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makeste · 4 years ago

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BnHA Chapter 299: No Chains Left

Previously on BnHA: Horikoshi was all “and then AFO broke out all of the inmates from six other prisons and took a nap. well anyways, here’s the hospital angst.” Kacchan woke up two days later and was all, “WAIT BUT HOW ARE DEKU AND TODOROKI AND ALL OF THE OTHER CHARACTERS EXCEPT IIDA DOING” and then we cut to Shouto’s room where the other U.A. kids were sitting around being Mutually Traumatized and giving each other moral support and such. Everyone was alll, “...”, and then the rest of the Todofam showed up, INCLUDING POSSIBLY REI?! which, omg. The chapter ended with Kacchan STOMPING THROUGH THE HALLS all “WHADDYA MEAN DEKU HASN’T WOKEN UP YET”, dragging along Satou and Mineta behind him, fueled by the power of ALL OF THE FUCKS HE NOW GIVES. He gives so many fucks now you guys. This boy cares so much he can probably deduct it on his taxes.

Today on BnHA: SPEAKING OF PEOPLE WHO GIVE A LOT OF FUCKS, the story cuts abruptly to Hawks, freshly recovering from his near-death experience, and pondering the threads that have weaved the tapestry of his life and led him to this moment. Basically he grew up in poverty with his Jerk Dad and Jerk Mom until his dad got arrested one day and his mom sent him off to go Find Money Or Something, and so he rescued a busload of people and found himself a new career. Back in the present day, Hawks and Jeanist ride around town in Jeanist’s Jamborghini having awkward encounters with civilians in a country on the brink of social collapse, and visiting Hawks’s mother’s home. Hawks is all “I know from an outsider’s perspective it must look like my life currently sucks, but now that the HPSC is gone, my public image is shot, and my parents are finally out of my life, I’m actually feeling SURPRISINGLY GOOD.” Anyway so he’s gonna go meet up with Endeavor now, and p.s. this chapter was fucking fantastic though, damn.

oh my god?? is this Hawks narration?? something about him growing up watching the heroes on TV and thinking of them as fictional characters

okay I scrolled down a little bit more to see the rest of that “Keigo” panel, and wow

this is basically a shed. poor boy definitely grew up rough. let me tell you guys, I came in here ready for some BakuDeku shenanigans; I was not prepared for Hawks Flashback Angst. I AM HERE FOR IT, but also wow I gotta brace myself now lol

HELLO MISTER HAWKS’S JERK DAD, SIR

BnHA sure does have an array of Jerk Dads, doesn’t it. makes me appreciate characters like Masaru and JirouDad all the more for bucking the trend

anyway. so Horikoshi, you really thought that one itty bitty chapter of hospital catharsis would be enough to calm us all before you went right back to showing us child abuse huh. my god man can we rest

BABY HAWKS

swear to god this kid can’t be more than five or six, and yet he has this completely blank look on his face even with his dad looming over him being all threatening and shit. like he’s shut down his emotions to protect himself. imagine what has to happen to a child for him to have learned this at such a young age. fuck

AND MEANWHILE THIS GUY

don’t mingle with humans?? not “other” humans, just humans?? what is this implying here?? and also holy shit Hawks definitely didn’t inherit his looks from his dad orz

then again he doesn’t really bear much of a resemblance to his strung-out mom here either

omg omg omg. and this child is basically trapped here in this environment with these two people. this explains a SHITLOAD about Hawks’s personality though you guys. his ability to completely separate his real thoughts from the face he presents to the outside world. his pragmatic approach to analyzing and solving problems. his layers of emotional walls. turns out almost none of that came from the HPSC training -- that was all learned hands-on in his own personal do-or-die survival nightmare childhood!! oh, boy

and small wonder then that he latched on to Endeavor so strongly if he really is the one who brought down his dad and inadvertently saved him from this. also, just putting this out there, I know people are always talking about him and Dabi being foils, and I think it’s very interesting how Touya grew up in a household where he saw firsthand the dark side of hero society, and so ended up becoming a villain in order to bring it down. whereas young Keigo had almost the exact opposite experience, growing up experiencing the dark side of villain society and becoming a hero in order to bring about a world where no one else has to experience that. just. both of them are so determined not to become their fathers. some interesting parallels there

so Hawks was sort of an accident after his parents had “thanks for helping me not get caught after I killed that guy” sex, and now this little boy is growing up in squalor and being beaten by his father for things like Sitting In The Wrong Out-Of-The-Way Corner Trying Not To Be A Bother To Anybody. holy fuck. this is so rough to read through you guys

wait so does Jerk Dad have a an eyeball manipulation quirk?? because he doesn’t have the wings like his son, but wth are these things??

this presumably also means that Keigo has never been to school or anything either. he basically doesn’t exist. he thinks heroes are fictional characters, he doesn’t realize that they’re real people. these are people who could help him if he could escape and find them, but he doesn’t know, and they don’t know about him

OH MY GOD HE’S JUST SITTING IN HIS CORNER HUGGLING HIS ENDEAVOR PLUSH OH MY GOD

how could this child possibly have an anti-fandom when he’s done NOTHING WRONG HIS ENTIRE LIFE. huh. just explain that to me. lol I mean I’m not looking to pick a fight with anyone, but also, MAYBE I AM, idk?? this kid has gotten me all riled up lmao

anyways, Protect Keigo 2021, and thank you Horikoshi for these three very terrible pages. I am pleased to inform you that you’ve effectively gotten your point across and you may now commence saving this kid already

YAY

oh no, Keigo’s dumbass jerk dad tried to steal a car and the popo nabbed his ass and now his mom can’t just sit around neglecting her VERY YOUNG SON all day long, oh horrors. sorry lady my tiny violin is on backorder. just imagine that I’m playing a very sarcastic song on it for you

anyway so what are you gonna do now, abandon him? I can hardly imagine he’d be worse off, if anything it might be a near-instant improvement

LMAO HE’S ALL “WAIT WHAT ENDEAVOR’S A REAL FUCKING DUDE?!”

AND THEY SAY THAT A HERO CAN SAVE US~~~~ I’M NOT GONNA STAND HERE AND WAAAAAIT~~~~~ I’LL HOLD ONTO THE WINGS OF THE EAGLES, WATCH AS WE ALL FLY AWAAAAAAY~~~~

lol what a randomly pivotal moment in his young life. TIME TO GO MAKE THESE MEMES INTO DREAMS YOUNG ONE

anyway so his mom freaked out and grabbed him and they wound up at a train station with her TELLING HIM TO GO GET HER SOME MONEY, oh my god. SURE MOM LEMME JUST WALTZ RIGHT ON DOWN TO THE “JOBS FOR FIVE-YEAR-OLDS” STORE AND TELL THEM I NEED SOME CASH. ffff manifesting someone to come help him in 3... 2...

...

SIGH, JUST GO RESCUE THE PEOPLE FROM THE BUS, KEIGO. is this the outfit he was wearing when that happened?? it must be, right?? I can’t imagine them surviving more than a couple days out here unless this starts getting REALLY dark in a way I know that even Horikoshi won’t explore, so yeah. cut to the HPSC now please. never thought we’d be glad to see them. I mean sure, it may be an “out of the frying pan...” case, but good god

THANK YOU!!

and I guess it was his mom’s eyeball quirk then. anyway, whatever, see you again never, hopefully. lol oh man. thaaaat, was upsetting. need to center myself here for a sec. NAMASTE

OH YAY THE PRESENT

so we cut from Baby Hawks Angst straight to Present Day Hawks Angst, huh. not that this exhausted and traumatized lil lad isn’t still a baby to me too, I’ll have you know

BEST JEANIST, ALWAYS WITH THE JOKES

“WHEW, THOUGHT YOU DIED ON ME FOR A SEC THERE KID.” lmao. Caleb will no doubt ruin this by making his word choice all stiffly formal as usual, so I’m just going to treasure this “WOULD YOU LOOK AT THAT, I’M FRESH OUT OF FUCKS” version of Jeanist while I can

look at him, driving his Jeanistmobile

again, is it any wonder Kacchan was bitching about Endeavor’s dinky little car when he was used to riding around town in style like this. anyone else staring at this panel trying to figure out how this car is somehow secretly made of jeans

NOOOOO

FUCK YOU DABI LMAO. PUTTING THESE VOICE ACTORS OUT OF A JOB ONE BY ONE

anyway so Jeanist is all “GOOD THING IT’S THE FUTURE AND WE’RE SO GOOD AT MEDICAL SCIENCE” to handwave how Hawks went from one step shy of being a very handsome corpse, to sitting around texting Jeanist in a car all of two days later

OH MY GOD, AND FINALLY AN EXPLANATION FOR THIS

wait a minute. I’m so confused lmfao. soooo, was Hawks all “anyway, here’s Jeanist’s dead body, you can examine it but please don’t look at him too closely and also I’m gonna need that back unharmed.” how tf did you pull that off lmao

(ETA: also isn’t this technically confirmation of the ol’ Noumu Jeanist theory lol. I’m gonna go ahead and say it is.)

NO BUT PLEASE, CONTINUE. I unironically love reading Horikoshi’s overly convoluted “SEE IT’S NOT A PLOT HOLE” explanations

lkldslfk so wait, you’re telling me Hawks convinced Dabi and the League to put Jeanist’s body in storage, and basically just hoped they wouldn’t use him for any experiments until he could put his plan into action and have the HPSC’s people break in and find and revive him?? WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG. A FOOLPROOF PLAN IF I’VE EVER HEARD ONE

fff this man really asked Jeanist to risk it all to prop up his little cover story, and Jeanist was all “sure why not” omfg. anyways, thanks for recapping all of this out loud for no particular reason in your car conversation you two

LMAO NOW WHAT

TROUBLE YOU SAY? GOOD THING THE NEW NUMBER ONE HERO IS ON THE JOB THEN

okay no it’s just some random thugs strolling around terrorizing the downtown. fuck ‘em. so Jeanist is making short work of them now

uh oh

won’t come? not can’t, but won’t?? what???

WOW

well I guess that makes the local heroes A BUNCH OF SHITHEADS now doesn’t it?? jesus

and okay, serious question, if the cops are spread too thin and the heroes have literally walked out on the job, what exactly is stopping everyone from deciding to use their quirks to defend themselves, legal or not? nothing, as far as I can tell. society just got a hell of a lot more chaotic

anyway so this is an interesting panel here

man, Dabi really did pull it off, didn’t he. well anyway so here’s that better world all of the villains were wanting, you guys! isn’t it so great?? everyone’s terrified and angry and losing hope and society is inches away from collapsing into total anarchy! but hey, at least we exposed the number one hero as a hypocrite

anyway so what are these guys up to

fucking hell, he’s visiting his mom. I really wasn’t prepared to commit this much emotional energy towards reading this chapter today. BUT VERY WELL, WE PRESS ON

?? wait she’s not there?

is this supposed to explain how Dabi knew who Hawks really was? except that there’s the little matter of how he even know where to find his mother in the first place. feels like we’re still missing something there, but oh well

OH MY GOD

RHA I TAKE BACK EVERY WORD I EVER SPOKE AGAINST YOU. YOU ARE A SCANLATION GROUP FILLED WITH ANGELS LMAO. I WILL TAKE THIS PANEL IN MY HANDS, AND TREASURE IT AND KEEP IT SAFE

ANYWAY, BECAUSE MY TIRED BIRD SON’S LIFE SUCKED SO MUCH ALREADY, IT TURNS OUT HE’S ACTUALLY PLEASED WITH THIS NEW TURN OF EVENTS LOL HOW ABOUT THAT

