#my self defense mechanisms have always been too strong. to like. have therapy be helpful

[biolums]

typed out a wholepost about how i constantly crave attention ornevencjust That Person. drafted it because i said waymore thwn i want people to see (i am haha unstable on here. buti dont want to. like. i dont want you guys seeing me just. unstable). stood up. realized imwearing my exes shirt. and now im doing even worse. so. haha feeing kind of unstable here

[thewickeddevil]

A Study In Jean Moreau

(tw: mentions of Jean's past, violence, mental health and suicidal thoughts/intention to die. let me know if there's something else)

ok, so, i say all the time that Jean Moreau is my favorite and comfort character in All For The Game (i know. it literally hurts but also brings me joy sometimes) and i would literally kill for that man. so, that said, i think too much about him and, consequently, i have too many hcs about him. on request, i will now do what i'm gonna call A Study In Jean Moreau

(my beta reader and best friend helped me a lot with this. thanks @jostenrun)

i'll start with this quote from one of my kerejean fics (https://archiveofourown.org/works/26146540)

During Jean's first four months at USC and playing with the Trojans, he would always ignore Jeremy and put a frown on his face whenever he was in the same place as him. It obviously wasn't the best of strategies to put distance between himself and all the Jeremy glow, but it looked exactly bad enough to work.

Still, Jeremy was all pompous and charming looks at him, always smiling and being polite even though he received much less in return. It pissed the shit out of Jean.

He was used by the Ravens for many years, treated exactly like the exchange item he had been, just possession and obliged to follow lines and lines of rules too strict even for how he should breathe.

Riko was violent, the Ravens were cruel, the Moriyama family was wrong and he needed to repeat this to himself on a daily basis to be able to just keep going.

Back at the beginning of those days, many times he would fight back until he was taught that it was only worse. Many times he would beg until he realized that it encouraged Riko more than it prevented him. Many times he would cry until he was taught that it was wrong.

He would often bleed.

He would often wish to bleed until there was nothing left in his veins, no thoughts in his brain, no air in his lungs, no words on the tip of his tongue—

And he would often try to do just that on his own.

That was his daily life for a long time. Evermore was what he knew, the Moriyama family was who he belonged to and all of that was for what he served. That was it.

How was he supposed to know back then that suddenly overly nice twenty-eight other people would replace all of that with magnificence?

How was he supposed to know that they wouldn't look at him with disgust whenever he accidentally let a curse in French slip away?

How was he supposed to know that the Trojans had complete freedom within the team, instead of having to walk in pairs like the Ravens?

How was he supposed to know that Jeremy wasn't going to hit him whenever he made a mistake?

Or how would he know that Jeremy never considered anything that he made a mistake?

It was all a very big break from reality and so, so suddenly. Jean felt confused at first. Lost, wrong, out of place, stupid and scared.

And Jeremy was always determined to be the best he could be. Jeremy was safe.

Until Jean felt comfortable, confident, fine, and satisfied. He was someone instead of something and he really felt like that.

i think Jean would take years to relearn how to live instead of surviving. sometimes he would fail at that, but so many failures can only lead to success eventually.

he really didn't want to keep playing exy after everything, he doesn't think exy is good at all and trauma made him hate it, but he needs it because of the deal with Ichirou. fortunately, the Trojans are a team big enough to put him in the background for a while, to give him a little rest. but he knows he can't relax too much

he starts therapy. he needs it badly and it takes time for him to really be able to do it, but Jean was never anything but strong, and when he sees the chance to finally heal he knows that, despite how tired he is, despite how many times he wonders if it's worth it to keep going, he needs to grab that and at least try. just one more time. he never wanted to work for anything in his life because nothing was important before, but now he thinks that maybe things are changing

the Trojans get a dorm exclusively for him at first, because they don't want Jean to force himself to share space with someone he doesn't know and still doesn't trust. they want Jean to have his own space and feel safe before anything. he needs that solitude and he knows that it doesn't mean loneliness because his team will always be just a call away from him

he relapses sometimes. days without taking basic care of himself and without getting up from bed, and he no longer remembers whether he’s alive or not. sometimes he's able to call his therapist when that happens, but sometimes he isn't

this is how he gets into the habit of learning poetry. and eventually, writing poetry. he needs a coping mechanism and words seem to be safe enough to float around in his mind and make space in his core

(French poetry that Kevin always dissects for him and tells about the history behind the period in which those texts were written, or about the authors of each text)

the process is slow but it’s progress nonetheless

so, we know about therapy, about not being easy, about difficulties and things happening slowly during the healing process, now let's talk about the little details when things finally start to work out positively. when the best part of Jean's life finally begins

he finds out that his eyesight isn't bad only because of the beatings he took in the nest, and finds it ridiculous when Jeremy offers to help him buy glasses because, according to him, all the glasses Jean likes make him look like a middle-aged man that curses people for fun. Jean doesn't hate it though

Jean learns how to swim and likes it more than he thought he would. he likes the fluidity and movements of the liquid around his skin, how he cuts the water with his body when moving around and how it doesn't hurt him, and he just feels light

Jean likes nutella and chocolate with nuts, because Jeremy used to give it to him after nightmares or difficult days, and it became a comfort food for him (something he wasn’t even allowed to eat in the nest)

Jean's musical taste is a big mess of R&B, soul, pop art, folk, dark pop... he likes artists like Lorde, Aurora, Marina, Sigrid, Sleeping at last and the list goes on

Before he left France, Jean's family had a farm and he was responsible for harvesting fruits and vegetables there. this is one of the last memories he has about France, so he likes to harvest fruits and vegetables whenever he has the chance in the US

Jean loves to read fantasy books. he is a hufflepuff and part of cabin 6 in camp half-blood (children of Athena)

he likes geography. pedology, topography and weather are his favorites. he likes to look at the sky and know how to name climatic phenomena regardless of where in the world he is

(he also likes history and sociology, but only because he can hear Kevin and Jeremy — respectively — talking for hours and hours about those two subjects)

he hates biology

he absolutely hates croissants, tea and coffee. in the morning he always drinks juice or chocolate milk (the latter is Jeremy's fault)

the first time he willingly got wasted on alcohol, he, Sarah and Laila woke Jeremy up in the wee hours of the night while singing in Spanish (Jean barely knows Spanish). he passed out after that and woke up the next day in his room. his first thought was that he was fine even though he lost control of himself around other people, and he cried because of that. Jeremy was concerned because he thought he was crying from a headache or something related to a hangover

Jean can never find shoes his size in conventional stores because he's very big (fucking tall, muscular but not too much, with large shoulders and hips, and eventually a tummy) and, consequently, his feet are also big. he needs to have it personalized and he completely hates it

he loves dogs but is easily scared by them. he couldn't get out of the dorms for almost an entire day after Jeremy's mom's dog barked too loud and it scared Jean. he felt guilty and didn't want people to be mad at him for being so scared of a simple dog

he loves cats though, and after some time into therapy, he adopted a service cat. Kevin and Jeremy always joke about it looking like a replica of Jean himself

Jean doesn't understand the purpose of MMA competitions, because he doesn't like violence and thinks martial arts should be only for self-defense, so he doesn't really understand why people choose to compete over something so aggressive

he also doesn't like the violence in exy, but he forgives because, at least, violence is not the main goal of the sport, but to score points

he learns to draw and starts to open art commissions on the internet. this is his first job and he's proud of it because it was something he achieved by himself

Jean and Jeremy fell in love on the beach

Kevin and Jean take time to forgive each other, especially Jean. the broken heart Kevin left in Jean hurt more than being abandoned by his parents. he suffered from it for years but he didn't really want to blame Kevin. he also knew Riko, after all. he knew how capable of driving someone insane Riko was. it didn't make things easier or less painful though. Kevin and Jean took time, but they never loved each other less

Kevin and Jean fell in love for the second time (the time they could, the time they were allowed) after one of the matches in which their teams were rivals

Jean is very picky for food consistency, and he hates ketchup and mayonnaise for that. he insists all the time that if people knew how to season the food well, they wouldn't need those condiments

(he secretly loves Dijon Mustard though)

Jean was born on 08/31. he’s a virgo

plushies are the first resource that Jean uses when he feels alone but is unable to be around anyone at the moment, so he unconsciously starts making a collection of them. they're all small, except for two that Kevin and Jeremy gave him and are, respectively, a fox and a red and gold trojan. he eventually distributes his plushies to children in local orphanages but keeps those two to himself out of sheer emotional attachment

he doesn't stop suffering because of his trauma throughout his life, but he learns to deal with it. that's the point of everything. he never thinks he will magically forget or get over it, but now he is in a different place in his life and he can start working his way to be the best version of himself he can. he doesn't fool himself into thinking it will be easy and fast, he never thought it would be less difficult than it really was, but he takes things slowly and carefully and hopes it works

his entire healing process is too complex and extensive to explain everything here, but i did the best i could and now i really need to stop because i could stay here ranting for days. xx

[maaji-maji-majima]

some kissing hcs for Majima?(if u can make it nsfw)

So I'm in a weird place with this. I don't want to leave you unanswered but I know you won't like the answer that I give. It has been a long time since I was active on tumblr and I'm not sure when along the timeline headcanon became synonymous with fanfiction. I appreciate fanfiction authors for their creativity, but I am not one myself. I use headcanon in the older definition of "this isn't in the source material, but it is true in my brain". They are either random things my half asleep mind thought of while walking home from work or a character analysis. At the same token your ask had crawled into my brainmeats and won't leave. So again, I apologize that this most definitely is not what you're looking for, but I hope someone out there finds this to be an interesting read.

Without further introduction, here is a character analysis of our favorite pansexual, gender fluid, emotionally stunted goblin in regards to relationships and why the he desperately needs therapy as brought to you by a different pansexual, gender fluid, emotionally stunted goblin who got therapy but probably needs more.

Trigger warnings: Abuse, self harm, mental disorders, poor coping strategies, unhealthy relationships, random tense changes, not fanfiction

Spoilers for the whole franchise, but very specifically for 0, K1, and 5.

Abuse does weird things to people's brains. In Yakuza 0 Majima has barely been out of the hole for a year. He might no longer be suffering the actual physical torture he had been subjected to the year prior, but he is still directly in the hands of his abusers and being watched every moment. He is still in a cage even if it doesn't look like one. He is depressed and likely suicidal, but doesn't follow through with those thoughts because he is determined to make sure Saejima has a home to come back to. He is willing to endure just about anything to allow Saejima a chance to exact that final moment of retribution because Saejima is the one who deserves it and Majima doesn't feel that there is any possibility for forgiveness. In all likelihood he hasn't sought out anyone for a hookup or paid company for an evening due to a combination of not feeling like he deserves anything that feels good and the fact that he's constantly being watched. The year in hole means he no longer really has a concept of privacy, but he's worried that getting close to someone, even for a few moments, could put them in danger if Sagawa or Shimano feels like holding something else over his head. It isn't worth accidentally dragging someone into his own personal hell. He no longer lives for the present, he is only living for that far-off future that he hopes isn't just a pipe dream.

Enter Makoto. At first she is a stand-in for Saejima's sister Yasuko, but it morphs rapidly from there. She is the light and kindness and hope that he hasn't seen in years and she's being dragged into his bullshit. He knows in his heart of hearts that she doesn't deserve what she is being forced into, so his mind snaps into the immediate and does everything he possibly can to save her. This is is the hill he wants to die on. Maybe, just maybe, he can end his miserable existence with a final act of good and he feels that Saejima might just be able to understand. But because he no longer has any relationships in his life that are not strictly professional or the abusers he cannot escape, he has little recollection of what a nuanced relationship or even friendship is any longer. Due to circumstance she is also the only person that he cannot keep at arm's length, no matter how desperately he tries. So he falls for her and falls hard. But in the end, after everything they go through he does the impossible. He lets her go. She has a life and a future, whereas he has neither of those. What would she do? Become his ane-san? Have some temporary happiness before she realizes she has a target on her back for the rest of her life? No. Majima believes she deserves so much more than that even though it hurts him deeply. What is one more hurt on top of everything else? He's gotten extremely good at burying his pain.

Getting to Tokyo flips a switch in Majima's brain. Like many people with mental trauma who don't have access to therapy he falls into excess as a way of self medicating. He fits virtually everything on the hedonism checklist. Drinking? Yeah. Violence? Hell yeah! Promiscuity? Yeah, but I ain't judging. Drugs? Probably, even though it isn't explicitly stated in game. Everything from his shift in personality to his wardrobe has become, intentionally or not, a defense mechanism. He has escaped from all of his abusers except for Shimano and he refuses to allow anyone to gain that kind of power over him again.

It is a double edged sword, however. His depression and PTSD are running unchecked. In all likelihood he hasn't fallen hard on vices as a way to reclaim ownership off his own body. Instead it seems more probable that he is dissociating. After everything he has been through he doesn't care what happens to his body in the long run because it isn't actually his anymore. Risky behavior, which is practically Majima's middle name, is also frequently used as a passive form of self harm because the end result is either temporarily feeling better thanks to endorphins and adrenaline or permanently feeling better after embracing death. He could achieve a similar feeling by taking up jogging and chasing a runners high, but that takes more time and energy than chugging a handle of whiskey or goading some chump into throwing hands. Sadly even now admitting to mental problems by seeking help is fairly stigmatized in Japan and it was only worse in the early 90s. Can't have a problem if no one tells you it's there, right?

Then he meets Mirei. She's intense but not wild like Majima. At that moment in time she is everything he needs. Head strong, domineering, and very, very determined. She knows exactly what buttons to press to wrap him right around her finger. And he lets her take the reigns, lets her run his life because he realizes he was doing a terrible job on his own. Better her than Shimano, right? Doing something wrong results in the cold shoulder instead of a vicious beating, and doing something right leads to more than simply the relief of avoiding a beating. He decides that making her happy is enough to make him happy. Until suddenly it isn't. He never wanted to be a father, but even the idea that he could have been was enough to cause a fundamental shift in his entire outlook on life. He could have had someone to live for, instead of just survive for. But he had no say in the matter and didn't know until the decision had been made for him. When Mirei told him she had an abortion he snapped. He hit her. The one and only time he raised his hands against her. Disgusted with himself, and wounded by her decision, he left. If he was capable of that, he knew couldn't be the person she had been trying to mold him into. He realized he was nothing but a weight around her neck dragging her down. And so that day signals the end of their short marriage. He spends the next several decades drowning in guilt for his actions while still resenting her for her choice.

That leaves us with Kiryu. Poor, oblivious Kiryu. Majima's fixation is multifaceted but in no small part due to the fact that Kiryu is one of the few people strong enough to hurt him, but is the only one that doesn't want to. And Majima just doesn't understand. After everything, he only deserves to hurt, right? Saejima, Yasuko, Makoto, Mirei. Everyone who gets too close to him ends up worse for it, so why won't Kiryu and his sense of honor seek justice on their behalf? So he does everything he possibly can to wind up Kiryu enough to Pay Attention Damnit, Fight Me. But Kiryu's response is always just flustered awkwardness because he doesn't want like fighting, it's just a part of his job, like wearing a suit or answering a phone. To Kiryu fighting isn't a thing done because it's enjoyable, it's done because it has to be. But he's still the only one who doesn't flinch when Majima brandishes a knife inches from his face.

