#not being able to grieve someone you loved is like the special key to drive me insane

[youandthemountains]

(via @darthdisasterous)

[petersasteria]

Raising You - Holland!Reader

Holland!Reader || Main || Taglist

Requested? Nah. 1,941 words TW: character deaths, swear words, nothing super bad

I was supposed to post this on Mother's Day, but it wasn't ready by then and I didn't know the direction of this story. But yeah. Here it is now. Enjoy.

* * * *

“I hate you!” You screamed. “Why do you always ruin things for me?! You’re no fun at all!” Tears were streaming down your face as you ran up the stairs to go to your room.

Tom followed you and said, “Tough luck, Y/N! I love you and whether you like it or not, I’ll always meddle in your life!”

“Go away!” You shouted, went into your room, and slammed the door. Tom furiously knocked on the door and let out a frustrated sigh when he heard you lock it.

He rubbed his face and went downstairs to cool off. He walked in the living room and saw a framed picture of both of you. He smiled at the sight and immediately went to grab the picture. “When did you grow up?” He asked himself quietly.

Things were different. His life was difficult. He no longer had parents and his brothers perished in a terrible accident. All he had left was you. He could’ve followed his dreams and took his talent to Hollywood, but life was cruel. He never got a chance to do that because his family mattered more to him than any film career.

Tom couldn’t remember a time when he had a decent break. To him, he was always working and on the go just to get by. But he knew that his parents would be proud of him for stepping up at being the best brother for you.

Tonight was just different.

He got a call from your school saying that you left prom with one of the douche-y dudes. It was just fitting that Harrison was with him, so he had some help in dealing with you.

“Haz, I’m really worried. She could be anywhere!” Tom said as he paced back and forth, clutching his phone.

“Mate, calm down. We’ll find her, alright?” Harrison said calmly. “Have you called her?”

“Yes, and she didn’t answer. I left 20 fucking voicemails, Haz! Fucking 20! Still no answer. I called her friends and they said they didn’t know where she went and obviously that’s bullshit! What if she was kidnapped? O-Or killed somewhere and she’s dead in a ditch in the middle of fucking nowhere??” Tom rambled, running a hand through his hair frustratedly.

Harrison looked at his worried best friend and only said three words, “Check your wallet.”

“What?” Tom stopped pacing to look at him. Harrison shrugged, “Check your wallet.”

“We have no time to shop online right now, Harrison.” Tom said through gritted teeth, but grabbed his wallet anyway. He opened his wallet and he still didn’t know what he was supposed to look for. As if reading his mind, Harrison added, “Check your credit card or debit card or whatever fucking card you have. Check your cash.”

Tom did what he was told and groaned in frustration, “Y/N took my credit card and she took the fake ID that I confiscated from her.”

Harrison nodded and pointed to the phone, “Call the bank and ask for your recent activity.”

Tom called the bank and asked what his recent activity was. They told him that he checked into a motel about three minutes ago and gave him the address. Tom has certainly never been there and it baffled him on how you wound up in a place like that. Tom thanked the bank and hung up.

“She’s at a motel.”

Just like that, the two best friends got in Tom’s car and drove to the motel. Tom was too nervous to drive, so Harrison drove instead. Tom was looking out his window to see where the motel was and they eventually found it. Harrison parked the car and they both got out.

They went to the person in charge and asked if they'd seen you. “She was wearing a prom dress and she’s with some guy who was probably wearing a tux.” Tom explained.

“Yeah, I know those two.”

“Where are they?” Harrison asked.

“Room 2A.” The man said.

“Okay. Can we please have your spare key for that room?” Tom asked. “It’s an emergency.”

“No, sorry.” The man replied and sipped his coffee. Harrison glanced behind the man and immediately saw the key for room 2A. He walked around the desk and grabbed the man from behind. “Tom, go!” Harrison shouted as the man tried to get out of his grip.

“What are you doing?!” Tom shrieked.

“GET THE FUCKING KEY.” Harrison nodded his head toward the key and Tom’s jaw dropped in realization. Tom quickly jumped on the desk and grabbed the key for the room. When he grabbed it, he ran outside; followed by Harrison.

“Return that key!” The man shouted.

Tom and Harrison went up the stairs and walked around until they found your room. They stood in front of the door and Tom whispered, “What now?”

“You go in there and just take her. I’ll be out here for back up.” Harrison whispered back and Tom nodded.

Tom knocked on the door and said ‘housekeeping’ in a high pitched voice. Harrison slapped his arm and mouthed “what the fuck”.

“It’s improv! I can’t just barge in like a freak. I’m an actor, Haz.” Tom defended quietly, earning an eye roll from his best mate.

“We’re busy!” A male voice said which enraged Tom.

“Alright. Now, I can barge in.” Tom said as he used the key to open the door. The chain was in the way, but he managed to break it by pushing the door open.

“Y/N!” Tom shouted.

“Tom! What are you doing here? How did you find me?!” You shrieked. Your hair was messy and your dress wasn’t as neat compared to when you left the house. The guy with you was just watching the whole scene go down.

“That doesn’t matter now. Get in the car!” He yelled.

You shook your head, “No! I’m staying here with Brad!”

“Over my dead fucking body, Y/N.” Tom said before he grabbed your wrist and dragged you outside. Brad intervened and grabbed your other hand, “Let go, man!”

Tom was stronger and he was able to pull you out of Brad’s grip and told Harrison to take you to the car and give the key back to the man downstairs. You and Harrison went to the car and Tom stayed to lecture Brad.

“Chill out, man. Nothing happened!” Brad exclaimed.

“Okay and what if something did happen, hmm? What if you got her pregnant? Can you pay for child support? Do you plan on marrying my sister in the future? Are you ready to take care of a fucking baby?! I DON’T THINK SO.” Tom said angrily.

“She’s 15 and she has a great life ahead of her! I’m not going to let some boy ruin that. If you look at her or even blink at her, I will end you, Brad.” Tom threatened before leaving.

Tom sighed and put the picture back. Harrison left when you got home and that’s when your screaming match with Tom started. He walked up to your room and knocked on the door.

“Go away!” You said.

“You know, saying that will only make me knock on the door again. Just let me in. Let’s talk this out.” Tom said softly. He waited for a few seconds and he heard you unlock the door. He smiled at himself and let himself in.

He stared at you as you lay in bed with red eyes and puffy cheeks. He went further in the room and closed the door behind him before sitting down on the foot of your bed.

"I'm sorry for what happened back there, but I was doing it for your own good. You'll thank me in the future." Tom said and you rolled your eyes.

"Don't roll your eyes at me, young lady." He gave you a pointed look. "I'm serious. I guarantee that if it happened, you'll regret giving it to someone who isn't special after all. So you're welcome, I saved your ass."

"You're not the boss of me. Don't you remember what it's like to be young?!"

"Yes, I am the boss of you and of course I remember what it was like to be young. It was five years ago when I was 19!" Tom raised his voice and stood up. He paced around your room to calm down. He didn't want to fight, but you were being stubborn.

He looked at you and put his hands on his hips. “I never got to truly explore or- or experiment with different things, alright? I was robbed of my youth because I have to step up. I’m the eldest so it’s my job to take care of you; all of you.”

“Do you know how shocking it was for me?!” Tom shrieked. “I never got to grieve properly because I had to be strong for you and Paddy and Sam and Harry. It was too much for me to handle, but I forced myself to push through because I had no choice but to move forward.”

“Sam and Harry had their youth taken away too because they had to help me. When they were your age, they worked and picked up a few side jobs just to help me pay the bills. We’re lucky that we get to keep this house because it was already paid for by mum and dad before they died.”

“I had to give up everything for all four of you and you have no idea what that’s like, Y/N!” Tom yelled. He was clearly frustrated and it dawned on you that he never released those pent up feelings and you just let him shout.

“Sam and Harry were there sometimes, but they were also too busy trying to make something of themselves. Most of the time, it was me! They were working and going to school for their future and I was at home with you and Paddy because both of you were still too young. All my friends were out partying, dating, going to university. Meanwhile, I’m at home too busy being your mum and dad and brother.” He cried out of frustration, causing you to cry too.

He sat down at the edge of your bed and wiped his tears as you stared at him., not bothering to wipe your tears. “Now three of our brothers are also gone and it’s fucked. They never got to reach the finish line of their dreams and goals.” He said quietly. Tom looked at you and gave you a tight-lipped smile, “I don’t want to fight anymore, okay? It’s just you and me now and we have to be a team. We should help each other, so before you do anything stupid ask yourself if it’ll put stress on me. If the answer is yes, then don’t do it. I don’t need more stress.”

You only nodded. He got up from your bed and said, “Good night.” Before he left your room, you walked up to him and gave him a hug, “Thank you for your sacrifices and I’m sorry for being a pain in the ass.”

He chuckled lightly and hugged back, “I’m sorry for being strict, but it’s all part of the parenting thing.”

“You’ll be a great dad.” You said softly before yawning. Tom’s heart melted when you said that. “You think so?” He asked.

“I know so.” You told him. He smiled and kissed the top of your head. It may be sad that five of your family members left both of you, but it was okay. You had each other and that’s all that matters.

* * * *

𝐇𝐎𝐋𝐋𝐀𝐍𝐃!𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐃𝐄𝐑 𝐓𝐀𝐆𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓: @blueleatherbag @thatforgottenangel @turtoix @runawayolives @chewymoustachio @just-here-to-escape-from-reality @alexx-stancati @rumplebutterbaby @dummiesshort @thevelvetseries @quxxnxfhxll @angelsgrxzer @dreamy-clousds @bora-world @caitsymichelle13 @wannabemobwife

𝐆𝐄𝐍𝐄𝐑𝐀𝐋 𝐓𝐀𝐆𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓: @holland-styles @trustfundparker @alinastarkrovs @felicityparkers @hufflepuffprincess24 @tommysparker @justasmisunderstoodasloki @quaksonhehe @call-me-baby-gir1 @itstaskeen @theonly1outof-a-billion @lost-in-the-stars03 @justafangirlduh @piscesparker @speedymaximoff @miraclesoflove @lexirv @blairscott @getbywithasmile @pqrkerr @lavender-writer @blackbat2020 @hoodpankow @bi-lmg @emmastarz

[bluegarners]

Oooh for the bingo card can I pick survivors guilt with dick feeling guilty cause he ran away from home just like Jason but he lived while Jason died 😢

ahhh sorry this took awhile to get to!! i hope you enjoy this though~ requested for my Bad Things Happen Bingo ; it is also on ao3

Survivor's Guilt

The days bleed into one another to the point where it’s almost offensive, how indistinct and indiscriminate each sunrise and subsequent sunset is. A little boy died and the world carries on like nothing happened. Like his life was nothing less than the lawn being mowed or a tree being cut down. Is there an analogy Dick’s forgetting about, comparing dead children to nature? He’s not sure, he’s just tired, and the days continue to bleed into one another.

Monday is actually Thursday and Dick looks in the mirror and traces the bruise on his face. There’s a line in the fading purple blob that’s just the slightest bit darker. Knuckle indents. He saw it coming but he didn’t do anything. It was… just a punch. He applies some ointment and looks away. A little boy died and he’s still taking care of a tiny little injury, hardly an injury, it’s nothing, it’s nothing, because-

It’s four in the evening and Dick just woke up. It’s not a good habit to fall into, to sleep so late, do so little, think about dead little boys and missed funerals, but Dick can’t help it. Sometimes, he loses time within the bleeding days, just sits down for a moment and then an alarm goes off to remind him that it’s morning now and that he should be getting up to do… something. Go somewhere. Take care of things. But what? But what? Dick only just sat down, it doesn’t seem fair for the world to demand he be pulled this way and that when it already took a child, already took someone that never graduated tenth grade.

What do people learn in tenth grade? They’re just children, and Dick can’t remember much from his Gotham Academy days, so he really hopes they aren’t put under too much pressure. They’re all just so young, tenth graders, so young and youthful and there’s really no reason for them to be bogged down with work or stress from education. Life was infinitely more important than some late homework and Dick wonders if the school requires missing assignments from dead children. Wonders what they do with that extra, empty desk or the absent name on the roster. Wonders if they just shove another kid into their place, cross out the name for attendance, and carry on like the rest of the world seems to have.

What’s more, what do the friends of the dead child do? Do they mourn? Mourning seems so sad for the young, it's got no place in their view, and yet Dick remembers mourning, grieving when he was just nine but it was all so wrong. Dick hopes that the friends of the dead child are okay. Dead child. Dead little boy. Dead tenth grader.

He heard the funeral was nice. Heard that the school hosted a vigil. Of course, he wasn’t able to attend. Wasn’t extended the invitation to attend, but it’s not about him. It’s about the dead boy.

Dick has never been comfortable with children. Not in the sense that he finds them strange or annoying or that he can’t stand youth. He’s just not comfortable with the sheer light, with people who possess so much of it that it literally oozes out in all the things they do. Leaks out from their innocent smiles, their troubled and off-handed questions, their zest for adventure, yearning for dreams so much larger than themselves, their endless compassion for others, their infinite amount of crushes, their worry about deadlines and asking someone out on a date, their constant need to keep up with trends of the day; so many light things that Dick hasn’t touched in so long. So many things he feels like he shouldn’t be allowed to touch.

You were lucky.

Was he? Dick doesn’t think he was, but then again, he’s not a dead little boy with a specially made coffin to fit his small, under-developed, never got the chance to reach a growth-spurt, body. Being Batman’’s partner was terrifying. He remembers it being scary, not knowing if he was going to live through the night or if Batman was going to go off on another rampage because Dick screwed up. Not knowing if screwing up as Batman’s partner meant no longer being welcomed as Bruce’s ward.

How many times has it been now? Twice? Three times?

A key is gone from his chain now and its missing weight burns holes in all of Dick’s clothes. It’s a finality that feels just as permanent as the dead little boy’s gravestone.

A size six and a half pair of sandals sit on the edges of Dick’s tiny balcony. He has a no shoe policy in his apartment, hardly cleaner than the streets below, but it was the principle that counted right? No muddy boots, no dirty sneakers, no rain logged socks, none of that. So Dick keeps a pair of size six and a half sandals on his balcony in case a size six and a half wearer decides to waltz in.

Dick wears a size eleven.

He’ll have to get rid of them at some point. There’s no reason for them to stay there, collecting dust or peeling away whenever it rains. They weren’t even that good of a pair, just some knock off brand he found at a convenience store once, so keeping them for their worth isn’t that important. He spent the entirety of seven dollars on them, so really, he’s not strapped for cash and he can’t wear them himself and he’s sure that some homeless kid or anyone really would be happy to have them. He could just donate them, throw them in a box and leave it outside for the trash to pick up. He could. He could.

He can’t.

They aren’t his. They belonged to someone, someone very important, and he can’t just throw them away. You don’t throw away a dead little boy’s shoes just because they can’t wear them anymore. His parents always taught him to respect the dead, respect their belongings, and those sandals aren’t his so he’s got no say in what to do with them. It’s fine if the dead child’s shoes stay out on Dick’s balcony. It’s fine. He doesn’t go out there much anyway. The shoes are so tiny, only a size six and a half, and Dick can hardly get half of his foot in a size so small and they belong to a dead boy anyway so he shouldn’t touch them. Shouldn’t touch the dead child’s shoes.

He’s distancing himself on purpose. It’s a lot easier to say a dead little boy, a dead child, than it is to admit a name belongs to such a ghastly title. There are so many other words, so many other titles infinitely more fitting for a child than dead, and yet it’s the only one that describes him in this moment. Dead. Gone. Passed.

There used to be a box shoved away in the back corners of his closet. A cramped and banged up cardboard box containing every memory he had from being Robin. There used to be a picture of his parents in there, a cracked glass frame and a stained photo all he had left from Haly’s; there was his old costume from the circus, the same one he wore on the night where the sawdust turned black and he learned what sounds a body makes when it hits the ground; there was a small photo album in there too, pictures Alfred took of Dick’s time at the Manor, of his time as Bruce’s ward. Sometimes he’ll flip through its pages and feel that sting in his eyes, feeling the ghostly fingers of longing cradle his head through each memory every pristine photo contained.

And, most importantly, in that old, worn out, and beat up cardboard box, was Robin. Red, green, and yellow. Shorts and a velcro cape. Boots he doesn’t know how he ever fit into. A vest that would be impossible to get around his shoulders now. The crest, the emblem. Robin.

It was supposed to stay in that box. Remain there for the rest of his days, leave behind a child soldier and trade it out for a freelancer looking for a new war to fight. A new landscape to reshape and hone as his own. But then another little boy, taller than when Dick started out, appears in the night and leaps and frolics and laughs by Batman’s side. Stands over Gotham and gloats and jeers and grasps Robin almost perfectly.

And for the first time, Dick understands the horror that plowed into every other superhero out there when he first debuted as Robin. Understands the numbing terror of the thought of a child, someone who probably didn’t know how to do calculus or read Shakespeare or tie their shoes correctly, out there fighting the dirtiest and darkest sides of the world. That someone with a shoe size of six and a half was out there punching rapists, getting up close with drug lords and traffickers, witnessing and investigating crime scenes and analyzing gore and blood spatters.

Just a child. Just a little boy.

It feels wrong. So, so wrong, to give his blessing to someone who’s just barely hit puberty. Who’s still struggling to perfect a Robin cackle or speak without his voice cracking and pitching wildly. It’d make him a hypocrite not to though. He was younger, so much younger, when he started out as Robin, so who is he to stop an almost teenager from being Robin?

Well, actually, Dick is an adult. His frontal lobe is completely developed, he can pay taxes, drink, vote, organize his own affairs, drive, buy cigarettes, make his own decisions. Help others make decisions. Jas- the dead boy was just that. A boy. He had no idea how to do any of those things, much less think about them for the next few years, so how can he just allow a child to decide if they want to traumatize themselves, bleed themselves dry, for a city that doesn’t love them and devote themselves to a man’s mission that hasn’t changed in over a decade?

But even if he hadn’t given his blessing, the boy would have been Robin anyway. Remember? Dick has no say in anything to do with Robin. Anything to do with Gotham. No, all that was taken away the moment he stepped out of line, stepped out of the conformity and obedience Batman demanded. The blessing… it was just a formality for something Dick had never wanted to continue. Robin was supposed to disappear with him, die with him leaving Gotham, and yet…

Robin died anyhow.

There’s a dead little boy that used to be named Robin buried in a cemetery with a beautifully carved gravestone that just wanted the child to rest in peace, sleep well, and dream of a better life. And Dick gave his blessing for him to die as Robin.

The days still bleed into each other, melting and drifting over and mixing until the sunrises and sets in the same minute. Dick keeps losing time and people keep calling him but he just forgets to pick up the phone to answer. He can’t help but stare at his balcony, can’t help but stare at the empty space in the box, can’t help but listen to his own heartbeat and watch the way his chest expands as his lungs do.

He is alive. Alive when he probably shouldn’t be.

Robin was not meant to last. Dick has told himself that over and over again, the clear and simple fact that Robin was not meant to carry on. Born through the same circumstances as Batman, Robin was supposed to be nothing more than a temporary outlet but Dick got addicted and now he can’t stop. Now his thoughts loop around and around and all he can think about is a dead child wearing his Robin uniform and running out in the night with his blessing.

You were lucky.