GOOD FOR YOU BBY. YOU GO OUT THERE AND BE YOUR OWN PERSON

and in all seriousness, I love that identity he chooses -- chooses, because it actually is him making a choice now, possibly for the very first time in his life -- is “guy who helps people”, though. it really is nothing short of miraculous that he held on to that kind of optimism and desire to do good even with everything he’s been through. there were so many times he could have chosen to turn his back on the world in retaliation for the way it treated him. but he didn’t!! and here he is now, finally free, and what he wants to do with the rest of his life now is simply to help others. anyway please excuse me for a moment, I need to go find some sort of basket or a big vase to put all of my fresh new Hawks Feels in, pardonne-moi

YEAH BOIIIIII

“FIRST ORDER OF BUSINESS, MISTER JEANIST, WHERE DID YOU FIND YOUSELF THAT SWEETASS CAR.” hey, all I’m saying is if this boy’s wings really aren’t growing back, he’s gonna need to find himself a new means of transportation y’know?

oh my god you guys it’s a flashback to his mom buying him the Endeavor plushie when he was like two because, and I quote, ALL MIGHT WAS TOO EXPENSIVE

oh my god oh my god. my boy out here with a new lease on life finding hope in the darkest of times

wasn’t your throat supposed to be all fucked up lmao. Horikoshi was suddenly all “oh shit the VAs are gonna be pissed at me if I keep this up huh”

“that’s why Bubaigawara was such a great guy” motherfucker IT IS A TERRIBLE DAY FOR RAIN. FORECAST SAID NOTHING ABOUT THIS

:’)

yes ma’am. yes indeed. confirmed, I really will straight up fight some motherfuckers for this child. well not really, but YOU KEEP YOUR DISCOURSE OFF MY LAWN AND OUT OF MY BLOG YOU HEAR. THIS IS A HAWKS-FRIENDLY SPACE. WE RESPECT TAKAMI KEIGO IN THESE STREETS

and he’s saying (or is he thinking?? what a weirdly shaped speech bubble this is) that even if what Dabi said about the Todoroki household is true, “I’m not sure it’s the same now.” which happens to be ABSOLUTELY CORRECT. man this whole chapter really is all about saying “fuck the past” and moving forward and I am living for it

SON!!!!

“the first step is at my beginning” fklkjlk. what an iconic fucking line??

AND HIS WINGS!!!! THEY ACTUALLY ARE GROWING BACK AHHHHHHH. “PUT A RAINCHECK ON THAT CAR, JEANIST-SAN.” THE HAWKSMOBILE CAN WAIT, RIGHT NOW HE HAS TO GO INSERT HIMSELF BACK INTO THE TODODRAMA WHETHER THEY LIKE IT OR NOT

you guys. I came here ready for some BAKUDEKU HOSPITAL ANGST, and I got DIDDLY SHIT of that, and none of my other kids were even in this chapter, but!!! ASK ME IF I CARE LMAO omg. because bird son is hanging with his new best friend, and he’s out here Finding Himself and picking up the pieces and putting them back together stronger than ever because RESILIENCE HAS A NAME, AND IT’S SPELLED H-A-W-K-S, and you guys. profound, my love for this child. holy shit. hey google, play Silence by Marshmello

#bnha 299 #takami keigo #hawks (bnha)#best jeanist #bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #bnha manga spoilers #makeste reads bnha #I found peace in your violence #can't tell me there's no point in trying #I'm at one #and I've been quiet for too long

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dhaaruni · 3 years ago

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I appreciate your answer, but I do find it strange when married couples maintain separate accounts. My husband and I have one joint checking and savings that both our paychecks go into and all our bills get paid out of. We co-own our house. Everything is filed jointly.

I mentioned my situation because you keep talking about women who make less than men, but we are the opposite and I guess unusual. I hardly ever see anyone talk about what it's like for a wife to make more than her husband. Our split is like 60/40 so it's not outrageous, but still.

I also think it's just kind of weird to fixate on income and money so much. There are other valuable contributions that can be brought to a marriage. What about stay at home parents? Are they all necessarily gold diggers or freeloaders? I don't think so.

This is just my stance, I'm not saying what you should or shouldn't do. People don't normally talk about women that make more than men because most households aren't that way.

I don't see anything wrong with paying for shared goods and services from a shared account like a mortgage or bills, but when it comes to stuff like my SoulCycle classes or one of his hobbies I don't partake in, that's on each individual to pay for. I'm an adult, I don't need my husband to pay for my luxury goods that he isn't using.

I'm not saying that stay at home parents are freeloaders or gold diggers but the thing about divorce being socially acceptable is that it's also socially acceptable to file for divorce for no reason at all. In the past, women couldn't easily get divorced if their husbands were abusive or whatever but on the flip side, men didn't generally flat out abandon their wives and didn't provide for them financially even if they treated them like dirt and flaunted their mistresses or whatever. In the 21st century, it's not unfathomable that a woman marries a guy in her 20s, quits work, and 20 years later, the guy decides he wants to get divorced and she hasn't worked in 20 years and has no way of providing for herself or their kids because getting back into the workforce after not working is really difficult. That's the whole premise of the show, Younger! Alimony isn't the same as having a full-time salary with benefits!

I fixate on income and money because it's very important to me that I'm in the green always, and I also don't want to be forced into a drastic lifestyle change if I happened to get divorced. If I wake up one fine day when I'm 45 and my husband wants a divorce, I don't want to have to downgrade my lifestyle to provide for myself, I don't want to stop getting my $50 manicures, I don't want to give up buying myself nice bags and shoes and electronics, I don't want to be on my husband's medical insurance and have to shift all my brain meds to ones covered by a different insurance plan that I can afford like these meds work, and not all insurance plans cover them. And, to have that security, I need my own money and my own career, and to have built up that security over the years like this is deeply personal stuff and if you don't feel that way, it's not up to me to tell you how to feel.

I believe love lasts forever but I'm not going to trust my whole life's savings to another person. I don't intend on getting divorced if I get married, but I'm still signing a prenup if and when I get married. It's about my own money that I have saved up before the marriage and it's also whatever my parents may leave me like if they choose to. I don't trust the overwhelming majority of straight men to be like my dad and simply go "I'm not going to touch your money" without a prenup, which is what my dad did with what my mom's father left her when he died. My dad has every right to that stuff by Indian marriage law, and he has the dignity to go "I grew up poor and worked hard, and I'm not touching anything I didn't earn because I don't need it" but not all men are like that. My mother signed a lot of that off to charity and gave it to her brother for her mother's care because my mom doesn't like the idea of profiting from her father's death, so it would be really egregious if my dad decided he wanted to use it, but without a prenup, he'd reasonably be able to access it and there's nothing my mom could do.

That all makes sense right?

#anonymous #answered #finance talk

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supermiraculousladybug · 4 years ago

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The Disturbing Dark Truth about Cat Noir.

Cat Noir is the loveable dorky flirtatious jokester from Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir who loves to flirt with Ladybug and making her laugh by using jokes and puns but is he really a jokester or is he using jokes and puns as a coping mechanism to escape the abuse , neglect , cruel and harsh world he's born in? But whatever it is it's obvious that everything in Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir is nothing but a figment of Cat Noir's imagination and is actually an abused mentally unstable boy with special needs who sees the world differently than others due to having a childish-like personality and sorta kinda behavior.

Family Life Income.

Born to a prostitute with an unknown father, Cat Noir comes from a lesser fortune poor family who are struggling to make ends meet and making money. He's an complete opposite Adrien Agreste who lives a life of luxury and wealth while Cat Noir lives a life of slums and poverty but growing up in a ghetto-like town side of Paris wasn't easy it's full nothing but violence , rape , robbery , burglary , aggravated assault , total violent crimes , motor vehicle theft , total property crimes , battery , prostitution , street gang , kidnapping , sex trafficking , child trafficking , street gang violence , bribery , fraud , racketeering , drug trafficking and vandalism but it's sad to see Cat Noir grew up in a horrible neighborhood side of Paris where this "village" is one of the worse shanty town neighborhoods that evolved ghetto crimes which it gave Cat Noir paranoid trauma for life.

Clothing , home life and house.

Clothing.

Since Cat Noir grew up in the slums of Paris, his mother barely could afford clothes so she made his clothing from a left over fabric from a trash can and gave him her old clothes which surprisingly it fits him. So technically he shares clothes with his mother but it's sometimes he wears his dad's old clothes. His mother is a seamstress so it makes sense she made Cat Noir's clothes.

Home life.

Cat Noir comes from an abusive household where it's just him and his younger half brother, Connor get punished by their mother because they're both born male and look like their fathers but it's just their mother but sometimes their stepfather would beat them because he dislike their fathers and both Cat Noir and Connor look like their dads thus their stepfather abused them physically.

House.

Cat Noir lives in a small shack house that is a mixture between a cabin and a cottage that is located in a Western Shanty town, one of the worst ghetto neighborhood in Paris , France. In the Western Shanty town, they have cheaper old wireless TVs from either the 90s or 70s and have old TV show programs from 1920s-late 1990s but for cartoons from 1910s-late 1990s as well. Cat Noir and his family slept on an old abandoned dirty mattresses that are so uncomfortable to lay on and often the children (mainly Cat Noir) gets bed bug bites at night. Cat Noir and his family sat on old abandoned couch but mainly his mother get stoned and drunk on that couch.

Forced child labor.

From age 9-12, Cat Noir was forced to be a sex slave stripper against his will but he was taken out of school by forcedly "dropping out" during the 4th grade and ever since then the principle of Françoise Dupont Elementary School was and still wondering why Cat Noir wasn't at school like he's suppose to be. Then he was sold to Copycat, a pedophile neighbor who has sexual fantasies of Cat Noir and sexually abusing him but Copycat a lot of horrible things and stuff to Cat Noir

Molesting Cat Noir.

Raping Cat Noir.

Giving Cat Noir bruises , scars , chafing or bite marks and bleeding in/on his genital area.

Masturbating Cat Noir's teeny weeny peeny.

Smacking Cat Noir's bottom in sexual way.

Forcing Cat Noir to dress up as a french maid for sexual purposes.

Forcing Cat Noir to be in bed with him.

Removing Cat Noir's clothes so he can just have "fun" with him.

Turning Cat Noir from a sex slave to a house slave.

Raping Cat Noir in his sleep causing his insomnia to be worsen up badly.

Touching Cat Noir inappropriately from his whole body to his teeny weeny peeny.

Using sexual punishments on Cat Noir.

Using erotic spanking on Cat Noir's bottom for sexual purposes.

And Smacking Cat Noir's bottom as a form of sexual harassment.

Due to this harassment it causes Cat Noir to be extremely afraid of adult men because of the fear that they could sexually abused and harassed him even tho they're not gonna do it but Cat Noir was and is traumatized by this experiences it made him think they would do it without excepting it but he didn't want to be around grown men and not even his male aids he can't trust but everytime a grown men sit next to Cat Noir, he would cry because he amused they would molest him.

"Operation saving Cat Noir from a child molester"

In October of 2013, 12-year-old Marinette Dupain-Cheng was looking for the 10th and last child to be sold to a pedophile but it was no luck, until a random guy shows up to Marinette and tell her where that kid is but once she found him passed out on the floor, it turns out he's the boy that Ladybug was talking about and he was wearing a black tank crop top-like shirt and a blacker granny panties-like undergarments although he was underweight and severely malnourished. After Marinette notice the poor living conditions Cat Noir was in, she decide to take Cat Noir to the hospital immediately to get medical attention, once she and Cat Noir got to the hospital everyone knew Cat Noir was one of 10 children who were sold to pedophiles by their parents for money and were sexually abused. When Cat Noir woke up in a hospital bed, he sees Marinette and went speechless because he didn't know how to interact with people very well and Cat Noir mistaken Marinette for Ladybug because she and Ladybug looked like and because Cat Noir is insane-like crazy, he's unable to know the difference so it went like this

Cat Noir after he woke up: *seeing Marinette* Ladybug?

Marinette: no i'm not Ladybug🤔.

