#my therapist is useless at addiction bullshit so like. I’ve mostly gotta do this on my own I think

[isdalinarhot]

I wanna get sober. Like, legitimately. I haven’t had a truly good dopamine day in what feels like months and I’m not getting the emotional benefits as much anymore. Plus it’s getting harder to deal w/ the trade offs like It Tastes Bad and It Makes You Nauseous. Basically, it’s time. But like. I don’t have any Cool Healthy New Coping Mechanism to replace it, nor do I have a Fulfilling Life Full Of Purpose to live. Like I’m still gonna be living alone unemployed no friends only social interaction face to face is with my family. So I’m worried I’m setting myself up for failure. Plus the suicidal bullshit has gotten worse as of late and while being drunk hasn’t helped me feel less miserable overall lately, it has gotten me from Actively Suicidal to Passively Suicidal. Which I guess if I was looking at it from the perspective of It Doesn’t Need To Make You Feel Better, It Just Needs To Keep You Alive then all the distress tolerance bullshit from DBT would be useful there but I’m sooooooo rusty on those. In conclusion: augh

[timeisacephalopod]

Request ABO-au, Tony is the Omega mate to alpha Bucky Barnes and about to have there first child unfortunately due to all the trauma Tony's body has been under his whole life complications arise at the birth of their child, The avengers return to find a newborn child but the precious Omega that gave birth to this beautiful baby now lies in a coma due to the extreme blood loss or whatever else you can think of. Now The avengers are forced to raise this child and pray that Tony wakes up soon.

Ok, so mpreg squicks me out, not for me at all, so I’ve just made Tony a woman for the purposes of this fic. The rest stays relatively true to the prompt, though I didn’t necessarily focus on child rearing.

**

Christ, Tony didn’t think this would happen and even Rhodey looks put out. “What the hell is this?” he asks, gesturing to a hovering Bucky and Tony’s tempted to kick him out of the lab but the last time she tried that he broke back in and it wasn’t a pleasant mess to clean up.

She sighs, “pregnancy brain,” she tells him and Rhodey frowns.

“I thought pregnancy brain was a… pregnancy thing. Clearly he’s not knocked up,” he points out.

No, but her scent does seem to have created some type of weird reaction that has him in, as best as they can tell, a state somewhere between Bucky’s normal and Winter Soldier state. Except he shouldn’t have a Winter Soldier state. Either way she’s kind of pissed off that he keeps invading her space but if she gives him the boot he shows back up with a vengeance and Steve got tossed out a window last week so she figures she’ll deal with it. He’s mostly harmless anyway, at least to her.

“Yeah, uh. Apparently not. We aren’t sure why he’s like this but don’t get too close. If he’s willing to toss Steve out a window I don’t know what he’ll do to you,” she says. She feels bad, but she laughed when Clint got punched square in the face for getting too close. Serves him right for being a massive fucking prick who definitely doesn’t deserve his wife but still, she wouldn’t be impressed if Rhodey got punched.

Rhodey’s gives her a look, “take him to a damn therapist or something, Tony!”

“Tried that. Sam refuses to do that twice,” she says. “And he’s still a little upset about Steve being thrown out a window.” He’d been all offended and honestly Tony doesn’t get it. Of all the people that could have gotten tossed Steve’s the most durable so he should deal with it. So what if his boyfriend went sky diving with no parachute? Be bounced off the ground a little and was fine. At least it wasn’t Clint. Without his arrows he’s useless so that would have been an unpleasant mess to clean up.

“He’s a danger to people!” Rhodey says and he must get a little too close because Bucky steps forward and Tony grabs his arm, yanking him back.

“Hurt him and I’ll throw you out a window,” she tells him. He listens to her. Mostly.

“You’re just going to deal with that for ten months?” Rhodey asks and Tony shrugs.

“More than half that time has already passed so,” she shrugs. Besides, Bucky isn’t always Caveman Brain, sometimes he’s normal.

Rhodey sighs. “Why couldn’t you have picked someone normal. Steve would have been nice,” he says and Tony wrinkles her nose.

“Steve is corn field hot,” she says in way of an explanation. And also Sam called dibs, so.