Bruce was right. He was lucky. Lucky beyond belief that he survived being Robin. Lucky he stuck around long enough to learn what he needed to and then some under Batman’s tutelage, only to be fired and leave a gaping hole behind that was just calling for a replacement. Screaming for someone to fill the void, beckoning the ears of the young and naive to answer its call. Of course a child would answer. Of course someone eager and looking for love and praise and meaning would find their way there.

And perhaps Dick used up all the luck, all the magic, Robin gave. Used it all up and without a care in the world for who would be next to wear the cape, parade the emblem, because now there���s a dead little boy in the ground and his blood stains Dick’s hands.

Maybe if he had died as Robin instead, died in those early days where he was nine and filled with moxy undeserved, it would have served as warning enough to stay away from Batman. Stay away from Robin. Stay away from the beckon of being a child soldier. And, really, it wouldn’t have been all that bad if he had died so young. If he had died after Zucco was found because then he would have been with his parents, would have been reunited with his family again.

Dick isn’t sure he believes in the after life, if there are places like Heaven and Hell, but sometimes he hopes there is because there is a dead little boy in his arms and he is desperate for the hope that he has a good place to go to. To move on to.

But Dick’s not dead, still very much alive and breathing through working lungs with blood pumping through his veins, and now he’s not only outlived his time as Robin, but the next as well. He has outlived a child.

How do you outlive your own legacy?

He can’t call the dead child his brother. They’re not, legally, and Dick didn’t bond with him like brothers should. He tried, tried to after the initial shock and horror, bought size six and a half sandals, helped with homework, lent an ear to vent to, but it wasn’t enough.

Somehow, a dead little brother is so much worse than a child and Dick can’t give him another title to cling to. Can’t assign another name and still…

Jason is dead. Dick missed his funeral, missed it all, and his name is Jason Todd and he was only fifteen when he died and god, Dick wishes he had been a better brother. Wishes so badly he had never given his blessing, never lived through being Robin, because that would mean Jason would have never had to die and he would be in Dick’s place, simply breathing and alive and that’s… that’s all he can ask for.

The days continue to bleed into each other and the bruise slowly fades away into his skin.

The sandals remain on the balcony.

[bbrandy2002]

Happy Birthday Burnsy!

@burnsoslow​

Burns,

You probably don't remember this, but the first time I ever talked to you was a reply to your comment on my fic, The Breakfast Club, in early July. I'm not sure what possessed you to reach out to me a week later in chats but, you did and its been one wild and crazy ride since then. You've certainly come a long way since we were new and mulling over those earlier stories-or in your case-Heavier Things, Chapter 1 (YOU ARE STILL WRITING THAT...LOL) . And while you have sooooo many friends here, for some reason you chose me to be your Tumbler Bestie. I hope you know you are so much more than that though ... you're my sister, my twinsie, a truly good friend. You've inspired me in ways you'll never know. I have watched you grow in your craft and reach an unprecedented level of talent that is evidenced in the quality of your work and through the amount of enthusiastic readers who can't wait for you to post the next epic chapter. You did it all through a tremendous amount of hard work, lot of tears and because you have a likeness that draws people to you. You're just truly an incredibly, special person who possesses a certain spark that makes this crazy place even better. And I think I tell you enough, but you really are one of the best writers in this fandom. And as you say to me all the time, I'm gonna say to you ... I'm one proud TBFF!! I can't thank you enough for all the late night laughs, bull sessions, real talks, 6 hour chats about nothing, letting me know when I'm being a dumbass or just being there when things get really, really tough. The fic I wrote isn't anything special and definitely could have been better, however I hope in some small way it captures the essence of our crazy friendship. Keep growing and shining and being your amazing self.

Love you my friend and Happy Birthday!!

Brandy

**You asked for Drake, Alyssa, Riley and Liam shenanigans. I don't know if this will be what you were expecting, but its what I came up with after 20 different versions. You'll recognize some of this as inside jokes or dialogue and situations from your own stories (yep, I stole them...lol). This is wacky and crazy and makes no sense. Okay Im shutting up now.

Thank you @sirbeepsalot for gutting the hell out of this on Monday night and @emceesynonymroll for SO MUCH of your help and suggestions. Also to my lovely pre-readers/keep me saners @jessiembruno and @loveellamae

Song Inspiration: You're Still The One by Shania Twain. **Drakes final dialogue will come from these lyrics.

Alyssa pulled her black mini-van through the palace gates, running over a cone and nearly taking out Michael, the security guard, in the process. Her hair was swept up into a very messy bun and her sunglasses were perched atop her head. She was wearing a blue, faded Bears sweatshirt, black leggings with a small hole in the crotch, and a mismatched pair of flip-flops -- both were for the left foot. Unable to find a close parking space, she double-parked her van in two handicapped-accessible spaces. She checked her reflection in the rear view mirror and wiped away the smudges of mascara that had run below her eyes. 

She was hurt and mad as hell, yet waited until, 'DIRRTY’, finished on the radio before shutting the van off and tossing the keys in her oversized mom purse. Alyssa’s dainty fingers fumbled hastily as she tried to release the lock on her seatbelt with no luck. "You son of a bitch! Let me go!"

After pulling and tugging, twisting and karate chopping at it as hard as she could, she finally freed herself.

“HAHA! MOTHERFUCKER! GOTCHA!”

Alyssa snatched her purse and cell phone before she swung the door open, hopped out, and kicked the door shut. Still mumbling obscenities, she walked a few paces before turning back around and hitting the van’s hood with her swinging purse. “Fucking hold me hostage like that again and I’m driving your ass into a ravine!” 

Everyone who knows Alyssa Walker would say she is generally a fun, loving, and sociable little woman. She’s a devoted wife who has been married to the man of her dreams for several years and a wonderful mother to their children. She's very successful professionally, having served as the Royal Education Director for 8 years. A social butterfly of sorts, she’s been known to give Maxwell a run for his money, in regards to being considered the life of any party. On most days, Alyssa is typically outgoing and joyful.

Today is not one of those days.

Her flip flops were barely hanging on as she trudged across the lawn that led to the palace gardens,  thoughts of her morning crossed her mind. 

For every single birthday since marrying Drake, she would wake up to the smell of bacon, scrambled eggs, and french toast wafting through the cabin. She would lay in bed and pretend to sleep until Drake and the kids burst in with a tray full of freshly prepared foods, a hot cup of coffee, and a glass of orange juice. They would shower her with kisses and hugs, sing Happy Birthday, and then wait anxiously as Alyssa took the first bite to see if their mother approved of the time and effort they put into making her birthday morning special. When she finished, like clockwork, Drake would send the kids outside with the eldest child and give Alyssa a gift that only he could give her; one that required the skilled use of his lips, hands, and the colossus that was his … well … colossus.

Except, there were no bacon, eggs, or french toast. There were no kids jumping on the bed to wish her a happy birthday and fighting over which one hugged her first. Drake did not send the kids away when she finished her breakfast nor had she risen from the bed barely able to walk from the most mind-blowing sex she’d ever had. 

None of the things she expected happened. 

When Alyssa woke up this morning no one was home. All she found was a letter by the coffee pot from Drake, telling her the kids went with Maxwell for the day and that he would see her after work. To make things worse, her 20 attempts to call him that morning went straight to voicemail.

Drake had been working late and acting shady for months, telling her he was helping Liam take care of some horses they were preparing for next month's derby. Lately, she was beginning to wonder if there was something more he wasn’t telling her.

Now she was late for her luncheon with Riley.

As Alyssa rounded the corner that entered the gardens, she saw Riley on the patio arranging a tray of fresh fruit and sandwiches on the table. An array of metallic birthday balloons danced and bounced from the chairs with the changing breeze. Alyssa frowned with resentment towards her best friend of over 20 years. Bitch is still in her 30s.

Riley’s focus was averted when she heard the sound of rustling leaves behind her. She turned on her heels and said, “Happy 40th Birthday, Old Lady!” Her cheery voice trailed off when she caught sight of her disheveled friend. 

“Lyss? What the hell happened to you? You look like shit.”

Alyssa strode past Riley and threw her purse on the ground beside a chair before she slumped down into it.

Riley furrowed her brows with a snicker. “Bad day?”

Alyssa reached for a strawberry and dipped the entire berry, stem and all, into a dish of melted chocolate before leaving behind a trail of droplets from the dish to her mouth. As she chewed, she mewled. “Ma life if ofer!”

Riley scrunched up her face and arched back in an attempt to avoid the spittle of food that sprayed from her friend’s full mouth. She sighed heavily, grabbed a napkin, and wiped away the chunks of fruit-and-chocolate-mixed saliva that landed on her arm. “Oookaay, what’s going on? Why is your life over?”

Alyssa threw the stem on her plate and leaned forward into the table, gesticulating dramatically. “He didn’t tell me happy birthday, Ri! There was no breakfast, there was no spoiling, there was no fucking, colossus dick! There was nothing!”

“Who? Drake?”

“No, fucking Santa Clause! Of course Drake.”

Riley bit into her sandwich as Alyssa complained about Drake’s lack of attentiveness over the past few months. It wasn't the first time her friend had mentioned this to her; however, judging by how upset she was and the fact that she was dressed like a $2 hooker, she knew it was really serious now. 

Alyssa continued to point out how Drake was always working and, supposedly, was helping Liam out with the horses too. When he returned home each night, his clothes were sweaty and dirty but never smelled like horse shit. To make things worse, the sex had dwindled. Alyssa could give up a lot of things in life, but Drake's dick was not one of them.

“I know he’s cheating, Ri,” she lamented, wiping a stray tear from her cheek.

“Nooo.”

“YES! He’s found another woman … someone younger, sluttier, who hasn't popped out a bunch of kids!”

Riley scoffed. “Lyss, everyone knows Drake worships the ground you walk on. I’m sure there is a good reason why he hasn’t paid as much attention to you lately.”

“But he KNOWS I’m needy and clingy and desperate for love!” she wailed.

Riley lifted the napkin from her lap and tossed it on the table. Her friend was a hot mess -- a more than usual hot mess -- and she wanted to help. She stood and walked around the table to her grieved friend and grabbed her tiny hand. “Come on.”

Alyssa’s weepy eyes stared up at her in confusion before she let out a small sniffle. “Where are we going?”

“We are going to the stables. You said he is there today, so let's go talk to him.”

Alyssa sat back in her chair and crossed her arms. “I’m not going, Ri. He needs to come to me!”

Riley began pulling on her friend's arm, but Alyssa was not being very cooperative with her efforts. “Get your ass out of the chair, Lyss, and go get your man.”

Alyssa pulled back harder. “Get off me, you skank ass ho!”

Riley continued to tug at her, surprised there was so much strength in such a little body. “Bitch, I will drag your ass and this chair all the way to the stables!” 

“I’d like to see you try, dumbass!”

With a hard jerk from Riley, Alyssa’s chair tipped over and she landed on the ground. Her resolve never once faded. While Riley continued to tug at her arm, Alyssa reached over and grabbed her broken flip flop and began smacking vigorously back at her. 

Riley immediately let go of her and stumbled backwards. “You have gone insane!” she groaned. “I tried to help you and, if this is how you’re gonna act, leave me out of it!” She turned to walk away and glanced back quickly. “You know the way out.”

“Ri … wait.” Alyssa called out softly to her.

Riley stopped and quirked her brow with a huff. “What?”

“Can palace security take us down? You know my ass ain’t walking that far.”

Riley called for a guard to take the 30-second drive to the stables. Both girls hopped off the cart and entered the empty barn. Riley called out for members of the stable staff while Alyssa’s eyes roamed the perimeter for her husband.

“Your Majesty? Did you need something?”

Riley turned to face the man in charge as he walked around the corner wiping his hands off with an old cloth. Before she could acknowledge him, Alyssa popped in front of her, nearly knocking her over.

“Eric!! Where’s Drake?”

The Queen smiled at the stable manager. “Eric, we’re looking for Drake.”

He looked between the two women, confusion etched across his face. “Is he supposed to be here, ma’am?”

Riley looked at Alyssa, who looked like she was ready to snap at his question, then back to Eric. “Um … yes. He told Mrs. Walker here that he would be helping in the stables today.”

“Hell … I’d say its been a good --” Eric paused to calculate before turning his attention back to the women. “--three  … maybe four weeks since I last saw Walker here. Came down with King Liam to take the newest horse, Driam, out for a ride … it made me real hard ma’am”

“Hold the fuck up!” Alyssa yelled with one hand on her hip and the other covering her forehead. “He told me he has been helping out here for the last several months. Is that not true?”

Eric, realizing what is going on, backed up defensively. He could sense this was not something he wanted to be a part of. “Nope. I'm not getting in the middle of your marital woes, Ms. Alyssa.” I just want in the middle of your husbands.

Alyssa approached him and aggressively poked at his chest. “Oh, you are in so far in the middle of my woes now, Ricky boy! So drop the bros before hoes bullshit and spill what you know.”

Riley grabbed both of Alyssa's shoulders from behind and pulled her aside. “It’s not his fault, Lyss. Plus … I think Eric’s the ho in this case”

Alyssa shrugged her away and began to pace back and forth frantically. “I’m seeing sounds, Ri. I am seeing fucking sounds all over this bitch!”

“Oh God, Lyss! No!  Don’t look at the sounds ... Don’t look at the sounds” She turned her frantic friend around to face her, squeezing her arms soothingly. “Look at me.”

Alyssa’s lips quivered as she stared back at her best friend. “I’ve lost him, Ri. I’ve lost him.”

“No, you haven’t.”

Alyssa sniffled through her tears and wiped her nose on her shirt sleeve. “Can me and the kids live with you now that I’m a single mother with a cheating ass husband?”

Riley pulled her into a hug, rubbing comfortingly along her back. “Of course you can, but maybe we should talk to Liam first.”

Lyss wiped her tear-stained face on Riley's shoulder and pulled back. “Liam loves me. He won’t care if I stay with you.”

Riley smiled with a nod. “Yes, he does love you, but Drake loves you too and you know that. There has to be a good explanation for everything.”

“Then why did he lie? He’s never lied to me, Ri.”

Riley gave her friend a sympathetic frown and shrugged. “I don’t know, girl, but let’s find out”

Palace security was once again summoned to haul the girls back to the palace.

Liam was in his office taking part in a video conference with Queen Elizabeth when his door burst open.

“WHERE IS MY HUSBAND?!”

His eyes went wide as he cut them to the flash of Alyssa barging in and stopping behind him at his desk; Riley was just a step behind her. Liam’s face flushed as he looked back at the camera and apologized for the interruption.

“Alyssa, dear,” he whispered. “Now is not a good time.” He motioned to the video feed on his laptop.

Alyssa turned to the laptop with the 106-year-old Queen’s face still illuminating from it. “Turn the hearing aid down, Lizzie! Unless you know where Drake is, this conversation doesn’t concern you!”

“ALYSSA!!” Liam stood, towering over her petite frame. “Are you coming for your King?” (had to put that in there lol).

“Liam, she's had a rough day and, remember, we love Alyssa,” Riley interjected with an innocent smile.

“We do, but she can’t just barge in here while I’m working!”

Alyssa grabbed his tie and yanked him down closer to her face. “Please, just tell me you know where Drake is. He said he was working for you and he’s not. He didn’t tell me happy birthday, he didn’t make my breakfast, and he didn’t fuck my brains out this morning!”

“Oh My!”

Alyssa turned back to the laptop. “I thought I told you to turn your hearing aid down, you old coot!”

Liam’s hands covered his face in embarrassment as he fell back into his chair. 

Alyssa crouched down in front of Liam and pulled his hands from his face. “Real talk, Li. Did you or did you not ask Drake to work for you?”

He stared at her for a moment with a deer-in-the-headlights look. He knew exactly where his best friend was and what he was doing -- he had known for months -- but he couldn’t tell her that. 

Nervous, Liam knew there was one way to solve this problem. He reached over to his intercom and pressed the call button. “Bastien.”

A split second later, the door to Liam’s office opened and the head guard entered. “Your Majesty?” he said as he bowed.

“Yes, could you see Alyssa and my wife out, please.”

Exasperated with Liam's request, Alyssa stood back up and eyed Bastien with a steely glare. “I’m not afraid of this bitch! He’s the one who raised the man whore my husband became with all his hookers and shit. My children are fatherless now because of you!”

Refusing to leave, Alyssa plopped down on Liam’s lap and gripped the armrests of his chair tightly with both hands. Her bony ass caused him to yelp as it dug into the muscles of his thigh. She reached for Liam’s scotch  and took a sip before leaning down so that her face could be picked up by the camera.

“Alright, Liz, help a fellow girl out here! You have a lot of experience with a cheating ass spouse and son … should I rip his big, beautiful nuts off? Orrrr … just take it up the ass like you did?"

The Queen of England clutched her chest with an exasperated expression. "Little lady … your behavior is simply prudish and insulting. I highly suggest you learn proper etiquette when addressing me … and, as for your husband, I can see why the poor man's eyes have roamed with such an immoral and, need I dare say, crazed woman such as yourself for a wife."

"Conversation over, bitch!" Alyssa threw the rest of Liam’s drink at the screen, hoping it drenched the queen and slammed the laptop shut.

"God Dammit!" Liam yelled out while he wrapped his arms around her from behind before standing up and handing her off to his guard.

With Bastien holding Alyssa in his arms, her little legs dangling and kicking at his shins, Riley took action.

The Queen grabbed her friend's feet, which were now bare from her crumbled flip flops, and tried with all her might to pull her back.

"You’re gonna break her hip, Bastien! She's an old, feeble woman now! She could have osteoporosis or the menopause!”

Giving their best efforts to escape, including Alyssa's teeth being firmly sunk into Bastien’s upper arm, neither were able to overpower his strength. 

While carrying Alyssa and dragging Riley -- who was still holding onto her friends legs -- Bastien was able to get the two of them out of Liam's office and into the main corridor.

Alyssa followed Riley back to her quarters, where she was given a pair of flip-flops and new leggings from Riley’s 12-year-old daughter’s closet. The hole in the crotch of her leggings had completely blown out during the struggle with Bastien. There were still no answers or replies from Drake, and Alyssa was beginning to feel utterly hopeless. 

Alyssa started to raid the royal couple’s liquor cabinet, happy to swipe a bottle of Balkan vodka, when Riley had an idea. She snapped her fingers with a sly grin. “I know someone who can help us find Drake.”

“Who?” 

The ladies left the quarters and walked downstairs to the ballroom. Once inside, Alyssa took a hard swig of vodka and eyed the utility closet Riley stopped in front of with a questioning look. 

The Queen gave four quick knocks followed by two slow ones and the door unlocked. Mara had been working out of this closet for years, having been fired after a fall out with Alyssa during a costume ball that nearly got her killed. The former guard walked in there during that ball and just never came back out. Riley and Bastien were the only two people who knew about this and told no one -- Bastien purely for comical reasons and Riley for a certain skill the woman possessed.

Alyssa was surprised to find the woman hiding out there after all these years. "I thought you fired her ass! I nearly got a traumatic brain injury and hearing loss from her incompetence!" 

"Shhh!" Riley pulled her friend inside, peeking around the ballroom to ensure no one was looking, and shut the door quickly. 

Riley explained how Liam revoked her cell phone pinging privileges with the guards before the costume ball all those years ago. Apparently, he wasn't too keen on her stalking the entire cast of Friends. He did what he had to do when a restraining order from Matthew Perry came across his desk. Mara, however, was still able to ping into anyone’s phone, thus, the Queen allowed her to stay.