Cat Noir: *confused* then who are you?

Marinette: my name is Marinette Dupain-Cheng, what's your name?

Cat Noir: *realizing* wait Marinette as in Marinette Dupain-Cheng, daughter of the best baker in Paris?

Marinette: yes

Cat Noir: nice to meet you Marinette🙂😄😊.

Marinette: same here😁.

Cat Noir: well then i'm Cat Noir Athanase Blake-Kyle.

Marinette: *realizing* wait your Cat Noir? As in Cat Noir Athanase Blake-Kyle, son of a seamstress prostitute?

Cat Noir: *sigh* yes I'm the son of a hooker who steals your man for no reason😓.

Marinette: so what's with the outfit you were wearing?

Cat Noir: I work as a stripper and a sex slave😣😖😟😫.

Marinette: why?

Cat Noir: to help my mom make ends meet.

Marinette: I get it but why as a stripper or sex slave?

Cat Noir: I had no choice but to be a sex slave stripper and because my mom wanted me to work in the sex industry due to me having a material of being someone's object or toy.

Marinette: so what you're basically someone's property or something?

Cat Noir: yes i'm nothing but everyone's "favorite" little toy to "play" and have "fun" with.

Marinette: were you uncomfortable with it?

Cat Noir: honestly yes because I don't wanna hook up with someone I don't know for money.

Marinette: so you were forced to do this against your will?

Cat Noir: yes exactly that's what it is.

Cat Noir: *bursting into tears* then 3 years ago, I was 9 years old when my mom sold me to an artist for money😭.

Marinette: wait how old are you now?

Cat Noir: *stops crying and sniff* I just turn 12 not so long ago.

Marinette: i'm 12 too.

Cat Noir: wait so we're the same age then?

Marinette: yeah

Cat Noir: What a coincidence.

Marinette: We're born in the same year but just 2 months apart.

Cat Noir: What do you mean by "we're born in the same year but just 2 months apart"?

Cat Noir: When is your birthday?

Marinette: My birthday is on July 22, 2001 and yours?

Cat Noir: interesting my is on September 25, 2001.

Cat Noir: *realizing* you're right we're born 2 months apart.

Marinette: that's right

Cat Noir: What does it mean?

Marinette: it means i'm 2 months older than you and you're 2 months younger than me.

Cat Noir: make sense

Cat Noir: But I was born 2 months premature.

Marinette: What do you mean "2 months premature"?

Cat Noir: I was originally suppose to be born on November 25, 2001 but I came out 2 months premature.

Marinette: Oh so you're a preemie?

Cat Noir: yes

Cat Noir: *arms and legs starting to shake uncontrollably*

Marinette: are you okay?

Cat Noir: *arms and legs still shaking uncontrollably* yeah why?

Marinette: because why are your arms and legs shaking-like crazy?

Cat Noir: *arms and legs still shaking uncontrollably-like crazy hard* sorry I have tremors.

Marinette: Tremors?

Cat Noir: Yeah I still have tremors since birth but sometimes i'll get seizures.

Marinette: Oh that it explains while we were on our way to the hospital, your whole body and head was shaking for 3 minutes.

Marinette: *realizes while reading facts on the article called "Crack babies" on the internet* are you a crack baby or something?

Cat Noir: Crack baby?

Marinette: Yeah are you?

Cat Noir: What's a crack baby?

Marinette: A crack baby is a baby born to a crack addict mother who used crack cocaine during pregnancy.

Marinette but you're a 12-year-old boy who still have seizures and tremors.

Marinette: so I guess you're a crack kid.

Cat Noir: What's a crack kid?

Marinette: A crack kid is when a mother who smokes crack while having a kid, when the kid is born it will be a crack baby/retarded or have problems.

Marinette: So that's what you are, a crack kid because your mother smoke crack cocaine while she was carrying you in the womb.

Cat Noir: it's not the only thing have because of my mommy's neglection action.

Marinette: What do you mean?

Cat Noir: mommy is not just a drug addict but she's also an alcoholic and smoker too.

Marinette: I look at a picture of your brain and I realize your brain is small , malformed , severely damaged and is permanent damage in your brain.

Then after that Marinette took care of Cat Noir in the hospital by being a mother figure towards him with her maternal instincts because it is something Cat Noir's mother never done before since she always ignoring him and Cat Noir needed a good parental figures and guidance in his life due to having bad parents, he doesn't know better but then again Marinette knew Cat Noir has a hard time understanding other people and everything around him in general.

Cat Noir is an autistic individual who can't understand everyone's social cues very well due to lack of interaction he barely had. Cat Noir was diagnosed with Low-functioning Autism , Asperger's Syndrome and Severe Autism or Level 3 Autism since he was 5 weeks old and due to his diagnosis, he has troubles of looking people in the eye , having interacting with others , living up to everyone's expectations of him what he should or shouldn't do including Ladybug's expectation of him how he should or shouldn't act when he's in public or when it comes to Ladybug forcing him , understanding boundaries or personal space , asking people what he wants or permission or where he wants to go , understanding sarcasm , when other people's jokes or when they're joking or when others don't understand his jokes.

Is Ladybug really convinctive , manipulative and abusive towards Cat Noir?

Ladybug and Cat Noir have been friends since 3rd grade but as they got older it was Ladybug who outgrown Cat Noir because she's more mature than Cat Noir due to him being immature , childish and baby-like but one of her other friends told Ladybug she's better off with someone who's more mature not someone who's baby-like person who can't handle "big kids" stuff and she frequently prefers hanging out with mature guys than Cat Noir so she decide to avoid Cat Noir at all cost and she forced him to grow up to act his age so their so called "friendship" isn't ruined in fact she verbally abused him for not maturing and acting his age in which Ladybug would yell at him and insulting his baby-like personality. Ladybug convinced Cat Noir his imaginations are real and she does it so often that the more she convinces him, the more Cat Noir believes it but then it got to the point where Cat Noir thinks everything he believes in his imaginations are a reality. Through every episodes of Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir, Ladybug gets easily annoyed with Cat Noir's childish-babyish personality even tho he acts like a child or baby at times, he can't help it and be he's pressured to be "normal" , "average" and "perfect" that it's starting to stressed him out. In the New York special, Ladybug is excited to go to New York City with her classmates for French-American Friendship Week but she realizes she needs to tell Cat Noir about her absence and she gave cat plush toy with a ladybug-printed remote bottom on it but Cat Noir presses the remote button several times in excitement, making the toy in Ladybug's hand squeak and he presses the remote button again which it made Ladybug groan in annoyance. But when Cat Noir was in New York City, Ladybug was angry at him because he's suppose to be in Paris and is too insane-like crazy to come due to the risk of being put into a mental asylum or hospital.

Altho this is a big theory, it's obvious Cat Noir has a problem and why it seems unreal so I hope like it.

#marichat #chat noir #cat noir #ladynoir #ChildhoodRuined #MiraculousLadybug

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solaneceae · 5 years ago

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MY HUMAN!EGOS AU

i got a surge of inspiration and started creating my own versions of the egos! its still a work in progress but i love them to bits and im really excited to share them

JACKIE

grew up in an abusive household, emotional and sometimes physical abuse

parents screamed at each other all the fucking time, father was an alcoholic

Left home as soon as he was able to live by himself (16)

he’s 22 now

poor

trans boi, on T, wears a binder cuz he can’t afford top surgery

lives in an apartment with two roommates: Max, a philipino sound designer and independent musician (they/them) and their girlfriend Nilanjana (Nana), a buff training coach from indian descent

Jackie is in a queerplatonic relationship with them: they cuddle and kiss on the forehead during movie nights and all that cute shit

he has a part-time day job to pay the rent and bills: he gives self-defense lessons

he drinks his respect women juice

vigilante at night. gets hurt a lot. his roommates think he fights in an illegal fight club for extra cash and are worried about him

wants to save people and spread positivity wherever he goes

but he has the wrong way to go about it

basically he does the PMA thing wrong and thinks any kind of negativity is bad and tries to force himself to be happy all the time.

not healthy, someone help this poor boi

anger issues, undiagnosed ptsd and ADHD

antsy boi! stimmy boi! He’s always bouncing on his feet or humming a tune or fiddling with his hair

aromantic asexual

pure of heart, dumb of ass. seriously, he’s such a dumb, but he does have street smarts

vitiligo!!

light blue eyes, dyes his brown hair lime green

extrovert, loves people

the kind of guy to record himself doing parkour and post it on tiktok

team hot cocoa

for the love of god please don’t give him coffee, he’s enough of a jitterbug already

wants a dog. prolly needs an emotional support one.

plays the drums. Fished a beat-up set somewhere, would like a proper one

fights with his fists and a wooden staff

no special powers, just self-taught fighting skills, natural flexibility and talent at acrobatics and rigorous training

MARVIN

he was born with green cat eyes, the physical representation of his extremely potent magic. parents were freaked out, and basically hid him away

had no control over his powers as a baby, would wreak havoc around him. think Mob from Mob Psycho 100

the upper side of his face was badly burned when he lost control of his powers as a toddler, so he wears masks to hide the scars. the cat one is just the one he wears most often

“hey, nice mask!” “it’s a prosthetic.” “...oh.” (it’s not that bad really, he’s just really self-conscious about it)

he was homeschooled his whole life and generally wasn’t allowed to go out much, so his social life/skills are nonexistent

his parents are famous fashion designers

they’re super rich and travel the world and send him a ridiculous amount of money every month

they say it’s for work but the real reason is that they couldn’t deal with having a “freak” as a son but couldn’t abandon him without getting bad PR

so instead they just took their distance and left him to live in a big-ass mansion by himself as soon as he was old enough (10 years old)

they dont really care what he does. last time they called him was when he was 13

last time they sent him a birthday card was when he was 18

now he’s 24

(and at this point he makes me think of bruce wayne lmao. he needs an alfred)

since he has money and home, he doesn’t need a job, so he just stays cooped up in the property and almost never leaves, he orders his food and groceries to be delivered to him

he’s basically a hermit at this point. and a huge nerd

he tries to use his natural magic as little as possible, (hello trauma my old friend) so he still has flimsy control over it

instead he dabbles into wicca and the occult to do stuff

A bookworm, quite serious, dresses like a hipster art school student. he wears SAROUEL PANTS.

glasses!! Big round rimless glasses!! soft!!!!

long brown hair, messy bun, dyes the tips dark green and purple

disaster gay

“sleep? what’s that? i only know coffee”

has three cats he rescued himself: Spades, Jasper and Poppy

has a huge greenhouse linked to the main building. he likes gardening a lot, whether it’s for his craft, for cooking or just because he likes seeing plants flourish

HOW THEY BOTH MET / IDEAS AND SHIT

Jackie tried to take on a whole ass drug ring and bit more than he could chew at the time so he got beat up pretty bad. He managed to escape with his trusty grappling hook and swung around a bit before crashing through the glass ceiling of the greenhouse while Marv was tending to his plants, in the early morning.

Long story short Marv is in a panic because a complete stranger (also the only human being he’s interacted with in months) just flopped in front of him and is probably dying and he wants to call an ambulance.

jackie: *beaten black and blue and coughing up blood* jackie: oh hey how’s it goin’ marv: *distressed nerd noises* marv: oh my god who the fuck are you but also are you dying in my house im calling an ambulance- jackie: uh yeah no please dont im kinda doing illegal stuff also i cant afford it marv: marv: wh-

also what if marv calls the family’s doctor since jackie won’t go to a hospital, and it’s fucking Schneep henrik: what the fuck did you do this time marv: it wasn’t me! jackie: your family doctor scares me marv: that’s why they hired him

maybe after that jackie keeps coming to see marv and marv is like “ugh you again-” and he always come to marv whenever he gets hurt, to get patched up by schneep. he broke the ceiling two more times basically they become “hey ron hey billy” vine, its just a habit at this point.

