#reminding myself to not invalidate my own symptoms or convince myself it’s in my head or I’m just not trying because of course I am.

[capetowncapers]

I’ll have days where I’m like no I’m overthinking the fatigue shit and then I’ll have days where my brain fog is so bad that I can barely process words on a page in front of me and my thoughts feel like they’re moving through a thick soup and I want to cry…. I fucking Need to make myself go to the doctor and get more tests done or something bc it’s annoying but so is trying to function like this.

[stattic-writes]

Nurse

https://statticscribbles.tumblr.com/post/639099629845233664/masterlist

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[justjessame]

Babysitting Butcher Chapter 36

I have taken great pride over the years in my cleverness. Hell, I took tremendous fucking pride in my intelligence in getting one over on Homelander right before my little trip to the women’s clinic to take care of his invader spawn. That’s why having this nugget of horrifying reality slip through my fingertips, my brain matter, and my very marrow so fucking difficult to process.

I’d been in their clutches this entire time. Right in the lap of their power, where they could have crushed me, but thinking on it, that wouldn’t do. Mallory had stood in this room, or the room I’d first been treated in and warned, no threatened the lot of them with the importance of my health, hadn’t she? They couldn’t have taken a chance, not the scientists (not that I believed any of them had the authority to make that decision), and Edgar was trying to rehabilitate the image of Vought International. If they didn’t want to harm me, then-

My eyes shut, tight against the steady beeping that belied the upheaval inside of me, as I swallowed down another round of harsh truths. Everyone knew how Billy felt about supes now, it wasn’t as though he wouldn’t tell anyone who asked, so someone in this twisted company probably hoped that my fear would bear fruit. If Billy Butcher killed me, then not only would it ruin him, proving once and for all that he was just as dangerous as believed, but the Office would be shuttered as a failure. The contingency, since a backup plan is always needed where humans are concerned, would be to utilize the free reign that comes when staffing becomes run thinner. I’d never fully staffed, it hadn’t seemed necessary. I managed to cover more tasks than most, Billy aided several areas, and so on and so forth. Knock me out, even with the bit that I was doing from ‘home’, and a wiggle space was created for someone or someones to dig in and push forward. Surveillance. Or monitoring in person.

I made a truly rookie mistake. Cockiness, a belief in my own superior intelligence and abilities, and it got us here. Now how to fix it?

 The first on my list of things to accomplish toward the goal of getting things back on track with Billy and me in the pilot and copilot seats would be to have a confidential sit down with him, alone and unobserved. Paranoia thy name is Dr. Veronica Taylor.

“Ronnie?” Billy was staring at me like he thought I might bolt, and I was considering it, honestly. “Love, you alright?” I nodded, picking up my fork and absently eating while trying to think of where we could go off to, how I could find a way to let him know what I’d realized.

“I’m fine,” I smiled, or at least I tried to. From the look that Billy was giving me, I had doubts that it was convincing. “Just can’t wait to get out of here and have you all to myself.” Truer words. Just not in the sense that he might think. “In fact, Mr. Butcher, spring me from this joint, and maybe I’ll show you a preview.” His smirk grew to a full blown smile and I felt my heart speed up in response, the entire building becoming privy to how this man made me feel.

“Let me see what I can do, Veronica.” A soft kiss and he rushed off, leaving me to my own rushing thoughts of how to find a way to tell him just how fucked up the entire situation really was.

 First of all, I knew that Vought could and did implant chips into certain supes (recall Starlight’s removal of hers). If they had the capabilities to GPS their supes, what else could they chip them for? Could they implant audio/video chips? I racked my brain for any CIA tech knowledge of gadgets and gizmos that might have crossed my desk recently, but then again, I was out of the office for an extended period of time now.

Even if they ONLY implanted a GPS tracker ON ME, that didn’t mean they couldn’t use it to access the surveillance video of nearby equipment. Look, paranoia comes from knowledge, and I work for the CIA. We’re not called the Central INTELLIGENCE Agency for nothing, people.