*

Whoever the hell said pregnancy is beautiful needs their goddamn eyes checked or maybe Tony thinks that because of all the bullshit she’s dealt with over the last few months. Pregnancy seems difficult for anyone, but with the reactor, history of addiction, and all the being beat up on a regular basis it hasn’t done her body any favors. Her blood pressure is consistently too high despite eating the way she should be, her heart rate hasn’t been normal in years, and having something both below and on top of her lungs has made breathing more difficult.

But she deals with it and its not really that bad anyway. No fetal abnormalities either, so that’s good, even if she’d like her breathing space back. She could probably say something to someone but frankly she’s going to have to deal with all these problems anyway so she mostly keeps it between her and her doctors. So there are problems, every pregnancy has them.

*

They’re on their way back in when they find her. Rhodey thought it was kind of odd that she hadn’t said anything over the comms, usually she does even if she’s not in the field, but figured maybe she was tired. Tony’s always been able to put on a good front but he can see how exhausted she’s been lately and playing interference with Bucky’s fucking weird pregnancy habits isn’t helping. Today, thankfully, he’s normal and Tony had pretty much fucked off to the lab presumably for alone time as soon as she realized.

Then came the call, fucking Doombots again, and Rhodey flew out with the rest of the Avengers because Tony’s position is both tactically useful and also hard to replace. He knows how to operate the suit and unlike Pepper he doesn’t have a company to run. Its temporary so people on his end have picked up the slack of him being missing however temporary it is.

“I hate the wizard,” Natasha mumbles as she walks by bruised and annoyed.

Rhodey laughs, shaking his head. “Better than Bucky gone squirrelly,” he says.

“I can’t help it and I don’t even know why I do that,” Bucky says in his defense.

“You have issues,” Rhodey tells him, shaking his head. Guess at least he’s basically a giant guard dog but more violent and not towards Tony. Actually, he mostly seems to only listen to her when he’s gone caveman. Rhodey might be more concerned if that weren’t the case.

“For the record I am not a wizard, I am the Sorcerer Supreme,” Stephen says, nose in the air.

“Yeah, like the Taco Bell fries supreme but magical,” Rhodey says, earning a laugh and a high five out of Natasha.

Nat takes off to go do whatever and the rest of the Avengers pretty much converge on the fridge with enthusiasm. Bucky gives Tony’s room a look but Rhodey doubts she’s in there. She’s probably in the lab too wrapped up in whatever she’s doing to notice them gone. Wouldn’t be the first time. Doesn’t seem to stop Bucky from looking concerned though.

Rhodey turns back to the fridge and snatches the left over Chinese out of Steve’s hand. “Excuse you, that’s mine I called dibs,” he says, squeezing around the rest of the Avengers to get to the utensils.

“When?” Steve asks, frowning.

“Right now,” Rhodey tells him, finding an extra pair of chopsticks and waving them around.

Steve looks irritated but lets him have it. When he reaches for the other carton Bucky snatches it before he can manage and Steve gives him a look. “What? I’m an expectant father, gotta eat to stay healthy,” he says and Steve squints.

“If health is your concern why are you eating Chinese takeout?” he asks.

Bucky considers that for a moment, obviously failing to come up with an explanation. “Rhodes, help me out,” he says finally and Rhodey rolls his eyes.

“Only other thing in there is Cheeze Whiz, Chinese is healthier than that,” he points out.

Bucky nods, waving a hand in Rhodey’s direction. “What he said.”

“Strange,” Natasha says, breaking into the scene unexpectedly.

Stephen tries unsuccessfully to bat the cloak away from where its trying to poke at a head wound. “I thought you didn’t like me,” he says, amused. He smacks the cloak away from him again, this time more successful, and turns to face Nat. When he does the amusement drops from his features. “What’s wrong?” he asks immediately and Rhodey frowns because Natasha looks no different than usual. A little pale, maybe, but that’s not exactly odd considering she got tossed around pretty good.

“I don’t know,” she says, turning on her heel and walking away. Strange takes off after her fast and the rest of them drop their food and follow, confused.

*

Natasha isn’t really a kids kind of person. She likes other people’s kids and she’s not going to lie, she was kind of looking forward to Tony having her kid. She can spoil the little bastard rotten for a few hours and return the kid with no consequences to herself like she does with Clint’s kids all the time. Laura about skinned her for that time she gave Nathan caffeine.