Marv is a rich boi that doesn’t know anything about life. at this point i realize he’s like a mix of Elsa and Rapunzel, and Jackie is kinda Flynn xD Jackie just… aggressively becomes Marv’s friend despite the magic man’s reluctance, and shows him the world. love me some smart grumpy nerd/dumb happy jock friendship

jackie: im your friend now marv: wh- jackie: *drags him outside* LETS GO CLIMB A BUILDING TOGETHER-

Marvin but he’s never been in a grocery store in his entire life because he just orders super expensive pre-made meals to his house or cooks his own veggies, and he’s just amazed at the first one they go to

like “wHAT, IT’S A ROW OF FREEZERS! Remind me to install one of these at my place!”

and Jackie, who just came here for bread and milk, looks at him fondly but also is very concerned. Also he doesnt question marv’s masks, he just thinks they look cool

@tabbynerdicat it’s my bois! @lilakennedy because i know you like those two, and your love for them motivated me to develop them first

#caori's stuff #jacksepticeye #jse #jse egos #jacksepticeye egos #jackieboy man #jbm #marvin the magnificent #jse au #human!egos AU

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caldonahue · 5 years ago

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—introducing callaghan “cal” donahue as macbeth

trigger warning: murder, death, drug use and overdose, abuse, disassociation

hi friends! i’m farah, i’m twenty-two, i go by she/her pronouns, i live in the pst timezone, and i’m literally so? stoked? to be here. i don’t think i’ve ever written a character quite this dark before so this shall be interesting... beware, cal is literal trash. anyway, i just finished writing a paper right before i was supposed to turn it in at midnight *wipes the imaginary sweat off my forehead* so my brain’s a little fried. but i promise i will try to be all caught up and in full-force tomorrow. that being said, please come plot with me. you can message me on here or on my discord ( farah#1263 ). can’t wait to stir up tons of trouble with you all.

skeleton: macbeth

name: callaghan “cal” donahue

age: twenty-two

birthdate: may 25, 1997

birthplace: manhattan, new york

faceclaim: jacob elordi

gender: cis-male

pronouns: he/him

degree: business

pinterest board

cal grew up in primarily in new york in one of the richest families in america. from the outside, his family had the appearance of perfection, but underneath that facade lay years of shocking and hidden family secrets that one way or another got out into society, even if his family tried to put them down as merely rumors.

cal’s father is a highly respected but also deeply feared business man/media magnate known for his cutthroat attitude in his business dealings and personal relationships. he had an extremely difficult childhood, having been orphaned at a young age and passed from relative to relative around europe, many of whom were not very kind to him. still, he was incredibly intelligent and wanted to make something of himself, having this belief in the american dream and wanting to move there if he ever got the chance. when he got offered a full-ride to ashcroft, he ran with it. it wasn’t america, but he figured the opportunities could lead to that. (this makes cal a legacy, which is one of the reasons he was asked to join the imperium society along with his father’s global reputation). and they did. after college, he was able to use his connections and move to new york, where he founded his own start-up that eventually led to him building his own personal fortune.

cal’s mother was very much a hustler. she grew up poor in new york and at an early age, learned how to use her good looks to manipulate men for the finer things in life. she had a short stint as a model before she met cal’s father, charming him enough to call it quits with his first wife who had just given birth to his first son. underneath her obvious beauty, however, was a fiery temper and substance abuse problem. the thing about her was that she really wasn’t made to be a wife and mother. cal’s father thought he could turn her into this perfect socialite/housewife (marrying her and then proceeding to have cal and his younger sister in a very short span of time), but the task proved impossible. she was always only looking out for herself and didn’t enjoy being tied down, certainly not with kids to take care of despite the nannies his father provided. they fought constantly, and their home life was extremely unstable. it was a normal occurrence for cal to see his mother being dragged off to an institution by his father’s security guards or for his mother to use him and his sister as bait to get his father to give her money for drugs, to leave him, or sometimes just to try and get back with him.

eventually, she finally did leave, having told cal and his sister the three of them were moving to los angeles, but leaving without them and dying of a drug overdose shortly after. cal was about eight at the time and thinks he has successfully hidden this entire episode from his memory, but it’s definitely something that affects him whether he likes it or not.

while his father cares deeply for his children and has provided them a life of ease and luxury, he’s certainly not innocent in all of this mess. he’s extremely manipulative and often psychologically traumatizing to them as well. he often finds his children to be lazy and ungrateful and resents the way they’ve been raised (even though it was his own doing), while he suffered from poverty and abuse in his own childhood. he often pits the three of them against each other, always trying to see who’s the stronger, smartest, who will do whatever it takes to be the best, especially because there’s always talk about who’s going to be the one to be the one who’s going to take over when he retires. it is usually said to be cal, because it’s no secret that he’s his father’s favorite. his older brother’s too sensitive in his father’s eyes and his sister doesn’t want anything to do with the family business, although she could be a rival in her own right.

the thing about cal is that he’s a bit of a perfectionist. he was someone who was born well-connected and with many talents, but because of his father’s constant watching and pressure, he’s always afraid that all of that isn’t enough. and a lot of times, it isn’t with his father because he’s almost impossible to please. and to him, pleasing his father is everything. the man is basically a god to him. cal is the type of person who looks like everything is so easy for them. he always got top grades, was stellar in sports, and was wildly charming and popular. but these were all things he worked hard at to perfect. it took a lot of work to become the cal donahue he is today, which is why his literal fall from grace is so upsetting.

the two things cal fears the most is being a failure and going insane. his father has a habit of using his mother’s temper, drug addiction, and mental illness again him, kind of saying things like i had you don’t end up her, son (even though his father has plenty of issues himself he could pass down to him). and he is like his mother in a lot of ways. he definitely has an anger problem and has had one since he was incredibly young, but it’s always something he’s tried to cover up his entire life. the thing is, though, it’s easy to make him snap. especially when things don’t go his way or he doesn’t get what he wants. those are the two instances that really set him off. he has the need to succeed, and he doesn’t want anything short of perfect. how far his anger can go honestly really scares him (and what happened with octavia was just an example of that). for a guy who looks and acts like he has everything, he is extremely insecure and has major abandonment issues deep down, resulting from all of the trauma he’s been put through between his parents.

he loves control and loves to be made to think he’s in control. in reality, because of his father, he’s no stranger to manipulation. so it makes sense on how it easy it was for lady macbeth to get him to do what he did, even though he went much farther than what she had originally asked him to do. really, all she had to do what boost his ego and ultimately, he probably got off on thinking he’s this tough guy who’s going to protect her, because at the end of the day he’s never felt in control of his life because his dad’s always been calling the shots and making him how he wanted him to be (and what he wants him to be is kind of ambiguous... like he doesn’t really want him to be a good person, so what is it then? someone who will do anything it takes to be successful and win?)

so diving into the murder... i mean, cal is not a sociopath... i think he was raised by someone who had sociopathic tendencies and these may have rubbed off on him a bit. is he a good person? obviously not with what he’s done, but even before that i feel like that area was kind of grey. there was this cutthroat, narcissistic edge about him and while he displayed this charming mask to his peers, he may have been closer to snapping than even he himself realized. he definitely wasn’t raised to have an outstanding moral compass; he was raised to be the best, and looking at his household, chaos is kind of what he knows and thrives on even though he wouldn’t admit that. he’s the type of guy that people like to a certain extent or have to give praise to but if you’re looking closely, there’s just something off like he’s almost too successful? or maybe he never seems genuine? he definitely strives to display this image of perfection, but sometimes so much so that it’s almost unnerving? he will take the necessary measures to get what he wants and ultimately, he’s gone too far. he does feel guilty, but it’s also triggered this weird grey area on him because he’s literally got away with murder.

his mental state is just really fractured and i feel like it’s getting harder for him to decipher what is reality and what’s not if that makes sense? like he’ll go through periods of extreme guilt, especially being plagued by horrible nightmares and being haunted by octavia’s ghost. but he also has this sense of feeling a bit untouchable? maybe awakening a god complex in him? i feel like that idea was sort of already there before, but it’s just magnified now and at points he’s just on the verge of a mental breakdown, not sure what to do? confess, try to carry on with his life, experiment with the idea of being able to get away with anything?

he’s deeply terrified of people finding out, but he’s also down deep a very wounded person and feels like maybe that’s what he deserves (his father always made it out like he didn’t deserve his charmed life, he never felt worthy of his mother’s love, now he’s a murderer...)

#spectreintro #about

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rosesnink · 5 years ago

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A Glance on MOTY: Is it close to reality? + my experience as a girl with separated parents

Mother of the Year is about to end during its chapter release I've seen many of your opinions and glances on the case of MC and Guy and even MC's little daughter.

As always,this is just my opinion and reality of the custody battles and parenting,and you're welcome of sharing yours.

TW: Bullying,domestic abuse,mentions of abusive households.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

MOTY has been a crude,real and transparent book since the beggining. A new single mom coming to a new town,now fully recovered of being abandoned by her own ex husband and her daughter's father. She's now on her own with a new school and a kid to take care of.

Since the divorce was a thing here in Madrid (I don't know when it was approved in the USA 😅) this wasn't old news for marriages. Women coming and leaving with their kids or at least the ones who wants to remain to their mother's side. MC's daughter didn't have much option: her mother was the only one who still wanted to take care of her. Guy just... Left.

MC's economy is questionable having a child,not gonna lie. She haves- as we say here- her belt tightened.

Most of the single parents can miraculously manage to give their kid what they need,but most of the time means that,for parents,their life is all work and child care until they're proven to be independant and capable to take care of themselves.

And,this is is an study made on Spanish universities,most mothers are still taking care of their children at the age of,no less than 30!

They have to give up on many luxuries to maintain their kid's happiness.

We didn't truly saw MC's daughter ask her mom why isn't daddy around,or asking about their story to understand how it would've ended. Maybe they had that talk long ago?

Okay,now,settling on a new school with higher standards. While it is unusual to poor kids being accepted unless their IQ is good,they check it's a good kid and blah blah blah,being accepted can be hard and most kids can be awful.

I was literally a stranger when I came to my school and left as a stranger to most of them. But when a new kid comes to an enviroment where everyone grew up in the neighborhood,it's true that even if there's two nice people who adopt you in their group the other 80% will be hostile and cruel just because you're a stranger. The diamond acene with August clarified that.

In a school there's always a pattern of behaviour,etiquette,etc and new kids would need months or even years to adapt,and here in Spain the PTA is thankfully voluntary. We call it the AMPA.

Now,finding a partner suitable for you AND that your kid approves... Oof,that's an odyssey. I still NOT approve my mother's boyfriend but that's more personal.

Here,the MC is lucky that the LIs are amazing. But finding someone who is willing to settle down on a domestic life in today's society is hard. Even if they're parents,they like their bubble.

I cannot give my opinion about the PTA because my mother never attended one– because of her deafness,she hates those Fathers and Mothers reunions because she's the only deaf parent and normally and sadly,everyone will listen with someone who can hear literally everything that's going on.

Now,with the return of Guy to MC's life is... Groundbreaking. While since the first moment I had my father by my side... It was all an illusion my brain created. He was like Guy,he was there but I was only an accesory for him. He's got even his perfectly gaslighted Faye! Younger,sweeter,... Everything my dad couldn't have of my mom

We didn't even saw the grandparents! And most of them here in Spain are actually spending more time with the kids! At least my grandparents had been an important aspect of my raising and I was kinda dissapointed that we didn't get to saw the rest of MC's family and their thoughts about her and Guy,because their opinion could've had a great impact on the story.

As I was saying,now children making besties quick as they do enemies– it's an amusing truth. In my kindergarten I had 5 different best friends and 4 boyfriends that I shared with my twin! That made my father roll his eyes. I'd have dates with them on the snack time and all that stuff. My mom just laughed at this.