“That's amazing,” Alyssa remarked. She pursed her lips as she scanned the tight space of the closet. “Can she find … maybe … Dwayne Johnson?”

Riley nodded. “Bitch can find anyone.” She looked to Mara, who was sitting at her desk, and winked with approval.

“Okay,” Alyssa clapped and leaned over Mara’s shoulder. “Let’s find him … I wanna know where Drake is!”

Within several seconds, an unfamiliar address popped up on the screen. It was close to the Walker cabin but still not somewhere Alyssa knew of.

She reached for a pen and a pad of paper from Mara’s desk and started to write down the location. “I can’t believe he lied to me this whole time! I must be really stupid for him to think he could actually get away with this.” Alyssa tossed the pen back on the desk and ripped the sheet of paper off the pad. “They’re gonna write a country song about me, Ri,” she cried. “Poppa’s in the graveyard and Momma’s in the pen! I just need a shotgun and for my damn dog to run away and I’ve got a hit!”

The two snuck out of the utility closet and ran to Alyssa’s van. Alyssa pulled the ticket for double parking in handicapped spaces from her wiper blade and threw it in her glove box with the rest of her parking tickets.  Riley shoveled away the piles of empty, diet coke cans and cheese whisps bags from the passenger seat  into the parking lot when she opened her door. 

Alyssa squealed her tires as she burned rubber down the palace drive, taking out the same cone again, nearly running down Michael again, and driving straight through the lowered arm of the security gate.

“WOOOO!” Riley yelled as they sped through the streets of Cordonia into the countryside. “This is just like old times in college, huh, Lyss?”

“I suppose. We’re just not high as fuck.” Alyssa raised her eyebrows and grinned slyly with an all too familiar gleam in her eyes that Riley recognized immediately. “Say … grab my purse, Ri.”

“Oh God! I know that look. We're gonna get smashed aren't we?"  Riley extended her arm behind the driver's seat. Alyssa reached into the side pocket of her purse and pulled out the rolled up, clear baggie and tossed it to her friend.

Unrolling the bag, Riley began to bounce in her seat with anticipation of smoking weed for the first time in 15 years. The excitement quickly faded.

“Um, Lyss?”

“Hmm?”

“I know I haven’t smoked pot in a while, but this looks like a bag of carrot sticks.”

“Give me that, dumbass!” Alyssa glanced over and snatched the bag. She held the bag over the steering wheel and examined it for herself. “Well fuck!! Looks like one of my kids had a really interesting snack yesterday at school. Oh well”

After a twenty-minute drive from the palace into a forested section of Cordonia, Alyssa and Riley stopped in front of a long gravel road. Riley double-checked the address on the van’s GPS with what was written on the paper.

“It says this is it. Look’s kind of desolate,” Riley mused, not sure where the isolated road would lead.

Alyssa turned the steering wheel of her van, probably a little too tipsy to drive considering she had consumed a quarter of a bottle of vodka (that the author of this story forgot about). They made it there, nonetheless, and no one was hurt. Never drink and drive!!

Lush, plentiful trees and a wooden fence lined the gravel road that seemed to lead to nowhere until they came upon a clear view of Lake Cordonia. Drake’s truck was sitting in front of a large wooden cabin with a huge, flat yard and one of the most stunning views of the lake either woman had seen anywhere. Alyssa tried to keep it together ... until she didn’t. When she saw Drake standing on the front porch, casually drinking a beer, shirtless and wiping his forehead with his denim shirt, she skidded the van into park next to his truck. 

Drake’s eyes widened when he saw his wife get out of the van wielding an ice scraper in one hand and a tire iron in the other, a look of pure hell in her eyes. 

He took a small step back. He hadn’t seen her like this since a drunken Olivia grabbed his ass at a Beaumont Bash two years ago. Drake waved his hands in front of her defensively. “Baby girl … wh … what’s going on right now?”

“Don’t you baby girl me!” Alyssa threw the ice scraper and Drake ducked just in time as it flew over his head.

Drake had no idea what the hell she was so pissed off about, but she was approaching him quickly and twirling the tire iron in her hands. He jumped over the railing of the porch and took off running around the side of the house. As he rounded the rear corner of the home, he ran directly into Riley, who was waiting to block him. The plan was a good one -- it really was -- but her thin frame was no match against the much larger Drake. With a hard thud, Riley fell backward, which caused his body to trip over her and land face down on the ground.

Drake rolled over on his back and shook his head in an attempt to get the daze out of his frazzled brain. There she was, standing over him, holding the tire iron like a bat, ready to pounce him without a second thought.

“Baby! Please tell me what’s wrong.”

“You … you’re a cheater and a liar!”

Drake went to sit up but laid back down when Alyssa flinched the hardened steel at him. “The fuck you talking about, Lyssa?”

With months of building suspicions and hurt, Alyssa took a long, deep breath and let it all out with a wail.

“I’m talking about the late nights, the shady-as-shit lies you have spewed to me over and over again. I’m talking about you missing out on dinners, coming home and falling on the bed without a word to anyone. I’m talking about only having sex with me every other day and forgetting my birthday. Now, me and the kids have to live with Liam, who hates me now because I told Queen Elizabeth she got fucked in the ass! It’s because I’m old now, isn’t it? You wanna be a Bastien and have bunga bunga sex parties with skank ass whores who have big boobies and wear their panties around their ankles! And … I just can’t compete, Drake … I just can’t.”

Drake held his hand up to block any sudden swings in his direction. “Can I get up?”

Alyssa nodded her head before she turned away from him and dropped the tire iron to the ground. “Just tell why, dammit?” she whimpered. “Was I not enough?!”

“Not enough? NOT ENOUGH?!!” He quickly rose to his feet, twisted her around and brought her flush against his hard body. With tears in his eyes, he kissed the top of her head, his thick hands sunken into her lush, brown hair.  He was barely able to mutter a single word. He was visibly shaken and broken by her accusations and that she held those feelings about herself for so long.

With both hands now on the sides of her face, he tilted her head so that she was looking directly at him. “Alyssa!” he sobbed softly. “Don’t you dare ever say you aren’t enough for me … ever! You’re literally my whole world. In every single life, in any alternate universe … I choose you every single time. And you wanna know what I’ve been doing? Look!” He turned her around to face the house.

“This is what I’ve been doing all those months! I built it, with my bare hands, just for you, for your birthday. I wanted you to have a bigger home so you could get out of that small cabin and have the view and the yard you always dreamt of. I wasn’t cheating and I didn't forget your birthday.  I just wanted you to have everything you deserve”

Alyssa gave Drake a quizzical look. “But … you’re terrible at woodworking.”

Drake chuckled. “Maybe I love you enough I learned.”

Alyssa sunk to her knees, not to give a blow job, but realization and understanding of the last few months had set in. She stared up at the beautiful, two-story log cabin that had every bit of her husband’s heart and soul for her in it and wept. “Drake.” Her voice was raspy and full of guilt. “I’m so, so sorry.’

He crouched down behind her and wrapped his loving arms around Alyssa before placing a gentle nip at her ear. “You've nothing to be sorry for. I guess I gave you plenty of reasons to think that, but I was crunched for time and wanted to surprise you. Just hope you like it.”

“It’s magnificent … and it’s our home?”

“It's our home. Happy Birthday, Baby girl.”

Drake and Alyssa checked on Riley, who was still knocked out cold. After assisting her and giving her a moment to collect herself, Alyssa thanked her friend for all of her help and gave her the keys to the van to return home in.

Drake showed his wife around their new cabin, pointing out the lowered cabinets in the kitchen that would be easier for her to reach. He had built her a library where she could work from and read without the noise and chaos of a house full of children running around. She was thrilled over the balcony that sat just off their bedroom, overlooking the lake and featuring private jacuzzi tub where they could relax together and, of course, have sex in.

Drake took her outside and walked down to the lake, where he had  put a gazebo in overlooking the water and ushered her to the center of it. 

“Drake! This is amazing. How did you know I wanted this?”

He drew her closer to him and kissed the tip of her nose. “I know everything about you, Lyssa … there’s nothing I wouldn’t give you.”

She smiled up at him lovingly. “And I love you so much for it.”

He reached for one of her tiny hands, brought it to his chest, and wrapped his other arm around her back. With very little room between them, he kissed her lips tenderly. “Dance with me, Alyssa.”

Alyssa gave him a knowing look with a grin. “Drake Walker doesn’t like to dance.”

He began to sway with her to music that wasn’t there, but he felt it in his heart. “Drake Walker will always dance with his girl.” Kissing her once more, they began to slowly dance together and Alyssa had never felt more alive or loved in her life. He has that effect on her--always had and always will.

He spun her in a twirl and pulled her tiny body back into his own. “Ya know, Lyssa … when I first saw you, I saw love.”

Drake reached down and lifted the bottom of her sweatshirt over her head and tossed it on a nearby bench. He caressed her cheek and trailed a gentle line down her neck and across her shoulder. “And the first time you touched me, Baby Girl ...I felt love.”

His lips found that sweet spot just behind her ear before he whispered to her. “And after all this time ...”

Drake’s thumb grazed across her bottom lip before he stared into the blue eyes of his yesterday, today, and forever. “You’re still the one I love.”

What happens next? .......

[couplesinstitutecounseling]

Holidays are always a hot topic in couples therapy, whether it’s whose family couples will be visiting, how much time to spend there, what activities will be included or avoided, how to enjoy the day when there is relational tension… the list goes on and on.

Thanksgiving Day is right around the corner.  For many, this is a time to reunite with loved ones, play games, cheer on a favorite football team, and gobble down all the delicious food.  Yet just like so many other special events, this Thanksgiving Day is one more causality of the pandemic.  In this article we will explore a few issues facing many couples during this holiday and go over some ways to navigate them.

Issues

Expectations:

One key issue to tackle before any holiday is expectations.  These little troublemakers can create all kinds of struggles to get through, especially when couples don’t slow down and talk about them.  Often people believe their partner will have the same expectations or at least they will agree with them.  Imagine if both partners are thinking that, but neither one communicates  it.  Now imagine how it will go if both partners have vastly different expectations about how, where, and with whom they will spend their holiday.  How do you think Thanksgiving will play out for this couple?  Do you think they will be feeling very thankful?  Or do you think the turkey will feel lucky to be dinner instead of having to deal with the emotional fallout from this couple feeling disappointed, resentful, and angry?

This is an issue that regularly comes up with couples, but it’s intensified this year because many couples have an even greater divide in their expectations this year.  Some people may expect to keep traditions and spend time with family or friends, while the other partner believes that staying home and social distancing is best.

Tolerance Differences:

Whether it’s the introvert and extrovert, large family or small family, zoning in front of the TV or playing games in a group, staying home or traveling, the list of differences could continue until Thanksgiving 2021.  This goes beyond how we enjoy spending our time; these differences can look like social anxiety, overstimulation, and exhaustion.  One definition of tolerance is the capacity to endure pain or hardship.  It can be hard to understand that something we enjoy and find energizing can be something that requires our partner to endure.  It can be such a difficult concept to understand that often people will believe that their partner is simply withholding or dismissing their needs.  Oftentimes we expect (yup, there is that word again) our partner to be interested in the same things we are.  I have seen this play out in many couples, as well as in my own family.  Here are a few examples and some respectful ways of coping when these differences arise:

My mom loves playing games at family gatherings, but my stepdad does not.  What I love about them is that they give each other space to enjoy the time the way they each want to- without expectation or judgement.

For me, my husband’s family loves to talk politics.  His family is made up of all kinds of beliefs.  Political debates are something I really don’t enjoy, so when this starts, I go and hang out with the kids or use that time to call and talk to my family.

I have had clients who want to spend every second with their family, talking and playing games, but the other partner is easily overstimulated or exhausted by that amount of interaction.  After understanding that this was not an excuse for the partner to hide away, each couple was able to come up with signals or code words that would let their partner know why they might disappear for a bit.  Then when the more introverted partner felt refreshed, they would go back and re-engage in the group.

The real issue with tolerating differences is not so much the difference, but the way partners handle those differences.  If the couple makes it unsafe for one or both partners to have different tolerance levels, then they are creating an environment for resentment, anger, and pain.  This doesn’t make a fun holiday or a fulfilling relationship.

Lockdown Grief:

This issue of lockdown grief is one that is solely related to the pandemic. Thanksgiving 2020 is not going to look like the ones before it and it is OKAY to be sad, mad, disappointed, and overwhelmed by this.  Many people look forward to having large family/friend gatherings and if there was a year people needed to be able to connect and hug loved ones- it would be 2020.  But what do we do when we are being asked not to gather and not hug? Often, we think of grief solely related to death, but grief is a reaction to loss, and I would be surprised to find anyone who hasn’t been shaken by loss in 2020.  Each time we miss an opportunity to gather, celebrate, or travel…the losses add up.  In addition to this, thousands of families are grieving the death of someone COVID robbed them of.   Others are recovering from the illness and endless communities are facing economic hardship like never before.  People are grieving the loss of their life’s work through being forced to close their business or being laid off from a job that they loved and that supported their family.  There is a lot of loss in 2020, too much.  It is important for couples to remember that people experience and express grief differently and some will feel this more than others.  When couples are facing difficult times and they respond differently, and if they have not spent the time to understand and work with their differences then there is the potential to create more pain and distance in a time when they need each other the most.

As an example, an introverted partner may be excited to stay home and have an intimate holiday, but if their partner is extroverted or only sees family on certain holidays, then they may be struggling.  This creates a vastly different emotional experience.  Yet just like with the expectations and tolerance differences, the real hurdle is not that there is a difference but how the couple navigates that difference.

You may now be asking, “Well then how do we navigate the differences?”  Here are some first steps to begin to build that skill.

Beginning steps to navigate differences.

Define expectations.  This starts with each partner individually getting clear on what their vision is for the holiday (or anything really).  This often looks like answering the how, who, when, what, and where.  It can often be powerful to also be able to share the why.  Such as, why this vision means something to you. The why can often help our partner feel more connected to part of a vision that they might experience a different way.  For example, if someone enjoys interaction they might not understand that their partner feels connected and close to a family member by just sitting and watching a football game.

Take turns sharing your expectations.  Check out steps here to keep this conversation from becoming toxic.

Openly acknowledge tolerance differences with curiosity and/or acceptance. If you think you identify something your partner may tolerate differently, tell them your thoughts, and ask them if it feels true for them.  This gives your partner an opportunity to self-reflect and self-define.  Ask each other what the tolerance differences feel like for them.

Come up with some creative experiments.  Experiments are an extremely important tool; you don’t want to think of your ideas as solutions.  Solutions have a feeling of finality, because if you solve a problem then the problem is no more.  When couples take this mindset in conversation about an issue it can be the set up to the next big fight.

Here is why, if a couple sees X as a problem, they discuss it and decide the solution will be Y.  Then the next time X happens, and Y doesn’t work the way they thought it would then it feels like they failed, or the relationship is doomed.  Yet if we think of these things as experiments, then the conversations because the next time X happens lets try Y and then lets give Y a try 2 times, after the second try we will reevaluate how Y helps and how Y doesn’t work.  The experiment gives couples a way to keep working together towards something vs trying one thing and allowing that one thing to determine if they are a good team or not.

So when looking at tolerance differences come up with experiments to try and then do a check in after you try them, look at what worked, what didn’t and make adjustments to the experiment for the next time.

When it comes to discussing tolerance difference around the pandemic, check out this article for help.

Acknowledge your emotions and/or grief around the lockdown.  How do you feel affected? How is it affecting your holiday experience?  If you and your partner have different experiences, that’s OKAY. But remember, this is a time to listen, show empathy and give comfort.  Brene Brown has a great video on empathy, you can check it out here.

Now for the hard truth: Navigating difference is challenging, and requires a strong internal muscle that most of us don’t have naturally.  Yet, the fact that you are reading this article is a great first step to building up your muscle.  If you follow the steps above, that is even more impressive, because it can feel a bit scary to step out of our world to understand someone else’s.  Pushing yourself to do something in the face of discomfort or fear, is brave and shows strength.  So, I hope you give yourself and your partner extra points for trying, because you both deserve them.

If you find you are struggling during this holiday season and you need support or you want help building up your “difference” muscle, reach out to the therapists here for a free 20 minute consultation.  We can help!

Also here are 15 ways to celebrate Thanksgiving together!

Go for a drive through nature.  Take in the view, look for changing foliage, pack or pick up your favorite fall treat and stop someplace to enjoy the crisp autumn air. Describe what you are seeing and feeling to each other and what you enjoy about it.

Have a private Thanksgiving Dinner.  If it is just the 2 of you, make it romantic.  If you have kids, get them in on the planning and cooking.  Dress up for dinner…fancy or silly.  Be creative.

Start a “Giving” tradition together. Start a seasonal tradition of picking at least one charitable act to do together as a couple/family.  Take canned foods to a place of worship or a local food bank. Take some yummy treats to Fire Stations or Law Enforcement Offices to thank them for being away from their families and serving the community.  Think about helping to distribute hot meals on Thanksgiving Day.

Get crafty.  Remember those turkey hands you used to cut out and paste together as a little kid? Well, who says you can’t still have fun with crafts as a grownup? Get yourselves in the spirit of the holiday with festive garlands, painted gourds and of course, delectable Thanksgiving-themed goodies!

Show your thanks for each other! Yes, it’s simple. Maybe it feels silly. But part of the holiday is simply showing gratitude for the small, every day blessings in your life … and that includes your partner, kids and family!

Have a “Thankful scavenger hunt” get post-its or plain paper and write things you are thankful for, happy memories and/or jokes.  You hand each other the first one, then hide the others around your home. Each one will have a clue to where to find the next one.  Include a simple little treat with the last note.

Thankful-bomb each other.  Throughout the day post or hand thank you notes to each other.  They can be simple but try to surprise each other on where you put them or when you hand them out.

Play board games, card games, or do a puzzle together instead of watching T.V.  Try an escape room in a box or you can look for games that you work together to beat vs games that you play against one another.

Get physical together. Take a walk, go for a jog or hike, have a Turkey Dance party, and if you can have alone time enjoy exchanging sexy massages.

Make sure you have some quiet time during the day: take a nap, read a book, or mediate.

Watch a favorite holiday movie together.

If hosting a small gathering. Decide together in advance on who will do what when it comes to straightening the house, planning, preparation, cooking, and clean up responsibilities. Don’t strive for perfection instead strive for connection.

Look up different historical Thanksgiving traditions or food and try to recreate them.

If you can’t be with family in person get creative with video chats, online group games, or start a “I’m THANKFUL” text thread and spend the day messaging each other things you are thankful for, fond memories or silly jokes and memes.  You can smile together even if you can’t physically be together and it is utterly amazing how joy, laughter, and smiles can connect us over even the furthest distance.

Look for ways to relax and enjoy the difference. As amazing as it is to be with a lot of family and friends, this holiday can be a good change of pace.  You can stay in comfy clothes all day, be on your own schedule and not worry about challenging family interactions.

Remember, whether you find new traditions that you continue or enjoy returning to previous traditions next year, this is a good time to experiment and create meaningful and memorable experiences.  

If you have any questions or want to learn more, please contact us.

[loveofmychips]

always did, always do (Joe Mazzello x reader, Ben Hardy x reader)

Disclaimer: Hey guys, so I wrote this after being inspired by Ariana Grande’s song from her most recent album. It is called ghostin’ and I love it literally so much. The words in quotes and bold and italics are the lyrics to the song so you can see what parts inspired what. I recommend listening to this song if you haven’t yet, because it is literally so beautiful and it makes me cry at the same time?? So yeah, in other words enjoy.