I was worried about the antidote, too. What if it wasn’t actually a cure? What if it was another fucking variant? Or hell, what if it was just regular fucking Compound V, forcing my fucking body into regular old fucking supe soup? Damn it, I fucking was in KNOTS.

 Billy came back after work, after a day filled with more tests, more questions about how I felt. More “are you feeling warm”? More “is your abdomen tender”? And more times for me to actually feel like a fucking spy than any other time in my entire fucking existence.

“There you are,” his voice, the only fucking voice I fucking cared to hear finally. “Good news, love,” I looked up from the book I’d been hiding behind for what seemed like fucking hours. “Not only can I spring you for the day tomorrow, but the entire weekend-”

I tossed the book and would have jumped into his arms, but I was still wearing my catheter. Fuck. “Back to our house?” I was excited, but then I stopped myself. Vought had had over a month to gain access to our house. Freedom to install whatever they wanted inside our home in order to keep track of me, Billy, our private lives and our progress at work and- I was still missing something, but what?! I felt like screaming, but instead I smiled.

“Actually, I thought I’d spoil my girl with a weekend away,” I let him pull me into his chest, snuggling into the warmth of him, his broadness, his strength. “Away from doctors and needles, and beeping, and noise and questions.” Was I imagining the undertone in his voice? The undercurrent of suspicion, that paranoia that I knew existed within him. Maybe the old Billy Butcher wasn’t completely scrubbed clean after all. “Gonna surprise you, Ronnie,” he pulled back, eyes twinkling, and with a wink and a swat on my behind, he told me to grab only my purse, since he had a bag ready for me in the car.

 He meant a different car from his or mine. Completely different. Not even a company car. And that meant I was right, because we left Vought in HIS car, met Frenchie and Kimiko in this unmarked blah of a car, and then drove off in the opposite direction from where we’d gone to see the house we wanted to buy.

I was still afraid to speak, even with my purse left behind in his car. Billy’s hand reached for mine, and I sighed when our skin touched. “It’s safe, Ronnie.”

 “How can you be sure?” I muttered, jaw tense. Unsure, so damn unsure that I wasn’t a ticking time bomb. For all I knew, we knew, the cleanser I was told to use on the catheter was a fucking solution to keep the kaboom at bay. “How can we be sure I’m not fucking bugged, or chipped, or fucking-”

“Trust me?” I glanced at him to see that he was darting looks my way. Nodding to let him know that I most certainly did trust him, he smirked. “I’m taking you to some people that Mallory found to have a peek see. She’s had some doubts for awhile now, but it takes time, Ronnie.” I sighed, still tense. “Told you, I won’t lose you.”

“How far are we going?” I wanted to know how long I had to sit on pins and needles.

He kept his eyes on the road, but his hand stayed with mine. “Not far, ever been to Mallory’s house?” I shook my head and he took note out of the corner of his eye. “She don’t give out many invites, so that don’t surprise me. This is one of her hideaways. She don’t count it as her home, so she deemed it a safe spot. Don’t think it’s in her name even. She’ll meet us there, not even Frenchie or the others know where it is, just in case.”

In case I was chipped, I thought, so the collateral damage was minimal. “What if-”

“The clean up crew is on standby.” His voice was clipped, and I knew he hoped that if push came to shove, that the clean up crew was going to be used simply to clean up HIS mess, not Vought’s.

 The “house” we went to was glass and concrete. Reminded me more of our office complex tucked into a shale hillside than it did a home or even a safe house. Not that it really mattered since I was simply there for the damn doctors and science nerds to poke and prod at me to see if I was fucked up or fucked over.

I was happy that Mallory didn’t treat me like an invalid, that was a saving grace. She didn’t tisk at me, or cluck her tongue and tell me how sorry she was that this was happening. Instead she asked what I thought the plan of attack could be. We discussed things as though my body were merely a secondary object, even as I was worked over.

One scientist/doctor took the cleansing fluid for a sample, another took a sample from the catheter itself. Bloodwork, because of course, was taken. My vitals, because what day would be completely without me hearing my heartbeat in surround sound along with internal and external temperatures. On and on, but no one asked me the usual questions, or the ones that Vought asked, so I started to puzzle out those questions.