And then Kiryu is arrested and in jail for ten years. And ten years is a long time to build someone up onto a pedestal. Like only wanting to talk about the best of a person after they've died. The same thing happened with Saejima. Build them in his mind to what he wants or needs them to be since they are not there to actively correct it. The decade is pretty miserable, going through the motions and trying to not make waves with the bigwigs while terrifying the minions into obedience. When he hears Kiryu is being released it is like waking up again. He all but waits at the taxi stand at the entrance of Kamurocho on the day of Kiryu's release, all but vibrating with excitement. It's a fight he has been waiting on for a decade, too bad it was little more than a disappointment.

So Majima decides to bring him back up to spec in that very Majima flavored way. Small fights, big fights, surprise fights. Kiryu is still reluctant because he doesn't have a reason beyond Majima's dreamed up training program he doesn't actually want to be a part of. Of course this only leads Majima to do everything possible to get under Kiryu's skin, including sharing his personal vulnerabilities while disguising them as jokes just to cause fights, but Kiryu just kind of rolls with it which leads to confusion and frustration on both sides. After a while Majima starts to get into Kiryu's hobbies, like pocket circuit, ostensibly as another form of picking a fight. And he discovers he actually enjoys a lot of it. And they are both too dense and emotionally stunted to realize they're basically dating at this point. At multiple points Majima takes potentially lethal blows meant for Kiryu and the excuse that he is the only one allowed to kill Kiryu is very, very thin. He just can't quite admit out loud that he doesn't want to see Kiryu truly hurt because that's weakness and he is Not Weak (tm).

Shimano's death and Kiryu's departure from the clan come as a whirlwind that destroys him all over again. He's left directionless. So he leaves the Tojo in an attempt to find his own way in the world, for the first time in over twenty years.

I think I need to call it here for now. I know I've left out Saejima and Daigo, among others, but I've been working on this for days and my progress has been eaten twice and I just don't have the energy to keep going right at this time. Maybe some day in the future I'll find the time and energy to write out the rest for all the other games.

tl;dr What Majima wants and what he needs are two different things. He wants to fightfuck, but he needs to be bear hugged into submission so that he can have that mental breakdown he's been carefully bottling up for over thirty years. He needs a good, ugly cry. And therapy. Lots and lots of therapy.

[whumpthisway]

Caretakers who just won’t quit

I adore defiant!whumpees so much; the whumpees who just WILL NOT give in, no matter what is done to them, to the whumper’s endless frustration,,, but how about stubborn as hell caretakers?? Who won’t give in even when everyone around them has long walked away? :3

...Okay this got long, so i’ll put it under a read more!

This features prompts for stubborn!Caretakers not giving up on:

1.      a non-responsive whumpee

2.      an angry whumpee

3.      a missing whumpees

4.      the whumpee who claims they’re *fine*

So here’s for the caretakers who won’t give up...

~

1. ...on the non-responsive whumpee

-> the whumpee who’s rescued but barely reacts, or suffers a trauma that silences them, when they used to be so bright and talkative

-> At first the whole team is there, trying to coax the whumpee into “coming back” to themself - showing them photos and talking/pleading with them, trying to give them their favourite foods and remind them of before. But the whumpee just stares ahead, week after week

-> and the others slowly, sadly drop away, not by choice but because they have other urgent things to focus on, other commitments in their lives...all except caretaker who *will not* give up on whumpee

-> maybe whumpee was their best friend, their lover, or maybe caretaker was at fault for whumpee being taken. Or maybe caretaker didn’t know whumpee really at all (even disliked them) and has no reason other than sheer stubbornness

-> and, slowly, very very slowly, caretaker makes tiny, tiny progress - nothing that the rest of the team can even really notice, when the caretaker calls excitedly to them, telling them that today whumpee looked at their food as caretaker fed it to them, or that they moved their head very slightly to the side when caretaker came in

-> and whumpee is never as they were before, but, so very slowly, they start to respond again and caretaker remains the one that pays incredibly close attention to them, being very protective if/when the team accidentally does/say something to upset whumpee, without even realising, because whumpee is still extremely quiet and closed off

-> (I feel like this would eventually lead to a very co-dependent and possibly stifling relationship for whumpee/caretaker~ but, still! at least caretaker got whumpee back to themself enough to respond to therapy~)

2. ...on the angry/self-destructive whumpee

-> the whumpee who drives away everyone near them, by distancing themself, cruelly insulting their friends, and refusing to care about anything or anyone

-> either the team knew whumpee before they were hurt, when they were kinder and more open, and they don’t know how to deal with this new, rough-edged whumpee. At first they treat the whumpee with pity and put up with the whumpee’s cruelty because of what whumpee’s been through, and then they get sick of whumpee’s behaviour and drift away

-> or the team only knew whumpee after they were hurt, and just assumes ‘that’s how whumpee is’ and don’t really try to engage past what they need for the whumpee to do their job for the team

-> but caretaker, whether they knew whumpee before or not, who won’t put up with whumpee’s cruelty, but also refuses to be pushed away. And they accept whumpee how they are now, rather than saying ‘you never used to act like this’. And they don’t just accept that it’s normal for whumpee to do [insert destructive coping mechanism] all the time and actually tries to help them

-> and maybe caretaker has some shared experience/trauma with whumpee, or maybe they’re just empathetic and stubborn and won’t take whumpee’s shit, but either way, whumpee comes to respect them and very slowly starts to believe that caretaker won’t abandon them, or hurt them, like everyone else they’ve cared for in the past

(-> the team can’t believe the change in whumpee, now they *laugh* at caretaker’s wry jokes and actually *talk* and engages, rather than being so closed off and angry all the time)

3. ...looking for a missing whumpee

-> the whumpee who disappeared years ago. Maybe it was the quiet one of the team, or the one who was a bit of a jerk, or maybe it was the one everyone liked. Maybe it was unclear whether whumpee just left, or was taken, or was killed.

-> Either way, everyone has finally accepted the fact that whumpee isn’t coming back, even the leader, as guilty and awful as they feel, barely looks anymore. Except for caretaker. For whatever reason, caretaker won’t give it up, perhaps it becomes an obsession, but they’re *certain* that whumpee is out there, and needs their help.

->Maybe there’s something supernatural about it (caretaker gets dreams of the whumpee trapped somewhere, kidnapped, which convinces them to keep looking), or maybe the whumper taunts just the caretaker with tiny tiny hints that the whumpee might still be alive, but hints that could easily be denied as the caretaker being obsessive. Or maybe caretaker is just stubborn as hell and refuses to accept that whumpee is gone

-> and they keep on looking and looking and months, years, decades later, whumpee finally reappears...either barely like themselves or hardly changed at all, either having escaped or been released by a whumper, or used against the team to shock them/as a hostage.

-> Or because the caretaker finally tracks them down, perhaps at the crucial final moment when whumpee needed most to be rescued, and, either way, the caretaker’s determination is vindicated, but mostly they’re just relieved to have whumpee back, whatever state they’re in

(-> think how aimless caretaker will be after spending all their free time searching and then having nothing to do,,,or how they’ll then put all their energy into whumpee, who may or may not want the attention/support)

4. …on the whumpee who pretends they’re fine

-> the whumpee who suffers something horrible, perhaps on their own, or perhaps alongside the rest of the team, but either way they deny that anything’s wrong, and refuses to talk about it, or go to therapy, or even acknowledge it happened at all

-> and maybe the rest of the team accepts the whumpee’s determination to just deny it, to just go on doing everything just as they did before, even if perhaps whumpee was terribly injured in the Bad Thing that happened, trying to push themselves to do what they did before, even when they clearly can’t

-> and the caretaker is the only one who continually refuses to accept that whumpee is “fine”, and tries to show whumpee that they don’t have to pretend everything is fine all the time, and maybe convince them that they don’t need to be perfect/strong/useful to the team all the time to be worthy

-> and finally, either in tiny bits and pieces, or all at once, the whumpee lets down their guard and lets caretaker help/opens up to whumpee. Maybe they finally tell the team that they can’t really do X anymore, even though they used to do it fine, because it causes too much pain now, physically or emotionally

-> Or maybe finally opens up to the caretaker about what happened, if they didn’t know the whole story, or even if they don’t talk about it, they acknowledge to themself that they have a right to be upset/hurt and start to work through it themself/with a therapist/with a family member

-> and the caretaker is just happy to see the whumpee finally start to relax again, to show their softer side and stop being always on guard, or tense, or defensive, or hiding their pain. The whumpee becoming more at ease is its own reward :)

~

let me know if you have any other ideas! :D <3

(NOTE: I feel this hardly needs saying, considering its for whumplr and all, but many of these aren’t even remotely healthy.

It’s completely okay to let go of people who go missing, or to step away from people who actively push you away/are self-destructive and put yourself first, and if someone doesn’t want to talk about the trauma they’ve been through that is 10000% their right and they should never be pushed to do so, etc.

Basically, I love stubbornness in characters, but in RL, it’s often pretty damaging. but anyway, i’m sure y’all realised that because we’re all capable of telling RL from fiction, but I thought i’d add it, for my own peace of mind :3)

~

[lokiarsene]

I really love your blog and reading your analysis and thoughts are always very intriguing and eye opening at times too. I'm not very good with words so excuse the mess that is this message... I just saw the anon who didn't listen to your reply at all and accused you of 'armchair diagnosing' and how it is 'bothersome' to have their illness applied to a character, I just wanted to say that's not true at all and as someone with depression it really does help me to know that I'm not really alone.

continuing… And I just wanted to say thank you for everything, I really love what you do and checking your blog really is a highlight of my day.

Art isn’t created in a vacuum. Many ill artists have throughout the course of human history used art as a medium to channel their illnesses, either as a coping mechanism, and expression of it for catharsis, or as a deliberate way to show what they’ve endured. Even those who did not know what they suffered still found a way to express it, and it’s only after the fact have psychologists, biographers, literary researchers, and even just regular people been able to draw parallels or recognize patterns because of their own experiences. This is even easier–and perhaps wiser–to do when the person you are comparing yourself to is a fictional character.

Neon Genesis Evangelion is the most famous example of depicting mental illnesses in modern Japanese media. Hideaki Anno was severely, suicidally depressed as he developed Evangelion, and channeled that pain into the story, the characters, and themes. Every single character in that cast has traits of clinical depression (at the very least) because the creator had depression, and was exorcising those particular ‘demons’ through fiction. He did this knowingly, consciously, and willingly.

That’s why Evangelion has struck a chord with people of different ages, across different cultures, and indeed with different mental illnesses. I do not have clinical depression, yet depression and suicidal ideation are traits of my illnesses. Ergo, I can understand how it feels. It’s the same pain with a different cause. That’s why Evangelion is an incredibly grueling yet emotionally satisfying piece of media, and it’s why I heartily recommend everyone watch it (although don’t watch it alone). It’s also very obviously one of the major inspirations for Persona 5 Royal and Akeshu, which I will not elaborate on because of spoilers.

But why did I bring that up? Well, you mentioned how my post about Akechi and BPD helps you, as someone with depression, realize you aren’t alone. It takes courage to admit that to someone; you are voluntarily revealing personal information about your health to a stranger, and to all the strangers who read this post. That’s incredibly brave. What’s more, by stepping up and saying that, by reaching out, you are removing yourself from loneliness and isolation.

Does that make sense?

One of the major themes of Evangelion and the crux of all the characters’ individual arcs, is a thing called “Hedgehog’s dilemma.” As the show describes it, this dilemma is the pain caused by people when they get close to each other: the closer you are to someone–the more you care about someone–the more susceptible you are to hurting them or being hurt by them, because your feelings for them are so strong. Some people are so afraid of this possibility of pain that they refuse to get close to anyone–but that only causes pain, too.

You know how it’s somewhat of a meme these days to joke about submitting to “the mortifying ordeal of being known”? That’s Hedgehog’s dilemma.

Evangelion also respresents the idea of the fear of being alone–and the “mortifying ordeal of being known”–and the fear of getting too close with another concept called an AT Field: an Absolute Terror Field. An AT Field is an invisible barrier that protects Eva units from being physically harmed, yet it’s a shield that can be broken through if enough damage is done, and thus make the Eva and the pilot vulnerable. The show also goes on to say that all humans have an AT Field around their hearts. AT Fields are an invisible, intangible form of defense that breaks down when we bond with others. Again, to let someone into your life is to invite the equal potential for happiness and pain.

So why do it? So why risk pain simply for a chance at happiness? Why bother letting anyone in at all? Because loneliness and isolation is making the possibility of pain into an absolute certainty. Loving others, reaching out to them, getting to know them, trying to understand them, is removing pain as a certainty, and balancing it with the equal potential for comfort and happiness. There is a very obvious parallel here with something in Persona 5 Royal, but I do not want to get into it because of spoilers. I would be happy to answer it in another ask, though.

Humans are social creatures. We socialize every day, in varying ways, to varying degrees, with varying levels of intimacy. We are never alone–which isn’t something I say to make you paranoid, or to dismiss the loneliness you felt, feel, and may feel in the future. I say that because I myself am an incredibly lonely person. I feel it to debilitating degrees, even now. And the only remedy to this loneliness is to make an effort daily, no matter how small, to reach out to someone else. To do something for them. To take the time to leave a comment, or check in on them, to send them a meme or a joke or a piece of art I think will make them happy.

This isn’t advice I dispense without personal experience or without medical evidence to back me up. One of the tasks given to me by my psychologist in therapy is to once a day, every day, write down something I did for someone else or something they did for me. By doing this, I am making the conscious choice to bring my attention things I do every day that prove I am not alone. This is one of the many ways to treat cognitive distortions (yes, yes, I know, but my therapist licherally said that we are going to help heal and dismantle my cognitive distortions, because that’s what Dialectic Behavioral Therapy and Cognitive BT does, and I couldn’t help but laugh and think of Persona 5).

Now, what does all that have to do with Persona 5/Akeshu, depicting mental illnesses in art, and this ask? Well, Persona as a series is all about creating relationships with others. It’s so blatantly obvious and so inextricably woven into the core themes of the game that I almost don’t think I have to point it out. I think people (even fans–even myself!) can lose sight of that crucial tenet of the series.

Persona is also a series about exploring the internal self and the external expression of the self. One of those forms of expression is socializing. Another is art. Sometimes, the act of exploring your internal self comes with the realization that you are ill. That means your external expression of that self will reflect, at times, some traits of that illness. You are not your illness–there is more of “you” than that–but your illness is a part of you, and can make itself known in how you express yourself.

So. What does that have to do with your ask? Because you, by sending this message–by following this blog, by keeping tabs on any of the rambles me and Mod Sirea make when the fancy strikes us–are making a deliberate, willful choice to keep your loneliness at bay. You are creating a barrier between the pain of loneliness and your Self–capital “S” self, or your “heart” if you prefer. You do that without even knowing it, and I bet you do something like that every day. Every person you talk to, every Tweet you read, every text you send; every person you sit next to on the bus or in class; every cashier, barista, wait staff, etc. that you speak to is you making connections with others, however small, however fleeting, however brief. Even if these people do not know “you,” do not engage with you in a personal way, you are still experiencing life with them.

You realize you are not alone, and you assert that you do not want to be alone, and so you make yourself “not alone.” You look at your loneliness and say, “no, not today.” You stand up to your illness, to your fear, to your pain, and you do not let it win. That’s brave. That’s powerful. That’s strength. Even if you don’t feel brave, or powerful, or strong. Maybe you might not like being called that, either. I know sometimes I don’t. But I also know that sometimes the only way we can be strong is by being tested. We endure, and endurance is resilience is resistance is strength.