And now I'm an useless lesbian haha

It is normally difficult to get along with the parent of your kid's best friend. But Thomas and MC's dynamic is surprisingly great... And unusual irl. Sorry ladies.

The thing is,it's difficult to let in a stranger to your territory. And it's understable. Excusable? Not at all.

And now,Tinsley's rule on the high school? It's awfully true. The teachers and principals will always win on these cases such as bullying,harrasment,etc because they're the ones in charge. During years they denied my case of bullying because I was disabled and the excuse was that I was being delusional. Y'know what they said to those kids? An apology,hug and move on.

Of course, I refused and said that I preferred to be expelled and get rid of these muglets for a short time that pretend that they bullied me with no reason. I was the one who got punished and they ran free. I was only 8.

Same happened when my sister bullied to a girl because she disliked her. Both in high school and in thE Internet no less. The girl reported the high school and ended up being hated. My sister forbid me to support her,but I told her silently that I was on her side. Her reaction to that was also questionable,yes,but the bullies? It was unforgivable for me!

Moving on a crude matter: Guy Ledford's parenting is NOT a myth. It's a reality.

My father and Guy are alike,and playing MOTY seeing his fuckface has been... Hard to swallow. Guys like him (no pun intended) are very real and destructive. Abuse can have many forms and Guy's constant gaslight,whataboutism,misogyny,and much more aspects can destroy a life without laying a hand on the victim and it's difficult to prove at court. My mom,even if she proved my father's behaviour,they judged her more than him and that's a reality that PB kind of forgot to show. They always question more the woman and if you defend yourself and let the others back you up,you'll lose your chances. I can't count the times my mom had to be silent and don't scream what a monster he was because she had to ‘behave’. It's truly disgusting.

And now,when I realised my father didn't care about me at all... It was like 1,000 knives came to my heart and stabbed every inch of me and then twirled it so it wouldn't heal. I was 10 and I was so innocent. I can still hear my grandma yell to my father that one day,because of his behaviour he'll lose at least one of his daughters. And it still feels like a big kick on my gut.

Knowing it can be hard,but admitting it? It can destroy you. Your progenitor,your own flesh,your kin and someone who is supposed to love you above all things... He just doesn't give a damn about you. Or if he does,is for one motive that is not your safety.

When I discovered that my father used me to presume of clever,obedient, silent and straight daughter and beautiful,I was heartbroken. I asked myself ‘am I all that? Just a Barbie doll who must please her dad?’ my mother told me I was already flawless like I was and I started to behave like myself... And he didn't like it. He'd always ignore me and not knowledge my merits by saying ‘they're not worth nor enough. you must do better’ and I'd always tell him I did like my results. We were always arguing and he'd always be like a commander. And I was his rebel link.

Until one day,everything went to hell. I was watching a show at 3AM (questionable,I know,but it was Saturday and it was festive) when he came to me and I said ‘can you give me 5 minutes until it ends? It'll be quick’ instead of waiting,he yanked me off the chair and slammed me against the wall,screaming that he'd beat me up if I didn't obey him. I nodded, scared and went to bed sobbing,my sister heard everything and decided to back him up. She blamed me. I wondered all night if this was the price to pay so I could satisfy him. A man. I decided to call my mom and tell her I didn't want to see him ever again. Back at her house,I told her everything. I cried.

During 4 straight weekends I had to go with him because the law forced me to. Until the 5th weekend,I was free of that burden. Of him.

I was 14 when that happened. I was in junior year and going through a massive bullying case. But at least I had one less thing to lose my mind with. After years of victim blame to my mom,gaslight,ignorance and bad parenting,I was a young,free girl with her future in her hands and a loyal,fierce ally by my side. My mom. The only one who believed me. The one who encouraged me to make ammends with my big brother and have a heart-to-heart. Now he always defends me when people excuse my father.

What I try to say with this story of mine is

That MC's daughter is lucky to have both their parents willing to be in her life and love her,to cooperate even if they wish to be away from the other. MC's daughter can tell off her father. I couldn't because he wouldn't listen to me.

She haves a father willing to have her in his life. Mine never wanted. He never cared. I was nothing to him if I didn't play by his rules. Now I'm a stranger to him. I am nothing to him. I never was. I never had a father.

- - - - - - - -

With this essay finished,I clarify that this is my story. I shared it because I saw it necessary, I don't want anyone's pity. Say anything but ‘I'm sorry’ because i'm honestly tired of this. But your opinion and experience is more than welcome. Again,this is just how I lived it and see it. Don't take it by heart. Anons are off,you need to consult something but don't want anyone else to know what,please DM me. My DMs are open to you. I promise to listen.

Tagging: @mrsbriarmarlcaster @hellospunkiebrewster @ineedshreyamistry @thefirstcourtesan @pippii-punkstockings @tephy24 @vienroose @ladylucina28 @choices-owns-my-ass @drakewalkerwhipped @50shadesofraleigh @parmishon @brightpinkpeppercorn @lilyofchoices

#playchoices #mother of the year #noe's essays #tw: abusive household #tw: bullying #tw: victim blame #tw: gaslight #anti guy ledford #noe's experiences #moty thoughts

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spyvstailor · 5 years ago

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Need 70 More

Sorry to do this, guys, but even though I thought I placed a one time stop payment on a bill that was coming out, it came out anyways, so my bank account is now overdrawn. I need just 70 more to get to a comfortable spot in my friggin life. However! Good news is you all reached my original goal! So life is doing good things for me!

HUGE THANKS AND SHOUT OUT TO EVERYONE WHO DONATED AND REBLOGGED! SOME OF YOU GAVE LIKE WAY TOO GENEROUS FOR MY SHITTY WRITING AND IT DID NOT GO UNAPPRECIATED OR UNNOTICED! GOOD THINGS WILL COME TO YOU IN LIFE FOR YOUR GENEROSITY. I LOVE YOU GUYS!

Donate to my Paypal. Also I now have a Ko-Fi at the suggestion of someone dear to me, so here’s the link to that. It’s kind of barren right now, I’m working on it to offer people things they might like in order to earn my keep.

But as promised, here is my give so I may take. Chapter Two of Graveyard Dirt & Salt!

Chapter Two

The bell tower was covered in bird shit and looked like it was going to give him some kind of disease, but the view from it was worth the filth.

If he stood, with his back to the trees that grew in thick to the South of the convent, the back end as he'd come to call it, he could see straight down the cattle trail that lead from the convent gate, almost all the way down to the highway beyond the woods. To his right, to his left, to his hindquarters, was nothing but trees. Thick woods to give them cover.

They were both a blessing and a curse.

In his mind, if anyone took beef with them, the trees would be perfect cover for lurking invaders. But on the other hand, the trees kept their little convent a secret from the rest of the world.

Kicking some of the larger detritus out from his new nest, he unfurled his bedroll and began to make himself at home. If he stayed longer than a week, if he lasted longer than a week, he would give it a good, solid scrub down, but for now it was a place to sleep without worrying about having his ass snacked on.

Besides, he was pointedly warned against trying to settle into the cloister itself, the dorms where the nuns seemed to sleep. So he had to make his bed someplace other than the infirmary.

The clacking on the wooden ladder up to his perch alerted him to the fact someone was about to visit and he settled on his haunches, wanting to appear non-threatening to the woman who was about to appear.

A blonde head popped up into view, followed by a blue jumper dress.

The young nun carried with her a plate with bread smeared with what looked like honey and she smiled sweetly at him.

“Mother Mena wanted me to bring you some food, she said you'd be hungry.” The woman said.

“That's very sweet of you, thank you.”

Setting the plate in his lap, the woman turned to leave.

“So...tell me about you nuns here, what's your deal?” He called out to her, mostly desperate for some conversation after months of solitude.

The woman turned. “Oh...uh...well, what do you...um. I'm sorry, I'm Mary Elizabeth, I'm a novitiate, which means I haven't taken my vows yet. We're a Cisterian order, which means we value stability and simplicity.”

“And you don't ever...do anything beyond pray?”

“Well, we garden and take care of our chickens and hives, mostly we supply...well, we used to supply vegetables and peaches from our trees and eggs and honey and bees wax to the local farmer's market to support our convent. Most of our funds go to charity in the church, people starving in other countries, disaster relief. And we reflect, on God, on man, on everything in between.”

Splitting the bread slice in half, he handed her the larger piece and bit into his.

Mary Elizabeth took the offered piece with a shy grin and squatted down like a lady to join him, knees together, skirt covering anything inappropriate, one hand on her knees to ensure this.

“Is it really bad out there?” She asked as they chewed in silence. “Some of our order went to the market nearly half a year ago and never came back.”

He nodded. “I can't give you any hope, they're probably gone. Swept away with the dead.”

The woman's pretty little face puckered in dislike of that idea, but she soldiered on bravely.

“It's like Revelations. The dead rising. Scares the dickens out of me, if I'm honest.”

The woman was so sincere in her fear, as she rightly should be, but it troubled him to think of her now knowing the full extent of what was going on outside the convent walls. The Lieutenant had been forged by war overseas, by rigorous training and by all he had seen and done in his forty-three years and he couldn't imagine being in the dark while the whole world fell to pieces around you. Then again, he was always the one running into the danger, as others fled.

This slip of a girl, barely old enough to vote, it seemed, was scared of the rotting corpses that walked across the land and he understood how she could be. It was bigger than them, out of control, there was nothing left but the dead and the vultures who picked at the corpses of society. The wildfire had spread, the towns and holy places had fallen.

Downing the last morsel of his bread and honey, the Lieutenant stood up and pointed at her. “Well, either you're closing your eyes to a situation you do not wish to acknowledge or you are not aware of the calibre of disaster indicated by the presence of a pool table in your community.”

The woman clutched her hands together and beamed happily. “Oh! I love The Music Man!”

“Ya got trouble, my friend, right here, I say, trouble right here in River City,” he went on playfully.

Mary Elizabeth blushed shyly. “Mother Mena says you're the trouble around here.”

“She's getting a hunter and protector out of this deal. Missy should watch her tongue.” He returned, easing his ass against the railing and folding his arms.

“I'd better get going, I have to do the washing tonight and I wasn't really supposed to talk to you.”

“It was nice to talk with you regardless, Lizzie. But don't get yourself into trouble on my behalf.”

The woman giggled. “You too, Lieutenant. And I won't. I think it's uncharitable to pretend you don't exist. Seems a little cruel. Not that I judge Mother Mena! She's kind, she's just...scared, I think.”

“We're all scared. That's the human condition. Fear of being the prey to a greater predator and for the longest time man was at the top of the foodchain. Mind yourself going down now,” he cautioned, moving to offer her a hand down the ladder, before remembering that he wasn't to touch any of the nuns, so he drew his hand back quickly.

Mary Elizabeth beamed at him. “Thanks for the offer though. I like a gentleman.”

For days the Lieutenant hunted for the nuns, but he was like a ghost at the convent. The nuns saw him, the spoke of him in hushed whispers, but no one dared approach him.

He'd bring them an animal sacrifice and they'd send someone up to his tower with a plate for his share of the meal, but he was still awful lonely.

It had taken an entire week before another nun spoke to him.

“That is a household worth of baggage, Lieutenant.” She said.

He had just returned to the convent with a successful bounty, two ducks and a goose for dinner, when Sister Mary Agnes approached him. He had met her the other day when she was the one to bring him some food. He liked her matronly look.

“I got lucky,” he returned, preparing to clean the kills.

“I meant that pack on your back,” she said, kneeling beside him. “Doesn't it ever get awful heavy after all that walking?”

Glancing at his pack, the one he went everywhere with, he grinned. “It's my apartment. Everything I own is in that bag.”

“How on earth can a man travel with so much on his back? Don't you ever get tired?” She demanded.

“Mais, when you don't have a home, Sister, you make do. My apartment is on my back, ready at a moment's digging.”