Why would they focus on those particular questions?

First, how was I feeling today? OK that one was standard regardless of where someone was a patient. Skip that one. Second, was I feeling warm? That one was slightly more focused. Given the fact that my first NOTICEABLE symptom of my pregnancy was the steaming skin, and my temperature rising when Billy was anywhere near me, or when I was pissed off. OK, but once the tiny intruder was yanked and scraped out of me, the regulation it afforded me left as well, causing that symptom to go off the rails. When they asked that in the early days, it made sense, if I was feeling warmer it would mean that the blood cleansing wasn’t working and holy shit balls clear the room, right? But once I was doing better with the ‘antidote’? Why was it so fucking shocking then? If it’s a fix, even if it’s a trial period, they were asking more fucking often-

“Hey, doctors?” Everyone stopped what they were doing and stared down at me because I was prone AGAIN. “What are my internal and external temperatures?” They noted them and they were both normal. “Take them again, please.” I waited, and considered how my nerves felt and how I wasn’t just anxious but irritated. They told me it had risen ten degrees and I groaned. Fuck. “Yeah, not a fucking antidote.” Shit. “Rush the test on the cleanser, would you?” I heard the movement and the muttering.”

“Ronnie?” It was Mallory, and I felt Billy’s hand on my cheek. “What’s going on, precisely?”

“They always ask the same questions.” I kept my eyes closed. Trying to gather my wits, and calm myself, since I was now my best fucking regulator. “First question is a throwaway, probably habit or hell for all I know it’s meant to make me think as much. Second one is ALWAYS about how warm I feel. Always. Even after-”

“They gave you the ‘cure’.” Billy’s voice was a hiss. “Those fucking cunts.”

“Are there other questions?” Mallory sounded sick, and I understood because I felt sick.

I nodded, feeling like the bile was rushing up. “Just one more. ‘Do I feel any tenderness in my abdomen?’” I could FEEL both of them staring at the catheter embedded in my abdomen. “I thought it was because that’s where I-”

“Where you hemorrhaged,” Billy whispered, his hand touching mine gently. “I signed for them to put that in you,” his voice sounded tortured and for a beat I had to hand it to Vought, they did something that even Homelander hadn’t managed to do. They’d hit Billy lower than even that caped fucker.

 The cleanser solution, what I’d taken as a benign solution to flush out a catheter whose redundancy would soon be made obsolete, had a tiny added substance that seemed to have a bit of my least favorite supe included. Yes, you read that right, I’d been flushing my catheter out with a wee bit of Homelander swimmers. I don’t even want to try to understand the genetic logic of that, and I nearly threw up when they attempted to explain it.

Billy punched a fucking wall. I envied him that, since I couldn’t actually get fucking pissed enough to do that, or I’d probably blow up and kill us all.

The antidote was clearly an antidon’t. It didn’t have Compound V, from what the doctors could see, what the determined was that with the TINY bit of Homelander leavings that they were adding into the solution to clean the catheter, they hoped to delay the inevitable, which was basically my body shutting down rather than going POP. Yes, Vought fully expected me to die, but they seemed intent on me dying in their clinic as a terrible side effect of a horrible mistake gone wrong. Sort of bandaid a bullet wound situation.

Another wall got a rather forceful introduction to Billy’s fist and once again, I was envious, but resigned.

Luckily, the doctor who seemed far more relaxed and confident assured me that he was fairly sure that I wasn’t as doomed as Vought hoped. In fact, he offered if he could have more time to study me he felt convinced he could not only remove the problematic substance, but return me to my normal human self.

I caught Mallory’s eye, hoping she would give me a sign that somehow she hadn’t accidentally pulled a fucking psycho from the pile. She smiled and shook her head, so I asked him how precisely were we going to manage this extended visit, since I was pretty fucking sure that Vought had me bagged and tagged to the hilt.

“Simple,” his smile grew as my heart sank. “We remove any chipped bit that might be within your body.”

[finsterhund]

tired and weak

I don’t know if I’m going to be able to bounce back.

I don’t know if I’m stable or functional right now.