And Akechi and Akiren would be very, very proud of you. I know I am.

[strangcrdoctor]

( @rationalunreason continued from here )

☀- It was kind of amusing, watching Stephen pace around his lab, clearly agitated by something in the never ending cosmos of his life. Bruce, for the better part, had ignored it. Not because he didn’t care, he did, but because eventually Stephen would snap and either it would come out with an ask for help, he’d have a drink and leave or Bruce might actually get an explanation.

Maybe. He doubts it but here’s hoping.  

What he doesn’t really expect is the agitation to be aimed at him, raising an eyebrow quickly as the little tangent goes on. Typically he’d have already given some kind of reaction but he was tired of this, of being a stopping point for Strange’s little hit and miss habits. He could go weeks without ever stopping by, days in debate and making Bruce laugh before being gone again.

Honestly he was just too old for that, for whatever the guy wanted from him. Hulk had given up on being confused months back, Bruce at least spent a little longer in hopes of figuring it out. 

Apparently responding to pre-existing stimuli was the wrong way to go about it. Fantastic, he loved being snapped at in the mornings. God he hadn’t even hit three coffee quota and Stephen was actually looking at him like he cared for the answer. 

( Someones being rude! We’ve been nice! Even Tony isn’t allowed to just come in like that, why’s he angry? )

I don’t even know at this point, why is anyone angry at them? Breathing? Not breathing? It’s an ever changing opinion. 

Bruce tries to make his expression impassive but probably falls just short of annoyed. 

“You can’t keep up? My labs become some sort of weird emotional booty call, you come by whenever you need patching up or a brain test I figure, you piss off for months on end without a word but you can’t keep up?”

Huh. 

You know it comes to his attention, momentarily, that he may just sound like a scorned ex or something. Not his intention but then again who takes well to it being insinuated that they’re blowing hot and cold when they still don’t even know what the hell’s going on? 

His voice drops into a sharp deadpan, sliding the mug beneath the coffee machine and he figures when they turn around the guy would probably have buggered off through another portal. 

Magic users, every time.

“Have you considered, for five seconds, that I can be all of those? Some of us are capable of more than three second visits with one emotion. I’m pissed at you because every time you come in here you’ve been fighting something or someone, or somethings going on but  you wont explain. I’m worried because you could die and how the fuck would I know? I wouldn’t but what does that matter in the line of the ever expanding stars and whatever you’re doing out there that means you come by here when you need pseudo therapy friend time. I’m happy to see you because I-”

An abrupt stop, Hulk tilting his head and Bruce biting his tongue. Admitting anything close to good company hadn’t exactly ended well at any point in his life before.

( Not exactly ending well now though, is it? Might as well! You can do it Bee. Just… be nice. ) 

Would you like to take over? 

( Nope! )

Asshole. 

“- I am happy to see you. When you’re not being the worlds fanciest dick.”

I live with a third eye and can see into the fucking future, and man oh man should I have seen this one coming. 

If he was going to be brutally honest with himself, he was the most emotionally constipated idiot he knew. And he knew a lot of beings. When he was in crisis he didn’t go to his close friends, oh no. He didn’t have any of those to speak of. Instead, he went to an ally for technical advice or consultation, and then only when he didn’t have to actually disclose anything that might lead to closeness. He felt like it was more professional, and even worse, safer, which was the selfish excuse he hated hearing from every other hero that came to him for help in the same way he came to Bruce.

God I really have been treating Banner like a cheap back-alley doctor. And he’s not even getting insurance copay or decent tea or booze for extraneous nice favors... Instead he gets someone confused by the notion of people caring enough to even think about them when they’re gone.

Still, the urge to retaliate was strong, but Stephen recognized it for what it was and literally bit his tongue to make him swallow it down. If nothing else was clear, it was that he owed Bruce better than that. Owed him that and more. 

The desire to fight back stemmed from that hollow crevasse under his sternum that didn’t want to deal with being hurt by the truth of the other man’s complaint. And wanting to flaunt off and go wallow in self hatred was the same response as retaliating, just diverting the attention in a different direction. They were all just petty defense mechanisms, and bad ones at that. The same unhelpful bullshit he always used to keep people away from him, but which had somehow failed on Bruce Banner yet for reasons unknown to even God if he even fucking existed.

“I... honestly didn’t realize I mattered enough to you to frustrate you this badly,” he said before he could think better of a more cutting or articulate reply. He still couldn’t tell just what Bruce wanted - whether it was for him to go away and stay away or stay and actually explain himself  - but he was going to make himself stick around to find out. He was a quick learner, and he’d been landed with harder kicks on his ass in the past.

Can’t be as bad as getting my sorry ass stranded on Everest, right? 

“I’m sorry.” And he held up hands, closing his eyes and begging for patience from Bruce and the right fucking words, god please. “Really, not. Just as a banality. Not just because the common octopus has more emotional acuity than I do, not just because I’m as personally available as Halley’s Comet. I am, but acknowledging that doesn’t fix it or make it fine.”

He opened his eyes, finally, and dared himself to watch Bruce’s response. “I am sorry for not thinking about how I am all too frequently “the world’s fanciest dick” to you, and I want to know how to.. do better. Get this better.” He laughed, idly, waving an un-accusatory hand at the other man. “I mean, you gave me a pretty good starting laundry list, but I want to know if you want me to stay and work on those things, or if you would... prefer me to go torture some other poor soul.” Or no one, more likely.

[borderline-vent]

So I know this is a vent blog but honestly like

I'm really grateful to my fp for helping me learn how to handle not only my bpd, but my other personality disorders, too. Whether it's avpd or avpd traits is a little up in the air w my therapist right now- at this point the list is kind of long and we're focusing on managing symptoms rather than what precise label goes where - but npd is a definite. When I met my fp I was mostly just questioning npd traits; I realized as I learned more about it and talked more to my therapist that I have, like, The Whole Thing. You know how it goes.

I'm determined not to be my mother who I suspect has bpd and npd traits -probably not the whole disorder, but some of our thought patterns and perceptions have been pretty similar in that regard -and kind of ruins everyone's life she touches, including mine. She's badly fucked her own self over, her husband I really don't think she abuses but he also seems uninvolved in some pretty significant ways; he just kind of let her do whatever she wanted to us, believed her over us, and she hides some of her worst abuse from him- like hitting me with a hanger, and choking my sibling and throwing them to the floor to scream at them and not letting us tell him what happened. She's also just manipulative and controlling and blames everyone else for her negative feelings and anything that goes wrong, even (especially) when it's her fault (sort of how her throwing me into a wall as a teenager was my fault somehow... lol). So that's oart of my motivation to work hard with therapy and learn to manage all this stuff, but really put some focus into managing my narcissism. It's not going to benefit me, or anybody else, if I'm unselfaware and I just treat people like shit all the time -which I don't, but I don't ever want to, and there are always places I can improce as a person.

It's hard to be honest and fucking excruciating to be vulnerable. I have a huge ego and a massive rift in self-esteem, I can't confront shame (so I use other mechanisms to motivate me to adjust problematic behavior) and I'm incapable of self-compassion, which apparently is essential for healing your inner child or something. I guess my inner child is just going to have to stay broken, but I can work on other things.

Fp has aspd and npd, which I think I've mentioned here before; and he's conscientious enough and makes me feel comfortable enough to talk to him about new things in my life, even things that make me feel vulnerable. We don't have all the same symptoms of course, but we share several, and he's got a lot of experience learning how to manage comorbid personality disorders, and when I'm really struggling he's extremely helpful in clearing my perception- and often he's the only person I feel comfortable enough to talk to about it, given that childhood abuse gave me such trouble with trust. I've known him for nearly 2 years now, and he's only ever demonstrated more commitment to treating me well, and so I trust him. I mean, I don't /really/ trust anybody. But I trust him more than anyone else, and he's made me feel more comfortable being secure and he's never been malicious or gaslit me or been cruel to me or put me down or any of the shit some other people have done.

I've also learned a lot about how dysfunctional my family is- for instance, defensiveness to the point of making an ass of yourself instead of correcting your mistakes, seems to be a family trait. Stuff like that is pretty frustating, given I'm (still) too sick to work and I have to live with them (but with therapy and a purse full of medicine I'm getting there). I isolate here a lot, because communication breaks down so easily, and then I get frustrated, and I don't want to snap at people and I want to try to identify what I could do to smooth interactions; and some things I'm oversensitive to because they remind me of my abusive mother (but apparently I'm not allowed to say "hey please don't do this because I have a history with it happening to me in greater degree and it's bad" because then I get accused of comparing people to my mother... anyway I spend a lot of time by myself.

Recently I've been deep in a ptsd swing because an alter got a (shiny!new!) flashback to our csa and so we had a bad couple of weeks tbh but it seems like that's smoothing out now. I haven't had a flashback or a panic attack in a couple of days and the nightmares are better too.

And I've realized that a lot of what I was so worried about before -a lot of what I yelled about on this blog actually- was just... not all an inaccurate perception on my part, but that I noticed changes in communication with fp and reacted to them in a characteristically borderline way. I correctly registered that he seemed more withdrawn, was less warm, etc. And when we talked about it, he told me he still liked me just as much as ever, but he was depressed, like we'd been talking about, and he had less energy and he just hadn't been expressing it the way he had when he'd felt better. And that's something I'm familiar with, because it's super common with depression and I've withdrawn like that, too.

He told me this friendship, and his being my fp, is important to him and he wants to maintain it, and he was glad I shared my feelings with him, because he wants to know if there's a issue. I told him that while I didn't want to make him feel taxed while he's depressed (or at all), more expression would ameliorate my anxiety and make me feel more secure. He didn't blame me for feeling the way I did, didn't try to make it my fault (it wasn't anyone's fault; I have my symptoms and he has his and we communicate out limitations and work on issues together) just told me he appreciated me, my friendship, and my communicating with him, and he'd adjust his behavior to help remind me I was liked and valued. And he has, and his depression has gotten better with meds, and I feel better (and the fact he was so receptive and so willing to put in the effort also made me feel better) and he's helped me as I've been stressed over family drama (my mother having some drama with other family members- I need to figure out somehow who's telling the truth but it's gonna be uhhh stressful) and over the new piece of trauma we remembered (not good) and the worsening of ptsd symptoms.

I feel stable in our friendship, and have done for several weeks now, and that's been the defining trend of our friendship over two years. It's fucking hard for me to feel stable or secure in friendships, especially with fps and especially when I have strong romantic feelings for them, but he puts in a lot of effort to help me feel that way, /and to help me improve my baseline ability to feel that way./

Our friendship is predicated in many ways on what's most useful; for instance, it's beneficial to him to put in that effort because I feel better, and so there's less maintenance work he needs to do. That's not a drawback; we genuinely like each other and enjoy one another's company, and help each other a lot, and while it's not an empathetic friendship from his side, it's a kind ans supportive one, a safe one, a sheltering one, a comfortable and profoundly important one. It's the strongest and healthiest relationship I've ever had, and it's done as much or maybe even more than therapy has to get me through struggling times and improve the way I feel about myself and other people.

This is a long fucking post right now but like. I'm really grateful for this man. I always have been. I have strong emotional reactions to real or percieved abandonment, and I see it everywhere, but he never tries to make me feel bad for it, just helps me feel better. I yell a lot on this blog but there's a reason I haven't really posted here in a while (and other things go wrong elsewhere but I usually post about that on my other blog. That's where my ptsd and family vents went.) I have an as-soon-as-possible goal to get myself well enough to work, and save enough money to move so that I can live where he lives. I'll finally be away from toxic family (telecontact, I'm sure, but still a meaningful distance) and regularly able to see the most important person in my life, and I think that has a lot of potential to help with my mental health.

[longstoryshortikilledhim]

Mental health stuff

Warning for... mental health stuff, and a one sentence remark on surviving sexual assault (no details). 

I’ve been pretty shaken these past few days after a therapy session. When I started therapy half a year ago I had no idea what my issue was, I just had a bunch of awful symptoms that didn’t seem to make any sense or have any connection to each other. 

And now I know what it is. 

My therapist was careful not to put a label on it, for which I am very thankful (I know I’d go full webMD on myself and panic about it) but she explained that I have a special type of PTSD that makes me constantly dissociate; my consciousness is fragmented because I have no core identity. She reassured me that I don’t have multiplex personality disorder, it’s just something similar, which can be treated the same way: we’ll have to fuse all my different identities, and that’ll give me a sense of self, and I won’t be completely detached from my own being any longer.

Which sounds reassuring. 

But I’m so shaken and freaked out. I went into therapy suspecting I have OCD, and was very reassured to hear that that’s not what it is (because OCD is super hard to treat) - and then I was like, maybe it’s “just” some milder version of anxiety disorder. It’s gonna be super hard, but hey, I can live with that. 

But there’s nothing mild about it. 

I’m just coping extremly well. But I’m coping constantly. So every time this coping mechanism, this state of dissassociation is interrupted somehow, I freak out, and I freak out hard - panic attacks, compulsive behaviour, obssessive behaviour, self-punishment, strong waves of paranoia, what have you. 

Those are the stuff I’ve noticed. I just didn’t know why I was doing them, what makes me break down. And paradoxically, it looks like all the weird stuff I do are actually my brain’s paniced attempt to continue coping - paranoia is self-defense after all, panic attacks are a (dangerous) way to deal with stress, and so on. 

And I’m so baffled by all this, but somehow, I’m not surprised. It’s like... everything makes sense now. And everything is scary. 

I’ve lost pretty much all my IRL friends to my mental health issues. It cost me relationships. Opportunities. And it’s always been like this, I’ve just been spiralling deeper and deeper into it; first it was childhood trauma. Then the r*pe thing I don’t want to talk about here.  

There’s something reassuring in the thought that my brain is trying its damnest to just keep me alive, keep me okay, that it’s constantly trying to keep me calm because if the dissociation stops even for a second then everything goes straight to hell. And I’m sorry that the way to keep functioning was to...get rid of an identity, to dissolve myself completely, to detach from everything and everybody around me. And I’m sorry that it’s not working, because I still get hurt constantly. (We all do. But my brain overreacts.) 

I’m confident that my therapist will help me find healthier ways to cope. I’m excited to ugh, have a self. I’m happy that I’m no longer in the dark about what’s happening to me, what’s going on in my brain. But I’m so, so, so afraid. 

Please note that this is a personal post, about my own struggles. I know that I’m lucky that I’m coping at all and that I can see a therapist. I know many people with mental health issues can’t afford or choose not to seek treatment, or are stuck with therapists who won’t treat them with the respect and care they deserve to be treated with. I know that many people on this website, and even among my followers have it much, much worse than I do. I don’t want to devalidate anybody or tell them what to do or how they should feel about their own issues. I’m also aware that even a “mild” anxiety disorder is awful to live with, and I don’t want to dismiss it in any way. 

I just... I don’t think hiding this part of me is doing me any good.  And I’ve been doing it for too long. 