Now that Tony’s in the fucking hospital though she’s worried. More so because, as it turns out, Tony had a whole list of problems not even Bucky knew about and he practically glued his ass to her side. The only one that doesn’t seem surprised by that information is Rhodey, who did little more than sigh and shake his head like this isn’t the first time that’s happened. Knowing Tony it probably isn’t.

“I’m impressed with how much she managed to do,” Strange says eventually, breaking the tense silence. Bucky glares at him something fierce but Pepper takes him up on his words.

“What do you mean?” she asks.

Strange, who’s probably the only one who understood half that doctor babble to its fullest extent anyway, rubs his temples for a moment. “Well, she managed to ensure an entire infant was medically fine after going through what looks to be a terribly traumatic birth. I don’t… its not really my area of expertise, but its safe to say people keeping that level of focus isn’t normal. And she clearly instructed her AI to monitor the baby’s vitals. That’s how I knew he was fine,” he says.

Of course Tony probably forgot to mention hers. Typical. Natasha doesn’t get Tony most of the time. Half the time she’s profoundly selfish, the other half she’s selfless to the point of absolute stupidity. Like now.

“What’s that matter at the moment?” Bucky snaps. Rhodey tries to put his hand on his shoulder but Bucky shakes him off, annoyed.

“It doesn’t, I suppose. But its still impressive,” Strange says.

*

Rhodey’s mostly asleep when he hears the shuffling of bed sheets. He’s tempted to ignore it because its probably Bucky moving around again but he cracks an eye open anyway just in case its something else. Turns out its a good thing he did because Tony’s awake and glaring at Bucky, who shuffles a little and wakes up himself. For a half a second he looks happy and then Tony speaks.

“Get the hell out of my bed,” she snaps at him. “Can I just have five minutes without you trying to crawl up my ass to make a nest in my colon?”

Rhodey covers his mouth with his hand to try and stifle the laugh but it doesn’t work. Bucky doesn’t look impressed but whatever. “Good news,” he says, “guess she’s fine.”

Bucky crawls out of her bed and slinks off but Tony lets him back in when he returns with coffee.

*

Natasha can’t help but laugh as Tony sits in a tub, steam rising off her skin as she glares at nothing in particular. “Why the fuck does no one talk about this?” she asks.

“What?” Natasha asks innocently, “no one told you about the heat?”

Tony looks so pissed. “No, no one told me about the fucking heat. I already knew about the month long period but it comes with a month long heat? How the fuck do omegas do anything after giving birth? And if Bucky shows up here tell him he’s fucking banned from my life for what he did with my uterus.”

Natasha starts laughing again, shaking her head. “Could have asked Laura,” she points out.

“And risk having her know I’d sooner sacrifice her husband to a Doombot than save him? No thanks. No offense,” she adds when she seems to remember that Natasha is also friends with Clint. But the fact that she and Clint don’t really like each other is well known by now. They all figured it was Steve she’d hate, that’s how it started, but now she mostly only dislikes the fact that he has authority on things rather than Steve himself.

“Fine then. No one mentioned this?” she asks, raising an eyebrow.

“No,” Tony snaps. “I think everyone assumed I already knew and, in their defense, this does seem like the kind of common knowledge thing everyone should know so why didn’t I?”

Well, people don’t much talk about omega’s bodies so they all know the answer to that already but Natasha shrugs. “Pregnancy’s gross?” she suggests and Tony snorts.

“God damn right it is. I looked like a planet, couldn’t breathe for shit, couldn’t even pick shit up, Bucky went zombie on my half the time, and I couldn’t even get the satisfaction of Clint being punched without being kicked in the fucking ribs. Don’t get pregnant,” she tells Natasha, pausing for a moment. “Wait, never mind. I shouldn’t get pregnant again. Its horrible. I’m getting a hysterectomy. Rip the whole thing out, fuck that,” she says, shaking her head.

“At least you got a kid out of it I guess,” Natasha says, not that Tony has spent much time with Peter between hospital visits and ice baths to maintain a normal temperature.

Tony lets out an annoyed sigh. “Yeah, he’s fucking adorable not that I can appreciate that because I’m in an ice bath all because apparently Bucky doesn’t know how to use a fucking condom,” she snaps.

Natasha snorts and starts laughing again. “I can’t believe you trusted a guy from the forties with that,” she says, shaking her head.

