With some warning this is to be a very indulgent ramble as I just want to savour how impossibly incredibly wonderful life is right now.

For a start, I finally live somewhere where I can be relaxed and also call it home. After my parents divorced when I was 10 until I was 25, I lived with my mother. She has taken it upon herself to compensate in a very overbearing way for the lack of a father figure in mine and my brother’s lives. It’s left me paranoid, resentful, strained and absolutely living and breathing anxiety and I desperately needed to move out but money and a stop-start pattern in my career after Uni made it impossible. Through sudden circumstances I suddenly had somewhere I could move into and live in my best friend’s beautiful house. I am eternally grateful and forever in his debt for letting me live in such an amazing place. It’s such a roomy and bright place, and he let me turn it as homely as possible. I got to decorate the kitchen in pink and green and light pine, and I made the living room light and dark blue with tons of nerdy books and old school consoles. I have an old PS1 dance mat and Spyro.

My bedroom is unbelievably gorgeous, and my boyfriend who lives with me across the hallway with his own space built me a window seat which I’ve wanted ever since I read an illustrated copy of the Secret Garden when I was 5. I’ve covered my room in fairy lights, printed polaroids of my Instagram, and I sit on my window seat in the sunshine since it faces south and I read with scented candles. I can actually keep flowers in my bedroom now without them dying from lack of sunlight and I buy different colour carnations every few weeks. My boyfriend is going to put up bird feeders outside my window soon. He makes curries with coconut milk and sticky rice and I cook garlicky seafood noodle broths, and occasionally we all inhale one huge takeaway pizza each whilst watching Friends.

I also live in the most beautiful part of the UK. The sea is less than a mile from where I live to the south, and the moors are less than 10 miles to the north. Everything is wide, green and natural and beautiful on the moors and the wild ponies happily eat from your hands.

I went bodyboarding in the Cornish waves the other weekend and the water was so warm and so blue. I also went swimming in my city’s adorable local seaside lido pool in the hot sun the other week. Eddy bought us hot dogs and slushies.

I now have a huge group of fantastic friends and I’m still not sure how I’ve managed to become part of such a incredible group of people. Thanks to a string of aggressive and manipulative bullying in secondary school, my own socialising skills were shot to pieces and I didn’t make friends easily. When I first moved house I felt lonely and without friends and I was panicking about new people. So when I found the University Amateur Dramatics society by pure accident, I couldn’t believe my luck. For some crazy reason they actually seem to like me and want me to be part of their incredible family. They’re all so talented, passionate and affectionate, and I feel honoured to be able to call them my friends. They even encouraged me to act in plays, and my newfound sense of humour and ability to make people laugh still surprises me after several months.

A few of us went swimming and cliff diving together on the moors in a crystal clear running river in a heatwave a couple of weeks ago. I’m going to a wedding reception party with a few of them soon. They gave me a special creative contribution award on their Awards Night with the most amazing speech even though I’ve only been part of them for a few months. I haven’t felt this confident in myself in years and I owe them all so much for that.

As stated before, my career of choice is very stop-start. I went from no experience to a magazine cover, from waitressing to a stint on Game of Thrones prosthetics team to stacking shelves in Tesco for a couple of months. I seized a more stable less relevant job and held onto it hoping I’d manage to do creative things and unfortunately I ended up much unhappier in the job than I thought as I ended up only really doing computer work. The only solace I had was being able to raise a baby crow from a chick and have his company throughout one of the dullest work summers I’ve ever had.

I was stifled and felt stuck, especially since I kept trying to win this 6 month scholarship at a huge makeup school in Hollywood, and I came so close to winning and kept on just missing the mark. When I came the closet I’ve ever been and lost for a third time this year after getting so hopeful in the light of my work going incredibly viral, I was so deflated and planned to leave the job for the first irrelevant thing I could find just to break the unhappy directionless monotony. And then it all happened. I got contacted by a huge entertainment company requesting me specifically to come work for them as a costume designer and makeup artists for international performances, based half hour away from where I live. I’ve been there 2 weeks and I’ve been feverishly creating everyday with and the days just fly by. I’m even going with my team to Texas next month to do the makeup for the event that I’m creating the costumes for. I might even go places like Kuwait or Dubai as well. I can hardly believe my luck. And as if that wasn’t incredible enough, I’ve had a private sponsor contact me about the failed scholarship attempts and kindly offer to sponsor me for a month’s worth of classes at the school next year. So I’m going to work extra hard and pay for an extra month of classes when I fly to Los Angeles in the spring next year. I can’t believe I’ve actually been granted so much generosity and kindness and that I’m now a professional costumer and that I’m going to Hollywood in less than a year.