I am no longer spending days weeping, getting the violent psychotic meltdowns or other overtly physical symptoms but I don’t think I’m okay.

But I can’t keep myself shut up not doing any of the things I like to do online because isolating myself is not helping me. I only did it because my psychotic episode was causing me to hurt my friends. I did this for them, but it’s not helping me beyond cutting off things that my psychosis could latch onto. It is more than capable of doing it on its own.

I am coming to terms with how my situation is not healthy, it is not sustainable, and it is not safe.

I feel that I am not safe and I do not have anyone I can trust. That my environment is unhealthy and is continuing to retraumatize me and that I am not receiving adequate care.

I am unable at this time to tell how much of this is delusion and how much is that people in my life are actually a danger to me. Psychosis is like that. But things have been getting clearer on many relationships and issues.

My roommate told me that he is going to be writing a letter to the landlord to try and convince them that I need to get my service dog and if that works I wouldn’t need to take it to court. But I can’t tell if that’s just an empty promise. I feel like I am being told what I want to hear in an effort to keep me under control. That I am being satiated just enough so I don’t get violent or kill myself. But that my environment is never going to improve in its current state.

There’s been a lot of empty promises. And with my psychosis makes the already difficult issues impossible to navigate.

I am very disabled. I know I type really well and talk a big game, all bark and no bite though basically. Truth is I am unable to take care of myself. And with covid and me being high risk I don’t know if I am capable to put myself into a new situation/environment where I can thrive at this time. I am at the mercy of whoever I can find as a guardian. This is not healthy, and is something that I cannot yet find an escape from. All that it seems I can do is hold on and wait until an opportunity presents itself, to submit to the freeze and fawn response until I’m able to make my move. A move I will need support that I can’t even begin to wrap my head around to make.

Obviously “cringing and waiting” isn’t something that severe mental illnesses are going to be play nice with. And this is why I am unstable.

I must stress that I am not an independent. I am not functional in society as an independent. And even with my service dog this may stay the same financially. I am stunted, slow, whatever gentle word you want to call mental retardation. And that on top of debilitating mental disorders and trauma disorders prevents me from functioning on my own.

I cannot have a job. I cannot leave the house by my own. I have a learning disability surrounding numbers, time, math, etc. I am slow enough that it is extremely difficult for me to go about daily adult tasks that most people take for granted. My physical body being shit just ads to that and makes me slow in an equally useless and infuriating way.

It is very easy to take advantage of me. And the combination of me being a dependent when combined with that is dangerous for my health.

I will be making a doctor appointment for the explicit purpose of getting a note to try and pressure the landlord. I know that once me and my service dog are a working team more opportunities to become more independent and to get myself out of this situation will be presenting themselves. But nothing can happen immediately, yet at the same time I am suffering from things not being resolved immediately.

I am living in a way that is constantly exposing me to stress and pain. And I have acknowledged I need to get out of it but don’t yet have the means to know how.

I do have friends who may be capable of helping, but the virus has put a roadblock on that help for now.

Things like moving, programs for people with disabilities, hospital visits, etc. have all been made impossible by the virus.

I have ruled out moving back in with my mother. Even though she has improved and I definitely see her as a victim of abuse and living with undiagnosed mental illnesses of her own it just is not safe for me to live with her.

The only thing I can do now is make the effort to try and protect myself from the things that are hurting me emotionally that I am currently incapable of getting away from.

And trying to push towards my dog.

Everything else is waiting for things to be capable of changing.

I have pinpointed what I believe triggered this week’s psychotic break. Residual trauma from the first Christmas spent knowing the holiday killed Zippy, combined with frequent exposure to traumatic stimuli and unhealthy power dynamics, financial and social stress, as well as an increased lack of support regarding being invalid.

I am not in a healthy situation.

I began to sniff out bad people with the intent to keep track of them to make sure they weren’t planning to hurt me. This is the same maladaptive strategy I have been using to make sure my birth father wasn’t planning to kill everyone at my mom’s house way back when. In reality, exposing myself to the evil culture of bad people is not helping me psychologically. And I am powerless to actually kill them like I wish I could. But I felt like I had some level of control knowing their every move after I have no control in the situations I am spending my daily life in. It’s like drinking a poison so you can ignore a gunshot wound. I wish I could treat the wound, but drinking the poison makes me forget about it for a while. Both are unhealthy, but the act of creating a new problem makes it easier to ignore the initial one that I have no ability to change. At the cost of my rapidly fraying mental stability.