“Yeah, yeah. Poor judgment call I know. But Peter’s pretty great so,” she murmurs, shrugging.

Nat looks over to find Bucky all but pouting at the door so she sighs. “Am I allowed to let Bucky in or do I have to kick him out again?” she asks, amused.

Tony looks like a pissed off wet brown lab but she sighs. “Yeah, let him in,” she mumbles.

Bucky looks happy to have been let in, making his way to Tony fast and when he hands her coffee she takes it but she doesn’t look happy about it. “I don’t know what I did but I feel compelled to apologize,” Bucky says, standing there awkwardly.

“Don’t bother with an apology, just pet me and tell me I’m pretty,” Tony says, sounding as annoyed as she looks. “Natasha refused.”

[half-man-half-lime]

Self-Loathing, etc.

Sorry for the crazy long and personal post, but I’m immeasurably frustrated with myself and need an outlet. So I’mma vent and ramble a bunch, and just sort of hope that somebody who reads this has something helpful to say.

Fuck

So I’ve been wanting to make comics for, like, a long time, and somehow I never seem to be able to just sit down and fucking make them.

Like, I don’t know why I’m surprised the kid who got overwhelmed, shut down and went to bed at the very thought of doing a large project or even some basic homework ALL THROUGHOUT GRADE SCHOOL WITHOUT FAIL grew up to be someone who has trouble with any large and complicated project, let alone a comic that could potentially go on for ten years.

And look, I didn’t even KNOW I was on the Autism spectrum until like 2 or 3 years ago. I’ve gone to therapists and the like, but most of the time I don’t get any seriously helpful advice. (And let’s be real, any moderately helpful advice I get I probably either dismiss because I don’t expect it to help, don’t hear because of my ADD, get overwhelmed by when I try it, or promptly forget upon leaving the office) Mostly it’s the same ‘break tasks down’, etc. etc. stuff I’ve heard a million times anyway.

On top of that, I haven’t been able to take stimulants like Vyvanse, Focalin, Adderall, etc. ever since a couple years ago when I randomly started getting the shakes and other side effects that are uncomfortable and completely get in the way of working.

So I thought, okay, there’s gotta be workarounds, right?

For one thing, I was employed in a full-time job for a little over a year, and I can’t think of a single instance when I slept in on purpose so I didn’t have to go to work. I know how monumentally sad it is to say, but that’s big for me. I still had that problem in the part-time job I had before, that’s how sad it all is.

When I’d saved up enough money at this job, I bought a new computer that I could make comics on, but, surprise surprise, I was too burnt-out by the end of each work day to work on comics, and despite all attempts I couldn’t get myself into the habit of working on my comic either every day, or even just on weekends.

So I thought, hey, maybe the routine, the strict schedule and the designated location are part of what helped.

And that’s why I made it a goal to rent an art studio and start working part-time again, while working on my comic the other half of my time. That didn’t pan out, but in a connected circumstance a friend offered to rent an apartment with me, meaning I could finally move out of my parents’ house.

Still not sure if it was the right decision or not- I admit it’s a little freeing to not have to be religious, but that’s probably not enough of a benefit TBH. Plus it’s not like living on my own magically granted me social skills and I now go out with some big group of friends I somehow made or managed to get a girlfriend or anything. (you know who you are- don’t fucking get on my case about this, seriously I don’t want to hear a word about admitting I like girls or whatever. I don’t want to hear that shit on a good day.)

But the new environment at least meant I could sort of ‘bundle’ other changes in with the big one. I bought an even better computer and set it up in a literal closet of all things so that it could solely be designated as a Work Computer in a Working Space.

On top of that, due to circumstances that deserve an entire rant of their own, I recently lost that full-time job I was talking about. And even though that sucks, (and even though I have to find a new job AND dispute some bullshit false claims my employer made so I can get unemployment and don’t get turned down for every job I apply for,) it does mean I now have a whole mess of free time, and that means I can do COMICS! That’s right, this story idea I’ve been working on for like 3 years or something now can finally be put to paper and everyone can see how great it is and how cool I am or whatever!

Except not, of course.

I set an alarm, I’m getting up at the same time every day, I go to work, and it’s just. Nothing. I look at the work I have to do onscreen and just think ‘I can’t do this, I can’t do this, I can’t do this.’ I need to draw a crowd scene or a complicated contraption or whatever, and I just draw a blank. Like, a combination of just not wanting to do it, and not knowing how.