[kriscme]

One Life to Live

Hi, here’s the latest chapter.   Almost at the end.  This is also on A03 and will be easier to read.    I’m Kris22 over there.  I’d link if I knew how.  As always thanks for Ronja for allowing me to write fanfic of her Hunger Games fanfic “The Chance You Didn’t Take”.  You can read it on AO3 and FanFiction. Chapter 36 “. . . and so Blake’s wedding was called off.   And in the meantime, Celia’s been attending a therapy support group for sex addiction.  They think it’s caused by a fear of emotional intimacy or something like that.   I guess it’s because she’s been hurt.  You know, by Blake.  And that’s all I know.  I haven’t watched it in a while.” “And who’s that guy?” Peeta asks.  He’s referring to a man in overalls and a straw hat crouched in a field of what looks like withered lettuces.  He appears to be examining the soil.   “That’s Celia’s father, Mulch Chastely.” The camera zooms in and ominous music builds.  His hands are stained with a black, greasy substance.  “Oil!” he screams, as the music reaches a crescendo. He shakes his fist at the heavens. “The Knights will pay for this barbarous act!  You’re a dead man, Rigger Knight!”   Then it segues to Rigger Knight who is seated on the porch of the Knight family home as if in wait.   Across his lap is a firearm.  It looks like a bazooka. The scene ends with Mulch Chastely selecting a pitchfork from his arsenal of agricultural tools and marching with grim determination in the direction of the Knight property.   Peeta bursts out laughing.  I can’t help laughing at the ridiculousness of it either. “I told you it was stupid,” I say.

Next, we’re in a large room, mostly empty except for a circle of nine chairs spaced at regular intervals.   People start to trickle in and each of them takes a seat.  Celia is among them, wearing denim trousers and a blue sweater, her long blond hair pulled back into a ponytail.  She looks tired and dejected.  Last to arrive is a gaudily dressed middle-aged woman with bright yellow hair carrying a clipboard.  She’s accompanied by a younger man in expensive sports clothes.   When he sees Celia an expression of deep longing passes over his face.  Celia doesn’t look up. The woman with the yellow hair starts the discussion.  “Good afternoon, everyone.  We’re in for a big, big session!  We have new a member joining us.  I know you’ll make him welcome.  Blake, would you please introduce yourself and share with the group what’s brought you here today.”  

Celia starts at the name and her eyes widen with shock.  As Blake speaks, his gaze never leaves her face.

“My name is Blake Knight and I am an addict.  My addiction is Celia Chastley.  I was a goner from the moment I first laid eyes on her in her family’s orchard when were eleven years old.  She became my best friend, my confidant, the object of my adolescent masturbatory fantasies and my great love.  I didn’t understand you then, Celia, when you broke my heart when we were sixteen.  That you were sacrificing your happiness for mine.  That you recognized the impossibility of our situation when I did not. I shut my eyes and tried to forget you in the arms of another but I was deceiving myself.  I was a coward – too afraid to confront the reality of my undying love for you.  Please forgive me.  Give me a chance and I will prove my constancy and devotion.  To hell with our families. To hell with everything.  Our love is the only thing that matters in this crazy world.  Even now, as my father waits for yours to fall into his trap so he can shoot him dead and plead self-defense, our love will endure.  Will you, Celia?  Please say yes.  I love you so much.” The other members of the group are transfixed, eyes darting between Celia and Blake in mounting expectation.  Celia’s eyes are awash with tears.  She lurches to her feet and throws herself into his arms. “Oh, Blake!” she cries, “If I have only one life to live, I want it to be with you.”  They kiss.  The group stands and cheers.   It then goes to a commercial break for romantic getaways in District 4.  I look at Peeta.  He looks at me.  It’s as if we’re each looking to the other for how to react.  It was funny.  So why aren’t we laughing?  Plutarch’s words ring heavily in my ears, “You and Peeta are Celia and Blake.” “We’re really not like that, are we? “I ask.  “I mean it’s so . . . dumb.”   “No, not quite us, but there are a few things in common.  What Blake said to Celia is pretty much what I’ve been trying to say to you.” “Oh.” I say nonplussed.  Is that what he’s been doing?  “Um . . . which parts?” Peeta shifts closer to me on the sofa so that our thighs are touching.  “Adolescent masturbatory fantasies.” I pull back, frowning, hot words ready on my lips.  

He nudges my shoulder with his.  “It’s a joke.  Well, actually not quite a joke.  You did feature in them quite a lot.  But I was Blake.  Going around with my eyes shut, too scared to open them in case I remembered how much I love you and then to find out that you didn’t love me back.” “You love me?”  I don’t dare look at him. It’s been an impossibility for such a long time, I can scarcely believe it.  He was engaged to marry another woman not so very long ago.  How can this have happened so quickly?  “Since when?” I ask dubiously. If he was expecting a more positive reaction, he doesn’t show it.  He takes one of my hands in both of his. “Since I was five years old and you stood up in music assembly to sing the valley song.” I attempt to pull my hand back but he keeps it in a firm grip.  He can’t just whitewash the past two years like that.  Lace happened.  “Then what has Lace been about then?  She was just a figment of my imagination?” “No.  She was more like a figment of my imagination.  I don’t want to discount what I had with her.  She’s been a good friend and I’ll always be grateful but a lot of what I felt for her wasn’t real.    I’ve gone over this with Dr Aurelius, to make sense of it.   She was a coping mechanism in the same way my reluctance to deal with my past was also a coping mechanism.  I could give her the feelings I didn’t think you wanted.   So, she was sort of you, in a way.  I didn’t exactly have a high opinion of myself then either and she didn’t hold back on telling me how wonderful she thought I was.  I think I just wanted to make myself feel better.”

Sort of like a rebound then.  I want to believe him, I really do.  He’s turned to sit sideways, our knees touching, his face close to mine.  I look at him beneath my lashes.  He’s watching me carefully, with a mixture of hope and uncertainty.  Everything that I’m feeling. “Tell me what you’re thinking,” he says. Be honest. “I’m scared.  What if what you’re feeling now isn’t real either?’ “I’m scared too.  Scared you’ll reject me and there’ll never be another chance. Katniss, I’ve never been more certain about anything in my life.” I turn away momentarily to collect my thoughts. As I do, the television screen comes into my field of vision.  Rigger Knight fires the bazooka at Mulch Chastely.  It misses his head by inches and zooms past to hit one of the oil rigs in the distance.  It explodes into flames and sets off a chain reaction until every one of the oil rigs is a massive ball of fire and thick black smoke.  Mulch’s face is a picture of glee until the billowing smoke is picked up by the wind and headed over the border towards his prized apple orchard.  The drama hasn’t ended for Celia and Blake.  And I know it hasn’t for Peeta and me either.  We still have things to work through.  And there’s also the television special and whatever fallout there might be.  But at least we can do it together.  

I let out a breath.   “Okay.” “Is that yes?” “Yes,” I answer, more firmly this time.  We both lean in and meet somewhere in the middle. A slow, getting-to-know-you-all-over-again kiss.  Soft, tender, shy.   This is real.   Not a daydream, not the reliving of a cherished memory, but real.  In between kisses he tells me he loves me.  And when I get the chance, I tell him I love him too.  Somehow, I end up lying on the couch with him half on top of me. The kisses have long ceased to satisfy either of us.  My t-shirt and bra are hitched around my neck, the nipples wet from where he’s sucked on them, and there’s something iron-hard pressing into my lower belly. “I think we should have an early night,” he murmurs into my ear. “I think you’re right.”  Our first time together should definitely not be on the couch. The television is still blaring and I grapple for the remote to turn it off but not before catching a glimpse of Celia and Blake writhing like eels on a bed with red satin sheets.   We make our way upstairs and down the hall without touching but immediately upon entering the bedroom we fall on each other and start peeling off each other’s clothes.  There’s a struggle pulling off my slim-fitting trousers and he grumbles that I shouldn’t have changed out of my dress.  I fall backwards onto the bed and then, with a final tug, my trousers with underwear still inside them, are sent flying.  I close my eyes and put out my arms hungry to feel his warmth and weight along the full length of my body.  But instead, my foot is lifted high into the air and kisses trailed down my leg until he gets to the juncture of my thighs.  The first brush of his tongue is a jolt of electricity, the final one a lightning bolt.  “Oh,” I say, when I eventually come down.  I hold out my arms and he’s inside me, filling a space so completely, so perfectly, I didn’t know there had been a void until now.   Nothing has ever felt so right.  When we fall, it’s within seconds of each other.  We share a slow, lazy kiss before he rolls onto his back and I nestle into the cradle of his arms.  My head rests against his chest, the strong and steady beat of his heart in my ear, and it feels like home. I wake before he does.  He’s on his back, his face relaxed in sleep.   I rise up on one elbow to watch him. The long lashes resting against his cheeks, the curve of his lips.   It seems such a miracle that he’s here, in my bed, and that he loves me.  I was convinced he was lost to me forever.  That by this time, he’d be in his own bed, in his own house, with Lace beside him as his wife.  And I would be . . .   Well, I don’t know where I’d be.  I don’t think I could have stood living across from them for very long.  So probably searching for someplace else to live like I once planned to.  Certainly not having dinners with them, or having Lace drop by for neighborly chats.   I still don’t really know why the wedding was called off.  That they both lied is the only explanation I’ve been given. Lied about what?  I should ask him.  And other questions I have too.  

I put out my hand to brush a lock of hair back from his forehead and it’s seized and brought to his lips.  “How long have you been awake?”   “Not long.  I didn’t want to interrupt. Do I pass?” “With flying colors,” I say, and lean down to give him a kiss.  His arms go around me and I’m rolled onto my back.   The kiss goes on for a long time.  

“We should start getting ready for work,” I say, although I make no effort to get up. “Not yet,” he says.   And he says it again when we take a shower together.   There’s no sign of Haymitch at breakfast.   Probably slept in after the excitement of last night’s episode of “One Life to Live.”   But we figure that now that we’re genuinely in love, no one needs to tell us how to act.  So, we walk into town together as we’re inclined to do anyway, and then meet for lunch again at the park near the school as it’s conveniently situated for both of us.   Haymitch is nowhere to be seen at dinnertime either.  We delay eating for half an hour in case he turns up but after checking first to see if he’s home – the lights at his house are on – we conclude that he’s decided to leave us alone from now on, and start eating.  And delicious it is too.  Roast pork with crackling to die for.  I guess I’m just a carnivore at heart.   Following dinner, we sit down to watch some television.  One channel is covering the mayoral elections in 7.  Johanna is well ahead in the count and early predictions are that she’ll win by a landslide.  Then Peeta flicks between cooking shows.  I don’t care what we watch.  I lie back on the sofa with my head on the armrest and my feet in Peeta’s lap.   I love having my feet and calves rubbed so much, I think it’s almost as good as sex.   Later, in bed, I decide that it’s not even close.  I am blissed-out, and still tingling from our love-making.  I stretch voluptuously, like a cat, bury my face into his neck and sigh, perfectly content.   His free hand plays with my hair, gently combing out the tangles.   If I could freeze the moment, I would.  So, I guess it makes it an odd time to ask the questions I want answers to.  But on the other hand, maybe there’ll never be a better.

“Peeta, can I ask you some things?” “Sure.” “Why did you and Lace break up?  Was it because she lied about her background?” His hand stills for a moment before going back to my hair.  “No, it wasn’t that.  I mean, I was disappointed she hadn’t told me herself and angry that everyone seemed to know before I did, but it’s not what broke us up.  You remember when I said that what I felt for Lace wasn’t real?” I nod against his chest.  “I’d been having doubts for a while – almost soon after we got engaged actually – but after that night I couldn’t ignore it any longer.  It was seeing you with Marcus that did it.  It wasn’t the first time I’d been jealous.  I was jealous over Max, even Arthur, but I’d put it down to being possessive over a friend.  But Marcus – it was Gale all over again.  He was so obviously in to you and you seemed to like him too.   And he loved nature, as you do, and you went into the woods together, and he had both his legs and wasn’t a mental nutcase. And then to see you walk away with him, with his arm around you, upset over something I had done, when I’m the one who should protect you . . .    

“As for Lace, I’d almost forgotten she was there.  And when I did get around to remembering, she was sobbing her heart out to Arthur.  She’d seemed to have forgotten about me too.”  There’s another pause and a snort of irritation.  “And that Max! “ “What about Max?” I ask warily.  

“It was like he was selling tickets to a sideshow.  Shrugging his shoulders and gesturing to anyone watching.  I don’t know how you tolerate him.” “It has it’s challenges,” I say carefully.   “But he does have his good points. They’re just not immediately apparent.” And isn’t that the truth.  I recall our first encounters and how much he annoyed me.  Still does.

I think I’m starting to get an understanding of Peeta’s relationship with Lace having gone through something similar with Marcus.   Desperately in need of affirmation. To feel worthy of love and acceptance. And something, anything, to dull the pain of rejection – either real or imagined – in the arms of another. At least I can take comfort in that there were no hurt feelings when it ended for Marcus and me. “What about Lace?” I ask.  “How did she take it?” Peeta gives a short laugh.  “She was as relieved to be out of it as I was.  While I’d been projecting an image on to her, she’d been doing the same to me.  In her case, the celebrity she’d seen and fallen in love with on television.  And then she said she realized that she had feelings for Arthur.  I doubt she’d admit it, but I think Johanna’s flirting that night had a lot to do with it.” I smile to myself imagining Johanna’s satisfaction that her scheme had worked.  She’s pretty people-smart, when you think on it.  A useful attribute for a politician to have. “But you didn’t break up straight away.”   Peeta was still wearing the ring Lace had given him the day he called around to apologise for yelling at me and to give me cookies.   “That’s because neither of us wanted to be the first to tell the other they’d made a mistake.  But once it was said, it all came tumbling out.  Whatever we once had was gone except maybe friendship and a few superficial things we had in common.  A marriage wouldn’t have lasted long.”