I start my VISA application this week.

And honestly, I still look back on the work I’ve achieved off my own back this year and I can truly say I’m so proud of what I’ve made. Cosplay is so important to me and I’m so blessed that I can take it and turn it into a career.

We still go Comic Cons at least once or twice a year and I love every second of them.

The boys got really keenly into cosplay this year and made cosplays they adored wearing so much that they went from wearing them for just the one day to all three days of the Con. I’m so proud of them and I love how much they enjoyed themselves.

I got specially invited to a huge London Comic Con at the end of this month as a cosplay guest and I’m staggered by how generous they’re being with covering all my expenses including a plus one. I feel weirdly famous and humbled by the kindness. I can’t believe I’ll be a guest alongside so many real celebrities such as Christopher Lloyd, Alyson Hannagan, Benedict Cumberbatch and my idol Doug Jones.

I am giddily madly and blissfully in love and I feel so warm and strong and sure of it when I remember how unhappy I used to be. It is a huge shame that my previous and longest relationship ended as needlessly bitter as it did. It really didn’t have to happen that way. I wish I had been mature and less scared of being alone and less inclined to retreat into the devil that I knew for all those years. I had no idea how badly matched we were after growing up differently and growing naturally apart. We just didn’t work together and it was making me so unhappy, frustrated at myself for thinking it must have been something wrong with me when in actual truth I just needed different things from a relationship. Consequently I only realised how badly unhappy I was only after I left it.

But Eddy is everything I’ve been needing and more. He is so patient with my whacky temperament, stubbornness and silly quirks. He is the calming, affectionate, assuring bedrock of my life, and my own self-image is so much better for his constant gentle reminders that I am warmly and passionately loved and always seen and even more importantly I can be totally myself without being resented. He encourages me to keep doing everything that I love doing, and he never misses a trick when I’m feeling upset or distracted. He always looks so happy to see me, and his smiles are infallibly genuine and light up the room. He is so ridiculously intelligent and yet he never ever uses it to make anyone feel inferior or show it off. He is so unbelievably unfazed by how anyone sees him and nothing ever embarrasses him, I’ve never seen someone so chilled in their own image such as him. It doesn’t matter how upset or stressed I am, he can instantly calm me down and break past my aggressive stubbornness or soothe my shame.

I love him for the way he can ballroom dance. I love him for the way he loves to cook and still finds time in between stirring saucepans to wrap his arms around me and dip me towards the floor even if its just to get an indignant squeak out of me. I love him for the way he animatedly talks about facts, history, art and gaming logistics with ease and humour as if its not things to be recited, its things to be actively and keenly discussed. I love him for the way he is shameless about what he loves, whether its a beautiful piece of art or a really bad internet joke.

I have a cupboard specially for all my teas. I have over fifteen types and three types of hot chocolate. I serve the hot chocolates with mini marshmallows. I keep a list on my phone of all the silly stuff Eddy has said that’s made me laugh. I’ll publish it one day.


I got to decorate the house with autumnal decorations last autumn after mum wouldn’t let me do it at hers. I put orange maple leaves everywhere and real pumpkins displayed with dried leaves. I regularly lit cinnamon and apple scented candles. We had a pumpkin party with toffee apples and toasted marshmallows on a bonfire in the garden. I carved the silhouette of a crow into a pumpkin.

One of my friends from the society lent me a book that made me cry. I’ve bought my own copy. She makes amazing cakes and looks like an elf queen. I’m going to her birthday BBQ tomorrow.

My cosplay got featured in a magazine again.

I got a new duvet cover with the Little Mermaid on it, and a phone power bank shaped like a unicorn. I can love pink, girly pastel things again without feeling embarrassed. I love having pink hair.

We had an incredible Christmas tree last year. I made and ate so many Devils On Horseback and drank a lot of mead.

Eddy took me ice skating for my birthday. We went to see his favourite band in concert at the same place a month later. That following evening he massaged my achy post-heels legs. We listen to the same band when we cook together. He loves to sing along to any music.

It snowed before my birthday again. We went up to the moors early in the morning and it was absolutely breathtaking. We rolled around in the snow and I petted the snow-dusted Dartmoor ponies.