Warnings: LOTS OF ANGST (Death, grieving, cheating, alcohol mentioned, fights, car accident), and a small amount of fluff (if you blink you’ll miss it because it’s mostly just angst).

~~~~

"I know you hear me when I cry. I try to hold it in the night while you're sleepin' next to me but it's your arms that I need this time.”

You loved him. He was everything to you.

After you found out the news, you were so broken, and for every night that first week you didn’t sleep. You only cried and prayed that he would come back. That it was all just some cruel nightmare.

You prayed that Joe would come to you and tell you it would all be okay, because he was the only person who could tell you it was okay and you’d instantly believe him.

“You should try to rest...” Ben begged you softly one week later, “I know it’s hard. I miss him too, but he���d want you to take care of yourself no matter what.”

You nodded, sniffled and wiped at the tears still falling from your face. You were only keeping Ben up and reminding him of the pain you felt. You felt so selfish. Ben was hurting just as much as you were. He was pushing it all away for you.

You turned to fall asleep, but after about 2 hours of only thinking about Joe, you ended up softly weeping all over again.

You forced back your noises as best as you could so that Ben wouldn’t hear, but you knew the truth. He heard all of it despite how he pretended to stay asleep.

You think the reason he did that is because he knew he wouldn’t be able to say anything to stop your heartaches. Nothing could fill up the agony in your soul knowing he was gone. All he could do was pretend to sleepily put his arms around you and hope it would give some sort of comfort.

“Look at the cards that we've been dealt. If you were anybody else, probably wouldn't last a day. Every tear's a rain parade from hell.”

Ben was Joe’s best friend. 

Joe and you always got into fights, and it was one of the main reasons you had broke up and kept getting back together again. Usually it was small things and nothing too big of a deal, but the last time you broke up it was different. Everything was different when it happened.

Joe came home after having a late night rendezvous with the boys of Bohemian Rhapsody. You were pissed off since it was so late and that he didn’t try to call.

“Y/N this is stupid, just let me go to bed!” He yelled, glaring at you.

“It’s not fucking stupid! You should have called me, you know I want you calling me if you'll be late coming home, but you didn’t. Why didn’t you?”

“Because I forgot! You’re not the center of my universe! I was with my friends, we had fun, and I was enjoying myself!”

You shook your head as you tried to grab his hand, “Joe you don’t get it-”

“I don’t get what?” Joe yanked his hand away from yours, his eyes only showing anger, “I don’t get how needy you are? I don’t get how much of a bitch you’re being?!”

You winced at his words once he said them, and he immediately knew what he did wrong.

“Y/N, I-I didn’t mean to say that, I’m not in the best state right now, okay?” He stepped towards you as you backed up. “N-No...I’m leaving.” You quickly grabbed your car keys and started heading for the door until Joe grabbed your arm.

“Just wait and listen to me!” He whimpered, making you turn to see his innocent eyes staring at you in regret, “Please just come to bed with me. Please. Let’s just lay down together. I’ll sleep this off and then we can talk in the morning when I’m better.”

As you stared at him, you started crying and shook your head once more. “Joseph...I-I don’t want to lay in bed with you...I need to be alone tonight.”

You pulled away from him and walked out the door to your car as he stood in front of the doorway.

“Please...” He kept repeating as he watched you drive away.

You didn’t know where to go until Ben had called you a few minutes later, “Ben?” You whispered softly, now parked at an empty grocery store lot, and was just crying in the car.

“Hey...Joey called and told me a bit about what happened...you know he’s really upset.”

“Well so am I. I am not going back there, at least not tonight, and not while I feel this way.”

You hear Ben sigh on the other side, taking a deep breath before hesitantly saying, “Then come stay with me tonight? We just want to make sure you’re safe. You can sleep in my bed.....you love my bed remember?”

He was just as drunk as Joe probably was. You knew that. You two had a fling before you and Joe started dating, and you knew that it meant nothing the whole time. 

The offer was tempting though. More tempting then going home and facing Joe or sleeping in the car at a parking lot anyway.

“I’ll be over soon...I’ll see you then.” You whispered before hanging up.

Ben was drunk that night, and he didn’t mean to do anything. Joe didn’t mean to upset you either. That night was just a drunken mess between the two boys.

You went over to Ben’s place and things happened all over again. Joe and you officially broke up the next day after you had called and told him the truth about your night with Ben.

“You been so understanding, you been so good, and I'm puttin' you through more than one ever should. And I'm hating myself 'cause you don't want to admit that it hurts you.”

You stayed with Ben for a few days until you were able to go over to Joe’s place and get your stuff. After being together for 3 years, you had moved in together, but now all it meant was you needed to find a place to stay.

Ben wanted you to stay with him, but you didn’t know if that was right. He was already facing problems with Joe for you two sleeping together, and it felt wrong.

You knew the truth that if Ben was literally any other guy, it wouldn’t have been as hard, and that you wouldn’t have even talked to him after that night. But at the end of the day, it was Ben.

Ben was your friend as much as he was Joe’s friend, and above all, he was a nice guy who was just trying to help you and Joe through this hard time.

As you quietly knocked on the door, Joe opened it up with a face full of mixed emotions. “I just came to get most of my things...” You said softly as you watched him nod and let you in.

You went to the bedroom you both had originally shared and got your biggest suitcase, starting to pack up your main clothes first since they were the necessity. Joe came by after about an hour of you arriving and just watched you getting your things all laid out and collected onto the bed.

“Can I help in anyway?” He asked, watching you like he was nervous to be around you in the first place until you nodded, and then he started relaxing. “Um yeah, do you have any boxes by chance that I can use?”

Joe left and came back with 3 big boxes, “Is this enough?”

“Yeah...they’re just what I needed...”

You both stood there and stared at each other in silence for a while until he spoke, “I still love you...I never stopped loving you, and I haven’t stopped thinking of you.”

You sighed and sat on the edge of the bed, “Joe-”

“No, don’t do this Y/N. I know I messed up. I know I did, and if I could take that night back just so I could be holding you still now I’d do it in a heartbeat...do you like Ben? Like, like him in anyway other then a friend?” He asked as he sat down on his knees in front of you.

“I don’t think you do...three years can’t just end like this Y/N...I can’t let myself give up the best thing that’s happened to me.” Joe took your hands into his and gripped them tightly, “I don’t care if you slept with Ben. I just want you here, in my arms, and letting me hear you say I love you too. Please tell me that you still love me...”

You both found yourselves crying as he stopped talking since the emotions were hitting you both all at once.

“I do still love you...I’ll never stop loving you either.” You cried to him before shaking your head, “But we’re not good together Joey...can’t you see that? We just bring our worst selves out instead and it’s not good. It was never good for either of us.”

Joe stood up and took your face into his hands, kissing you with all the love he had for you to give, and soon you kissed back. Both of you just kissed each other with everything you had until you broke apart for air.

Neither of you said a word as your foreheads rested against each other and he sat beside you on the bed. He gently pulled you into his arms and you both sat there.

Just hugging each other like you always did before it all, because you always told him how much it meant to you to just hold someone you loved for a long time with no words spoken.

He always knew what you needed at the times you needed him. He did that part so well in your relationship.

“I know that it breaks your heart when I cry again over him. I know that it breaks your heart when I cry again 'stead of ghostin' him. We'll get through this, we'll get past this. I'm a girl with a whole lot of baggage...”

You headed home that evening to tell Ben you were going back to Joe. That was the original plan you and Joe decided on. You both wanted to stay with each other while working out the flaws in your relationship.

As soon as you pulled up into Ben’s driveway, you pulled out your phone and smiled at the texts you realized you had missed from Joe.

JoeyBear: ‘I’m going out to the store. I want to make you a special dinner tonight. I love you so so so much.’

You texted back an I love you too before getting out and walking inside. “Ben we need to talk-” You stopped as you looked at his TV screen that held the title,

“Actor, Joe Mazzello, murdered in car accident.”

Ben turned to look at you with tears running down his face, “I-I’m sorry...” He cried as you came over closer to the screen and fell on your knees to the ground.

“N-No. This can’t be, he had texted me not too long ago-”

“He was supposedly running a red light when the truck seen in the side of it, the surviving victim, crashed into the driver’s seat where Mazzello was located and according to the eyewitness, Mazzello was looking at his phone and not paying attention. His time of death is reported to have been around 4:07pm. Only about 38 minutes ago.”

As the reporter on the screen said that, you pulled out your phone to see the time Joe sent his last message to you ever.

4:06pm. 37 minutes ago.

“Though I wish he were here instead, don't want that living in your head. He just comes to visit me when I'm dreaming every now and then.”

After a month of his death, every night felt like the beginning of a beautiful new life with Joe. You’d fall asleep and trick yourself every time to believe he’s still alive, and it just gets harder every time to wake up.

“Y/N?” Joe’s voice called softly, and you sit up in the bed to look at the doorway. There he always is. Staring at you with a soft smile as he’ll walk over  to you, crawling into the bed to be beside your body.

Some nights you’ll just kiss for eternity, and other nights you’ll just hold onto each other as he whispers sweet things in your ears.

“It wasn’t your fault what happened...don’t blame yourself my love.” He’d whisper. “I’m always going to be here for you, and you know that.”

You’d fall asleep soon enough in his arms before waking up to see Ben instead holding you, and you’d start crying. You don’t know if you cried just because you missed Joe so much, or if it’s because you felt guilty for wanting Joe here instead. Either way, you’d always start crying.

Ben would always wake up to see you and try to question it, hoping your response just might be different then all your other nights together, “Love why are you crying?”

You looked at him through your tears before responding, “He was here...w-where is Joey?” you’d cry, making him tear up himself before slowly wrapping his arms around you.

“H-He’s gone...He isn’t coming back my love-”

“I-I need him here! I want him here!” You cried out, and suddenly couldn’t help but scream and cry as your emotions took over once again.

They always take over. Always.

“And after all that we been through, there's so much to look forward to. What was done and what was said, leave it all here in this bed with you. Baby, you do it so well. You been so understanding, you been so good, and I'm puttin' you through more than one ever should. And I'm hating myself 'cause you don't want to admit that it hurts you.”

Ben and you ended your relationship of sorts two months after Joe’s death. You didn’t want it to end, because you felt you needed someone, but you both also knew it needed to be done.

You’ll always love Ben, but not in the same way you loved Joe.

Joe was your everything. Joe was your person, and you wish he didn’t have to die for you to figure it out. 

You’d like to think you would have gotten married not too much farther in the future. That you would have ended up having a family. That you’d grow old together.

You had just found your way back to each other when you lost him again. You knew in your heart you’d somehow find him again though. 

You always did, and always do.

“I know that it breaks your heart when I cry again over him. I know that it breaks your heart when I cry again 'stead of ghostin' him. We'll get through this, we'll get past this. I'm a girl with a whole lot of baggage...”

~~~~

That was a lot of emotions I just felt while writing this wow. I hope you enjoyed this, and will continue to want more from me. If you haven’t listened to this song by Ariana Grande I highly recommend guys because it is stunning. I’m willing to take requests or anything so just message me or something if you have any! I love you all.

[dfroza]

Today’s reading from the ancient book of Proverbs and book of Psalms

for july 4 of 2021 with Proverbs 4 and Psalm 4, accompanied by Psalm 15 for the 15th day of Summer and Psalm 35 for day 185 of the year (now with the consummate book of 150 Psalms in its 2nd revolution this year)

[Proverbs 4]

Gather, children, to hear your father’s instruction.

Pay close attention so you will understand,

For I am passing down to you important precepts.

Do not abandon these valuable life lessons.

Back when I was young—the very image of my father,

and yet from my mother’s view, still her only boy—

My father, with his years of experience, became my teacher.

Father: Son, grab on to every word I say to you—hold them close—

stay true to my instructions as you live, and they will serve you well.

Whatever it takes to gain Wisdom, do it.

To gain understanding, do it! Never forget this!

Never stray from what I am telling you.

If you don’t forsake Lady Wisdom, she will protect you.

Love her, and she will faithfully take care of you.

Gaining sound judgment is key, so first things first: go after Lady Wisdom!

Now, whatever else you do, follow through to understanding.

Cherish her, and she will help you rise above the confusion of life—

your possibilities will open up before you—

embrace her, and she will raise you to a place of honor in return.

She will provide the finishing touch to your character—grace;

she will give you an elegant confidence.

Hear my words, my son, and take them in;

let them soak in so that you will live a long, full life.

I have pointed you in the way of wisdom;

I have steered you down the path to integrity.

So get going. And as you go, know this: with integrity you will overcome all obstacles;

even if you run, you will not stumble.

Tighten your grip around wise advice; don’t let it slip away.

Protect Wisdom, for without her, life isn’t worth living.

Do not start down the road of the wicked—

the first step is easy, but it leads to heartache—

do not go along the way of evildoers.

Stay away from it; don’t even go past it—

and if you find yourself anywhere near it,

turn your back and run as far as you can in the opposite direction.

For evildoers are so twisted they cannot sleep unless they have caused harm;

they’ll lie awake all night until they figure out a way to cause someone to stumble.

For they feed on evil the way most eat bread;

they drink violence the way most guzzle wine.

Yet the way of those who do right is like the early morning sun

that shines brighter and brighter until noon.

Evildoers travel a dark road because they love to hide their deeds in darkness;

they can’t see the perils ahead that cause them to stumble.

My son, pay attention to all the words I am telling you.

Lean in closer so you may hear all I say.

Keep them before you; meditate on them;

set them safely in your heart.

For those who discover them, they are life.

They bring wholeness and healing to their bodies.

Above all else, watch over your heart; diligently guard it

because from a sincere and pure heart come the good and noble things of life.

Do away with any talk that twists and distorts the truth;

have nothing to do with any verbal trickery.

Keep your head up, your eyes straight ahead,

and your focus fixed on what is in front of you.

Take care you don’t stray from the straight path, the way of truth,

and you will safely reach the end of your road.

Do not veer off course to the right or the left;

step away from evil, and leave it behind.

The Book of Proverbs, Chapter 4 (The Voice)

to be mirrored by this line:

Keep vigilant watch over your heart;

that’s where life starts.

The Book of Proverbs, Chapter 4:23 (The Message)

[Psalm 4]

For the worship leader. A song of David accompanied by strings.

Answer my prayers, O True God, the righteous, who makes me right.

I was hopelessly surrounded, and You rescued me.

Once again hear me; hide me in Your favor;

bring victory in defeat and hope in hopelessness.

How long will you sons of Adam steal my dignity, reduce my glory to shame?

Why pine for the fruitless and dream a delusion?

[pause]

Understand this: The Eternal One treats as special those like Him.

The Eternal will answer my prayers and save me.

Think long; think hard. When you are angry, don’t let it carry you into sin.

When night comes, in calm be silent.

[pause]

From this day forward, offer to God the right sacrifice from a heart made right by God.

Entrust yourself to the Eternal.

Crowds of disheartened people ask, “Who can show us what is good?”

Let Your brilliant face shine upon us, O Eternal One, that we may know the undeniable answer.

You have filled me with joy, and happiness has risen in my heart, great delight and unrivaled joy,

even more than when bread abounds and wine flows freely.

Tonight I will sleep securely on a bed of peace

because I trust You, You alone, O Eternal One, will keep me safe.

The Book of Psalms, Poem 4 (The Voice)

[Psalm 15]

A song of David.

Eternal One, who is invited to stay in Your dwelling?

Who is granted passage to Your holy mountain?

Here is the answer: The one who lives with integrity, does what is right,

and speaks honestly with truth from the heart.

The one who doesn’t speak evil against others

or wrong his neighbor,

or slander his friends.

The one who loathes the loathsome,

honors those who fear the Eternal,

And keeps all promises no matter the cost.

The one who does not lend money with gain in mind

and cannot be bought to harm an innocent name.

If you live this way, you will not be shaken and will live together with the Lord.

The Book of Psalms, Poem 15 (The Voice)

[Psalm 35]

Rescue Me

A poetic song by King David

[Part One – David, a Warrior]

O Lord, fight for me! Harass the hecklers; accuse my accusers.

Fight those who fight against me.

Put on your armor, Lord; take up your shield and protect me.

Rise up, mighty God! Grab your weapons of war

and block the way of the wicked who come to fight me.

Stand for me when they stand against me!

Speak over my soul: “I am your strong Savior!”

Humiliate those who seek my harm. Defeat them all!

Frustrate their plans to defeat me and drive them back.

Disgrace them all as they have devised their plans to disgrace me.

Blow them away like dust in the wind,

with the angel of Almighty God driving them back!

Make the road in front of them nothing but slippery darkness,

with the angel of Yahweh behind them, chasing them away!

For though I did nothing wrong to them, they set a trap for me,

wanting me to fail and fall.

Surprise them with your ambush, Lord,

and catch them in the very trap they set for me.

Let them be the ones to fail and fall into destruction!

Then my fears will dissolve into limitless joy;

my whole being will overflow with gladness

because of your mighty deliverance.

Everything inside of me will shout it out:

“There’s no one like you, Lord!”

For look at how you protect the weak and helpless

from the strong and heartless who oppress them.

[Part Two – David, a Witness]

They are malicious men, hostile witnesses of wrong.

They rise up against me, accusers appearing out of nowhere.

When I show them mercy, they bring me misery.

I’m forsaken and forlorn, like a motherless child.

I even prayed over them when they were sick.

I was burdened and bowed low with fasting

and interceded for their healing,

and I didn’t stop praying.

I grieved for them, heavyhearted,

as though they were my dearest family members

or my good friends who were sick,

nearing death, needing prayer.

But when I was the one who tripped up and stumbled,

they came together to slander me,

rejoicing in my time of trouble, tearing me to shreds

with their lies and betrayal.

These nameless ruffians,

mocking me like godless fools at a feast—

how they delight in throwing mud on my name.

God, how long can you just stand there doing nothing?

Now is the time to act.

Rescue me from these brutal men,

for I am being torn to shreds by these beasts

who are out to get me.

Save me from their rage, their cruel grasp.

Then I will praise you wherever I go.

And when everyone gathers for worship,

I will lift up your praise with a shout

in front of the largest crowd I can find!

[Part Three – David, a Worshiper]

Don’t let those who fight me for no reason be victorious.

Don’t let them succeed, these heartless haters

who come against me with their gloating sneers.

They are the ones who would never seek peace as friends,

for they are ever devising deceit against the innocent ones

who mind their own business.

They open their mouths with ugly grins,

gloating with glee over my every fault.

“Look,” they say, “we caught him red-handed!

We saw him fall with our own eyes!”

Yahweh, my caring God, you have been there all along.

You have seen their hypocrisy.

Yahweh, don’t let them get away with this.

Don’t walk away without doing something.

Now is the time to awake! Rise up, Lord!

Vindicate me, my Lord and my God!

You have every right to judge me, Lord,

according to your righteousness,

but don’t let them rejoice over me when I stumble.

Let them all be ashamed of themselves,

humiliated when they rejoice over my every blunder.

Shame them, Lord, when they say, “We saw what he did.

Now we have him right where we want him.

Let’s get him while he’s down!”

Make them look ridiculous when they exalt themselves over me.

May they all be disgraced and dishonored!

But let all my true friends shout for joy,

all those who know and love what I do for you.

Let them all say, “The Lord is great,

and he delights in the prosperity of his servant.”