Another thing that Johanna had got right.  Trying too hard, she called it.  It makes sense in retrospect.  As doubts surfaced, so would efforts to alleviate it in the form of frequent and overt shows of affection and more money thrown at the wedding, as if a lavish display of either could cover the deepening cracks.  One thing puzzles me, though. “Why were you so upset when it ended, then? Johanna told me about the flashbacks.” “I was upset over a lot of things.   All that money wasted, feeling like a fool for letting it get that far, but mostly I was upset over you.   I thought I had ruined any chance I might have had.  And I had no one to blame but myself.” I feel a stirring of guilt. There was someone else to blame.  And that was me.  I ran hot and cold, giving mixed messages of my own.  I could have been more open with him.  Risked rejection, see where it led.  Because I couldn’t really be certain of anything until I did.  And I was the one who put it into his head that Lace was his girlfriend.  And that he should marry her. I open my mouth to contradict him but Peeta starts speaking again.  “You and Marcus were so cozy that night at the pub, holding hands on the way into town and then making plans for a weekend in the woods together.  I just couldn’t get it out of my head, imagining what the two of you were up to.  That’s what triggered the attacks.  It was jealousy, pure and simple.  The same emotion the Capitol worked on to get me to hate you.  And after they were brought under control, there was still despair and self-loathing to contend with.  How could I have been so blind and stupid?” “I – “

“And then having to watch those tapes.  I didn’t want to.  I knew the “to be watched with Katniss” label could only have meant two things.  It was either confirmation that you’d never loved me, or confirmation that you had, which actually would have been worse, since I’d messed things up so spectacularly.” My mind goes back to that day.  Peeta at the door, looking harried and nervous.  That speech about us trying for friendship. It’s obvious to me now that he made it because he thought that’s what I wanted.  His careful examination of any nuances that would give at least some hope that he was wrong.   “I’m so sorry,” I say.  “I’ve messed up too.   You’ve no idea.   I don’t know why you just didn’t leave me to my fate after seeing that video of Marcus and me.  I wouldn’t have blamed you.  Wanted you to, actually.  Weren’t you . . . you know, disgusted?” He pulls me closer and kisses the top of my head.  “No.  Why should I be, after what I’ve done?” My body stiffens at the implication.  That’s right. He’s been in the same situation, only he was lucky enough not to be caught.  He’s talking about what he got up to with Lace.  The Mayor’s party.  When he fucked Miss Facelicker up against a wall.  Hot jealousy surges through my veins and it takes all my self-control to squash it down.  It’s hardly reasonable is it, for me to feel this way?  Not when I practically did the same thing. “Weren’t you even jealous?” I ask.  That would make me feel a little better if he had. “Katniss, all that concerned me was that you were in trouble and how I could help.” His arms tighten around me.  “I want to protect you, keep you safe. And in some way, begin to make up for the poor job I’ve done of it lately.  I just wanted you back.  There was simply no room for a petty emotion like jealousy.” Instantly, I’m ashamed of myself.  Peeta has always been better than all of us. “You could live a hundred lifetimes and not deserve him.”  They were Haymitch’s words, and so true. “Besides,” says Peeta, “You didn’t seem to be enjoying yourself.  And who would?  Being pounded into against a hard surface like that.” Not jealous, huh?  So that’s what he was doing when he kept watching that tape over and over.  He was actually studying my facial expressions and taking comfort that I didn’t seem to be having a good time.   As if Lace would have enjoyed being whisked into a dark corner on an important night of her life to have her new gown pushed up around her waist and thrust repeatedly into against a hard wall.  But I say nothing.  At some point you do have to put aside the negativity and move forward or you might as well give it up right now.  

But one more question.  I’ll always wonder about it if I don’t ask.   “Would it have made any difference if I’d told you how I feel about you?  You know, when you were going out with Lace?  Or before?” There’s a long silence.  I wait nervously for the answer.  Please say it wouldn’t.  Please say it wouldn’t. “It might have.   I don’t know.  I guess it would have depended on the timing.  My mind was so stuck on the impossibility of you loving me, that I might not have heard it.  Or not believed it if I had.  But it could have changed the trajectory and ended my relationship with Lace sooner.”

Haymitch kept nagging me to.  I should have listened to him. Taken that risk and kept on trying until Peeta understood.  But then, how could I have known?   And when would have been the right moment?  Sometime before the marriage proposal, it seems.  But not before he’d slept with her and banned me from using his guest room at night.  And wasn’t it these two things that had crossed a line for me? There was no going back for us after that.  It had changed our relationship irrevocably and we had to come back as two different people.  That’s what Arthur said about Celia and Blake.  And there was something Max had said too.   That if they did get back together, they’d need to bring the same level of experience to it.  Celia had to, at least, try another relationship, otherwise Blake would always be the one who’d broken faith and she’d be the one who hadn’t spread her wings while she had the chance.  Marcus had to happen.  I can’t regret that.  Not only because it would betray what we had, but because I would always wonder what it’s like to be with someone not Peeta, when he’s been with someone not me, and possibly resented him for it. “I did tell you this one time.  That I love you, I mean.  It was when you started to get serious about Lace. We were sitting on your back porch and we got to talking about her.  I kept coming up with reasons for why you should be careful of her but what I really wanted was for you to stop seeing her and to notice me. And then I decided to just come straight out and tell you how I felt.  But you misunderstood my meaning and said I was like your family and what you needed from me was to accept her.  That’s why I never said it again.  It hurt so much to hear it the first time, that I didn’t want to risk hearing it again when there was no sign that you’d changed your mind.  But I should have.  Kept trying.  Maybe – “ Peeta doesn’t let me finish. “And maybe I should have faced my demons instead of running from them.  And maybe I should have asked about the blanks in my memories instead of filling the spaces with what I thought I knew.  And maybe I should have told you of my feelings for you once I became aware of them.  And maybe I should have ended my relationship with Lace when I started having doubts.  I think if we added up all the ‘maybes’ they’d be mostly on my side.  I don’t blame you for any of what happened.  It all started with me.” I shake my head.  “That’s not true.  It started with Snow.  That’s where the real blame lies.”  We lapse into silence for a few moments.   “I wish . . .” I begin. He brushes a tendril of hair from my forehead. “What do you wish?”

I sigh deeply.  “That it could have been different.  That there’d been no Lace.  Or a Marcus. That when you came back from the Capitol there was only the two of us, growing back together.  It seems to me that’s the way it was meant to be but somehow it got all messed up.” “Yeah, me too.  But we’re together now.  That’s what matters.” “I would have liked, at least, for us to have had our first time with each other.  I feel like we’ve missed out on something special.  We should have . . . before.  You know, before we went into the Quell.”   There’s a long pause.  “Didn’t we?” “No.” “Well, I just thought . . . are you sure?” “Peeta, I would remember something like that.   We didn’t.  Why would you think that?” “I don’t know.  I just thought we did.   I remember make-up and showering or something and it was in your room.” “That would have been the night before we went into the arena.  After the interviews.  But all we did was sleep.”   “Oh.  I guess I must have imagined it then.  There are still memories I can’t be sure of but this one seemed so real.” I pull his face down to mine.  “This is what’s real.”  I give him a long kiss and then settle back into the crook of his arm. But before I drift off to sleep, my thoughts go to that night before the Quell.  I recall pulling Peeta into my room and a state between wakefulness and sleep. But between times is a complete blank. I don’t remember showering for instance. Or Peeta showering.  Or of us getting into bed.  But we must have.  Without thinking, I press my hand to my left temple.  Right on the spot where Johanna hit me with the coil of wire.  There’s no pain anymore, but the memories swirl just as they did then as I try to sort out what is true and what is false.  Maybe . . . maybe, it happened?  Peeta and I were very familiar with each other with those kisses on the beach for people who had, up until then, only shared chaste kisses. And it didn’t hurt at all that first time with Marcus.  But I just don’t see how I could forget.   I roll over onto my other side and Peeta rolls with me, cradling my back.  I sink down into sleep, enveloped in his warmth, and dream of seventeen-year-old Katniss and Peeta and their very first time.  

Addendum. The following excerpt was discovered among notes made by Katniss Everdeen for her memoir on the Hunger Games and her role in the Rebellion.  For reasons unknown, it was not included in the final draft.  Historians have speculated that the omission could be due to a number of factors: that it lacked relevance to the central theme of war and oppression, that it was too personal in nature, or because the prose resembles that of a particularly bad romance novel.   It is also notable for the difference in point of view narrative from first person to third person.  Various theories have been put forward.  Does this suggest the introduction of a fantasy element, that this is what author would have liked to have occurred?  Or is it due to prudishness on the author’s part?  As a teenager, Katniss Everdeen had a reputation for purity.  Her memoirs, written when she was in her mid to late thirties, take on the language and tone of the adolescent she was at the time the action takes place.  Could this be teenage Katniss distancing herself from her burgeoning sexuality?  Evidence to support this is her account of the famous “kisses on the beach” which, in her memoir, was confined to prolonged kissing but in actuality was more akin to heavy petting.  In addition, is her tendency to cloak feelings of sexual arousal behind euphemisms such as “that thing,” “a stirring inside my chest,” and kisses that don’t satisfy.  

Contentious, but also worthy of consideration, is hijacked Peeta Mellark’s insinuation that more happened on those “nights on the train” than Katniss Everdeen admitted to.  Was the accusation simply an attempt to embarrass her in front of her friends, or was this the resurfacing of a genuine memory?   Eminent psychiatrist Dr Lucius Aurelius, a descendant of Dr Gaius Aurelius, the same psychiatrist who treated Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark, proposed that Mellark had confused adolescent masturbatory fantasies with reality as a form of wish fulfillment.  At the time, he had great difficulty discerning the real from the not real.   However, it should be noted, that this recollection, no matter how nebulous, is given greater credence by Everdeen’s own telling of this one event.   From “Catching Fire” the second volume of the trilogy “The Hunger Games.”    The omitted passages are in italics.   We walk down the hallway.  Peeta wants to stop by his room to shower off the make-up and meet me in a few minutes, but I won’t let him.  I’m certain that if a door shuts between us, it will lock and I’ll have to spend the night without him.  Besides, I have a shower in my room.  I refuse to let go of his hand.   She showers first and while he is in the bathroom, she searches for something he can change into.   “This might fit,” she says, holding up a voluminous nightgown with a ruffled high neck. “It won’t fit across the shoulders,” he replies.  “Maybe a robe?”   She retrieves her discarded robe from the floor and hands it to him.  Aside from being too tight around the arms, the front edges don’t come together. “Perhaps you could wear it backwards,” she suggests.  “Like a hospital gown.” “That could work,” he says with a wry smile, “Except my backside will be hanging out.  I’ll just wear the towel and hope it stays put during the night.”

“It won’t.  Look, I’ve seen you almost naked before and you didn’t care about me seeing you then. Don’t wear anything.  I don’t mind.  I’ll even sleep naked too so it doesn’t seem so strange.  I often sleep with nothing on anyway,” she says with a nonchalance she’s far from feeling.  She hasn’t forgotten the naked Johanna in the lift or his laughter at her reaction and her so-called “purity”.  She’ll show him she’s neither pure nor has a problem with nakedness, either his or her own.  She starts to lift the hem of her nightgown but drops it again.  “I’ll just turn the lights out,” she says. They get into bed.  She lays her head against his chest as she always does and his arms go around her.  But the skin-on-skin contact evokes sensations previously not felt before. Her breasts are flattened against his side and she’s conscious of her bare pubis, recently divested of its hair, pressed against his hip.  The sensation builds and demands some kind of release.  In an attempt to alleviate it, she moves onto her back, and as she does, she inadvertently lowers her arm and it brushes against the tip of something long and hard.  

He gasps and tries to twist away from her.  “I’m sorry,” he says.  “I didn’t mean – “ “It’s all right,” she says quickly. “That happens to boys, doesn’t it? I’m not offended, really.”  She had known about, and ignored, other times in bed together when his body had acted without his permission.  And this time, with her lying naked next to him, she would have been more offended if his body hadn’t reacted. “Please stay,” she says.  “I need you to hold me.  I don’t care about that.” He lies back down and she lays her head on his chest but it’s impossible to relax.  All her senses are heightened and she’s acutely aware of a corresponding tension in his body.  How are they to sleep?  And they so need to sleep, tonight of all nights.  Who knows when they’ll be able to sleep next?   Maybe if they. . .?   She agonizes over it, uncertain of what to do.  Her experience at this kind of thing is almost non-existent. The most she’d ever done is kissing, and the most she’d ever felt before is a stirring inside her chest.  And then to make the first move?  She knows it will have to be her because she’s certain that he won’t.  He doesn’t even kiss her unless there’s a camera or someone around to witness it.  She can guess why.  It’s because he’s not sure of her.  He doesn’t want what happened before to happen again.   Very gradually, she lowers her arm again, over his ribs, over his taut abdomen.  There’s an intake of breath and she can feel the rigidity of his muscles. Lower goes the arm until it glances against that thing again.  With almost certain death in the arena perhaps only hours away, this might be her last chance to engage with one.   She gathers her courage and puts out a timorous hand to encircle its girth and is amazed at how soft it is over the steel.  He moans but makes no attempt to take her hand away.  She’s unsure how to proceed and moves her hand gently up and down the shaft.  She doesn’t want to hurt him.  He puts out a hand to encircle hers, tightens her grip and gives a firm tug.  He takes his hand away and, taking his cue, discovers that the tighter and faster she employs her hand, the more intensely he reacts to it, until there’s a series of shudders and a viscous liquid spurts out over her hand.  She discretely wipes it on the sheet. “Thank you,” he says, and kisses her softly on the lips.  Then, shyly, “Would it be okay if I touched you?” “Yes,” she breathes.  She moves onto her back and opens her limbs.  Reverently, he starts at her shoulder, trailing his fingers down to her ribs, skirting her breast, and then back up, cupping it fully, thumb brushing against the nipple.  A pulse beats insistently between her legs and she shivers.  

“Do you like that?” he asks.

“Mm,” she murmurs.  She parts her legs a little more in anticipation, willing him to take his exploration there next.  But he takes his time, skimming the curve of her waist and then her hip and inner thigh, perhaps hesitant, perhaps teasing.  Either way it gives rise to the most exquisite torture.  Please, please, she silently begs.   And then his fingertips softly trace the line of her sex, pressing deeper between the slippery folds, finding first a cavity into which he inserts a gentle finger, and then higher up, encountering a hard little nub that elicits the most intense of sensory delights.   “Oh,” she cries, and with that small word she eloquently conveys the place where he should focus his attention. With the lightest touch, he strokes and circles, keenly attune to how her body reacts to him.    He covers her mouth with his own as she hurtles towards the pinnacle, and with one delicate flick of his finger, she tumbles down, down, down into an abyss of the purest pleasure.   “That was amazing,” she says between kisses and he smiles against her mouth.  He’s half lying across her, and she becomes aware of that long hard thing again.  It’s seemingly sprung back to life.  She takes it in her hand feeling its weight and length, and thinks, “This should be inside me.”  She turns towards him and guides him between her legs.  He needs no further encouragement.  Lying fully over her now, he presses his hardness at her entrance and she tenses at the unfamiliar intrusion.   “You need to relax,” he tells her.   She nods and turns her attention to loosening her muscles and more of him glides in.  There’s a kind of burning, but not too unpleasant.  A final push and he’s all the way in.   He moves slowly at first, but then, seemingly overcome with passion, and with a few vigorous thrusts, he finds his release and collapses on top of her, panting against her neck.  She kisses his brow and brushes back his damp hair.  

“Sorry,” he says. “I couldn’t – “ “It’s okay.  There’ll be . . .” she starts to say but then stops. By this time tomorrow, one or both of them could be dead and there will be no other times. She begins again. “I’m glad I did it. And with you.” He kisses her and moves onto his back. His arm is around her shoulders and she rests her head against his chest.  “I love you,” he says.  She doesn’t say it back.  It doesn’t seem the right time, somehow.  But she takes his hand and kisses it.   Do we sleep?  I don’t know. We spend the night holding each other, in some halfway land between dreams and waking.  Not talking. Both afraid to disturb the other in the hope that we’ll be able to store up a few precious minutes of rest. Cinna and Portia arrive with the dawn, and I know Peeta will have to go.  Tributes enter the arena alone.  He gives me a light kiss.   “See you soon,” I answer.

[agingerwithaseoul]

I want to talk about feeling distanced from a part of yourself, or rather separating a toxic part of yourself and convincing yourself it’s not really you.

I don’t want to seem like I’m trying to play the victim here at all. I was faced with a challenge and i failed it. I was weak where i very easily could have been strong. I was put into a very uncomfortable work situation where I was the most depressed i have ever been in my life. I had to sit in the kitchen at work because i would just be crying uncontrollably at the office. It was everything from minor sexual assault to not having a bed for 3 months. I was being emotionally abused for 3 months straight by the person who basically controlled my job, my housing, and the opinions of everyone around me.  This then continued for many months after that.