The woman stopped them both, her dark eyes grave. “What's it like out there, Lieutenant? Really?”

“Hell on earth,” he admitted. “If it's not full of the dead, it's lonesome and abandoned. Torn apart like the aftermath of a child's temper tantrum. It's like walking through a bad dream.”

“Sounds like things are bad.”

“Worse. Whatever you're thinking, it's worse.”

Mary Agnes frowned. “I sometimes wonder why, when everything has turned to dust, we're left here holding the bag, as it were.”

“We're the survivors,” he explained. “It takes a lot of hard work to become the survivors. A lot of loss and a lot of pain, but we're here.”

“I suppose that makes sense. They always said the broken ones triumph.” She nudged him kindly. “So what broke you?”

For a second he was thrown, gunshots echoed in his memory. Shouting and verbal abuse, memories of his mother, of everything that had shaped him came flooding to the forefront of his mind, before he managed to recover himself.

“Why, sister,” he teased. “We are all broken children under God's eyes. Doesn't take much more than a dead dog or a bully in our childhoods.”

“I pried,” she returned simply. “I'm sorry. But humour will only deflect for so long, Lieutenant.”

“Mais,” he sighed. “It lasts long enough though.”

He was on the wall later that evening, watching an uggie as it shambled from out of the woods towards the wall he was on.

Poor little lady in her bathrobe, one slipper still on, the other long gone.

“Didn't expect to be caught in your jammies, huh?” He asked the thing.

It grunted and made a mad dive for the wall just under him, hands clawing at the stones.

“Never actually thought people even wore bathrobes,” he went on calmly. “Maybe I should start wearing one. Look like one of those old Hollywood actors. Cary Grant, yeah?”

“What on earth on you doing up there?” Missy asked from the ground behind him.

“Bird watching,” he returned casually. “Wanna come up?”

“And fall off that wall and break my tail in this habit? I think I'll pass on the offer. Being up there in jeans is one thing, but this habit is a wind catcher for sure.”

Turning around he held out his hand to her. “Come on. I won't let you fall.”

Hitching her robes to her, she moved to a spot where she must have propped an old ladder in order to climb up.

He moved to help her onto the wall, once more forgetting that he couldn't touch the nuns.

She held out her hand as he moved to grasp her elbow and stood on the wall, peering down at the uggie in her jammies.

“Do you suppose they're in pain?” She asked.

“I don't think so, think they're running on instinct and nothing else.” He said, running his hand over the butt of his rifle a little nervously, ready to steady Missy at a moment should she prove correct and the wind grab her. “Reminds me of this fact I heard about octopi and how if you put their corpse by salt their little tentacles react, but they're dead as rocks. Like that, I suppose. Them folks in Japan eating them basically raw, and their little tentacles grab at them chopsticks. Little undead squiggles putting up a fight.”

“This is a person,” she murmured. “She had things to do, goals and dreams.”

“We're all born astride the grave.” He stated.

Handing her his rifle, he pulled out his knife and jumping off the wall, over the thing, he came up behind her and knocked the uggie against the stones, holding her there so he could drive his knife into the base of her skull. It sunk heavily to the ground and he eased the poor woman back into a dignified laying position. Kneeling by the corpse, he wiped his knife blade on her bathrobe, before looking up to find the nun peering down at him quietly.

“Do you want a hand with her?” She asked.

He moved to help her down, his large hand sliding around her waist so that she could hop against him to break her fall somewhat, the other day she had precariously climbed down and nearly fell, today she was wearing her full habit, she offered him a hard look as he set her on her feet.

“That had better been my only option of dismount,” she warned him.

“Unless you want to break your neck today, then yes, ma'am.”

Kneeling over the corpse, Missy pushed the woman's hair out of her face and peered upon the rotted visage.

“Last rites?” He joked.

“I can't give those,” she said. “I just wanted to look at the poor woman. I killed so many of these the past few weeks, I never had a chance to pause and give thought to them. I honestly thought it was for the best to put them out of their misery. They are abominations after all, but they were once God's children.”

Kneeling with her, the Lieutenant nodded. “Bet she was someone's mama. She looks like a mama.”

“I hope her babies are alright, but from what you tell me, I don't imagine they are.” She was quiet for the longest time, before adding, “you'll keep my girls safe, won't you?”

“If you want me to,” he replied. “I haven't got anywhere to be.”

She looked at him for the longest time, those pretty blue eyes of hers shining and hard, despite being the bluest things he had ever seen. Set against her white chocolate skin and framed by luscious dark lashes, she was hell in a habit. If he had to gauge an age on her, he would wager she was around the same age as him, maybe a little younger. She certainly aged well if she were any older, and maybe she had, she was in charge of her convent, after all, and it took a while to advance in any profession.

“Then if you advise me on how to keep them safe, I will listen, but I will not compromise our faith for anything. The bell will stay silent, and we will do a patrol of the wall, but I will not expect any of my girls to harm anyone or anything without knowing for certain that it won't damn them. Some of my nuns still have their faith and I want them to keep it strong.”

“Fair enough,” the returned with a grin, holding out a hand to shake.

She considered it for a moment.

“Nobody went to hell for shaking a Cajun's hand,” he teased.

“Yet,” she murmured with a very, very small shine in her eyes.

Reconsidering his dirty hand, the Lieutenant wiped it on the front of his shirt, before offering it again.

This time she took it, shaking gently.

“You know this reminds me of this story my mamere used to tell me,” he explained, grunting as he scooped up the dead woman. “About this--”

“Sorry, your 'mamere'?” Missy interrupted.

“My granny.” He said, moving the corpse onto the muddy cattle trail of a road leading up to the convent gate where a fire would burn better without starting the woods ablaze. If they were going to keep collecting bodies, he would have to begin burning them. That pile in the woods would soon be doing nobody no good. “She used to tell me about this old man named Gilliam, used to beat the hell out of his old hound. Never deserved the poor thing, so one night, my...uh...granddaddy, he goes over, dead of night, dark as Hades--”

“I don't mean to cut your tale off at the root, I'm certain it's a wonderful parable, Mister Lieutenant, but we are about to burn a body here? Perhaps some wise words or none at all?” Missy suggested.

The Lieutenant was quiet, settling the corpse up in the middle of the muddy trail, before reaching for his lighter. He set the woman ablaze, burning her clothing, knowing full well the parchment paper flesh that remained on her corpse would go up in smoke easily.

Standing back, he glanced around cautiously, knowing that uggies liked to pop up when least expected.

Finding them alone, he turned his attention back to the burning body.

“Uh, dearly beloveds we are gathered here today to, uh, burn this--”

“Are you marrying the corpse or laying her to rest, Lieutenant?” The woman demanded with another very small twinkle in her eye.

“Mais, girl, go easy on me. I ain't a priest.”

“Honey, even the heathens had idols they worshipped before the Christian God,” she pointed out.

“So I'm lesser than a heathen and yet greater then a toad, yeah?” He winked at her.

As the smoke began to choke them with the scent of burning flesh, the nun turned on her heel and headed back to the wall, hiking her hem up as she went tiptoeing through the mud.

“You're certainly bigger than a toad,” she said. “Now use that might and give me a hand up and over, please?”

She squealed an undignified and rather girlish noise as the Lieutenant came up behind her and scooped her up and at the wall with his hands.

“Mind your hands,” she warned coolly as soon as she recovered her dignity.

“Sorry,” he said easily, shifting his left hand from where it cupped her inner thigh, “there's so much skirt to you that I wasn't sure where the safest place to stick my hand was at. I guess I aimed wrong.”

“I nearly had to abandon my vows for you to make an honest woman of me,” she declared, hoisting herself up onto the wall.

Beaming up at her, the Lieutenant said, “hey, now, Missy. Mind your tongue before the devil cuts it off.”

As soon as she was safely on the wall, he said, “now hand me that rifle you got.”

“Aren't you coming up?”

“Well, I promised you some venison now didn't I?”

“This late? Lieutenant, it's almost dark.”

“Best time of day to hunt for deer, yeah?” He winked at her and held out his hand for the gun.

That night the Lieutenant stood in his bell tower watching over the land.

He had to admit, at night like this, with only the cicadas chittering, the ruined world was beautiful still.

As much as he loved people, he enjoyed his solitude as well and with the stars in the sky and the land absolutely still, he was able to just think his thoughts.

“If it keeps on rainin', levees gonna break,” he sung to himself, wandering around the small perimeter of the bell tower, watching all sides for anything moving in the shadows below. Raising the rifle he peered down the scope at something that shifted, it appeared to be shrubs and the wind. “If it keeps on rainin', levees gonna break.”

In the woods he knew they were there, lurking, shuffling, ambling, tripping up and falling. Maws open to devour whatever they fell upon, hands clenched into death claws at their sides, the muscles having retracted and dried up in death.

“And the water gonna come and we'll have no place to stay,” he lowered the rifle as an uggie emerged from the woods.

It was just a shadow really, shuffling from the darkness, finding the wall with its chest, bouncing back and staggering to regain its footing. For a moment, the thing stood dumbly, head bent down, before it seemed to lift its chin and sniff the air.

It wasn't worth it for him to shoot the thing, his gun wasn't much use at times like this, the sound only drawing more to his location, but he liked to use the scope to watch as the dumb thing sort of collapsed against the wall.

From his perspective, he could only see the top of its head, but the manic bobbing told him it had caught their scent and was trying to find a hole in the wall to get at dinner.

Tomorrow he would have to reinforce the wall properly, a few sharp sticks, some hole traps, anything to give them an edge on the dead. He'd head into the nearby town to find something that still drove that he could back against the wrought iron gate.

He wasn't sure about that one, most of the time the vehicles didn't turn over at all. Having never pondered it, he supposed that maybe the gasoline had gone south. He knew it could stale, had tried to drive old lawnmowers enough times to know you had to drain the gas out from the tank if you weren't planning on using them for a good, long while.

Maybe he'd find one though. He only needed her to limp to the convent, it didn't need to win no races.

“Good morning, Lieutenant.”

He had emerged from the church the next morning to Sisters Dymphna, Felicity Perpetua and Mary Claire standing around the steps in the cool shade of the north side.

“Good morning, ladies,” he returned. “Aren't y'all not supposed to talk to me?”

“Only when Mother Mena's not around,” Dymphna replied, her brown eyes sparkling. “Are you heading out?”

“I was planning on doing a little work on the wall today. Did you need me to head out for something?” He asked, coming to stand in the little clutch with them. So far he had found the younger nuns more receptive to his presence than the older ones.

Except for Sisters Gertrude and Boniface, he adored Gertrude and her cats and Sister Boniface was a Quebecois French woman, so he felt a sort of kindred spirit in her.

“Maybe we wanted to do something for you for once,” Sister Mary Claire said with a smile that could brighten a stormy day.

“Something for me?”

Sister Felicity Perpetua, who had been standing with her hands behind her back, produced a child's lunch kit and held it out to him proudly. “We made you a lunch if you're planning on leaving.”

“You have to stay strong,” Sister Mary Claire added. “An army marches on its stomach.”

“Plus, you know, we appreciate you being here for us.” Dymphna added.

There was something sincere in their eyes, something which made the Lieutenant give a slight, unsure pause, before he accepted the lunch kit.

“Thank you,” he said. “I'm going to be just outside the wall working on it today, but maybe at some point I might hike it into the nearby town, see if I can find a big enough truck or some kind of van maybe.”

“What for?” Felicity Perpetua asked.

He motioned for the nuns to follow him towards the gate. They all stopped before it and he motioned with the hand holding his lunch at the rusty gate. “She's solid enough, but old and if enough of those things out there pushed against her at once she could go. I'm going to back a heavy girl up against her and reinforce it.”

The nuns were quiet for a bit, before Dymphna said, “I'm going with you.”