I had a phonemail with my best friend of 20 years earlier today. She’s coming to stay with us for a week soon. Her voice hasn’t changed since we were 13. She still smells like she did when we were 6. We went to the Tower of London as invited by the Ravenmaster himself and met one of the ravens. We also went to see a Steven Spielberg tribute Philharmonic Orchestra concert later that day. She drew me whilst sat on the tube.

I caught the cherry blossoms this year on really warm days. Eddy shook the tree over me so I got coated in pink petals. I got iced matcha from Starbucks later that day.

I acted in a play that started with everybody laughing then finished crying. I loved every second of it and I loved my cast and I loved the play itself. I love acting now.

I think Eddy’s family likes me. They took me to Disneyland the other week for Eddy’s sister’s hen party. Eddy’s mum fixed my skirt for the wedding and she also fixed my dress for the wedding of Eddy’s other sister last year. Both his parents cried and hugged me when I told them about Hollywood.

I bought a scrapbook with unicorns on it. I’m going to print of as many polaroids as possible to stick in it with glitter glue. I’ve been covering everything in rainbow, Pokemon and dinosaur stickers.

I never want to forget feeling this happy.

[elle-stevens]

The Break Up Blog - Day Eighteen

Ladies Night at the bar turned out to be more fun than I initially expected. 

I was at home yesterday having eaten half a big bowl of chicken and shrimp fried rice and enjoying my new Chinese drama. I almost felt too comfortable to leave my apartment. But I gave myself a pep-talk about being more sociable and meeting my friends like I planned. Then I met C outside our apartment complex and we took a cab to the bar. 

Our mutual friend, AM, who convinced both C and I to go to Ladies Night with her, joined us 10 minutes after we arrived. I’m glad I went to Ladies Night. Even though I get super reserved around people I don’t know, a few people approached me and chatted with me, including a woman who’s also from South Africa like me. I got a nice surprise when one of my new acquaintances, R, turned up at the bar too. 

R is a Pilates instructor and I first met her when I consulted her on some neck problems I developed from my sleeping posture a few months ago. She helped me out a lot with improving my overall posture and I’m toying with the idea of even taking some of her Pilates classes in the near future. It doesn’t hurt that she has a warm and vivacious personality and a killer body that would make a monk weep. I’ll admit, I was pretty attracted to her when we first met while I was dating X, but it wasn’t anything like what happened with L. And that was mainly because I decided early on that I wasn’t going to make my penchant for shameless perving into something more serious and amorous. Anyway, it was good seeing her at the start of the night, even though she disappeared right after that. 

I still found myself looking around the bar for any sign of R while me, C and AM laughed up a storm. AM is just a ball of infectious energy and positivity, it’s damn near difficult to be miserable in her company. I told her about X and I’m glad for it because she was very kind about it. She even seemed keen on reading these break-up blog posts of mine, which made me a little embarassed. Sure, I’m already sharing my private thoughts with what might be a score of nameless strangers online, but that’s only because I thought people didn’t really care about what I’ve been writing in the first place. But the more I type out my thoughts, the more I realise just how many people are helping me through this process of moving on from X and gaining a better outlook on life. 

I mostly drank free red and white wine at the bar, which got me feeling really tipsy after a short time. Me, C and AM met a new girl at the bar just as we were leaving named AN who’s Russian. She spontaneously invited the three of us to join her at a night club across the street with the promise of more free drinks. I didn’t really care about the alcohol, but I definitely wanted to keep the positive buzz of the wine going through my system for a little bit longer, so I agreed. I was trying to unwind from the stresses of work and distract myself from the loss of X, I figured I was due some unscripted fun for a change. 

It was actually my first time ever in a night club. I’ve lived a pretty sheltered life up till now and living on my own abroad has been the only time where I’ve been allowed to have adventures and misadventures alike. I’m glad my first night club wasn’t as big or as crowded as the ones you see in movies. This club had a very relaxed atmosphere with only a few people in the building. I started chugging down a glass of Coke and whiskey when AN asked me if I wanted to play pool with her. I’m no great shakes at it, but I like playing whenever I’m in a bar, so I agreed. At this point, C, AM and I were well on our way to getting ‘cliche’ wasted. But I managed to stay lucid and on my feet and even won at pool after lots of poorly constructed shots with my cue. 