Because of my depression, the new people I was working with treated me in all different ways.  Some were over the top supportive and asking me how i was doing every day tears or no tears, and some were the opposite.

By the end of the summer I had lost 20lbs and was trying to figure out how to see a therapist with no american medical insurance. I had to ask my abuser if the company would cover my therapy and his response was ‘you need to make more friends.’ I never got treatment. 

I came back to Korea with my depression for 6 more months, with the treatment by the new coworkers getting even worse, which in turn made me treat them poorly too. That’s when the toxicity of my personality became clear. Luckily I had my best friend and my boyfriend with me in Korea so I wasnt facing it alone, but my depression was turning into something much more dangerous. This was the first time in my life I had met people that unapologetically made me feel horrible and openly ignored or belittled me and my defense mechanism was to try to do the exact same back which, doesn’t work. During this time I also had an infection that almost cost me my kidney, they’re both permanently scarred. I didn’t go to the hospital early on because I didn’t want to miss work and give my abuser an excuse to scold me. Later I needed surgery.

The coworkers were taken out of my life without much closure, but the anger in my heart was still there. It was like a bad break up where I check up on their instagrams not knowing what I’m looking for. Do I want them to be unhappy? Do I want them to be happy? I dont know and its unhealthy.

My depression significantly lifted nearly simultaneously with me not having to deal to those people and after I started YouTube I was so happy! My best friend had just moved away so I was suddenly missing a huge piece of my life. YouTube was something that was motivating me to leave my house and the comment section was where I had most of my human interaction. 

Looking back on it now, I was much lonelier than I would ever admit to myself. As for my boyfriend, youtube was like my own little world so we never talked about it and it felt very private and very mine. He is always a shining light for me, but only recently did i let him into this part of my life.

Though I thought my depression had left me alone, something happened that proved I was wrong.

I had done something that was misunderstood, and it was the first feeling of being attacked that I’ve had since the time I was depressed. This misunderstanding caused someone to do something so small and so petty that it shouldnt have bothered me, and writing it here seems so stupid, but it really hurt me.  My best friend had left, i had started this new fun creative adventure and every time i logged in i would be met with a small gesture of hate. To them it probably felt like nothing, and looking back on it I should definitely have been able to handle it, but at the time it felt like i had made these special paintings and every day i’d find someone poured a bucket of red paint over each and every one of them. It really sounds so dramatic but I was (or maybe still am) emotionally weak from basically 2 years of emotional abuse and it got deep under my skin.

Everything about this situation was so petty that I didnt want to talk to anyone about it, so I buried it. Then I gave up. It was like someone kept picking on my scab i was trying to ignore and i took the bait. I got angry and acted out, but it was worse because i had the internet and i could be anonymous. And my actions hurt people. I hurt people. And i can never undo what i did or excuse why i did it.

The scariest thing about this was, i was able to completely separate the me that was mean in this one space online, from who i was “in real life.” That person i was being was the opposite of the morals and standards i hold myself to “in real life” even though so much of what i consider my “real life” is online. This is where im going to get confusing because to be honest im still confused.

There was a part of me that felt satisfaction seeing people agree with some mean thing I wrote online at the same time i’d feel totally ashamed and guilty and i couldnt sleep because of what i did.

I know i seem really positive and happy and like a supportive friend and i am, but there was a small part of me that wasn’t or still isnt, i guess,  because i know even though im suppressing it, its still there. What was most unhealthy is that i was so sure it was just an internet persona that i didnt consider it to be a part of myself. The person you see on youtube or tumblr or instagram is honestly who i am, its not a fake personality i put on, thats genuinely how i am if you were to meet me on the street. But i refused to accept that that isnt completely me. There’s that 1% of me that is a person i loathe, that im ashamed of, that i wanted to stop being, but part of it felt like such a release to play that role.

I was so ashamed of myself that i couldnt tell anyone. Even my friends that i really trust, it was such a private thing that it almost felt like it was part of another world. Not the reality i lived in. again, confusing but thats just how i felt and honestly still feel a little bit. I didnt want to tell people about it because i didnt want them to think that was who i am, but really it was just i didnt want to admit that that was who i am.

Then one day, it really hit me how badly i had behaved. I felt ashamed and i knew i needed help.

Luckily i have a friend who is understanding. I had lied to her face many times when it came to this dark side of mine. I knew she needed to know and i trusted she would have the best advice and wouldnt sugar coat things for me. And luckily i was right. She listened, and she held me accountable. Now that i finally let someone in and that someone was able to tell me point blank ‘what you’re doing is wrong and unhealthy’ i felt the ability to come forward to the person I hurt. Whether or not they believe me or accept my apology is out of my hands, but now that I know I told the truth, I can begin to move forward. 

Now I’m working on figuring out what it was that made me act like that. Why was my reaction to such minor harassment so cowardly? What is it that affected me so strongly? How i behaved makes me feel actually nauseous and I know I will never do that again. I hurt people because i could and thats unacceptable.

With online behavior nowadays especially here on tumblr or youtube, its so easy to be someone you arent.  But as you act out that persona long enough you have to accept that its not some persona, its you. Its me. I took those thoughts and words from my own mind and put them out there by my own choice. That rude person is a part of me and i need to deal with it. I think having a great support system around you is important and i lost that now that i have such infrequent contact with my friends.

So if you’re reading all the way through, perhaps its because you’ve felt something like this to? Maybe not taking advantage of online anonymity but maybe you have a small part of your personality that you’re not proud of, that you separate from your true self.  I hope you can accept that that is also you and that we all need to work on that if we ever want to grow.

I’m sorry if this is coming out of seemingly nowhere because this is so not my personality, but it is. Its something i am going to deal with and i hope that this inspires anyone else to reflect on some part of themselves they’re ashamed of or distanced from. To accept it as part of you and to grow from it. You cant fix something if you pretend it isnt really there.

Im sorry this was vague and i will feel uncomfortable talking about this with anyone that isnt someone that knows the situation so im not going to answer any comments about this but please see this is as my first step in acknowledging and moving forward. Thank you for listening if you’re still here.

[sapphicalexaandra]

Impossibility Is a Kiss Away from Reality (3/?)

Pairing: Jace/Alec

Rating: M+

Summary: He had expected it for years; after all, everyone said that the justice system was bullshit, and a drug lord, murderer, kidnapper and abuser of child could still get out for good conduct.

Notes: So, chapter three of Sense8 AU. I promise it’s not as mean as the last one ;)

Dream

He’s out.

Jace stared down at the coffee cup in front of him, and that was all he could think about. 

He had expected it for years; after all, everyone said that the justice system was bullshit, and a drug lord, murderer, kidnapper and abuser of child could still get out for good conduct. Only right, and he had prepared himself for it.

Still, now that the day had arrived…

Jace had truly thought that in the twenty years that had passed since that night he had finally got to a point in his life where he could be unaffected by it all. But, of course, he was not.

How could he be?

Valentine Morgenstern, boss of one of the biggest chains of drug trafficking in the world, had faked his own death to escape imprisonment, had murdered Jace’s parents, kidnapped him as a baby, and raised him under the false name of Michael Wayland. Jace still didn’t understand exactly why, just that he had spent his entire childhood in fear of his father’s judgment, had been isolated in his home with the excuse of home-schooling, had been beat up and starved out, and he had taken it all in silence thinking that it was just normal. Until, one day, his father had snapped, and the neighbors had heard. When the police had arrived, they had caught Michael in his drunken state with a beat-up child in the corner.

However, DNA had shown that Michael was no Michael at all. Jace, when he had been conscious enough to do it, had watched the TV in his hospital room, and on every other channel there were reports about the infamous Valentine Morgenstern having been rediscovered and locked-up (allegedly) for life. The TV had talked of him, too, but Jace always changed the channel at that point.

The next day, an old woman had come to retrieve him, and she had explained everything. Neither Michael nor Valentine had ever been Jace’s father, but this woman’s son. She was his grandmother, and she had never stopped looking for him, she told Jace. She was ready to take him in, if he wanted to. They could’ve been a real family.

Jace could only accept, since he hardly had better options.

He was still called Jonathan Wayland at the time, and when it was time to reclaim his real name, he told his grandmother that he wanted to be Jace Herondale from then on. He didn’t exactly remember when he had come up with that name for himself, only that it stood for his initials, J.C.

His grandmother wasn’t exactly the warmest person, but she had always cared for him ever since that day, sending him to the best therapists as well as schools in the UK. But, most of all, she made him feel loved for the first time in his life. Even now that he’d been living on his own for almost ten years, Jace always went back at her house for Sunday lunch.

He was a functional adult, he had a pretty decent music career, he had a few life-long friends, like the real children of Valentine who had grown away from him with their mother, Clary and (ironically) Jonathan, as well as Clary’s on-again off-again boyfriend Simon…basically, all in all, he didn’t have much to complain about. He had a nice life.

So why did he now want to crawl out of it and hide somewhere deep down, at the mere knowledge that he might walk the same streets as Valentine, a ‘reformed man’? He hadn’t thought about him in ages, he had dealt with all the shit that he had left him with during his entire adolescent years…yet, there had been no stopping his insides from turning into complete mush as soon as he had heard that Valentine had gotten out of prison.

He needed to get a grip. Even if he hated the thought, he had to hit up his old shrink. He just couldn’t, wouldn’t let Valentine ruin his life all over again.

Jace hit his table with a fist, making a few people jump – at which he apologized – then he grabbed his coffee and got out. London was still the same old London, crawling with cockroaches, Valentine or no Valentine, so there was no reason to fear the streets any more than usual. And he simply needed to forget about his stint of last night, when he had messed up a show for the first time since he had first hit up the stage. He would try again that night, and it would all go alright.

Positive thinking, and all that shit. Or, half-way positive thinking, he would have to settle on.

Because there was always that damn sentence sprouting up in his mind. It had happened a lot, at first, after that night, then more and more rarely as the years went by…still, no year of therapy had ever been able to explain it.

GET OUT OF MY HEAD.  

Everyone just put it on Valentine and how Jace simply wanted to forget about him. Yet, Jace could never help but think that there was something more behind it. In the way it echoed in his mind, it was said in the same tone of voice he had as a child, screamed at the top of his lungs…and Jace simply didn’t remember having ever said anything like that to Valentine.

Of course, the trauma that he had endured, both mental and physical, could’ve caused a partial memory loss; that was why he didn’t remember anything of the sort. After all, when a memory is too painful, the brain resorts to burying it deep down as a defense mechanism. Also, considering the fact that now that sentence was literally drilling in his mind, back at full force after being dormant for so many years, and right after Valentine had gotten free, it was probably time that he accepted the fact that everyone was simply right, and there was no other explanation behind it. It was just a sign that Jace had wanted to get Valentine out of his head, but he never could.

In that case, letting the words fill up his mind instead of trying to squash them out, could be good. It’d mean that he wouldn’t think of anything else.

Get out of my head, get out of my head, get out of my head…

Jace still thought there was something more to it, and that was all. Every time he heard it, he could swear he felt that same desperation his younger self had felt.

Right then, a car’s tires shrieked loudly beside him, and Jace raised his head to glare at it…when he found himself in a much bigger crowd than the one on the street he had been walking on. He wasn’t on a street anymore, period, and everything was louder and scarier, as sounds that resembled gunshots echoed all around…

Jace knew that he should’ve moved away from there, and followed the people running towards him; but, for some reason, he couldn’t. Everything was wrong. How could he have gotten to such a different place in such a short…and wasn’t that the Statue of Liberty? In America? In New York?

Jace looked up at it with his mouth hanging open, and he couldn’t find any other explanation besides that he was dreaming. Had he fallen asleep, somewhere, maybe in the café? Most likely.

So the shooting wasn’t of his concern, right? Of course not, that was preposterous…

Everything still felt so real, as panic sparked into his chest at every new shout. Jace’s eyes twirled around in every direction frantically, until they landed on the cops in front of him steering people away from the crossfire. One of them, a tall man with dark hair, turned around, and he looked directly at Jace with determination in his fierce eyes.

“Sir, you need to move!” he shouted, and Jace, somehow, felt that deep and raspy voice etching itself into his brain.  

If that was a dream, Jace wouldn’t have complained if he got to be saved by those strong arms…

He wasn’t too far off. The man, when Jace still didn’t move, ran towards him and grabbed his arm, starting to push him backwards, and Jace knew that he should’ve listened…but he didn’t want to get out of that hold.

The two of them were obstructing the way, though, and a moment later some lady was right about to collide with him. Jace braced himself, closing his eyes…but nothing came. When he inched his eyes open again, he jumped at seeing another person running directly towards him…but the was no other collision, too. Because the man passed right through him.

A dream, like he was saying.

The tall cop was really meant to be his partner in it, then, cause he was still clearly touching Jace, unlike the others. But he was also looking at Jace as if he was seeing a ghost, all the colors faded from his face.

The stranger’s mouth kept moving wordlessly, as they kept on staying frozen in place, and what was Jace meant to do beside stare at his very sharp, very handsome face? The sunlight gave green speckles to the man’s hazel eyes, his short beard did wonders for his jaw, which framed a very full and pink mouth…and Jace rejoiced when they were both flung out of that chaos to be brought back in London.

Finding himself on familiar ground was truly a blessing; he could finally regard that man in peace. The world, after all, seemed to have stopped spinning, every sound drained except for their two breaths syncing together. The stranger’s face had regained some color, and Jace felt a thrill run through him as he realized that he was being studied with just as much interest. Why not, then, close the distance and give some purpose to the stranger’s still-parted lips?

But, in that moment, a gasp escaped the man, and he suddenly clutched at his stomach while an even more shocked expression formed on his face. Jace gasped, too, because his back had just been hit with a force that took his breath away…and they were back in the chaos. The loudness of the shouts hit Jace all anew, as the pain from his back spread throughout his entire body.

“ALEC!” The panicked voice of another cop, a blonde woman, stood above it all, because she was looking, eyeballs as big as her face, at the tall man. Who had been shot on the back. And who had fallen face-forward on the ground, which Jace suddenly knew was hard, cold, and unforgiving. His own face stung.

Instantly, a shout wanted to form in Jace’s throat, but he didn’t get to it since the blonde woman had already gotten out of the protection of the police car she was hiding behind, and was running up to…Alec.

Thankfully, in the meanwhile, someone else had shot the gunman that had been wreaking havoc.

Jace was aware of that, since everything was unfolding in front of his widened eyes, but all he could care about was the slumped form of the man on the ground. He was unconscious. He had been shot, because he had been looking at Jace and hadn’t paid attention to his surroundings.

This isn’t real, it’s just a dream, Jace kept telling himself. But, for some reason, he didn’t believe it.

And when he was back in London, the world back to spinning normally, all he could see at the back of his eyelids was the image of the ambulance taking that man away. Alec.

[endofinfinityrp-blog]

Welcome, ERIN, to the END OF INFINITY. We loved your take on BLAINE ANDERSON, especially his clear voice and unique perspective of the world around him. We can’t wait to see how Blaine does at WALDRON ISLAND UNIVERSITY! Now that you’re accepted, please check out the post below and make sure to complete the New Member Checklist within the next 24 hours!

OOC:

Player name: Erin

Player age: 25

Player pronouns: she/her

Activity level: 6-7; I work full time and have another group but I’m around almost everyday unless something comes up with my schedule, and then sometimes weekends get iffy because I get a little too enthusiastic when shopping.