Then I won’t be able to hold it in—

everyone will hear my joyous praises all day long!

Your righteousness will be the theme of my glory-song of praise!

The Book of Psalms, Poem 35 (The Passion Translation)

[thesinglesjukebox]

Tom Petty

He was the unlikeliest of pop stars in the hairsprayed and shoulder-padded MTV era, a thin-lipped, stringy-haired Florida ne’er-do-well whose toothy smile never seemed far from a sneer, whose band played swampy rock & roll with a pub-rock snarl and whose thin, scouring-pad voice sang anthemic highway-ready pop choruses about the feelings you wish you didn’t have and the bad decisions you have to learn to live with. It was a one in a million chance that a gang of dropouts and weekend rockers from Gainesville would ever amount to anything but a few not unhappy memories dating from the mid-70s; but Tom Petty was a one in a million talent, a clear-eyed writer with a knack for honeyed melodies that drew on the thirty-year history of rock to create songs so indelible and evergreen that it seems as must they must always have existed.

For many of us, born since his heyday, they have: Petty’s last Top-40 hit, “You Don’t Know How It Feels,” was from the 1994 album Wildflowers, which sounded thirty years old when it was new, but if it were a person would have graduated from college by now. But an unmatched catalog of perfect pop-rock songs stretching from the late 70s to the early 90s, many of which went unappreciated at the time, have gone on to a deathless life on classic-rock and throwback radio formats, peppered throughout movies and TV to underscore reflective or joyful or wistful moments, part of the ever-shifting tapestry of pop history that does what mass art at its best does: give voice to complex or transient emotions, unite us in shared enjoyment, remind us of beauty.

Here are some of the things we were reminded of this week.

Anaïs Mathers on

"American Girl"

something that's so close/yet still so far out of reach

I could tell you about being eight years old and seeing Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers with my parents at the old Miami Arena in 1995, long since torn down for a newer, shinier building. I could tell you about how my dad let me climb onto his shoulders when they played "American Girl." I could tell you how I waved my arms in the air while my dad sang along in thickly accented English. I could tell you about how Tom Petty records often played in our house not just because it was good music but because it was some of the music my dad listened to in order to learn English when he came to the US; Tom was clearer than most. I could tell you how I tried to keep my eyes open in the backseat of the car on the drive home as my dad hummed.

I could tell you about being a college freshman in Gainesville, Florida, sitting on the floor of some guy's dorm with him as we mixed vodka with Gatorade. I could tell you about how hot it was that night and how his AC window unit was doing us no favors. I could tell you how we listened to the Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' self titled album and when we got to "American Girl", when it got to the end, this guy told me about how the song was about a girl who jumped off her balcony in the same dorm we were sitting in and swan dived right into traffic on 441. I could tell you how he was pretty annoyed that I was more interested in hearing about this urban legend (the dorms didn't even have balconies!) than I was in hooking up.

I could tell you about living in Gainesville a few years later just a few blocks from that dorm in an apartment that overlooked 441. I could tell you about being so depressed I couldn't go to class, about sitting on my windowsill eight stories up (no balcony here either) and smoking cigarettes while watching traffic. I could tell you how homesick I was for a home that didn't really exist anymore. I could tell you about how bright it was, even in a not so big place like Gainesville, and how on nights when it seemed like I wasn't entirely in my body anymore, I wanted nothing more than to push off that windowsill with eyes closed. I could tell you how it was only the thought of how 441 was so long that it extended not only from where I came from to where I was right then but to places I hadn't even seen yet. I could tell you how I climbed back into my bedroom and tried to sleep based only on imagery and promises made in Tom Petty songs.

I could tell you about when I finally left America. I could tell you all the good things about therapy and falling in love and Canadian healthcare but what hasn't already been said about them? I could tell you about how relieved I was to leave but how much my heart ached the night before I was set to cross the border as a landed immigrant. I could tell you how in a Days Inn in Buffalo, I took my own photo in front of an American flag my dad had packed with me. I could tell you what a relief it was to leave and how it broke my heart that I was right that there was a little more to life somewhere else.

I could tell you about how strange it is to be an American girl these days. I could tell you about wanting to turn your back on everything you once knew. I could tell you about how sad it is to grow up and realize everything you were taught was bullshit. I could tell you how much sadder it is to realize the privilege you have in that system. I could tell you how complicated it is to be OK with being an American girl. I could tell you that there is shame there.

I will tell you that Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers recorded "American Girl" on July 4th, 1976, the bicentennial of the United States. I will tell you that this song has the jangliest guitars I've heard played the way you might a new wave song: fast, danceable, hopeful. I will tell you that Tom Petty seems like one thing ("dad rock") to a lot of people; I will tell you that those people are idiots. I will tell you that Tom Petty is not only one of the finest songwriters and musicians of any period but he is exactly what we could want in an artist: open, curious, flawed. I will tell you that Tom Petty was open to growth, open to change, open to being wrong. I will tell you that this is almost more important than his music; the risk with which he lived and created is the most American thing I could ever imagine: being able to be wrong is being free.

Jonathan Bogart on

“Here Comes My Girl”

In the wake of the news, grieving in my particular way (listening through a Spotify playlist), I tweeted: “Have I ever felt an emotion that wasn’t expressed by Tom Petty in songs millions of people love?” This is one of the rare songs whose central emotion I haven’t ever really experienced, but that’s in large part because I’ve never felt a tithe as cool as Petty sounds here, drawling spoken-word verses like a redneck Lou Reed (or Clarence Carter) over a musical bed that is all tension and sparkle, beat poetry overgrown with kudzu and lit by burned-out neon. Of course beyond the affect, I know the feelings the verses express, intimately: “I ain’t really sure but it seems I remember the good times were just a little bit more… in focus.” Ain’t that the truth. “It just seems so useless to have to work so hard, and nothin’ ever really seems to... come from it.” It does indeed. But then Benmont’s piano stabs into a key change, and Petty’s relaxed voice strengthens into song, and “she looks me in the eye-eye-eye” and all that exultation and pride and joy and no, it’s gone. I don’t get looked in the eye-eye-eye, or the solidarity of thatlittlegirlstandingrightbymyside, or told “we gonna last forever,” and if I did I would certainly begin to doubt it. But I still keep listening to it, as though to teach myself how to someday feel it, to prepare my soul for the eventuality that the unspeakable hope (heaven, an earlier thinker might have said, and I can’t say they’re wrong) embodied in the crooning, crashing chorus might become fulfilled, somehow, in my hearing. "Here comes my girrrrl," Petty purrs, as dewy-eyed and shimmering as a lovestruck Merseybeat combo, and the posturing verses resolve into just another line, something to say to pass the time until love happens. All you need, they say.

Rebecca Gowns on

“The Waiting”

I had a feeling that my baby would come early, but she didn't -- she made me wait. I kept checking the validity of my pregnancy as it progressed, and as soon as I hit 36 weeks, I was more than ready. I woke up every morning and thought, "This is it. Today could be the day." I had my hospital bag packed; our parents on speed-dial; my to-do list was empty. I dutifully attended prenatal yoga classes every week and watched the room shift week by week as the other women started to disappear. "She was past 9 months," the yoga instructor would say of a disappearing woman, "so we probably won't see her anymore. It was just her time!" The chorus of "The Waiting" kept coming back to me, a distant refrain that grew louder and louder. "You take it on faith, you take it to the heart. The waiting is the hardest part." Like all of Tom Petty's songs, the melody is simple, the hook grabs, then you realize, when you look a little closer, that it's made from strange glass. It's the ballad of the bad boy gone good, the absence making the heart grow fonder, the time that stretches between each date with someone who's really special. And then, as I pulled up the song and unpeeled the verses, it came to me through another lens: a song from a parent to the child on the way. Where did these words come from? What I'm struck by the most now is the bridge — "Don't let em kill you baby, don't let em get to you / I'll be your breathin' heart, I'll be your cryin' fool" — a vulnerable plea almost buried by guitars, but when you hear it, it's gutting. These are exactly the words I was thinking of on the surgery table, when I saw my daughter for the first time. She was a week overdue, and the hardest part, oh, all the hardest parts, just fell apart as I kissed her face. When I look back at those long hours of anticipation, this song will always be the score.

Thomas Inskeep on

“You Got Lucky”

In the fall of 1982, I was in 7th grade, and thanks to a contest at school (which involved selling tickets to a “variety show” put on by the parents of the band and choir members in grades 7-12), I won my first stereo of my own. It was a Panasonic boombox (very similar to this one), and I was very quickly in its thrall. I was already a huge fan of American Top 40, and now, whenever I was in my room after school, the radio was on, tuned to the local top 40 station. Top 40 radio as 1982 became 1983 was a fascinating thing: there were still plenty of soft, AC/pop records on the charts (from “Baby, Come to Me” to “You and I”), along with a heavy dose of AOR from the likes of Journey, Don Henley, Sammy Hagar, and John Cougar — but there was also the creeping influence of Britain’s new wave, as Culture Club and Duran Duran were each on their first US hits, and A Flock of Seagulls their second. And while Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ “You Got Lucky” was ostensibly AOR — by this point Petty, alongside the likes of Cougar and Bob Seger, was one of the kings of “heartland rock” — this single was different, too. It was the first of Petty’s singles I remember knowing when it was out, and it opened with (and was based around) eerie keyboards from Benmont Tench. “You Got Lucky” sounded futuristic in a way that, say, “Jack and Diane” didn’t, and it was fitting that its video (whose concept was the band’s own) echoed the prior year’s Mad Max, because this wasn’t regular old meat & potatoes rock ’n roll. This sounded unusual, especially to a 12-year-old whose musical tastes were just forming. I’d often play the radio low, after I had to turn out my bedroom light, listening to every bit of top 40 magic I could before falling asleep, and “Lucky” sounded even better, and eerier, at night, like a transmission from somewhere distant, coming to me through the night sky, bouncing off the stars. I’d later learn that being synth-based, it was a bit of an outlier in the Petty catalog, but in a way that makes it even greater. “You Got Lucky” is still one of my favorite Tom Petty songs, and it still, 35 years later, sounds better (long) after dark.

Ian Mathers on

“Don’t Come Around Here No More”

In all the tributes to Tom Petty since his death, people keep (understandably) coming back to the clarity, consistency, and quality of his songwriting; something about it seems to have dated less than many of his contemporaries. I know as a little kid growing up in the “Free Fallin’”/“Into the Great Wide Open” days, when radio or MuchMusic would play “Don’t Come Around Here No More” the clearly, uh, stylized (and so impossible for young me to peg to an era) fashions in the Alice in Wonderland-homaging video combined with that evergreen nature of Petty’s talents meant that it took me a lot longer with him than with many of his peers to actually understand that he’d had a lengthy, productive career, and not just an amazing clutch of out-of-time hits. Now, older and with more of a basic grounding in the production sound of various decades, the relative datedness of those stiff electronic drums (or at least the treatment given to Stan Lynch’s drums, once you look at the credits) and co-writer Dave Stewart’s forebodingly sleazy electric sitar seems like it should date “Don’t Come Around Here No More”, but as more than one admiring musician has noted (cf. here for some examples), it still doesn’t. It’s like, to take an example that otherwise has very little in common with this song, the way the Stooges used sleigh bells on “I Wanna Be Your Dog” — a totally incongruous element in the band’s sound that, by virtue of the strength of the song, sounds in this one context perfectly natural. One of the amazing things about Petty-as-craftsman was that you could get such an off-kilter, hugely loved, emotionally compelling song out of such disparate parts; a song called “Don’t Come Around Here No More” from an album called Southern Accents you might think would dip into politics somewhere, but it’s based on the time Stewart crashed at Stevie Nicks’ mansion after a party and woke up to hear her telling off recently ex-boyfriend Joe Walsh with the title phrase. Which then turns into Petty (a close friend of and potent collaborator with Nicks, and that’s where we’ll leave it for this blurb) giving an amazing performance, his voice sounding authentically strained throughout as he groans and wails and moves through arch disdain, richly self-mocking sarcasm, genuine sounding ache, pained fatigue, and several other examples of the densely textured, often unsung, totally quotidian emotional registers he could summon so effortlessly. Like so much of his work, it feels like a magic trick; rare are the singers or songwriters (let alone both) who could do so much, not with so little (never forget that the Heartbreakers are one of the greatest bands-as-indivisible-units ever forged, and his own talents were staggering) but with so much that just seems standard or normal. The flashiest thing about “Don’t Come Around Here No More” (even that sitar feels totally normal by halfway through) is the memorably creepy video, yet another example of Petty being one of the only acts at his level to consistently come out with actually really good videos, probably because he was willing to put them in the hands of others and had seemingly no ego as to how he came off (neither the snide, vaguely murderous Hatter here nor the pathetic creep in “Mary Jane’s Last Dance” were particularly good looks, which only made him seem cooler — he got that he not only didn’t have to always be the hero, but that it would get boring and honestly weaken the emotional storytelling in his songs if he insisted on it). There are probably dozens of Petty songs I could have picked to illustrate just how amazing (and, thankfully, loved) he was and in such often unassuming ways, but I kept coming back to “Don’t Come Around Here No More” because, no matter what the emotional truth of the situation that inspired Stewart and Petty in the beginning or even whatever Petty brought to the performance, this is for me maybe the strongest example of Petty willing to appear potentially wrong, cruel… hell, petty. More than many of his peers Petty seemed to realize that great songs can’t and shouldn’t just be aspirational, that we need songs just as much (or even more) when we are feeling uncharitable, wounded, disdainful, and so on. Plenty of people have given us indelible songs, but Tom Petty might have been the only songwriter at his level of prominence who covered as much of the emotional spectrum in doing so.

Anthony Easton on

“Southern Accents”

I am ambivalent about Tom Petty in the ways I am about most classic rock, acknowledging the talent and skill that they display, but never quite thinking that they are for me. Americana’s ambivalent relationship to country gives me more room to interleave my own fears of labour and of working class desire on a history that plays with a generic geography. The South is never generic, the politics are never quite clear, but the clarity is about overlapping crises of very specific locations.

Patterson Hood talks about the crisis of specificity in an obituary for Petty, about how he is not really sure about how to be southern, or what the negatives of being in the South are, he talks about the gap between expectations and reality, between representation and the failure of those representations to represent: “Doing what I do, I am often asked about my favorite Southern rock band. It’s a term I always hated (and used it with that in mind as part of a title for one of Drive-By Truckers’ albums). The question is usually prefaced with another, framed as a simple choice: Allman Brothers or Lynyrd Skynyrd? The correct answer for me is R.E.M. and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers...”

This song is an argument for the South — which is slow, local, interior — a ballad with a tight harmony, a deconstruction of the sweetness of the South (“that drunk tank in Atlanta, just a motel room to me”) and a reification of southern instinct (how he sings about his momma). It’s not the line about Orlando that makes it local, or even how he talks about his mother, but how it threads the needle between Stephen Foster and the Allman Brothers, between hymnody and Michael Stipe’s lonely baritone.

This was a title track for an album from 1986. There are things that must be said. I wonder whether the oranges in Orlando would be picked by someone less pale than Petty. Whether the drunk tank would be as hospitable if he weren’t white — or to someone who is quite local, whether all the accents of the south are as laconic as Petty’s. He had the Stars and Bars decorating the tour for this album, and he apologized for that oversight (and oversight is a politeness) more than a decade later.

All of that said, maybe the most southern thing about the song is that the South is constructed as a narrative of nostalgia. That one always seeks to return to a South, if one is white, if one can afford that desire. It is a song that was written, in a grand historicised style, by a man from Florida who was living in Los Angeles. It is about the idea of Florida as a metonym of the South, of the South as a metonym for this swamp of nostalgia that can only be written about outside of the actual, material swamp.

Maybe that’s why it’s so perfect.

John Seroff on

“Spike”

Part of what made Tom Petty an artist whose work survived comfortably into the new millennium is that while his songs reflected the perspective of an affable and genuine Southerner, there warn't a lotta peckerwood in him. That's clearest to me on "Spike," a misfired 1985 Heartbreakers single about a young punk frequenting a shitkicker bar. It's fun to hear Petty gleefully set up the genesis of the tune in this 2012 live performance of "Spike" as if it's his own personal Alice's Restaurant, drawling wise about "hippie killers in The Cypress Lounge." Can there be any doubt about where Petty's sympathies lie? Surely he knew the firsthand frustration of being thought "another misfit, another Jimmy Dean," laughed out of the club for being a white trash, would-be new wave poseur in a leather jacket. But Petty was more than petty; there's a meaningful final reel twist of sympathy for the redneck when our narrator comes around to asking the punk with the leather jewelry more and more seriously to tell him about life. In the end, this backwoods Budweiser guzzler cops that maybe he "need me a dog collar too, boy." All this over the train track chug of drums, a twangy lean guitar and a trotting organ nipping at the singer's heels like an old hound dog. "Spike" never quite got the radio toehold that its psychedelic, sitar-driven album-mate "Don't Come Around Here No More" did, but I happen to think it has aged better. It's sharp, catchy, demands a little hard fought insight from its subject and, perhaps, from the listener. Anyways, in an American South divided by the urban and the unemployed, what message could land more squarely true than that the future ain't what it used to be?

Josh Langhoff on

“I Won’t Back Down”

Behold the Annunciation: In early 1990 I got musical advice chiefly from Breakaway magazine, the adolescent boys’ indoctrination ministry of James Dobson’s Focus on the Family empire. Their reviewer was a kindly dad type and an enigma. He told me to avoid Paula Abdul’s “Opposites Attract,” because of the line “She makes the bed/ and he steals the covers”: clearly Paula and the Wild Pair were sleeping together, rendering the song off limits for Christian teens. A reasonable reading; but even so, thoughts arrived like butterflies. What if Paula Abdul was supposed to be married to the Wild Pair? By quoting this troublesome line in Breakaway, wasn’t the fatherly columnist soiling boys’ minds as thoroughly as if we’d listened to “Opposites Attract”? In fact, the sexual implications of the line only occurred to me because of this fatherly columnist’s advice! After which they continued to occur to me, daily. Again and again.

So when the columnist recommended Full Moon Fever, and particularly “I Won’t Back Down,” whose summer of ‘89 radio run I’d missed, I was intrigued. He speculated that some of Bob Dylan’s “Christian principles” had rubbed off on Petty; I’d only recently learned how to pronounce Dylan’s name. “Look!” I said excitedly to Mom, jabbing my finger at the magazine I’d stuck in her face, “Breakaway says I can get the Tom Petty tape!” That was good enough for Mom, who really had nothing against secular music — particularly oldies radio, which we enjoyed together during her crossing guard shifts. Upon purchase, I was surprised to learn “I Won’t Back Down” contained the word “hell,” which I wasn’t allowed to say lest I trivialize the place and spend eternity paying for the privilege. I also found puzzles I couldn’t solve — songs about Zombie Zoos and Micanopy, mysterious romances that appeared briefly and then drifted off like cattail fluff. On the Christian tapes Mom put in my Easter basket every year, forthright literalism was a given. With Petty it seemed merely an option, to be discarded on a whim.