My environment is not one that I can control. And it is not one that I can currently fix or leave.

For my safety I am not capable of going into detail about certain people and their effect on my health. Being a dependent means that this directly can threaten me at an already vulnerable time.

I need to get out of my current situation, but am incapable of doing so. This has caused an extreme amount of stress to build up to the point that my antipsychotics weren’t enough to keep me safe. I was told that even being on anti psychotics you can still experience episodes and down periods. Which is scary to think about.

But I have no avenue to change this situation at this time.

I do not know if I am fit to hold communications with people right now. I will not be returning to social groups until I am told explicitly that it is okay to do so. By my primary care physician, by my psychiatrist, and by the people I socialize with themselves. But I will now state that anyone may come to me with the explicit understanding that I don’t know if I am rational or mentally safe right now. You will be communicating with me at your own risk and understand that I may still be experiencing heightened amounts of unreality and delusions.

I am no longer experiencing violent symptoms. I have made the steps to prevent myself from doomscrolling and keeping tabs on my abusers. But I understand that I am not above the possibility of lapsing back into doing this.

I am now on my pain meds again. Being off them for an extended period of time was likely contributing to my psychological pain despite these meds themselves not being addictive, the relief they give me might have been.

I am currently only with 3 dolars in my bank account and 5 dollars cash. I will be getting paid in 12 days. I should have enough food to last me this long. It is stressful, but I was already anticipating this situation to happen at this time.

I am extremely sorry for allowing my delusions and sickness to hurt innocent people. It was not my intent to cause pain to others. Whilst I would like to explicitly remind people that my mental illness directly influences how I perceive reality and this can make it impossible to tell if I am justified in my actions at times, it still doesn’t make up for the pain it may cause in the process.

Friends have expressed pain at me saying that I am not recieving help and nobody is helping me despite them trying to support me online.

Please understand that I appreciate the energy you are sending my way, but I am explicitly venting about my living situation that you nor I have any way of fixing. In the future to help my friends not feel like I am ignoring their attempts at helping me I have created this disclaimer that I will be putting on posts about situations that online friends cannot help or change. I hope this will alleviate the pain of your efforts not solving my problems.

I appreciate everything people try to do for me, even if my mental illness makes me not see it at the time. I understand it is very difficult to be close to someone who doesn’t perceive reality properly all the time, and I may not always show it when I am being helped due to one issue being immediately replaced by another, but I do appreciate.

I have been told that despite me being clingy that I tend to push people away and isolate myself when I am hurting. This is because I was abused and treated badly for expressing clinginess. This included targeted stalking when I was still a minor. My brain had it beaten into me that if I was clingy towards people they would hate me and not want to be my friend. As a result I experience clinginess by violently wishing I could be close to them while trying to hide that from them and give them space. If anything this presents itself as persecutory jealousy. It is something I am trying to stop doing.

I also apologize for friends trying to do things with me, encourage me, socialize with me, and me being too exhausted to appreciate or join in. This is equal parts my distress at my living situation, my mental health, and my physical health. I spend most of my life far too exhausted to consistently socialize except for manic periods where I am desperate to do so. Again, the solution to this issue is post-covid changes to my living situation and the resources I have access to.

The point that I think sums this up though is that I cannot keep living like this. I will continue breaking down, I will continue having episodes, and I will continue lashing out. Violence is and always has been my answer to fear in situations I cannot change or leave.

I don’t know if there’s a way to fix this during covid, but I KNOW there isn’t an immediate way to fix this before I get my service dog.

Additionally: I do not want to be institutionalized, being trapped in a psych ward when you are not explicitly a danger to yourself or someone else will only make you worse, and calling police for “wellness checks” on disabled people who have ugly/scary mental illnesses will get them killed. Please understand that the system itself will not help me. I need to find a different solution. This unfortunately does involve jumping through hoops that I cannot at this time.