“Nope,” he declared firmly.

“Yes,” she insisted. “You can't go into the town alone with those things out there.”

“I lived this long on my own, I'll be fine.” He stated. “You nuns don't go anywhere outside these walls without me. My job is to keep you safe, your job is to make my job easier by staying here and being your cute little selves.”

“What if something happened to you?” Felicity Perpetua whispered. “My soul would know no peace.”

“Don't you have chores?” Someone asked from behind them, causing a couple of the nuns to jump.

Sister Thomas Aquinas, a stern faced woman of about seventy stood behind them, her arms full of blankets.

The three nuns all ducked out quickly, but not before Dymphna grasped his forearm with a strong, small brown hand.

Looking at him with a hard, glittering stare, the older nun seemed to be sizing him up for a moment, before handing him the blankets.

“Here,” she said. “We found some of these to spare. I thought you might like to keep yourself warmer up in that bell tower.”

“Thank you.”

“You're welcome,” she said tersely, before turning and walking off, muttering to herself about a 'fox in the hen house'.

He missed the days when he could go out into the woods and just sit and enjoy the peace.

Now, whenever he was in the woods, he was vulnerable and on edge. Always prepared for something to stagger out of the underbrush.

There was a time, when he was a boy, he'd duck into the woods by his rural home near Eunice, what wasn't swampy bayou, was pretty little woods filled mostly with cypress and oak trees, the forest floor was always good and moist, carpeted with the soft needles that the bald cypress trees shed.

The smell of the forest was always the way he found peace. That scent of good, clean country air, with a little harmless stank from the bayou, coupled with the scent of the damp earth. It was home sure enough and he missed it.

Georgia had it's own smell. Less bayou, more fresh water on the air. Rivers and streams and creeks. Nothing like the stagnant scent of the swamp.

He supposed, it was perhaps a little more fresher air, though it just wasn't home and that made all the difference.

Georgia was True Love Ways compared to Louisiana's Oh Boy, if Buddy Holly songs could be used to compare the two. Both good songs, though one was a little more melodic and slow-paced, the other had a bit more get-up-and-go.

“Boy, what are you doing to my wall?”

The voice came from above him on the wall and he looked up to find a furious nun standing there, swaying a little unsteadily in her habit and the mild wind.

“Just reinforcing it, Missy,” he said.

Philomena sighed. “We look like an ancient castle with these sharp sticks poking out.”

Stepping back, he admired his work and nodded. “Yeah, palisades, that's where I got the idea. Figured if it kept them old Celt tribes out, it'd work for us.”

“It doesn't look very inviting,” she muttered.

“It's not supposed to be a welcome mat,” he replied.

“Well, I suppose that's fine, just please don't hoist yourself on your own petard,” she said after a moment of thought.

He wiped his hands off and dug through his pack for the lunch the nuns had packed him. “You up there for a reason?”

“Sister Mary Claire says some of the younger nuns expressed interest in helping you outside these walls.”

“And you want to slap my wrist for tempting them?” He used the gate to climb onto the wall and sat beside her to eat his lunch.

“Not entirely,” she admitted, easing down a little clumsily beside him. “I think...well maybe you could be permitted to teach those of us interested in a few ways to defend ourselves from the abominations.”

Plucking a half a carrot out of his mouth, he crunched on the other half for a good long while. It was so delicious. He had forgotten what fresh veggies tasted like.

“Really?” He finally asked.

She stared off down the cattle trail before them, and he followed her gaze. The path was hung over with oak branches and Spanish moss, pretty for the late summer, but it was tainted by the dead. Always and forever tainted now. Somewhere out there in those pretty trees and green shrubs they ambled and shuffled and staggered and crawled, gnashing and drooling for their next meal. And somehow it worried him more to think about them in the broad daylight, then at night where all the boogins and monsters belonged.

He supposed those uggies all had hopes and dreams and plans set aside now for one thing and one thing only. Same as him, same as the woman sitting beside him, same as all the nuns in the convent behind them.

“Our wills and fates do so contrary run,” he began with a sigh, reminded by something she had said earlier.

Beside him Missy was quiet still, eyes on the world beyond her walls. “You're well read, for a soldier.”

“I'm sure you had to read Hamlet in high school too,” he teased. “A lot of it just stuck with me, I suppose. Don't be fooled,” he went on with a grin, “I'm just a simple country boy from the bayou.”

“I grew up in Savannah,” she said. “Have you ever been?”

“No,” he admitted. “Didn't get a chance before all this and I damned well won't go now. It'll be overrun.”

“We've been so secluded here,” she admitted gently. “I thought though, that someday I would be transferred out to a school or a...missionary, but I suppose this is my life now.” She hurried to add, “not that I'm complaining. I will bear this with grace, only that I miss the outside world, God's real world out there. Art and books, beauty created by the hands of His creatures, so much lost now.”

The Lieutenant stared at the woman as she continued to gaze wistfully out at the trees. He was so struck by how easy she made being beautiful look. “Has anyone ever told you that you that you look like Vivian Leigh?” He asked.

For a moment, the woman's face read irritated, then puzzled, before she finally smiled sweetly and looked down. “Tell me, Mister Lieutenant, is it nature or force that compels you to flirt with every woman you meet?”

“Sometimes it's not just women,” he teased.

“Oh!” She offered him a scolding look, though her face was still mostly smiles and amusement.

He beamed.

#here is the second chapter #you are all doing friggin great in helping me out #i have less stress because you have all helped pick me up #let's keep this going #and follow my ko-fi because i will post stuff there for reading too #please signal boost the new chapter guys #for your followers who may be reading this

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mooneec · 6 years ago

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Fatherless Daughters: How Growing up Without a Dad Affects Women

Growing Up Without a Dad Shapes Who You Are

It took six decades, but I can finally utter a huge truth that caused me tremendous shame and sadness: My father didn't love me. I never spoke that deep, dark secret, but it was always festering inside of me. It manifested itself in many ways throughout my life as I struggled with a food obsession, low self-esteem, social anxiety, and depression.

Whether a dad was present but rejecting like mine or walked away from his fatherly duties entirely, his absence leaves an indelible mark on a daughter's psyche as she grows into adulthood. What does the research say about woman who grew up with fathers who didn't love them—daughters who were never daddy's little girl?

Below, you'll find six ways a daughter may be affected by an uninvolved dad.

Fathers provide their daughters with a masculine example. They teach their children about respect and boundaries and help put daughters at ease with other men throughout their lives. [...] So if she didn't grow up with a proper example, she will have less insight and she'll be more likely to go for a man that will replicate the abandonment of her father.

— Caitlin Marvaso, AMFT, a grief counselor and therapist in Oakland, CA

1. Fatherless Daughters Have Self-Esteem Issues

According to Deborah Moskovitch, an author and divorce consultant, kids often blame themselves when dad leaves the home and becomes less involved in their lives. When they aren't given an explanation about why dad left, they make up their own scenario and jump to the conclusion that it's their fault and that they're unlovable.

This is especially true for daughters. Countless studies have shown that fatherlessness has an extremely negative impact on daughters' self esteem. Her confidence in her own abilities and value as a human being can be greatly diminished if her father isn't there. Academically, personally, professionally, physically, socially, and romantically, a woman's self esteem is diminished in every setting if she did not form a healthy relationship with her father.

As a child, I watched television shows like The Brady Bunch and Happy Days in which the fathers showered their daughters with tremendous amounts of attention and affection. Because I never got that from my dad, I convinced myself it was because I wasn't cute enough. I thought if I had blond hair and talked with a lisp like Cindy Brady I would then have my dad's devotion. I hated the way I looked because I thought it caused my father's disinterest in me. As I got older, my self-esteem plummeted and I was sure no man would ever find me attractive.

2. Daughters With Absent Fathers Struggle to Build and Maintain Relationships

According to Pamela Thomas, author of Fatherless Daughters (a book that examines how women cope with the loss of a father via death or divorce), women who grew up with absent dads find it difficult to form lasting relationships. Because they were scarred by their dad's rejection of them, they don't want to risk getting hurt again. Consciously or unconsciously, they avoid getting close to people. They may form superficial relationships in which they reveal little of themselves and put very little effort into getting to know others. They may become promiscuous as a way of getting male attention without becoming too emotionally involved.

Ever since childhood, I've built walls around myself. I didn't open up to people. I didn't ask questions about their families, jobs, or hobbies. I kept my life private, and I remained socially isolated. These were all self-protective measures so I wouldn't experience rejection like I did with my dad. Knowing this intellectually did nothing to help me change my behavior because my fear of rejection was more powerful than my desire to make connections.

3. Women With Absent Fathers Are More Likely to Have Eating Disorders

In their book The Parent's Guide to Eating Disorders, the authors Marcia Herrin and Nancy Matsumoto write eloquently about the fact that girls with physically or emotionally absent fathers are at greater risk of developing eating disorders. Anorexia nervosa, bulimia, binge-eating, body dysmorphia, unhealthy preoccupations with food or body weight, and other eating disorders are all more likely if a girl does not have a father figure as she's growing up. Daughters without dads are also twice as likely to be obese. Because her longing to have a close relationship with her dad is denied, she may develop what Margo Maine (author of Father Hunger: Fathers, Daughters, & Food) calls “father hunger,” a deep emptiness and a profound insecurity. Daughters are left wondering: What's so wrong with me that my own father doesn't love me? If I looked different—if I was thin—would I earn daddy's love?

I've struggled with "father hunger" throughout my life—stuffing my face to fill the void, dieting to get model-thin, and always obsessing about food. My days have been filled with thoughts of eating—either doing it or struggling mightily not to. When I accepted that my dad didn't love me and that he was an unhappy man with deep-rooted problems, I finally started eating normally and began maintaining a healthy weight. I began treating myself in a loving way by exercising, gardening, reading, walking in the woods, and spending time with family. For the first time in my life, I only thought about food when I was truly hungry. This freed me to enjoy my life in so many wonderful ways.

4. Daughters of Absent Fathers Are More Prone to Depression

Not surprisingly, girls who grew up with dads who were emotionally or physically absent are more likely to struggle with depression as adults. Because they fear abandonment and rejection, these women often isolate themselves emotionally. They avoid healthy romantic relationships because they don't feel deserving and fear getting hurt, but they might jump into unhealthy relationships that ultimately lead to heartbreak. In either scenario, the women are in emotional peril and frequently become depressed. If they don't deal with the cause of their sadness—an absent dad—they may never be able to develop healthy relationships with men.

To top it all off, data suggests that children without fathers are more than twice as likely to commit suicide.

According to Denna Babul and Karin Louise, authors of The Fatherless Daughter Project, it's helpful to simply realize that we're not alone. In fact, one in three women see themselves as fatherless and struggle with feelings of abandonment. Knowing this fact helps us see that there's a whole sisterhood out there who share a common pain and a need to connect. When we open up and share our journey, we help both ourselves and each other. Whether we feel the loss of a dad through death, divorce, drug addiction, estrangement, or emotional neglect, we must grieve in order to move forward. Read Five Steps to Heal Her Pain: How a Fatherless Daughter Can Move On From Her Dad's Rejection for ideas on how to avoid falling into depression. A gifted therapist can be key to helping us do just that and becoming happier people.

5. Dadless Daughters Are More Likely to Become Sexually Active Earlier

Studies have shown the many benefits that come from a strong father-daughter bond. Most notably, girls who are close to their dads are less likely to get pregnant as teens. They delay engaging in sexual relationships, wait longer to get married and have children, and when they do find a husband, their marriages are more emotionally satisfying, stable, and long-lasting.

Countless studies also show that women who have unstable or absent paternal relationships are more likely to start having sex earlier and engage risky sexual behaviors. Daughters are four times more likely to get pregnant as a teen if dad isn't in the picture. Studies show that more than 70% of unplanned teenage pregnancies occur in homes where there is no father.