“I thought that it was maybe just too direct,” Tom Petty once said of “I Won’t Back Down.” “There isn’t really anything to hide behind here, you know?” Which probably explains why the Christian reviewer recommended it. But listening to Full Moon Fever daily, again and again — in my room with the door closed, or on the Walkman while Mom ran errands and practiced the organ — I never heard the song as an anthem. Repeated scrutiny simply forced “I Won’t Back Down” further down inside me. Singing the song in public, with other people, seemed as gauche as Soldiers for Christ using a metaphor. That dry opening march of guitars, the build into the explosive chorus harmonies, the tuneless way Petty pronounced the song title (fun to imitate in the shower!) were all private pleasures, to be treasured up and pondered in my heart. As Mary said upon learning her son was adored by multitudes: “Huh. Weird.”

Jessica Doyle on

“Runnin’ Down a Dream”

The Florida Turnpike features some of the dullest driving in America: miles upon miles with no exits save to the white-grouted, Dunkin-Donuts-equipped rest centers, and nothing in between to lay your eyes on save the occasional landfill or billboards informing you, for the 33rd time since you left Kissimmee-St. Cloud, that a baby's heart starts beating at 18 days. The last time I drove the Turnpike I had two kids in the back seat and thus couldn't put "Runnin' Down a Dream" on; it would have been irresponsible; my foot would have put the gas into bad-mom territory as soon as I heard those opening chords. The song isn't actually set on the Turnpike, like I self-absorbedly thought — Petty mentions trees — but I have the two linked together: because to have the career he had Tom Petty had to get the heck out of Florida. The United States, the southern half especially, has been justly criticized for its longstanding love affair with cars and the nature-chewing, community-leveling highways built to accommodate them; and maybe I should be condemning "Runnin' Down a Dream" for its unabashed embrace of the promise of traveling on your own, even if there isn't that much to look at outside, even if there's no one else in the car. Petty wrote plenty of songs later about discovering that there was not, after all, something unequivocally good waiting down that road. But listening to those guitars, and his voice as if he's telling you his story at sunrise after returning your lighter, it's easy to rejoice in the going; as if even a desultory drive down a lonely highway could be an adventure.

Gin Hart on

“Free Fallin’”

"Free Fallin'" is a perfect aphorism. Petty's mild-mannered opening strum and supine vocals offer a kind of blankly evocative space. The mind spores and the spores bloom, emanating across a succinctly yet thoroughly located Los Angeles. You find yourself there on the map by the naming: Reseda/Ventura/Mulholland — they signify themselves, need not be described. You ride through at a near-miraculously spooky hour, the streets devoid of traffic. You could drive fast but don't, letting the heat and the haze impress themselves upon you, the unified field of sheer atmosphere allowing each plot point (map pin) to sprawl through, dig in.

Genius dot com calls this escapism; I can't agree. Even though the first chord switches on a projector in my head, the whir of which I can almost hear, which unspools a film I can almost see. (It'll be useful to note that I have aphantasia. I lack the capacity to visualize... this song makes me feel as though I can grope my way into mind-sight through my feeling-sense, they way Toph can "see" through her seismics. This is visceral every time. Click, flicker, whir). Cinema in its social modality is, sure, joined at the hip with collective fantasy, sure sure. But do you feel unfettered to think of the facts of a life, your life, and not be able to grasp onto them? To know you had and lost sweetness, a girl who's crazy bout Elvis like you are ("my picture of Elvis was... was the American Dream" [btw my personal actual feelings re: Mr. Presley are more like this])? To know you're the villain in the story, and your villainy derives from your apathy, and your apathy is what makes you wanna write her name in the sky? It's wanting to want, which is wanting to stand on something solid. Heartbroken girls have it good — heartbreak as a fetter but also as a certificate of humanity. Proof of being someone, somewhere — gravity, ground.

Los Angeles is mastodon of place and plurality and pavement. If you're there, but not there, if you're above and in the sky and, without a parachute, falling, you're either death-doomed to splat or damned to a perpetuity of disorientation. Petty and Lynne's vocals soar through the chorus, describing the plummet of unreadiness. Tumbling and repeating and ultimately fading out, gonna leave. this. world for a while.

Ian Mathers on

“Zombie Zoo”

Maybe it’s because I grew up in such a sarcastic family (where, crucially, it was used both for humour and to express affection), but a lot of the Tom Petty songs that others seem to take as being fairly straightforwardly negative I read as a little more…. not necessarily positive, but let’s say multivalent. I know I’m not the only person my age to assume that making fun of something and loving it can coexist without friction (and I know that problems that can lead to, but that’s another blurb). When you combine that with me being not-quite-eight when Full Moon Fever came out and my mom picked up the CD and I started playing it obsessively, you get a little kid who wouldn’t realize for, uh, at least a decade that many people think of “Zombie Zoo” as a song where Petty officially becomes a grouchy old man, sneering at the punk kids. Now, I guess I’d point out that if that’s the way he felt, 1989 is kind of a weird year to start taking potshots at punk (being both too late and too soon) and that the less positive lyrics here feel more to me like rueful remembrance of what it’s like to be a kid than some sort of damning indictment. But when I was less than a decade old I mostly would have just told you that 1. the synthesizers sound like a baseball game 2. a “zombie zoo” sounds like something out of a video game i.e. awesome 3. this was probably the song on the album I most wanted to put on repeat and jump up and down to, three minutes at a time. I’d find out later that the Zombie Zoo was an actual club Petty and company walked past or went into one night (I can’t track down the anecdote) and were slightly nonplussed by, and that the line wasn’t the evocatively ungrammatical “painin’ in a corner” but in fact “painted in a corner” (which is probably better, and again speaks to the sympathy I feel like Petty clearly has for his “target,” but I still have a sentimental fondness for my mishearing). And now I can appreciate the steady gallop and sturdy construction of the song and Roy Orbison’s backing vocals, but one thing hasn’t changed: especially for a star as resistant to quick-changing notions of “cool” as Petty was, I’m not at all convinced that “you look like Boris Karloff and you don’t even care!” was intended to be insulting instead of admiring.

[fortunespeak]

Picking Up The Pieces :: Natsume's Epilogue

Natsume struggled to hear anything above the silence on the ride away from Cliffside. Bits and pieces of the Jeggare’s orders filtered in, but it felt more like the words from a self-help tape listened to just before nodding off to sleep–muffled and otherworldly. She’d barely choked down yet another panic attack at the reveal of Kathy’s crimes, too numerous to count at this point, and it was far too soon for her thoughts to allow her any rest. What could she have done to stop it, stop Kathy from her deranged attempts at stardom? As much as the answers were more than likely “nothing” and “it wasn’t your fault”, the thoughts continued eating at her. She was supposed to support people! That… that was her life! The point of her existence! Not only had she not done that, she’d killed someone and sent several others to their death. She should have died, she should have died, why was she still alive when better people could have lived, why was she still–

If the imposing looking figure said anything in the time between leading her out of the vehicle and getting back in it, Natsume didn’t hear it. The first sound that registered was nothing more than a murmur at first, gathering volume as it approached ever closer to her until it clicked: someone… was talking on their phone. It was a business call–she could tell by the language and the tone of their voice. Upon realizing that, more sounds poured in: cars, high schoolers talking among each other, the pounding of feet across wide crosswalks, music, song, electronic blips and bloops. For the first time, the sounds of the city sounded like a lullaby, and Natsume became acutely aware of the exhaustion wracking her body.

She fumbled with her keys, trying to get into her apartment as quickly as possible, and no sooner did the door open then did it close once more as Natsume practically slammed it behind her, sliding down its chilled faux-wood covering. Everything… everything looked the same. The same small kitchen on the left, her cozy moderately sized living area, even the t-shirt she’d dropped on the way back from doing the laundry remained on the ground as if nothing had happened. 

It was enough to make her want to scream.

It wasn’t normal. What they’d gone through wasn’t normal! How could things keep moving on as though a group of people weren’t kidnapped  and tortured for months! Maybe they weren’t any more special than other people who went through similar or different tragedies, but didn’t… didn’t anyone CARE? Didn’t someone NOTICE?

As if a jolt of electricity ran through her at the thought, Natsume’s head shot up at attention, looking at every inch of her apartment as if it were new. She pulled herself from off the ground and as if in a trance, began moving things from their places. Spice containers were pulled away from the backsplash of her counter, cleaning supplies haphazardly tossed on the floor beside their cabinets: the fear that maybe things weren’t quite so much as she left it driving Natsume into a fit of madness. It couldn’t be that simple. Someone… someone was still watching her. Maybe the Fool–Akira, Kathy, or one of the other potentially endless amounts of Fools that they didn’t know about–had installed more cameras here. Maybe the Jeggares did. Maybe it wasn’t over. It couldn’t be over. Not so easily. At the end of the evening Natsume was pulling out boxes, only stopping when exhaustion finally won the battle against paranoia and she collapsed into the now unorganized contents strewn across her bedroom floor.

Natsume stifled a yell against the palms of her hands the moment she woke up. It wasn’t the King of Cups cabin! Where… where was… Her heart was beating rabbit fast when her mind finally caught up to her once more. Right. She was home. Whatever that meant, now. 

With the adrenaline of the past day fading, her ankles throbbed with the plead of any form of legitimate physical therapy, but even outside of Cliffside, Natsume didn’t have time to entertain the idea. Fitting back into a normal life meant getting back to her normal schedule, which meant throwing on her least wrinkled blouse and skirt, shoving her poor feet into heels, and hurrying to Jaesprit as quickly and professionally as she could manage. She’d been swallowing back her pain and suffering for years, but the next few hours would be a true testament to how well she’d unintentionally prepared herself for a situation like this. She’d seen the number of voicemails she had on her phone when it finally got some juice back in it; she knew her boss would not be pleased. To put it lightly. Being chosen as the personal assistant to the director’s son was a gift. An honor. Suou Mifune’s personal assistant did NOT ignore her phone calls for a month and definitely did not just… ignore her work. Natsume could feel the hellfire brewing behind Suou’s deep brown eyes the moment she entered his office and they remained evenly trained on her. Somehow, at the end of it all, she still managed to maintain her job. But this, she knew all to well, was that he wouldn’t dare so easily give up the advantage her skill gave them moreso than any testament to a rapport or his faith in her skills.

In some ways, Natsume was correct. This wasn’t normal–this wasn’t the life she left. She’d fit back into the machine of her workplace, but it was as though she was an off-kilter cog, and eventually she would either be replaced or her spokes broken off to fit back in. Her bed held no rest for her; her dreams plagued with vivid memories of what had happened under Kathy’s watch and a few more surreal dreams of things that couldn’t have possibly happened. After all, Magnus couldn’t have gotten shot and died right in front of her: they were still exchanging letters as frequently as they could muster.

One late work night it hit her: maybe… maybe she shouldn’t try to fit into what normal used to be. Maybe it was impossible. As someone who had lived her entire life for the sake of others under the guidance of others, taking the first steps to independence and building her own life was terrifying. Much more terrifying than being stuck in a murder village. Still, it had been weeks since the Jeggare’s had returned her to her apartment–even if she refused to grow as a person, there was one thing she knew she had to do.

It was an early Saturday afternoon when Natsume called Shin’s parents. Kindly, Eiji ignored the slight noise of shock that escaped her when he picked up. Confusion quickly spread through his words–not that he wasn’t happy to hear from her, but didn’t Natsume know her parents were worried? Why hadn’t she and Shin talked to them in so long? Natsume almost hung up right then and there. Like slowly pulling out a splinter, Natsume calmly explained to them that their daughter was dead. To any other family, this may have come off as some cruel prank, but the Fukui’s knew full well that Natsume wasn’t the type of girl to joke about such a thing. And her heart continued to break the more he questioned her–even if she was willing to defy the Jeggare’s this much, she couldn’t put Shin’s parents and hers in more danger by going through all the details. More importantly, she couldn’t do that to them. Telling them Shin was dead was one thing, that she hadn’t died by her own hand, but to tell them that she’d been crushed in front of everyone for claiming a crime that Natsume committed, and that her death may very well be on the internet for every sicko with a murder fetish to see… that was too much. Too many variables that none of them could control. Too much for grieving parents to fret uselessly over. And even as she hung up and flopped back onto the couch, Natsume knew that she had done far too little. She would never be able to do enough to make up for this.

In between work and meager sleep, Natsume began making trips to visit Magnus in his little village. The both of them had decided that sending letters wasn’t nearly enough for them, and in the grand scheme of things, several hours on a train didn’t mean much compared to the time spent with a loved one. Magnus’s company was invaluable to Natsume, which she frequently told him. “I love you"s fell freely from them in all the small ways that people don’t pay much thought to: the smiles for no reason, the small, inconsequential touches, deciding what to make for dinner, and the inevitable extra moments spent holding each other in the doorway before getting on the train back home. Though they’d lost much during their time at Cliffside, some things they would never regain, they’d also found and kept a firm grip on a confidante, a true friend, and a dear loved one who would never abandon them to the terrible nightmares of their past. It seemed only natural to Natsume, then, to move in with him.

That decision, though, came much later, and after many mutual discussions about viability. First, though, Natsume had to put everything in its place, and that meant finally talking with her parents.

She hadn’t ignored them–she’d even spoken with them somewhat frequently after she’d finally admitted reality to the Fukuis. However, she was more than aware that her parents both knew that something was up, least of all because the Fukuis told them about Shin. There was no denying their invitation to visit them.

Minoh felt like a ghost of a place, like it wasn’t real and that the water that flowed from the mountainous cliffs that surrounded it were more likely to take her to the underworld than simply get her soaked. Her parents treated Natsume gently upon seeing how the previous months had taken a toll on her, but not even the strongest dam could hold back the wealth of parental love and fear that had been building all these long months.

"Please! Please… just tell us what’s wrong. I’m begging you.”

The desperation in Kozue’s voice–her mother, who never would lower herself to beg for anything–finally broke her, and Natsume explained it all. While her father Alvise took the route of immediately cradling his daughter as she remained shaking long after the whole terrible tale had met its conclusion, a fire rose in Kozue’s eyes. She knew well enough that there wasn’t anything to truly be done about this, but it didn’t stop her from complaining to the administration at Hope’s Peak in the oncoming weeks (while keeping to Natsume’s will that they don’t mention anything directly about the murders). The anger had to go somewhere, and even if they thought she was delusional, they would KNOW that somewhere along the lines, they had fucked up. With the combined efforts of the Fukuis, the Nanninis, and the people of Minoh, Shin’s spirt was finally sent off with a funeral befitting of the bombastic dancer. And near her grave could be seen ten small nice looking stones that Natsume had arranged. One for each of her peers that had died unnecessarily. If the Jeggare’s had something to say about this, they could take the whole of Minoh down with them.

The final step–the final immediate step–in Natsume’s attempt to take back her life was, strangely, the one she was least conflicted about. She always imagined it would be harder, but turning in her resignation to Suou was the least painless thing she had done in what felt like years. She had even smiled when she’d done it. For his part, he didn’t try to keep her. He’d thanked her, even, which is more than Natsume expected. Finally… finally she was free. Finally she could go and just… be with Magnus. She could live.

Things weren’t always easy: as with any couple they had their share of arguments and the flashbacks to Cliffside paired with the ever-present traumas they’d accrued made for several harrowing moments. Things were unarguably better for both of them, though. Months blissfully passed and ideas of marriage began entering both of their minds, the two playfully planning where the event should take place or what they would wear, and so on. What wasn’t on their minds, however, was a baby.

When Natsume’s sudden bout of illness was finally diagnosed as the morning variety, Magnus and Natsume were left with much to discuss. Both being employed (Natsume having found a job in the village) money wasn’t of the biggest concern, but… was it too soon? Were they ready to be parents? The prospect was scary, but the more they talked about it, the more the two decided that this was actually a blessing. They had already become like family; maybe it was time to start making one of their own.

If one was lucky enough to be invited to their modest, outdoor wedding, they would have seen Natsume, resplendent and very much pregnant in her wedding dress. Magnus buzzing amongst guests, still masked yet his joy and excitement more than palpable despite the physical barrier. Family, friends, co-workers, even Omen (who Natsume allowed to come at Magnus’s request)  mingled between each other, their lively discussion and laughter filling the air around them with positivity and love.

The pain and suffering the events at Cliffside had brought would never vanish completely, but there was life outside of that. There was family. There were friends. There was hope.

[wellimaginethat]

Safe Haven Chapter Two

Title: Safe Haven Chapter Two (Chapter One)

Pairing: John Wick x (female) Reader

Word Count: 2196

Author’s Note: I’m so sorry this took so long! I was having some family issues, so I had no time to write and only came on tumblr to look at cute things and do some reading. But, finally, here is chapter 2 and I have good news, which is chapter three is already in the works and should be posted within the next couple of days (maybe even tonight if nothing comes up) I’m not sure how I feel about the ending of this chapter, it kinda ends abruptly, I just knew that if I continued writing it would be 6k+ and I don’t really want any chapters over 3 or 4k, if it was a one shot that would obviously be different.

Trigger Warning(s): Heavy mentions of death, depression, leukemia, car accident, reader’s family is dead (sister’s death is why she is in the support group), suicidal feelings, drunk driving, and self harm. And this chapter includes the mention of the jerk of an ex that left reader after her sister died. So you've been warned.

Disclaimer: I do not own John Wick nor am I in any way involved with the franchise. I do not run a support group called Safe Haven, and I am not sure if there is one named Safe Haven, if so; I am not involved with them and never have been. I obviously don’t own you cause you’re your own person.

Summary: He’s joined the group, but he never imagined that he would make friends there. Now the only reason he continues to go is because of someone special.

Y/N = Your Name Y/S/N = Your Sister’s Name (the deceased sister in the fic) Y/EX/N = Your Ex Boyfriend’s Name (because I’m obviously not creative enough to come up with one) Italics = Flashbacks

Third Person POV (whole chapter)

He’d been attending the meetings for a few months now. He was still trying to figure this out, it wasn’t like how support groups seemed on TV, all sad and depressing. It was actually very light and open, everyone was kind to each other and genuinely seemed to care for one another, and they’d welcomed him immediately, despite his dark and mysterious aura and his less than willingness to share.

But eventually, he did share. And it actually made him feel a little better, being able to talk to people who knew what he was going through, who had gone through the same thing or something similar.

He even made friends with some of the other attendees, Fred (who was friends with practically everyone), Janice (which honestly shocked most, because she wasn’t one to warm up to people, probably due to people treating her like shit for most of her life) and you. He was still trying to figure you out. He’d figured out everyone else. Becky, Fred, Matthew, even Janice, and she was a helluva character.

Becky was a widow and mother of two, having lost her husband and oldest child, a son, in a car accident years ago and had started the support group to cope. Her daughter was part of the support group in the beginning, but eventually gotten married and moved away, leaving Becky all alone. She seemed happy though, like she had come to peace with her misfortune. She said that she still kept in touch with her daughter, who visited multiple times throughout the year with her husband and children, and that she had Dave.

Dave was the man who’d answered the phone when John had first called the support group, they had met his second meeting. He’d lost his mother when he was young child still, and his father passed when he was a teen. Leaving him all on his own until he met Becky through some miracle, as he called it.

Fred, on first glance, seemed like a typical sports dad. He had three kids, a boy and two girls, all in some kind of sport. His son played football and basketball, and his daughters played soccer and softball. But, if you looked deeper, talked to the guy, you’d find out that he had four kids, until his oldest took her own life. After that, everything started to spiral out of control, his wife left him and the remaining three kids. His son quit playing sports and almost dropped out of school. His daughters were too young to really know what was going on, so he thanked God for that. Eventually he started to put things back together and what was remaining of his family was working through it.