IC:

Character name: Blaine Anderson

Character species: Super-Human

Character age & birthdate: 19, Feb 5.

Character power: Energy Siphon. Blaine’s powers activate when he feels strong emotions, such as feeling threatened. He uses energy from others as a defense mechanism. An example is when getting into a fight, he uses that energy to create a shield made from the energy, channeled into a different shape, against his opponent to block their attacks. What happens to the person he is taking the energy from is that they feel weaker as Blaine’s offensive gets stronger. The downside is when he doesn’t have full control of his power, he can use up the energy of his allies instead, and the side effect would be the same, as they would feel weaker and their own powers would be depleted. As Blaine’s powers grow stronger, sometimes he can tire himself out and whatever he creates from the outside energy won’t work as well as it should.

Area of Study: Musical therapy.

Course Load: Blaine will probably look for a moderate courseload. He’s always been a bit of an overachiever and wants to do as much as he can. Theatre as an elective please!

Dorm Style: Salvatore, double room.

Clubs/Sports/Extra-Curricular Activities: Glee Club, LGBQT+ Association, Honor Council (for now)

f

Bio:

Blaine was born the youngest in the Anderson family. His older brother, Cooper was nearly a decade older than him, so the two barely knew each other as he was growing up. Cooper was always doing his own “grown up thing” while Blaine was busy doing his second-grade homework. He was used to it and he made his own friends. It didn’t matter too much either, his parents had money, he was pretty set for life with his dad’s funds, and he was never really without anything he didn’t want.

Still, like any other kid, growing up was rough. Sure, he had friends, but he was picked on a lot by the taller boys in his class. Blaine with his bow ties and perfectly gelled hair and books with his carefully placed bookmarks. He had to figure out how to defend himself, and when he did, it was pretty much by accident.

He discovered that his powers actually existed in a true-to-Blaine manner, as he would, accidentally. When he had started junior high, the bullies started getting bigger, taller, and not necessarily smarter, but they were tougher. Blaine found himself cornered after school while he was waiting for his ride. The boys started pulling his backpack and Blaine’s first instinct wasn’t to run–he put his hands up in his defense and suddenly a wall of energy appeared out of nowhere. Surprised and afraid of detention, his bullies ran off with the rest of his lunch money.

Instead of being totally freaked out by the sudden extra strength and bravery, he felt better about himself, thinking that he could actually stand up for himself now. Still, he wasn’t completely sure of what was happening–the possibility that he could still be beaten up wasn’t all out of his mind just yet. Before he could figure out what could happen, he found his bullies had run off and Blaine was left to ponder his own abilities. Of course, he knew about the Supers that were living in the city. After all, the New York police force was run by some of the best, and Blaine admired them like no other.

After a few more close-calls, Blaine started to notice not only his strength would heighten at moments when he was surrounded by bullies, but his other senses as well. There was something was different about him. And it wasn’t just because he was the only boy in the whole school who loved show tunes. It was just one of those secrets he was going to keep from his dad and his brother. His mom, however was sometimes overprotective of him and always favored him while, his dad favored Cooper. The man wasn’t very cooperative even when Blaine tried to be; Blaine almost became scared of him because of his opinions and talking with their rich friends. He would start pressuring Blaine to go out with girls, and to start looking into joining the family business–all things Blaine did not want to do. He had his own dreams. He didn’t need his dad and his brother stomping on them ever chance they got.

By the time he was in high school, he was starting to sort things out, not only with this strange talent that he had (that no one knew about, except probably his guinea pig named Arthur) as well as his social life. But who really had enough time for a social life when he had something strange happening to him to worry about? He started getting more self-conscious and hyper-aware of everything around him, everything he touched, and everyone he spoke to. The bullies kept at him, those ones that he escaped from in junior high told their friends about him and Blaine’s powers only got stronger when it came to defending himself. He would create different objects; he became an expert at creating those walls. But he didn’t want to get in trouble. He had enough to deal with as a so-called loser in high school. The other kids who had their powers revealed didn’t have as much trouble as he did. And they seemed to have it all under control. It didn’t help that his dad was also still giving him a hard time about joining his school’s glee club instead of the sports teams like Cooper did.

Cooper, who was never his best friend but always made fun of him for being nerdy and loving different things. He was always Blaine’s biggest critic and as they grew up, they rarely got along, except for a few moments. It was as if Cooper’s goal was always to be better than Blaine. A better singer, dancer, actor. Maybe he was, but Blaine had never seen Cooper create a wall or a box of energy out of thin air when running from bullies either.

Then came the moment where he decided to be brave for once and not to avoid the topic. He was at a point where his friends were all dating and driving their rich parents’ cars. Prep school boys could be tiring to keep up with. Luckily, not all his friends were like that. But his father expected him to be. And with that, Blaine left the living room in tears, his mom was yelling at his father, his father was calling him names and telling him he’d get over that ‘phase’ by the time he got to college and that he should spend more time with his friends and their girlfriends. Blaine was tired of being forced to be someone he wasn’t. He took up all his willpower and dignity not to blow up in front of his parents.

Once he was tired of pretending to live up to his dad’s expectations, he decided to ask his mom more about the Supers. She told him about the stories she had learned as a child. And about the fact that his father would deny any of it, but she had kept some things that her own father had found. His father was a stubborn man, after all, which explained why he always would huff over new reports of the Supers while Blaine would just sit in awe in front of the television until the man turned it off Blaine decided to take her words to heart and go find out more. He had seen the stories on TV, read the books, taken the tests in history class, but he still had more questions.

With more research and poking around the attic, he found box containing a notebook that was his grandfather’s. There were a lot of big words and scientific terms that Blaine didn’t really understand. In another folder, he found pictures of people in his family, those he knew and some he had heard of but had never met. Looking through the notes some more, he discovered his grandfather also had powers–manipulation of inanimate objects. His mom and her sister had some kind of healing abilities and mental control. His dad had been jealous of her abilities but she had married into money so they made an agreement to not tell their kids if they ended up having powers too.  He learned more about himself in one box than what the whole internet could give him. Was that the reason why Cooper never minded him and at the same time could be bossier than normal when they were kids? Did he know something was different, and between the two of them, being the ordinary sibling wasn’t enough for him? He had probably figured it out before Blaine if something had happened accidentally when they were kids. But that was just like Cooper, to shrug it off and tell him something was wrong with him.

Now, he wasn’t sure if he could be something great, or if ‘super’ was just describing something that was beyond the normal, rather than being a comic book hero. But it was something that had helped him ward off the bullies–and that was something Blaine wasn’t going to complain about. So he was nervous, but he did what he had to. He took his trust fund money and applied for Waldron University, much to his father’s disapproval. But the truth was out there and he couldn’t deny it, as much as the older Anderson man hated admitting it. Blaine had the Super Gene. So Blaine finally got to really understand himself more as he left home. Reading the notebook as he headed to Seattle made him more curious about the history, ready to learn more about himself and meet others like him.

IC Writing Sample:

Your power or skill has just misfired. What happened? How do you character feel about it?

(So this is after Blaine’s been at school for a year or two and he’s put into a situation away from the school where he panics and things go downhill from there)

Blaine stepped back, shaking. He looked down at his hands. He wasn’t this type of person, he could never really hurt someone more than just scaring them off after a couple of punches–and he would do it to defend himself. But never had he actually hurt someone more than he thought he could. It was a terrifying feeling, and he didn’t like it.

He continued to shake, tears threatening to escape out of his eyes and he could feel the energy inside of him again. He didn’t ask for this. He didn’t ask to be cornered in the middle of nowhere and then panic. Blaine looked at the man who was down on the ground in pain, or was he–no, that couldn’t happen. He was… twitching. Blaine was so scared and surprised, he didn’t even know how it happened. He just knew that the guy was coming at him and he was defenseless. Something just flipped on and he attacked the guy, creating darts that flew through the air. He fought him like he had never fought an enemy before.

His fists started to clench and he started to cry. He wasn’t sure how he lost control–he thought by now he’d be able to control it. The extra energy wasn’t making him feel much better right now, it was making him feel stronger and angrier. He couldn’t control his emotions, or the way that he just wanted to fight again. Never before had he felt like this. Usually after a fight, he’d start to cool off and get himself back to normal. He started gaining some control over where he’d pull energy from. When he had his allies or friends around him, he was able to channel them out, focus on the fight.

But alone, it was just him, and he felt dangerous. He had never felt dangerous before. The feeling brought him back to those bullies in middle school and how he had defended himself as an instinct he never had before. The energy he was drawing in helped him defend himself against those bullies, and now, in a panic, he was almost as scared of himself as he was of them.

The energy wasn’t fading and he felt angry. Maybe that was a normal reaction, but he still felt all this extra strength–strength that didn’t belong to him, and he wasn’t sure what to do. His mind was all over the place right now and he closed his eyes, trying to channel his energy back into all the right places by breathing deeply.

Soon, he told himself. Soon, he’d be back on the island and back, safe with his classmates. Soon he’d be able to control his emotions again.

Slowly, he unclenched his fists and exhaled. He was going to be okay.

Stats:

[becoming-bianca-blog]

“I” before “We”

Module 2 introduced me to some of the famous and infamous names in Psychology including Erikson and Freud. With evolving and contrasting views and theories on identity and development, I could only conclude that identity is dynamic and unique to the person which is why it is so difficult to explain or understand in less theoretical terms. Nonetheless, each has taught me something about myself and about those around me. 

In Freud’s psychodynamic perspective, he emphasizes the three structures of personality: id, ego, and superego and occurrence of development in sequential psychosexual stages. With the impetus of all his writing supporting psychoanalysis, all these simply reveal that we are motivated by hidden and unconscious thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. This was the most memorable and relevant learning to me, aside from the obvious fascination or more accurately disturbance to his ideas on infantile sexuality and the Oedipus complex. This idea of the unconscious leaking out elsewhere when repressed was hauntingly but also accurately portrayed in “Ghosts in the Nursery” which used two case studies to prove that the occurrence of repression of emotion and identification only continues the cycle of childhood trauma and abuse. One of these defense mechanisms, repression, was so accurate that it seemed to be mocking me. I even found myself muttering “lol, me” in class. As someone who has never had an “id” personality, my conflicts tend to be between the ego and the superego. Obeying my perfectionist personality, the superego always seems to win out. Again, I am no stranger to the defense mechanism of repression, and I have used it to the point where I have harmed my own mental health. Enter my intrapsychic conflict: asking for help. With my ego telling me that it is okay to be humble and accept that I cannot carry the burden of pain and past traumas alone and my superego telling me I have to conform to the notion of perfection I have where I have to hide pain and not burden others with it, I always seem to repress any negative emotion I have. I’ve done this since I was a little kid, never telling my parents about a bully in school, how I felt when my my mom had a miscarriage, and even recently when I have intrusions about the day I found out my boyfriend took his own life. When it comes to the latter, I admit that sometimes I still have to push these thoughts to the dark just so I can function normally in school and smile. Freudian psychology begged me to look deep and see that I was identifying with my parents who never talked to me about pain or problems even though they could never shield it from me. I saw that I was trapped in a cycle of silence and “you’ll get over it eventually.” All of this pain that I have been uncovering and releasing in therapy has been a relief and made me understand a lot about myself, the most clear being that I’m a “tagasalo” and have this need to fix everyone before I can even feel anything for myself. Looking at the person I am now, although such can be considered as a facet of kindness, this approach to life and problems has harmed me and come to the point where I have hurt others. Recognizing this cycle, I want to be able to say “it ends with me” because I now know how important it is to not let it get to the point where your mind festers and the black dog resides. Reminding myself that it is ok to feel and that something will blossom out of my vulnerability, I vow to go easy on myself first and then other people too as they are also hurting and healing from traumas that they keep in the dark and disguise with defense mechanisms. 

Erikson’s psychosocial perspective, on the other hand, stresses the ego and the eight stages of development where there is a crisis that must be resolved in order to learn a new trait. Here, I could not help but be in awe of the accuracy of how Erikson described the stage I believe myself to be in which is the identity vs role confusion/fidelty stage. He completely understands the thirst, the incessant questions, the strong opinions, the sparks of inspiration, and the noisy confusion that teenage life is married with. I am currently testing the worldviews and causes that I have previously identified with and introjected and selecting which is a best fit for me to create a version of myself that is “based on but more than or different from the sum of these individual parts.” I think the latter is a beautiful metaphor, almost suggesting that we are like a painting or sculpture touched by many but ultimately portraying a unique picture with previous and clumsy markings covered by new ones. I’m the type of person who likes to have a plan for everything, but with all that has happened I am finding that my plan went off track and that is okay because I am still finding myself. It is okay that I ended up in a different college than I expected because of the circumstance and it is okay if I am still feeling out. It’s okay if I don’t end up finishing this course and taking Psychology instead, and it’s okay if I try out a completely different path. I feel like I’ve always been in such a rush to grow up and have always put myself down for falling short and staying in this period of not knowing what I want yet. I know now that I should look at this period with grace and excitement as it will prepare me and bring me closer to the version of “I” that is prepared to shift to a “we”. After this stage is intimacy vs love/isolation where Erikson defined intimacy as the ability to fuse identities with someone without fearing the loss of a part of ourselves. I’ll always remember this. I honestly wish I had been told this before entering a relationship in high school but now I know that I am not yet ready for the type relationship I always wanted. Lastly, to supplement Erikson’s theory James Marcia provided Four Statuses of Identity. Of course, consistent with the psychosocial stage that I am in, I am currently in a psychological moratorium. I am currently testing different views, perspectives, ideas, and identities without making commitments and as I said previously, this status is ok and can delay my progression into succeeding stages because the “I” that emerges will be one that I am proud of and worthy to care for and be a part of a collective “we”. 

Lastly, I will talk about what I have discovered upon self-reflecting beyond the looking glass self and dramaturgy. First, it was difficult and confusing to accept that we do play different roles in our lives. The very notion of such scared me into thinking that I, someone who is very much rooted on the looking glass self and seeks validation from others, could lose myself upon being so invested in a role that I play to simply please others. Nonetheless, I trusted in the affirmation that I made to myself before starting college which is that I have a strong sense of self and others who cannot see the truth, with the ugly, about myself do not deserve that part of me. With that, I think I have set out manageable performances that I take on in life. First is that of a student and a classmate, where I have to be focused, reliable, and studious. Second is that of a daughter and a friend, someone funny, strong, compassionate and now, sad and mopey (wow, they must think I’m a handful). My friends and family are the people who i can be unapologetically me around and knowing that i have people within my reach who accept me for who I am relieves the constant strain to seek validation and praise from everybody else. I resolve to take note of things that I was able to accomplish with pride because it is time that I recognize how I have dealt with the pain and honestly done the impossible while mourning a  loss and feeling like I have lost a great part of myself given his permanent physical absence. 

Inserting this low-budget meme because my blockmates think I’m masungit HAHAHAHA: 

[theconservativebrief]

Every week, we pick a new episode of the week. It could be good. It could be bad. It will always be interesting. You can read the archives here. The episode of the week for July 15 through 21 is “Austerlitz,” the seventh episode of HBO’s Succession.