Again, I would like to state that I will be trying to return online, but I will not be engaging with people who haven’t explicitly come TO ME until my doctor, my psychiatrist, and those people themselves, let me know that I am allowed to do so. Please be advised that I may not currently be in a safe place mentally.

I will be trying to interact with art and media that I enjoy with minimal social contact with people outside of those who have come to me and are okay with that. Stressful things i will make every attempt to ignore.

[statticscribbles]

Nurse

Summary: Swarchie; Sick-fic, Archie gets sick from Sweet Pea’s sister

Archie refuses to go to the doctor; there’s no need he assures. He knows exactly what’s wrong with him. He knows exactly how long it’s going to last and how sick and long it’ll take him to recover. He also knows he’s never going over to visit Sweet Pea’s sister unless he knows she’s not sick as he’d spent half the time he was there; supposedly introducing himself to her sitting awkwardly on the couch passing her a box of tissues or the glass of water. Occasionally he’d refill it from the kitchen but that was the extent of his tour of the house. He’d assured both her and Sweet Pea that he didn’t mind her being sick; and he really didn’t he just minded that he’d brought home the flu with him and was trying his best to drown it out with orange juice and excessive amounts of water.

It doesn’t work and two days later Archie is curled on his couch hiding in one of Sweet Pea’s hoodies and under three blankets he’s stolen from Sweet Pea’s bed and Sweet Pea tries not to laugh when he can just see Archie’s eyes and the top of his hair.

“Sweet Pea, remind me to send a card to your sister about how shitty this is!” Archie grumbles between coughing and Sweet Pea glares as Archie looks up from the chair he’d taken over in the student lounge. “Well if you weren’t insistent about coming to school with a fucking fever….” “What’re you gonna do? Drag me to the nurse?” Sweet pea contemplates this but before he actually can Archie’s already run off to his next class. Sweet pea decides to hunt him down, determined to make him go to the nurse to either be sent home with a fever or to assure Sweet Pea that he can in fact be in school. Archie doesn’t show up for lunch and Sweet Pea is silently hoping that he went home; instead he sighs when the nurse flags him down on the way to his next class.

“He has a fever and he said his dad is out of town.” “Yeah his dad is out of town; I tried to make him stay home but he’s really stubborn.” The nurse nods and lets Sweet Pea sign him out, the perks of being eighteen first Sweet Pea thinks as he hauls Archie up from the nurses cot on towards his bike. “Just hold on and if you’re feeling up for it we can get Pop’s later.” Archie doesn’t verbally respond just nodding and then coughing a little. “My voice…” Archie croaks out and Sweet Pea chuckles. “Yeah not surprised that went I mean you’ve been talking non stop trying to convince everyone you’re feeling fine and then you’re taking five whole minutes to cough and sneeze and bury yourself in a pile of tissues and the extra hoodies you brought.” Sweet pea grins nudging Archie’s bag when he shakes his head trying to deny it.

“And I know you took two of the blankets from the end of my bed; I don’t know how you thought I wouldn’t notice that; they’re my blankets that I sleep with every night.” “It’s as much my blanket as-” “Hush; save your strength…” “Asshole.” Archie coughs and Sweet Pea laughs. “You can claim it’s your blanket all you want because of how often you sleep here but that doesn’t mean shit when you compare it to how long I’ve had the blanket; or the fact I bought it; for myself!” Sweet Pea grins and Archie smirks back.

“You’re arguing with someone who is sick? And invalid; how could you be so cruel my love; to wound someone who already is wounded.” Archie half croaks half whispers as his voice dips in and out while he sneezes and coughs. “You have at least four more days of this; I’m not asking you to rest your voice; I’m telling.” “Next you’ll be taking the blankets from me and making me make my own soup….” Archie chuckles but it just comes out as a raspy cough and a round of sniffles which Sweet Pea offers a glass of water and some medication for the slowly building symptoms he’s getting.

“Like I said; four more days of this at least.” “I bet you get it after me.” Archie huffed before he coughs once more turning towards the TV that Sweet Pea has put on.

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