After that, I drank and I danced. And then, I drank even more while dancing. The music was really good and it took my alcoholic buzz to new and extraordinary heights. In that moment, I felt happy and free. I almost wished that X could see just how happy I was without her. But that was just the alcohol talking; it gives me a false sense of bravado which lifts me to my pinnacle only to send me crashing hellwards when I eventually sober up. 

These were these neon signs of broken hearts on the walls and while I danced, my fingers kept pointing to them and whispering X’s name in a mantra. Even in my heightened sense of frivolity, my subconscious was still trying to alert me to what I truly feel when no one else is around. I’m not over X; I probably won’t be for a while. I wish that we’d gone clubbing together at least once and just danced the night away in each other’s arms. That will never be now and because of that, I kept dancing and dancing, but just for myself. 

In hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have chugged down a glass a wine and about 4 glasses of Coke and whiskey without sips of water in-between. That hit me hard after I said goodbye to AN and C and I managed to put AM into a taxi without any of us running into the streets. My stomach really hurt during the taxi and my head was spinning from the alcohol. I finally couldn’t hold it in and rolled down the window so I could puke while the car was still in motion. I ended up making a bit of a mess on the side of the car door. By the time I reached my apartment complex, I had to climb out of the car and kept hurling on the ground. The experience was pretty mortifying, especially when C had to pay extra for our taxi ride because of the mess I made. But she was very nice about it and took me home because I could no longer walk on my own feet. She helped me onto the sofa and even put a bucket down on the floor in case I needed to throw up again before leaving me to sleep. Despite embarassing myself before then, I managed to get 5 hours of peaceful and uninterrupted sleep. 

Naturally, I felt like shit this morning. I got my wish from a week ago: the need to get blindingly drunk. I had my very first hangover today and it was not fun. My eyes were puffy and felt heavy all day long. The thought of eating anything greasy made my stomach churn and my head was pounding for most of the day. Still, I put on a brave face and even laughed about it with C, CI and PE at our desks during the day. I was probably not in the best physical state to deal with my rowdy students, but I remedied that by downloading a video with sounds that only young children can hear to torture them every time they got too noisy and ignored my instructions in class. 

I managed to leave work on time and make it home for my Skype interview with S. I’m not entirely I nailed it or made a good impression, I was pretty nervous. But hopefully, there’ll be other opportunities to make a second good impression that will stick. Even though nothing’s on the horizon yet with finding a new job, I feel about my life in general this week than I did a week ago. I have to just keep showing up and pray that a door doesn’t get slammed in my face. 

After my whacky adventures from the night before and a busy day at school along with an interview, I expected to feel worse for wear. But I’m actually feeling ok now, like I can actually muster up enough energy to exercise at the gym tonight. And I got paid today; surviving a month of a low bank balance finally paid off in more ways than one. I”m probably going to end up spending half of my salary on this weekend alone with paying off subscriptions, saving up for rent, sending money back to South Africa to replenish my savings and buying things for the apartment like appliances and groceries. But I’m gonna try not to mind too much. It’s better to have money I can actually spend than having no money at all. 

I have a meeting with another school tomorrow. If that goes well, I’ll get some extra income from teaching for a few hours on the weekends. After that, I’ll need to buy some groceries and then I’ll have lunch with KI, one of my new friends, on Sunday. I don’t like giving up my down time too much, but staying busy these days seems to be helping me. I’ve been alone with my morbid thoughts about X and our previous relationship for months now and I’m sick of it. I put my life and my dreams on hold for her one too many times; it’s time to start living again and being happy. 

I had a weird moment when I opened up Paypal earlier and saw X’s account details on my screen. I used to help her out with money in the past; seeing my previous transactions were an uncomfortable reminder of how naive I was about X’s intentions for me. It smarted ever so slightly when I deleted X’s details from Paypal, but I’m glad I did it. I gave her too much of myself, including the contents of my bank account. Now I’m finally free of her manipulations. I’ve even decided to postpone sending back her crap, which was originally going to happen this weekend. There’s no real rush now, especially when I know that it will only be a matter of time before I’m finally over her. I might do it next weekend instead or I might not. I don’t want to make any decisions that I might have second thoughts about later. X may have controlled our relationship, but I’m going to control the break-up and how I carry myself throughout it all. 

This has become a long post reflecting on my night-club exploits, so this is a good place to stop for now. I don’t really know what’s going to happen from here on out, but at least I know that I’m going to work at being my old, positive self again while it happens.