Have you opened your heart to the gospel of Succession? Since the show premiered on HBO in June, it’s the only thing I’ve been able to think about. In terms of the network’s programming, it feels like a more dramatic counterpart to Danny McBride and Jody Hill’s brilliant odes to contemporary Americana, Eastbound & Down and Vice Principals, the latter of which my Vox colleague Todd VanDerWerff described as “so dedicated to its own vision that it might make you laugh, and then make you want to throw up about five seconds later.”

All three shows are working with a similar set of tools. The characters are inherently unlikeable to the point that it’s startling to realize you’ve come to care about what happens to them, largely because the line between laughing with and laughing at them becomes so tenuous. They’re painfully funny, with the operative word being “painful.”

It’s just that Succession (created by The Thick of It’s Jesse Armstrong, if you needed any indication of the show’s pedigree) happens to be wrapped up in a more prestige-y looking package, and is working toward its central tragedy from the dramatic end of the scale rather than the comedic.

It’s that sense of cognitive dissonance that has largely allowed for Succession to fly under the radar. The show tells the story of a family-run media conglomerate wrestling with the question of who will take over if or when the patriarch chooses to step down. It looks too serious for how funny it initially is, but that humor is ultimately just as much of a defense mechanism as the brittle fronts put up by its characters, breaking apart and revealing deeper layers as the show tilts into disaster.

The show is a lot more fun than it might look. And it’s much more complex than the thinly veiled Murdoch family analog its advertising might lead you to expect.

As the first season has progressed, the series has grown into one of the most deftly executed dramas currently on TV. The show’s sixth episode, “Which Side Are You On?” ended in heart-pounding fashion with Kendall Roy’s (Jeremy Strong) failed attempt at staging a coup against his tyrannical father Logan (Brian Cox).

The sequence might as well have been a nightmare: Kendall was forced to dial into the meeting instead of attending in person, running through stalled traffic while on his phone (leaving his supporters to wilt under Logan’s gaze) and trying to interpret the stony silences on the other end of the line. The result — Logan remaining in power while Kendall was fired from the family business and left listlessly roaming the streets of New York — was blood-curdling.

That episode’s follow-up, “Austerlitz,” is a little less immediately showy, but it’s a neat microcosm of what Succession is, as well as perhaps the clearest example of how the show expertly strikes a balance between humor and heartbreak. If you’re not a Succession believer just yet, here are three reasons you should be, as explained by the episode.

“I want to have your back, and, uh … there’s also my back.” HBO

Arguably, none of the Roys are people you want to root for — despite being family, they can’t even root for each other. When Logan calls his kids together for family therapy (which turns out to be for positive PR rather than any actual inclination toward healing), one doesn’t show up, and the others can barely stifle their laughter when he says that everything he’s done has been for them.

This dynamic could easily become tiresome to watch, but the personas that Succession’s characters flaunt, whether it’s Kendall’s “business bro” posing or his younger brother Roman’s (Kieran Culkin) unrelenting penis-centric humor, have gradually been peeled back, transforming my desire to see these idiots get their comeuppance into genuine emotional investment. It’s a turn that would fall flat if the cast wasn’t so uniformly great. Their bad behavior, while not justifiable, comes from a place that any viewer should find at least a little familiar.

Granted, some characters are easier to care about than others. Siobhan Roy (Sarah Snook), tellingly nicknamed “Shiv,” is the most appealing (or least odious?) of the bunch, largely because she’s the only Roy child who seems to have secured any significant measure of independence from Logan.

Instead of going into the family business, she’s gone into politics, and when the two begin to overlap, her frustration is tangible. She doesn’t want to be defined by her family’s name, but it’s not her choice to make. And Snook is a master at playing tough to the point that when Logan finally reduces Shiv to tears in “Austerlitz,” it comes as a shock.

To that end, “Austerlitz” serves as a showcase for each character’s human flaws and insecurities, as the pretext of a family sit-down brings every character together under a single roof and holds a magnifying glass to the bonds between them. Even Shiv’s less self-possessed siblings — Kendall, Roman, and Connor (Alan Ruck), the eldest and least effective son — slowly start to feel more like human beings as the show makes clear just how badly Logan has broken all of his children. Watching him try to “win at therapy,” in Shiv’s words, is uniquely frustrating, and when the proceedings fall apart, there’s a sense of loss in the air rather than satisfaction.

Sweet, simple cousin Greg. HBO

Part of Succession’s emotional turn also comes from the way it deploys laughs. Armstrong uses cringe humor in abundance, first inviting us to draw a morbid kind of enjoyment from the antics of the Roy children before slowly pivoting to have us feel guilty for being complicit in their misery. But that’s not to say that the show isn’t also just plain funny.

In “Austerlitz,” for example, when therapy begins to break down, the therapist suggests everyone unwind by getting in the pool. The kids immediately tell him that doing so is out of the question because Logan can’t swim. “He doesn’t even trust water. It’s too wishy-washy.”

Moments like these are regularly punctuated by the way the show is shot, with little zooms in and out on the characters’ faces that are commonly used on shows like The Office or Brooklyn Nine-Nine, but rarely on “prestige dramas.”

Then there’s the way Tom (Matthew Macfadyen), Shiv’s fiancé, follows her around like an overeager puppy, pressing her for details on how therapy is going. His interest is both personal and practical: He works for her father. Though he knows it’s not a good time to try to angle for a better position in the company, he can’t help it — not that that should come as much of a surprise, given that his attempt to cheer Shiv up during the second episode of the series, which saw Logan hospitalized, was to propose to her in the hospital hallway.

Though Tom otherwise takes a back seat in “Austerlitz,” I’d be remiss not to mention that his rapport with cousin Greg (Nicholas Braun) is the most consistently funny part of the show. Their status as the two outsiders to the Roy family — Greg is the black sheep cousin from Logan’s (practically estranged) brother’s side — immediately puts pressure on them in an environment that’s already close to its boiling point.

Unlike the people they orbit, they don’t come from money, making their vying for some kind of status all the more obvious. Greg phones his mom for advice, and Tom can’t stop trying to needle Shiv about how to best impress her family.

Tom loves Shiv, but he loves the power that the Roy name bears, too. As such, though he ought to be able to find common ground with Greg as another (relative) beggar at the feast, Greg also constitutes a threat to his position.

Tom is, to put it mildly, absolutely horrendous to Greg, subjecting him to near-constant verbal abuse (which he plays off as a joke, a tactic Greg is finally getting wise to) and using Greg as a pawn in his attempt to climb the Royco ladder.

It’s a demented relationship, but Macfadyen is so good at playing a sociopath, and Braun is such a delight, that it’s impossible not to laugh while watching as they navigate everything from a corporate “death pit” to eating ortolan, a delicacy that was also notably featured on Billions as a marker of wealth, as it involves consuming a protected species of songbird whole (and which Tom gleefully tells Greg is “kinda illegal”).

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Of course, Succession’s humor has become all the more precious as the series progresses. “Austerlitz” is particularly grim, as Kendall’s journey to family therapy takes him on a detour into a drug den, first. Early on in the season, it was established that Kendall is a recovering drug addict, and that his marriage fell apart as a result of his drug abuse and his commitment to his work — or perhaps more accurately, to his father.

His relapse is crushing, as is the knowledge that it is in equal parts due to just how low he’s been laid by getting fired from the company (and then being sued by his father for his insubordination), and to his father planting stories about a relapse in the tabloids.

When Kendall finally arrives at the New Mexico ranch where his family is gathered, he’s high out of his mind. He’s smiling throughout the ensuing confrontation with his father, but there’s no semblance of happiness in his attitude — there hasn’t been through the entirety of the show thus far.

“I was born lucky,” he says, but he knows the Roy silver spoon is a blessing and a curse. Like Shiv, he’s inextricably tied to his family despite how ill-suited he is for the shark tank it is, and he’s finally realized that the reason (or one of the reasons) that Logan seems to hate all of his children is that they were born with luxuries that he had to earn.

Strong is giving perhaps the most impressive performance on the show — every scene of his brings to mind the devastating finale of The Thick of It, in which spin doctor Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi) finally decides he has nothing left to say — and is most clearly shepherding Succession toward the Greek tragedy it now seems it’s always been.

Tension is brewing between the Roys, and it’s clear that something horrible lies ahead, especially now that they all know they’re capable of stabbing each other in the back. Thanks to his father, Kendall has become a man with nothing to lose, which, for once, actually makes him dangerous. That is, if he’s able to keep from falling prey to his own monsters.

We’ve known from the start that the Roys are horrible people; what makes Succession so impressive is that it has managed to make their turning against each other so difficult to watch. It’s hard to imagine what would constitute a “happy” ending to the season — if one is even in the realm of possibility.

Despite how much we’ve learned about the Roys already, there’s still a lot left to unravel. To wit, in contrast to what the Roy children said about their father earlier in the episode, “Austerlitz” ends with a shot of Logan slowly swimming in the pool as his children depart one by one.

Succession airs Sundays at 10 pm on HBO.

Original Source -> HBO’s Succession has quietly become my favorite show of the summer

via The Conservative Brief

[rebelrunnergirl]

Ironman 70.3 Santa Rosa (Part I)

This race almost didn’t happen for me. I almost didn’t get on the plane for California the Wednesday before the race, even though I had already shipped my bike. The weeks leading up to it were mentally and emotionally draining for me, personally, having little to do with my training, so my heart, my determination, and my energy were definitely not on racing.

A little background--my older son has high-functioning autism. He was officially diagnosed at 7 years old. Fast-forward to now--he’ll be 14 soon. He’s been in therapy this entire time. He’s made progress, LOTS of it, but, to the untrained eye, it may not seem that way. And, more often than I like to admit, even I forget in the moments when he’s having a hard time with a social concept or refuses to participate in school or some change has thrown him off and agitated him. He’s still sensitive to certain sounds, textures, temperatures, and tastes, all things that I have to be constantly aware of in order to potentially intervene before a meltdown may ensue. We have a pretty rigid routine in place because sudden changes are very bad, and he cannot deal with them. His motor skills are still pretty awkward. When his blood sugar gets low, he becomes virtually inconsolable. And, he is wicked smart--his IQ is higher than 99% of the population of the planet. (He doesn’t know that part.) Add to all of this, puberty, and, well, you have the makings of almost daily emotional tornadoes. Things have been really tense at home for a while now.

I do my best to maintain a routine for him and make sure he eats often enough (if he doesn’t, he becomes frantic). We regularly attend therapy, sometimes weekly, but usually every other week. He’s had a meltdown in the past several weeks, which we haven’t experienced in a long while, but, thankfully, it wasn’t a physical one, because, honestly, I don’t know that I’m physically strong enough to manage him anymore. He’s bored with school and doesn’t see the point. He’s depressed and anxious. And then, exactly one week before the race, shit hit the fan at his very small private school (10 students in grades 6-12). He and another student have been butting heads all year, and she also has special needs, though hers are physically evident. The school finally rearranged the class setups about 8 weeks ago to help them avoid one another, and that aspect of school at least became a bit easier for both, or so we thought.

One week before I was supposed to board my flight to California, I picked him up from school, asked him how his day was (“Um, okay”—usual response), and I drove to the bike shop to drop my bike for transport to the race. We had been home for an hour when I received an “incident report” about him and his school nemesis snarking at one another on the way to the restroom, mainly just kid stuff, but, since he has zero filter, I have to constantly remind him how to interact socially, so I asked him about it, and he responded that only part of the report was accurate (turned out to be the truth on his part—plus, he’s a terrible liar, so I knew right away), and then he added, “Plus, I don’t understand why her mom came into the school and yelled at me when I got there this morning.” I was stunned—surely I misunderstood what he said. So I asked him to repeat what he said about the other student’s mom to make sure I had heard correctly. He did, and before the blind rage completely took me, I managed to ask, “What exactly did she say?” I knew that he wouldn’t be able to tell me, because as a defense mechanism, he shuts down during confrontation and has no memory of it whatsoever—it happens when during meltdowns too, and this is perfectly normal for him. But I had to ask before I made my next move.

So many emotions and thoughts overtook me, and then I glanced at my 10 year old (who is not on the spectrum) and saw his face—he absorbs so much of this intensity around him too—stopped myself and said, as calmly as I could manage, “Okay. Let me take your brother to art, and I will contact the director, and we will handle this. Don’t worry about it right now, okay?” My teen said, “Okay,” and my 10 year old visibly relaxed a bit. When we got in the car, my 10 year old simply and quietly said, “I’m sorry, Mama.” He does this all the time when I get upset too—he tries to comfort ME.  That killed me, so I said, “Buddy, please don’t apologize. None of this is what you need to deal with, and I am sorry that you have to witness it all. It’s going to be okay. I will handle this, and I will always protect you and your brother. Okay?” He perked a bit at this, and I changed the subject to his day while I drove him to art. He’s mainly a very happy kid, so that helped.

All of my endurance training helped prevent me from doing or saying anything colossally stupid—this is no exaggeration. Otherwise, I might be writing this from jail. On a paper napkin with a dull pencil. When I called the director, it took every last ounce of self-control I had to suppress a stream of profanity worthy of mortifying hardened sailors. Verbally, and in writing, I requested a written report of everything that was said and done by the mother during this incident, which I received later on and insisted that school policies needed some drastic changes regarding parental interaction with students.

This is what transpired that morning, partially from me and partially from the school investigation: I dropped him at school that morning, and I saw the mom and her child waiting outside the school, which never happens, and my gut told me to walk into school with him, but when I mentioned it to him, he said, “No, Mama. That’s embarrassing.” So, against my instincts and better judgment, I told him not to talk to them and to just go to his desk and start his work. She followed him inside, apparently, and, in the presence of at least one staff member and another student, threatened him with bodily harm if he ever talked to her daughter again. (Yes, really.)

When I received this report, I was LIVID and worried. I struggled with wanting to hunt her down myself, with calling the police to file charges, with wanting to hug and comfort a child who hates to be touched,  with taking legal action, and with soul-crushing guilt for not having walked him inside school that morning. I reached out to my college tribe for support because I knew that I needed talking down. (My husband was traveling and was unreachable for most of this, and my family is not supportive—they think his diagnosis is an excuse for us to avoid parenting “properly.”)

It didn’t take long before the school requested a meeting with my husband and me. It turns out that whatever he was accused of saying to her daughter had never occurred, and, when confronted with this fact, the mother was unrepentant and refused to apologize for her behavior. The school immediately banned her, and, consequently, her daughter, which is unfortunate for the child. The school staff have been instructed to immediately call police if she appears again. They’ve changed their parent/student interaction policies. They were very apologetic for not contacting us immediately. So, at least that part was encouraging.

But now, before bed, my teenager frequently asks what would have happened if the child’s dad had showed up or if the mom returns. I reassure him that we won’t let it happen, and that he’s safe. My 10 year old asks about it all the time. He worries for his brother and always has. So, no, I REALLY didn’t want to leave them, even with their dad (who can’t stick to a routine to save his life, except his own), though my husband does okay when I leave explicit written instructions.

This all left me mentally and emotionally drained. I wasn’t sure I had a race in me anymore. Physically, I was ready, but I just didn’t know about my mental and emotional state. I didn’t feel like my heart or head was in it this time. I wasn’t even excited about the prospect of a girls’ trip and race for which I had been training my ass off. A friend finally convinced me to go, reassuring me that she’d help out here if needed. I reluctantly packed, though at the last minute. And I cried most of the way to Fort Lauderdale, but I got on the plane.