Matthew was mourning the loss of his fiancee, who died suddenly a week before they were supposed to get married. Luckily, his wife’s family still treated him like he was family and that helped him some, but he still grieved, so his mother in law suggested the support group.

And Janice, probably the toughest nut in the whole group, besides John himself. Was grieving the loss of her girlfriend. They were all each other had, and she had been stolen from her by some drunk who wouldn’t give up his keys after having too much to drink. Now, all she had was the group.

Finally, you. You’d been going to the meetings for about six months when he started attending them. Your uncle had practically forced you too, being the only family you had left he kinda kept an eye on you, which you appreciated. You’d lost your parents when you were young, leaving you and your little sister to live with your grandparents until you had graduated college and gotten a job so you could get your own apartment. It was three years after you and your sister moved into your own apartment that she got the heartbreaking news that the leukemia had come back, and she survived two years before it stole her from you. Leaving you on your own, now the city that you loved so much, the one that held so many great memories, also held so much pain and you just wanted to leave it all behind and get a fresh start.

John could understand why you’d want a fresh start, and he could understand that you were torn because even though this city held so many happy memories, it held so much pain. He was felt the same way at times, wondering if he should just pick up everything and disappear from the city, start over somewhere else.

-----

You weren’t dense, or stupid, quite the opposite actually. You could tell that John wasn’t exactly who he claimed to be. You could sense that he was hiding something. You’d seen, over the course of a few weeks, a couple of meetings, that he’d changed slightly; in both appearance and attitude. The first meeting, he was distant and somewhat cold, he’d told you all about the loss of his wife, but he didn’t mention her name or how long they’d been married, not that either of those things really mattered, but most of you would talk about your loved one and the time you’d spent together. He seemed to want to give as little detail as possible.

“So, John, would you like to share with us your loss?” Becky asked in that gentle way that reminded you of a grandmother comforting her injured grandchild.

John seemed to be frozen for a moment, not out of being put on the spot or nervousness about speaking in front of the group (like you had been the first time you spoke). It seemed like he was contemplating whether this had been a good idea, coming to the group. Like he was almost regretting his decision in that moment. But, then he glanced around and took a deep breath, running a hand over his face before staring down at the floor.

“My wife…” He started out lowly. “She was sick, for a long time, before we got together. She knew she would end up...passing...but I...I actually had hope that she’d overcome it. That we’d grow old together...that I’d go first.” The last part was so quiet you were certain that most of the group hadn’t heard him.

Now, it was different. He had slowly began to open up more to the group, slowly became more comfortable. You’d also noticed he didn’t wear as much black. It was like he was just now coming out of his mourning period, slowly but surely. In the last few weeks, you’d learned more about him. His wife’s name was Helen, they’d been married for six years before she passed away, and it had been two years since then. You found out that before she died, she had arranged for a puppy to be delivered to him, and that it was delivered to him a few days after her funeral. Only for the puppy to suddenly die, he didn’t tell you how. And that he’d gotten himself a new dog, adopted it from a shelter.

Slowly, you’d started to befriend John. It started with you running into him and spilling a cup of water all over him.

You had to walked to the meeting again because your car was an unreliable piece of junk, and you were thirsty as hell. You just managed to get there five minutes before the meeting was going to start, ‘better the being late’ you thought to yourself as you walked over to get a cup of water.

As you walked you took notice of who was there and who wasn’t, everyone there had been there before, the group hardly ever got new members. John was the newest member, and before him you held the title of ‘newest member’ and by that time you’d been coming to the meetings for a good six months.

You took your attention off the group as you walked to the water cooler and took one of the small paper cups there. You didn’t know if it was because you were so consumed in your own thoughts, or if he was just a super sneaky guy, but you didn’t here him come up behind you to wait to get a cup of water and you end up running right into him, managing to spill the water on him and yourself.

“I’m so sorry!” You exclaimed immediately, not noticing all the eyes on you. “I didn’t hear you come up behind me and I am so sorry!” You spoke quickly, starting to ramble out an even longer apology.

“It’s fine, really.” John assured you as he began to dab some of the water off his shirt. “You don’t need to be sorry.”

The rest of the night you couldn’t even look at him because it made you want to apologize for spilling water on him, and you tried to avoid the eyes of the other members because you were embarrassed by your clumsiness.

It was after the meeting that he caught up with you and you’d tried to apologize again, only for him to again tell you it was fine and say something about him being ‘too quiet’. When he saw that you didn’t have a ride home, he offered to give you one, but you turned him down saying you didn’t mind walking, when in reality you were still too embarrassed from earlier.

You didn’t know when it happened, but soon the two of you were pretty good friends. You two had an odd friendship, it started suddenly and it almost felt like you’d known each other for longer than four months.

You’d take turns going over to each other’s place to have dinner, you’d watch movies and talk about random stuff. And slowly, you found a reason to stay in New York.

Going to the meetings had been helping you, you knew that, you could feel it. But befriending John had helped you as well, it brought you back to life in a way, you’d even started hanging out with some friends you’d been neglecting since your sister’s death.

“Earth to Y/N.” John waved his hand in front of your face. “Where’d you go? I lost you for a second.”

“Sorry, I was just thinking about something.” You mumbled, you’d actually been thinking about your ex, who’d recently tried coming back into your life. Saying that ‘now you’ve had time to grieve, we can start over’. You honestly hadn’t noticed how lonely your life had become until after you’d actually started doing things again, things instead of go to work. It’s like you had been on autopilot since Y/S/N’s death. You would wake up, go to work, go home. You were sure you’d eat sometime throughout the day, but you honestly couldn’t remember exact events during that time. It was after you started hanging out with John, and your old friends, especially Y/EX/N, that you had realized that you had actually been in a depression. How you didn’t noticed it sooner was beyond you.

“You wanna talk about it?” John asked you, pulling you further from your thoughts.

You let out a slow sigh as you thought if you wanted to tell him, it seemed silly to you that you were even thinking about going back to your ex, he had left you in your time of need, after all. “My ex boyfriend called me yesterday.” He waited for you to continue and after a moment you did. “He wants to get back together.”

“Okay...I’m not sure I’m following.” John wasn’t about to flat out say that if he was an ex there was probably a good reason for it.

“I’m not sure how I should feel about it, because we had been together for a long time, almost three years...but he also left me when I needed him most.” John raised a brow, but he was certain he already knew when this jerk had left you. “Right after I buried my sister, he waited until after the funeral, and told me he did so because he didn’t want to seem insensitive.”

John snorted and went back to stirring whatever food he was making tonight, you’d been surprised when you found out that not only could he cook, but he could actually cook really well. “Doesn’t seem like the kind of person going back to in my opinion.”

You sighed. “I know...but when I heard him...it was like he actually regretted leaving me.” You were honestly torn, and you hadn’t felt this down or confused in a while. It should have been a sign right then that your ex wasn’t worth it, already dampening your finally improved mood.

John gave you a serious look, which wasn’t much different from how he usually looked because he just had a seriousness about him. “If you honestly feel like he regrets what he did, and you want to give him a second chance, then you should.”

[allyinthekeyofx]

Dreamcatcher - Chapters 6 & 7

Prologue & Chapter 1    Chapters 2 & 3   Chapters 4 & 5

St Mary’s Hospital. May 4th 1999 1:07am Visitor’s room.

“You look tired.”

Scully raised her arms wearily and stretched them above her head, wincing at the audible cracking sound that came from deep within her shoulders.

“I’m fine,” she offered by way of reassurance. “Just been a long day, that’s all…”

As if to contradict her words, she trailed off as the end of the sentence was swallowed up by a yawn that she just couldn’t suppress.

Mulder grinned across at her.

“Want some caffeine, Agent Scully? You look like you could use some.”

“No, it’s OK.”

She got to her feet.

“I’ll get it. I could use the walk. Baseball lessons aside, my muscles are still protesting from too much inactivity. I’ll see if I can find anything out while I’m gone.”

On leaving the relative peace and quiet of the room, Scully was surprised to see the corridor beyond teeming with activity. She had spent a lot of time around hospitals, both as a doctor and as a patient, and in her experience even hospitals quietened sometimes.

Not so here apparently.

But then, she reminded herself, it was a small hospital, probably serving an area far bigger than its capabilities. Thankfully, though, its lack of facilities hadn’t seemed to detract from the care given to little Gina Robik when she was brought through to the ER. She had been assessed, treated and found a bed up in the children’s ward within an hour.

But then again, maybe the presence of two FBI Agents had speeded up the process somewhat, Scully reflected. Or maybe it was simply because it was such an unusual case.

By the time the ambulance had arrived at Brackenhurst, Gina had lapsed into what Scully could only guess was some kind of catatonic shock. In the space of ten minutes, the child’s breathing had become shallow, her pulse rate sluggish and despite everyone’s best efforts, she had remained totally unresponsive to external stimuli, although her eyes had remained open in an expression of pronounced fear.

Scully had never seen anything like it before, although in medical school she had read about cases of so-called waking comas, where the mind shuts down to avoid facing up to events beyond its normal rational capabilities.

Usually, though, a clear cause could be found, especially in children. She’d read about children who had witnessed the death of a parent withdraw into themselves, shutting out the world around them until some inner voice told them it was okay to come out again.

 Tangible, explainable reasons.

Scully frowned.

What was Gina’s reason?

What had she seen in that room that would cause her to close down like this? Obviously it was tied in with the disappearance of Felicia Slabbert, but Mulder had ordered a thorough search of the building; forensics teams had been called in, their investigation centering around the area where Gina had been found. Their best efforts, though, had revealed nothing aside from the obvious - that Felicia Slabbert was gone.

There was no evidence of any kind to suggest that a third party had been involved, and Scully knew that her partner had already ruled out any misplaced kidnapping theories.

But if not kidnapping, then what?

The child had seen something, of that there was no doubt, but until the girl decided to join them back in the real world, Scully suspected that the answers would remain just out of their reach. It was anyone’s guess how long that might take. Hours, days, months, years even. There was just no way of knowing.

Deep in thought, Scully didn’t notice the figure coming toward her until it was too late, and before she could stop her forward momentum, they collided.

“Shit!”

She recognized the voice as belonging to the young doctor who had ministered to Gina hours before. He had been harried then. Now he seemed on the verge of hysteria.

Scully understood only too well the pressures heaped upon medical professionals and she didn’t even flinch at his choice of greeting. Besides, she had collided with the man after all.

“I’m sorry. I wasn’t looking where I was going.”

She held out her hand in apology.

“Special Agent Dana Scully. You met my partner earlier, I believe.”

Recognition washed over the man’s features, softening them slightly.

“Yes, Agent Scully. I remember. You and your partner brought the little girl in, right? I’m sorry for seeming a little brusque. It’s been kinda crazy here tonight.”

Scully waved away his apologies.

“It’s fine, really. I understand how busy you must be. But since you’re here, can you tell me, is there any change?”

He shook his head.

“I wish I could give you some good news Agent Scully, but no. I’ve just been up there, in fact. I’ve seen this kind of thing before. Only thing we can do is keep her as comfortable as possible and hope that she’ll come out of it. We’ve called her parents - they’ll be here tomorrow - often just the sound of familiar voices can help break through the barriers. For now, though, the best thing we can do is allow her to rest. She’s finally sleeping. I don’t expect her to wake before morning.”

He cocked his head on one side, contemplating the woman before him.

“Speaking of which, you look like you could use some yourself.”

“Excuse me?”

“Some sleep. To be perfectly honest, if I’d realized you were still here I’d have had one of the nurses send you home hours ago. But like I said, it’s been kinda crazy. Best thing you could do would be to go check into a motel somewhere and call us in the morning. I have numbers for a couple of decent places if you need them.”

Scully summoned up a tired smile, recognizing that he was just being polite. That he had better things to do than make small talk with her about local motels.

“No. Thank you. It’s fine. My partner has it all arranged already. But I do think I’ll take your advice. You have our numbers, right?”

He nodded curtly.

“Of course. I’ll ensure someone calls you if there’s the slightest change. Goodnight, Agent Scully.”

She watched as he continued down the hallway, his white coat billowing behind him until he was swallowed up by the dozens of other medical personnel and patients milling around the enclosed space. It suddenly felt too hot, and for a second everything seemed to turn liquid as she swayed slightly on her feet, the figures before her seeming to meld into one as they blurred and tumbled together. Clutching blindly at a convenient vending machine, Scully opened and closed her eyes rapidly, blinking until her vision returned to normal.

God, I must be tired.

Time to collect her partner and call it a night.

XXXXXXXXXXXXX

CHAPTER SEVEN

Eeazy Sleep Motel. Cleveland Ohio. May 4th 1999 1:52am

They spent the journey back from the hospital in silence and Mulder suspected that their lack of communication had less to do with tiredness and everything to do with the perplexing nature of the case.

Certainly he had spent the drive formulating and dismissing several different theories as to what had happened earlier that evening.

And truthfully, he had no clue because, after all, he hadn’t been christened with the nickname Spooky for nothing and it was rare for him to be completely stumped by a case.

Usually he could rely on intuition to guide him through the tangled web that so often made up an X-File. Tonight though, this same intuition had all but deserted him.

A slight movement beside him, caught in the corner of his eye, prompted him to twist his head toward his partner.

Shit, she looks tired.

It had been a long day for them both, sure, but aside from when she had been sick, he couldn’t remember seeing her look so exhausted before. Her face was pale, lit by the ghostly glow emanating from the illuminated dashboard, and the carefully applied make-up of the morning had all but disappeared. It leant her a vulnerable, almost childlike air. It also allowed him to see the dark shadows underneath her eyes. Shadows that contrasted sharply against the creamy, white skin.

It worried him more than he would ever admit. This case, horrific as it already was, would be doubly hard for her to deal with in light of the lingering wounds she carried close to her heart. She never told him as such, but it wasn’t hard for him to appreciate that she was still grieving for Emily.

They never talked about it. He wasn’t sure that she talked with anyone. It wasn’t Scully’s way to admit need. Not about anything. And certainly not to him.

He had caught her unawares once though in the office they shared, the memory of the way she looked imprinted forever on his psyche.

He had left for the day, needing to gather some information pertaining to a case they were working on. Mind elsewhere, he had reached his car only to discover that he had left his keys atop the desk where he had casually tossed them earlier in the day.  Cursing softly he had made his way quickly back to the office, only to freeze in the half open doorway when he saw her. Her back was to him, shoulders shaking as she sobbed silently. She was holding a photograph in her hand, tracing her finger over its surface.

Mulder hadn’t been able to make out the picture upon it. 

He hadn’t needed to.

Emily.

Scully’s daughter. Known for such a short time before she was taken from her, but long enough for Scully to love her.

Long enough for her to mourn her passing.

Ignoring the need that ached within him to enter the office and take her in his arms, knowing that it wasn’t what she wanted, he had pivoted and walked away, out of the building and straight to the nearest bar. He hadn’t moved until the bartender had begun to pointedly sweep the floor around his feet, signalling that it was time for Mulder to get the hell out so he could close up for the night.

And now, looking across at her, he prayed that she wasn’t reliving past horrors.

“You okay, Scully?

He watched as she rubbed a hand across her face, attempting to bring herself back to alertness.

"I’m fine. I’m just hoping you have some insight into all this, Mulder, because I sure as hell don’t.”

He didn’t answer her. He didn’t know what to say.

“Mulder?” she persisted.

He shrugged.

“The truth, Scully? I don’t have a clue. Three missing girls. One who turns up looking like she’s been thrown into a Cuisinart? A school that looks like it fell off the pages of Country Life magazine full of kids who make Stephen Hawking look ignorant? You tell me. Maybe I’m losing my touch.”

Scully absorbed his words, struck suddenly by the defeat she heard in them. It wasn’t like him. She was accustomed to hearing any number of outlandish theories spill from his lips. And although she saw it as her purpose in life to balance out those same theories with the voice of reason, she also knew that she relied on him to make sense out of the things they encountered.

More than he would ever know.

“What about this? You were going to explain it to me.”

Mulder flicked his eyes away from the road and, for a second, settled them on the intricately woven framework of thread, beads and feathers.

“It’s called a dreamcatcher. There are several Native American legends as to its purpose. I thought maybe it meant something. Now I’m not so sure.”

Scully waited for him to continue, but after long seconds had passed uncomfortably between them, she delved a little deeper.

“Care to share or do I have to guess?”

Mulder sighed, the sound reaching her across the vast distance that seemed to separate them. She’d seen this before, seen her partner withdraw into himself when in the grip of a difficult case.

The fact that she understood it, though, didn’t necessarily mean she accepted it.

“It’s a kind of good luck charm. Meant to protect its owner against bad dreams. Sort of a preventative measure…it’s an age-old story. Passed through one generation to another…”

He trailed off as the lights of the motel came into view, and Scully waited until he’d piloted the car to a halt in front of the office before speaking again.

“I’d like to hear it.”

Mulder froze, his hand halfway to the door release.

“Hear what?”

“The legend.”

“Of the Dreamcatcher?”

He sounded so incredulous that Scully almost laughed out loud.

“That surprises you? C'mon Mulder, you’ve spent the last six years filling my head with alien abduction stories, prehistoric lake monsters, all manner of mutants and freaks of nature, and you’re surprised that I would want to hear a simple Native American folk tale?”

Mulder gazed at her, as though trying to figure out whether she was sincere or not.

Her asking to hear one of his outlandish tales was such an un-Scully-like thing to do that for a few moments he was literally rocked backwards. Ever conscious, though, that she might just be humouring him, he offered her one last get-out.

“It’s late. You sure you want to hear it? It could wait till morning.”

Scully smiled back at him softly.

“Call it a bedtime story then.”

Mulder laughed in response as the moment lightened perceptibly for both of them.

“Ahhhhh,  Scully, if you only knew how many times I’ve waited for you to say that…”

XXXX

Thirty minutes later Scully regarded her partner from behind the over-sized Styrofoam cup of steaming hot chocolate, which he had magically produced from behind his back.

He had, he’d informed her, taken a quick side trip across the street to the all- night diner - because, he proclaimed, solemnly enough to make her laugh - that no bedtime story was complete without chocolate and marshmallows.

It had made Scully feel like she was six years old again, evoking as it did sweet childhood memories of her mother coming into the bedroom she had shared with Melissa and sitting with them in the warmth of the room, as they listened wide-eyed to the stories she had told from her own childhood.

It seemed like only yesterday.

A thousand childhood memories that she herself had hoped one day to share with her own daughter. Memories now that would remain forever locked in her heart, to wither and die with her when the time came.

There would be no one to share them with.

Not now and not ever.

They had both showered and changed for bed. She in comfortable satin pajamas, Mulder in cutoff sweats and an old T- shirt. There had maybe been a time, way back in the beginnings of their partnership, where Scully might have felt self-conscious to be seen by the man before her dressed so casually. Not anymore though. Now, sharing time and space with him before he retreated to his own room for the night had become almost commonplace. A way to allow the tensions of the day to flow from them before succumbing to sleep.

The Dreamcatcher lay at the bottom of the bed.

Scully had allowed herself to properly examine it while Mulder had jogged across to the diner to fetch hot chocolate. The intricate patterns had captured her imagination, and she had found herself tracing a finger along its edge, closing her eyes, drifting off.

She had to admit that something about it had piqued her curiosity, aroused a need within her to fully understand what it stood for.

So she waited for Mulder to begin, once again closing her eyes as his words swirled around the small room.

He spoke softly, from his position across from her, seated on the small, ratty sofa while she lay half lying, half sitting on the bed, almost like a father recounting a fairy tale to a small, sleepy child. 