I’ll admit, I DID make a few improvements since I started working- listening to audiobooks and podcasts less, music more, and keeping my phone in the other room so I don’t end up playing MINDLESSLY ADDICTING MOBILE GAMES I’M STARTING TO HATE

But it’s not going anywhere. For the past few days it’s been like, 10 minutes of actual, literal drawing to, I dunno, 7 hours a day of playing Skyrim because I can’t even fucking bring myself to play a new video game anymore? (Seriously though, everyone’s saying the new Pokemon game is supposed to be amazing, and I’m still like an eighth of the way through, I shouldn’t be this bored by it! I KNOW it’s good!)

It’s hard to find a good way to describe the problem. Heck, it’s hard enough to get my thoughts in order enough to write all this. Do you know I skipped a Drink & Draw at a bar nearby to write this??? Before I decided that, it was just going to be a nap, because sleeping sounds better than going to a place full of people I know I mostly won’t be able to talk to while I stare at a blank sketchbook page or the notebook I’ve been thumbnailing and scripting my comic on and just not knowing what to draw.

*ahem*, Anyway

I’ve read stuff about Autistic Inertia and the like. It’s my favorite go-to name for the problem, but I’m not sure how close it actually is. I’ve googled the term recently, and I saw some relatable stuff, but there was other stuff people said about not being able to talk except fuck, I just realized around like 4th grade, along with my parents being unable to get me up, there were times I just didn’t want to talk, like it would ruin my resting experience to use my vocal cords. Maybe that’s an inertia thing because I had spent so many hours asleep not talking? Anyway, I’m not sure.

Frankly, I don’t know how much I even care about what the label is except to the end that it helps me figure out a solution. I don’t even give a fuck if this is all technically my fault and I’m just lazy, or have learned helplessness, and that’s it. Does anyone know how to magically make yourself not lazy? It’s a paradox, where can you get the motivation to change and make yourself motivated?

Like I’ve said before, this has been a problem for as long as I've had anything resembling a responsibility in life. I have a large task, and it’s just... I see it and my thoughts fizzle out. Like, some kind of mental block.

The best way I’ve figured out how to describe it is like trying to live in a cluttered basement full of useless junk. From the start, it’s this huge enormous mess, and you have to wonder ‘where do I begin?’ But it’s not like there’s an instruction manual for sorting garbage. It’s easier to just sit down and do nothing some of the time. Try and walk around, and you’ll only find yourself tripping and falling over, or being unable to wade through it all because it’s too deep and shit is too cluttered and heavy to move around. It’s like an antlion pit, where trying to climb out just results in everything crumbling and you falling back in.

And say you want to do something more complicated. You’ve got to build something better to work with, right? But imagine how difficult it is to build a couch or a shelf or whatever out of random scraps of garbage, while ALSO trying not to trip and fall over yourself. It’s mentally tiring to figure it out, it’s physically tiring to put it all together. And the worst part of that is the same antlion thing, where if you fuck up then the paths you’ve worn will get flooded with garbage, or the things you’ve built will fall apart.

I don’t know if that metaphor makes sense, I hope it does.

This is all hard to describe. It’s made things difficult, too.

Like, the ENTIRE reason I haven’t gone to college is because of this shit. Whenever I want to feel sorry for myself I’ll think ‘I got into SCAD for God’s sake, how did I end up like this?!’

The fact is, I couldn’t get all my work done in the community college art classes I took JUST TO TEST THE FUCKING WATERS. I avoided any homework I had to do like the plague, and I burned out of a 4-hour drawing class after maybe a single hour.

I still remember when my art teacher told me I was doing something wrong, and asked me to start over, and that was it. I was just done, I couldn’t even imagine devoting the mental energy to doing all that work again, but somehow doing it right, whatever that meant. So I just stood there by the easel for a couple hours until the teacher called me into his office to lecture me/try and figure out what was wrong, and I was too choked up to even speak.

So I don’t know what good can come from posting this rant. Maybe somebody can give me answers? If not then at least I’m venting, I guess.

Excuse me. *ahem*

FUCK

FUCK

FUCK FUCK FUCK

I HATE MY LIFE I HATE MYSELF I HATE EVERYTHING AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

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