“Throughout history, nearly every person and culture has placed importance on the meanings of their dreams. Dreams are still a powerful force in many people’s lives, particularly because of the meanings that can be found in them. I have a half dozen X-Files that speak of just such phenomena, Scully. How dreams can affect our lives, our relationships, our everyday actions. How by listening to and understanding what our dreams are telling us we can shape our very destiny.”

He paused, and Scully was pretty sure he was sipping at his own hot chocolate, maybe getting his thoughts in order so as to tell the story in the way it was meant to be told.

“To the people of the Ojibway tribe, night visions, or dreams, were so important that children were not given a name until a person designated as the namer of that child had a dream of what name should be given. The namer would bestow a gift upon the child, a charm woven to look like a spider’s web. Hung from a loop above the baby’s cradle, the Dreamcatcher was believed to catch any bad dreams floating in the air, ensnaring them like a spider’s web traps an insect. It was believed that only good dreams could pass through the hole in the centre of the web, sliding down the feather at the bottom to fall into the baby’s head. The bad dreams couldn’t navigate the web, and would hang there, suspended until the first rays of morning sunlight burned them away.”

Scully opened her eyes and regarded her partner through hooded lids.

“Sounds like something you could use. Do you think they work? The Dreamcatchers I mean?”

Mulder shrugged.

“Maybe. If nothing else, you yourself know how powerful the act of suggestion can be. Call it superstition if you will…..good magic………whatever.  I think if the user believes it will protect their dreams, then it will. Much like the modern day version of a placebo. Believe in something strongly enough and it becomes a kind of truth.”

He was silent then, dropping his eyes from hers, and something inside Scully cracked as she read his expression.

Mulder had spent most of his life desperately wanting to believe.

Steadfastly refusing to give up the belief, even in the face of ridicule, that he would one day be reunited with his sister. It was a hope he clung to as if for life itself.

His own version of a Dreamcatcher and just as elusive.

“Mulder…”

He shook his head wearily and rose to his feet.

“It’s late. You’re tired and we have an early start. I should let you sleep.”

Don’t go.

“What?”

He stopped in his tracks as though struck. Had she just said what he thought she’d said? He hadn’t heard her exactly, or at least not in any traditional sense. But her words had reached him as surely as if she had whispered them directly in his ear.

“Stay. Please.”

She looked as confused as he did, as though she didn’t know how to proceed.

Sitting up in the oversize bed, she looked suddenly vulnerable, unsure of herself, of what was real. But her expression cleared again, the confusion replaced with a kind of peaceful clarity. The same expression he had seen fleetingly cross her face that night at the park, and without hesitation, he headed toward the bed, waiting as she scooted across to make space for him to join her.

His heart beat painfully as she reached out to him. Allowing him to snake an arm around her so that her body rested against him softly.

“Tell me the rest of the story, Mulder.”

And so he began again, losing himself in long-ago tales of Indian women who could transform themselves magically into spiders, spinning webs to protect their fellow clansmen.

Of children protected for all eternity beneath the webs, sleeping peacefully beneath their silken strands as women bestowed upon them gifts of peace and tranquillity to carry them into dreams.

And long before he was finished, he felt Scully relax even further against him as she, too, was transported into gentle slumber.

Her breathing was deep, peaceful as she rested against him, and for a few minutes he luxuriated in the feel of her, watching over her as she slept, trying to make the agonizing decision whether to stay or go.

Finally, he carefully planted a kiss on her brow, feeling the heat of her skin against his own lips, before reluctantly disentangling her limbs from him and laying her gently against the pillows.

His movements were such that she didn’t stir, not even when he reached down and smoothed a few strands of the rich, titian hair from where it rested against her porcelain skin.

Sweet dreams, Scully.

Continued Chapter Eight

[shipwrexked]

INTP Careers

I used to think there was something wrong with me. All of my friends had their careers mapped out before they even went to college and me....no so much. It wasn’t that I wasn’t interested in anything it was more that I was interested in EVERYTHING! So it was hard to choose.

Since 2nd grade I wanted to be an archaeologist and work for National Geographic. I went to college thinking I would follow that dream. Then at the end of my Freshman year I went on a dig and I realized...while this field of study fascinates me I do not, in fact, want to dig up the past. I’m still really fascinated with archaeology but I’m more content to read about it than to do it.

Then I thought I’d like to concentrate on the field of journalism..that lasted all of a semester when I realized that journalists have very few morals. They are quite literally land sharks. I did not the temperament to interview grieving families, angry people, or politicians.

I always loved reading and analyzing texts and fairy tales so my English Professor told me I should study English Lit. Ugh ok but what was I going to do with a degree in English Lit.? Turns out you can do a LOT with a degree in English Lit. For instance communication is key in business and English Majors are trained to communicate in a variety of different ways and using different media. So that’s what I did. I got a bachelors degree in English Lit and double majored in Secondary Education. I went on to get a Master Degree in Creative Writing. I wrote my Masters thesis on historical development of fairy tales. That was most exciting as I got to study folklore and myth in even greater detail and was able to successfully show connection between the folklore and myths of ancient cultures and how they developed into the fairy tales many of us know today. It required a working knowledge of historical places, culture, and people. It relied heavily on archaeological findings in Egypt, Greece, and Norway. I got to use all the elements of things that I’d been passionate about studying to create that thesis and I learned A LOT. I was proud of that Masters degree. I had studied and worked hard to obtain it. Here’s what I wish someone would have told me when I was still in college.

You don’t have to specialize. You can use your bachelors degree as a spring board to something else. You can go back to college after you graduate. You NEVER STOP LEARNING. Learning doesn’t end when you walk across the stage and get your degree.  I taught high school english for a year and then walked away from it. That was not my bag. I went on to work in Higher Education and taught creative writing courses and the whole time I was working I was taking more classes. I was furthering my own personal interests. I took classes in psychology, anthropology, and African Studies..not for a degree, not for a book, not for any reason other than it interested me and I wanted to know. That��s the thing about us INTP’s we are driven by curiosity and our own need to KNOW. 

I still loved to read and was passionate about it. I would recommend books to my friends all the time and eventually it got to where even professors that I worked with would ask me for my opinions on books. My co-workers joked that I was the “book whisperer” because I never recommended a bad book. If I said a book was good you could be sure it was. That’s how, a few years ago the Book Whisperer’s book review blog was born. I started it out solo and was eventually joined by my best friend and fellow bibliophile. Now all these years later of using my hobby as a side project I’ve connected with authors from all over the globe. I’ve put together and run a summer class for young book reviewers teaching young kids how to read and analyze books. I’ve gotten the pleasure of seeing my own short stories and essays published and even attended a book launch party where I was the guest of honor. I never would have imagined all those years ago in college trying to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up that I would be here. 

I’m not done..not by a long shot. Last year due to budget cuts the University I worked at had to let a bunch of us go. I was sad to be leaving but through all those connections I had made I was offered a job doing NOTHING remotely in my field of study. My “day job” is working at an Arts Foundation that specializes in Public Art. I love this job but to be fair I’ve found something to love about all the jobs I’ve worked..even the fast food ones. We are all of us the sum of our experiences and yet we are more than them as well. So fellow INTP’s if you find yourselves struggling with “what to do when you grow up” I would say..don’t decide because life will throw you curve balls you don’t see coming. That hobby you’ve been pumping all those hours into may turn into the “next big thing” or those stories you’ve been writing in secret that you haven’t let anyone read, those may become your first “best seller”. Instead enjoy being what makes you unique. Your curiosity, your drive for information, your obsessive need to know. Temper it with a bit of humility and tolerance and you’ll find yourself falling into jobs you never would have thought you’d like.

And yes it’s true I worked at an Alligator Farm and Park in college and no I won’t be telling you the name of the place. My willingness to humiliate myself publicly only goes so far.

[brianjameson]

It’s 9pm and it’s 65 degrees out.

Normally it doesn’t get cold in Vegas until November, so it feels like we skipped fall and went straight to winter and it has my emotions kind of messed up.

Nick and I met in September of 2015 so the times he came to visit me or I went there, the season was already changing to winter so I would always cuddle up close to him.

It’s been a month since Nick passed away and it still kind of feels like yesterday but it kind of also feels like a year has gone by.

Grieving is the most invasive and hurtful thing to go through, especially when you’re going through it because you lost someone you really loved.

When you love someone so much and lose them, like I lost Nick, it really is devastating. Loss is hard in general but when your heart is fully invested and you lose the person who had your heart, it fucking hurts like hell. Not like it’s not supposed to but it’s a different kind of hurt. A hurt that just feels like your heart was ripped from you and stepped on.

I’m realizing there’s different levels of grief.

Every day feels like a blur.

Every week that goes by feels like it went by very quick. I can barely get a hold of myself. I can barely think. When I sing in the car sometimes I forget the words even though I’ve heard the same song over and over. I can definitely feel how this is affecting me and it’s scary but it just hurts so much every day not having him here.

I definitely have had days where I feel fine and I get through without crying but there’s triggers and when I get that trigger I break down and let out everything that had been pent up the past 2 days or however many days that went by without me crying.

I used to tell myself I couldn’t imagine living without him, hell we even did a suicide prevention walk and yet here I am having to try and having to learn how to live again.

I ordered 2 necklaces to put his ashes in just to feel close to him and find myself wearing the baseball one the most. He loved baseball and sometimes I remember coming home and he would be blaring it so loud I could hear it before I even walked into the house lol.

I’ll also wear some of his T-shirts that he never wore that I gave him. I found an Eleven Paris Star Wars shirt in his drawer that he never wore! So I took that shit and wear it to sleep now.

I have no idea if I’m grieving correctly or if I’m just hurting myself more

but

I’m finding myself going places we used to go to together just to find comfort in being there and thinking of all the things we did. It makes me cry every time I do it but I feel almost like it helps me get more closure when I do it because it hurts enough to make me stop and appreciate the good times and just try to move on. It’s my way of trying to normalize life again and be able to go to these places we went to and not cry so much but again, to just remember the good times and laugh and appreciate/honor his memory.. It’s extremely difficult and hard to do but I need this pain to hurt me so bad that I can begin to rebuild myself and come back to Brian because I do not feel like Brian at allllll.

I’ll be posting a lot more about the places we went to and the things we did together. I want to write and try to talk about this entire situation for what it is in detail because I hope if there’s anyone out there grieving, that these posts and words will help.

The only way I can describe how I’m feeling is like being violated.

The pain comes in so invasively and randomly and leaves me feeling so empty, lonely, used and abused and just feeling without hope. I try and try to push the pain out of my mind but it’s almost impossible once it starts and as much as I try to stop it it just keeps hurting me and I just keep wishing it would stop.

I tend to bounce back and remind myself often than not that he was in a lot of pain but it still doesn’t make it any better.. I still walk into the bedroom and just cannot believe that he’s gone. I really can’t. The house being so quite alone freaks me out and makes me think about him and cry because I would always come home to the TV on and him either cooking or watching TV waiting for me to get home and welcome me with a hug and kiss..

Wednesday October 10th, 2018

I went with my mom to go pick up my rental. It was the night before the memorial and I was going to drive at night but I could not sleep and still can’t unless I’ve taken my Xanax from all the anxiety that piles up in the day. The only place really open late to rent a car is the airport so I went to pick it up.

It didn’t register to me until I went but Nick used to work at this Hertz back when we first moved in together. It was a seasonal position but he worked really long days and I drove past the same area where I would pick him up from work..

I walked up the stairs to the car lot where the rentals were and Hertz does this thing now where they leave the car keys in the car and you just get the car you want and check out on your way out. It’s way quick.

I originally reserved a Dodge Dart just because I’m familiar with Dodges and the problems that can happen with them since I drive an Avenger.

So I’m looking for it and the guy told me I could pick ANY car from this lot so I’m looking around and see 2 dodge challengers that I remembered we had taken up to Mammoth Lake when my best friend Kayla got married. I looked the other way and there was the one and only convertible Chevy Camaro! I wasted no time and took the Camaro. I remember I would ask Nick what his dream car was, affordable and non affordable and he was so simple, he would just say he wanted a truck lol. I was like BABE I WANT A BENTLEY OR A LAMBORGHINI etc etc. But for an affordable car I would tell him I wanted a Camaro and wanted to deck it out like Batman’s car! I just felt like that was him there for sure telling me BABY GET IN! The car was all alone. No cars around it and doubles of every other car. This Camaro just so happened to have California plates too! I was driving that shit with the top down in no time! Driving and beating it up like I stole it lol.

Thursday October 11th, 2018

I drove out for the memorial early in the morning and didn’t get into town until about 3pm. I got ready and

The turn out for Nicks memorial was amazing. His family was only expecting about 80 people if that and it was well over 100 people that showed up. I didn’t take any photos with people or of the memorial because I felt like it wasn’t really appropriate.

His family was so happy as was I. Nick really did have so many people that loved him.

  I presented my speech that I shared with you all and that was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to read in front of people but I also felt myself come alive a little and joke with everyone because I really wanted it to be uplifting and not all sad.

Here’s the link in case you haven’t read it yet and would like to

Everyone seemed to have enjoyed it and I even had some people he knew come up to me telling me that I’ve changed them and changed their heart and it gave me joy because that’s what we’re all here to do, to help other people realize things and to just spread love and understanding to people who might not understand. I feel like the message got across to a lot of people that might not understand things or understand what it’s like being gay and in a relationship in general. Most importantly, I was happy that people saw how much we loved each other and how special our love was that we had because it was the biggest message I had for everyone.

Friday October 12th, 2018

This was the day after the memorial.

I had a plan when going to California that I was going to go to LA at least twice to visit friends and family but because of the circumstances I was under I just felt like planning was not the right idea and I was sooooo tired this day. I slept most of the day and when I woke up I had some coffee with Nicks dad and talked to his mom more about everything and we watched a few home videos of him as a kid and I just couldn’t keep watching, it was tearing my entire being apart seeing how adorable he was as a kid and just knowing he isn’t here anymore. I couldn’t do it. I decided to just take the rest of the day slow and just relax. We went to dinner that night with his parents and just chatted a bit about some of the things Nick would do and I just really felt like he was around. It just broke my heart a little because I know his family is really struggling with this and I just couldn’t imagine living with knowing my child passed away.

So instead of going to LA I decided to just be home with his family as much as possible to just try and be there for them as much as I can.

Saturday October 13th, 2018

I went to Santa Monica beach to see the sunset and walk around at night. I wanted to be alone for this moment and appreciate the time we spent at the beach when we went back in 2015. I got there around 5pm in time for the sunset. I was afraid it was going to rain because of how overcast it was but it didn’t instead the clouds made the sunset look even more beautiful.

Parking was a fucking shit show. All the hotels were the only ones really offering parking and there were a shit ton of people walking around. I remembered why I get so much anxiety driving in LA.

I dressed in the clothes I used to wear when we went to the pools. It was pretty cold and everyone was in at least jeans and a T-shirt and light jacket but I didn’t care I wanted to dress up.

I pulled out my head phones and listened to music as I saw each wave come in and leave.

There’s signs and things everywhere that allow you to be able to apply how you’re feeling and find peace, you just have to look for those things you can relate to.

For me this calling was the ocean.

For some reason I just felt like the beach is where I needed to go and needed to be. I’m glad I went because I’ve never felt so close to water before..

I would watch as each tide came in and put ridges and cracks in the sand and leave the surface looking jagged but then the tides would come back and smooth the surface again. There were waves rolling in small and some were big and at that moment I felt my emotions so closely related to the water and shore. There’s times my emotions roll in like tides, sometimes a little bit and sometimes really strong. Sometimes my shore feels jagged from the pain I feel but after awhile things smooth out and the shore looks smooth until the next tide comes in and ruins the surface again.

The sunset was the most breathtaking thing I had ever seen. I’ve never seen one so nice or in general at the beach.

  I stood there crying because it was one of the very first places Nick and I went to when we first met. Walking the beach at night with someone I loved was something I always wanted to do and I’m lucky I was able to do that with him around the time we met. My best friend Meagan was with us that night and she was behind us taking our photos because she knew how happy I was and wanted to capture every moment. I really fell fast for Nick. When we first met, our chemistry was so magnetic. I instantly liked him and he instantly liked me and since we felt so comfortable with each other, it was easy to jump into things as fast as we did.

I looked around and saw tons of couples together and kissing and I almost felt bitter about it.. I’ve never not been happy for other people but seeing so many people doing what we did and me feeling left out just really upset me. I’m sure I’ll get past that feeling but everything is just so fresh and my emotions are running way high with everything.

  Sunday October 14th, 2018

It was my last day in town and I wanted to go to the ice cream shop we would always go to when we would go back to Bakersfield to visit his family. The place is called Dewars and it’s some of the best ice cream I’ve ever had.

So I filled up my gas tank at Costco and headed straight to Dewars before hitting the road.

It was the busiest I had ever seen it honestly. Normally when Nick and I would go it would be like 2 other people but almost the entire place was packed. I sat at the very end of the bar area where we would sit and I had oreo cookie and cookie dough ice cream and just reflected back on the times we went there. There were some emotions but again I just felt close to him since we had been there together.

I had to return my rental by 11pm and it was now 6pm when I finally got on the road, so I needed to kind of be quick getting home because I wanted to stop by Peggy Sues 50’s diner. I’ve never been there but ever since I bought my car and would drive to California, I’d always see the signs but never stopped by because of one reason or another. I was determined to go and it was the cutest restaurant I’ve ever been to.

I couldn’t help but walk around and take photos of everything. The place was huge and there was memorabilia EVERYWHERE

Ever since Nick passed away I always get these images in my head of him randomly or I’ll feel like he’s in the same room with me when I’m alone. It’s times that this happens that I know he’s around. As I sat there eating my burger (which I don’t eat meat but I was this weekend so fuck it) I had the strangest feeling that he and Joey were there with me having dinner. I went around and took photos and just enjoyed my last night in town before returning back to Vegas. I got back in just in time for the rental to be dropped off.

I’m not sure if I’m becoming more sensitive to spirituality or whatever it is out there but I definitely feel like this situation has changed me. I’m a lot more patient with things and don’t stress about dumb shit as much anymore. I’m normally the type of person who needs to fix something right away but recently I’ve just said screw it all. Things will always work out and it’s pointless to always be stressed or worried.

It sucks that sometimes it takes someone passing away for you to change or realize how you’re acting or to see the way you’re living and seeing that maybe half of it is wrong and that you need to change. If Nick wouldn’t have passed away I probably wouldn’t be doing half of what I do now…

I find myself asking for receipts to everything to cover my ass for any reason down the road. I’ll take photos of things in order to remember what I know I’ll forget. I’ll write things down on sticky notes or on a notepad so that I don’t forget what I need to do. I’ll ask more questions than anything. He would do all these things and it just showed me how proactive he was and how much I grew with him to carry on these same habits of his.

To end this post I want everyone reading this to text a loved one, family or friend and just tell them you love them and how much you appreciate them for such and such reason. This is one thing I’m glad I did with Nick all the time because there is not a doubt in my mind that I didn’t say it enough.. Appreciate the people you have and let them know you love them because we are all on borrowed time and are not promised tomorrow.

I love you all

♥

Invasive Emotions It's 9pm and it's 65 degrees out. Normally it doesn't get cold in Vegas until November, so it feels like we skipped fall and went straight to winter and it has my emotions kind of messed up.