My older sister (who, like me, did not have a relationship with our father) met her future husband when she was just 18 and married him when she turned 22, straight out of college. He was the only guy she ever dated. Without a doubt, she was looking for the love and validation she never got from our dad. She was looking for an alternative to a man who never said "I love you" or "you're pretty" and never gave the unconditional acceptance one craves from a parent. Although she is still married, her union has been a difficult one, and she discourages her own daughters from marrying young.

6. Abandoned Daughters Are Susceptible to Addiction

As with depression, eating disorders, and low self esteem, the absence of a father can trap a daughter in a negative repetitive pattern she can't easily break out of and turn to drugs to self-medicate and help numb the pain. She is more likely to find herself trapped in a cycle of substance abuse, for example. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, fatherless children are at a dramatically greater risk of drug and alcohol abuse. Not only are kids in father-absent households about four times more likely to be poor (which can trigger many negative cycles), fatherless adolescents were found to be 69% more likely to use drugs and 76% more likely to commit crimes.

Can a Daughter Survive Without a Father?

Try as I might, I was never been able to get any traction, always making a mess of this or that and never able to form long-lasting friendships. I rejected happiness because I never felt worthy of it. I did so much to sabotage my life and make myself miserable.

Then last year my older sister revealed to me that she, too, had felt unloved by him. I immediately felt enormous relief and then great euphoria. I realized it had never been about me—that I was bad, ugly, stupid and undeserving. It had always been about him—his unhappy childhood, his cold mother, his negative nature, and his dissatisfaction with being a husband and father. It had never been about me...never.

I could finally shout: “You were a piece of crap and now I'm done with you! I'm not your prisoner any more!"

According to Caitlin Marvaso, AMFT, a grief counselor and therapist, to recover from a father's abandonment, a woman "must learn how to father herself, hold herself, and receive the type of love a father provides. It is a lifelong process, but with the proper support, tools, and patience, it is totally possible. That being said, the grief and pain never goes away, it just changes."

A daughter whose father abandoned her can grow, thrive, learn, excel, succeed, love and be loved, and live a wonderful life when she realizes that the problem isn't her, it's him. This is the first step toward healing.

#McKenna Meyers #fatherless #fatherless daughter #fatherless daughters #fatherless kid #fatherless kids #father hunger #father

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tf2canons · 7 years ago

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If you haven't already been asked: Any headcanons for Soldier, Pyro, Engie, Medic and Spy's parents? Or their family in general

While we have almost no clues about Spy’s past, I personallyimagine that he grew up very poor and was either an orphan or had very absentparents. Spy has the disposition of someone who has been a self-sufficientloner his entire life. He has never trusted or relied on anyone else. And itwould make sense for him to have developed his skills from an early age bysneaking around alleyways to stay safe and stealing from the rich just to feedhimself. He’d tell everyone who would listen that he was going to make it outand become rich one day, and he would spend every waking moment fighting tomake that a reality. Clawing his way up from the bottom would give him thatconfident, egotistical, almost narcissistic disposition that he has; hehas earned everything through hard work and skill with thehelp of no one. And when he had money he would over-indulge to make up for allthe time he had nothing.

It’s been hinted a lot that Medic’s parents were alsodoctors. In the Two Cities update where they added his hometown of Rottenburgas a map in the game, the update said that the town had a tradition of “chasingthe next in the resident lineage of mad doctors out of town with torches andpitchforks whenever they swapped out too many super-charged baboon hearts.”So at least one of his parents was a doctor. It would make sense if Medic grewup in that kind of environment, being taught from a young age all the wondersof the human body but never being taught medical ethics. I can definitely seehim as a little kid helping hold open a rib cage while his father doesexperiments on unsuspecting townspeople. On his official bio, it states thatMedic lacks “any sort of verifiable formal training in medicine.” If hewas homeschooled in medicine by his parents since birth, that would bewhy he doesn’t have that verifiable formal training. I also personallyheadcanon that Medic’s family is Jewish. (Warning for mentions ofantisemitism and the Holocaust after this point.) While thereisn’t any solid canonical evidence to support it that I’m aware of, it wouldadd a lot of depth to his character. It could also mean there was antisemitisminvolved with his family being chased out of town. While we don’t know Medic’sreal age, it seems most likely he was either a child or a teenager while Hitlerwas in power. Maybe even a young adult (and its worth mentioning that Valve has stated he was not a Nazi). After being chased out of town, Iimagine he and his family fled Germany altogether until the regime was defeated, or they did not go back at all. Alternatively, Medic could have fled Germanyalone after his family was taken by the Nazis, spending the rest of his time before getting involved in the Gravel Wars as a back-alley surgeon with half-baked medical training, living on as the only surviving member of his family and moving from place to place to avoid arrest. Alternatively x2, he could have fled to an allied nation and joined the army as a field surgeon, the desperate need for doctors and Medic’s own strange charm convincing them to overlook his lack of official training. There’s a lot of possibilities about what could have happened to him before he joined Team Fortress, and I’ve spent a good deal of time thinking about it.

Pyro is another character we have next to no clues to theirbackstory, but I do have my own personal theory that I like. In the comicsafter the team is disbanded, Pyro goes on to become a CEO of an engineeringcompany. After thinking a while about how the fuck they could havegotten that job, I started considering that they inherited it. Heads ofmajor companies using their position to give their children powerful positionsas well isn’t uncommon, and if Pyro had powerful parents it would explain whyno one was saying anything about them wearing a gas mask to work. Nepotism is amagical thing. On top of that, super busy, rich, asshole parents aren’t knownto produce the most stable children. While Pyro’s hallucinations are probablydue to a psychotic disorder or even potentially brain damage, their fixation onchildish things makes me think they didn’t have a great childhood. It’s likelytheir parents were too busy with their work to pay them attention, leaving themfeeling abandoned and unloved, or they were abusive, or both. Children insituations like that often feel very grown up because they have to learn totake care of themselves far earlier than they should, but once they actuallygrow up into adults they feel much younger than they are because they never gotthe chance to emotionally mature the way children in healthy households get todo. You’re faced with not only the normal stress of becoming an adult, but youalso have to deal with the trauma. Pyro is (consciously or not) clinging to thecomforts of childhood to make up for all the time they missed as a kid becauseof their bad situation. If they never got to enjoy cute, childish things as akid, why not do it as an adult?

I won’t lie, I don’t have as great a theory about Soldier’s family.I do think, though, it would make sense if his father or another close family memberto have been in the military while he was growing up. It would be the root of hisstrong interest in America and the military and explain why he felt so stronglyabout them. I also think this family member might have died whileserving in the military when Soldier was still young. Trying to justify and explainaway the death, he started telling himself that they died fighting for Americabecause fighting for America is the only thing that really matters. He’d geteven more obsessive over it than he already was, throwing himself into thespecial interest to cope with the loss. I doubt that he remembers his family asan adult, however, so no longer remembers what originally caused him to be sopassionate about it, instead just being left with an obsession and a feeling hewas missing something.

While it hasn’t been officially stated, I believe it is very likely that Engineer’s father was the Engineer from the Team Fortress Classic team, Fred. We already know his grandfather was the one who build the life sustaining machines for the Mann brothers and the Administrator, so his family has had these ties for a long time. Plus, we see a younger Fred in the Catch Up Comic (below on the left) and personally I think he looks a lot like older Engineer does. On top of that, he looks exactly like the guy with younger Dell in that one photograph we saw in the Engineer update, shown on the right. Since Engineer is with the Administrator during the entire expanse of the comic, we’ve never seen him interact with Fred or any of the Classic team members for that matter. He might not even be aware that they were hired by Gray Mann to hunt down the Red team. While I imagine that his relationship with his father wasn’t bad when he was growing up as a child, I think they may have gotten more distant as Dell started branching out with his own inventions and started working on his 11 PhD’s.

#Thank you for asking me this I.. love backstories and lore.....#Engineer #Medic #Pyro #Soldier #Spy #Lore #Backstory #Families #Theories #Anonymous #Pyro's Pyro

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greengirliam · 7 years ago

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Mother’s Day

I’ve written before about my mom - not in this forum - but elsewhere, where I can also be anonymous... She had a difficult childhood: a brain tumor at 6 left her somewhat disabled and with lifelong seizures (and the meds to control them). She was self conscious and unable to see herself as worthwhile because of this. So of course her father chose her of all his daughters to abuse sexually over the years. The place and the era and her family beat into her the notion that her worth was only in marrying and having kids. Her sisters all married and had babies young - just as ‘god intended.’ She instead went to college and was licensed for a career. That was’t done - not the girls.

She couldn’t marry the man she loved, who loved her, because wrong religion, wrong background, wrong whatever... So when my dad proposed, she said yes. Right religion, right background, wrong guy. She had babies, in spite of the impact on her own health. The man she had married showed himself to be abusive, even more so when he drank. She ran interference and protected us as much as she could, taking the anger and the abuse herself. She wanted to leave, but that’s just not what women did - they stayed and fixed themselves so that he wouldn’t be angry.

Then he lost his ability to walk; he became quadriplegic, he couldn’t work, he couldn’t care for himself, he couldn’t help with the kids, and he wouldn’t accept outside help. She did it all, she raised three kids, worked, and was full time caretaker for him. He remained abusive, though he had to switch to the most horrific kinds of mental and emotional abuse. We grew up thinking marriage was all about degradation and humiliation and cruelty. She couldn’t leave now - who would believe her (in fact none of her family or friends did believe he was abusive until he was gone), who would take her in if she abandoned her poor husband....

But she did raise us, and kept the household and kept us clothed, and fed, and educated, and loved. We survived - and that is a miracle. And spending time with her this past weekend - she was so down. She sees how her children have made their marriages work, and how her grandkids are thriving. And instead of seeing how she was responsible for that being possible she berates herself for the difficulties and the bad times and for not having the courage to leave, for not being enough. It’s a conversation we’ve had before. I don’t know how to make her see how much strength and work and persistence it took for her to have survived, to have raised us, to be where she is with us where we are. It is all truly due to her.

I am happy (and grateful) that the times, society, my surroundings and circumstances, and what my mom instilled in me makes me able to know that i don’t have to live the way she did. I don’t even wonder how i would have done it - i don’t believe i would have had the strength she did - not the day in, day out ability to just keep going through what she went through. In my 20′s, I was angry that she stayed and didn’t leave - as i got older and hearing relatives talk - i realized that she had absolutely no where to turn.

She is responsible for who i am, and that i have the choice and the self confidence and the solid footing to stand on to be able to live the way I do. This isn’t about domination or submission - this is about strength and bad-assery. She is a small, frail, partially disabled, grandma - and she had and has it more than anyone else i know - and there are maybe 5 people in the world who even see it. She doesn’t even see it.

#sccwriting

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human-oddity88 · 8 years ago

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Love and Self Loathing

ON LOVE AND SELF LOATHING

“You cant love someone until you love yourself first” Bullshit. I have never loved myself. But you. Oh god, I loved you so much I forgot what hating myself felt like.” Unknown

I was bullied. When I say this I don’t mean the cute innocent teasing portrayed in sitcoms and in movies. I mean the kind of bullying that sent me home in tears everyday from school. The kind of bullying that left me with emotional problems similar to those who grew up in abusive households. The kind of bullying that made me obsessed as a teenager with finding the quickest and most painless way to kill myself. There was literally nothing about my body, my thoughts, my past or my present that they couldn’t/didn’t use as a Knife to cut me. But the worst part was that the adults in my life either didn’t care at all, or even if they did care offered no real solutions. I spent years hearing the same old hallow tired advice like “just ignore them” (easy to do while people you’ve gone to school with your entire life pick your life apart like they’re dissecting a frog), “they’re just jealous” (trust me they aren’t), “just try to be more normal” (tried every day for 16 years and the more I tried to abandon myself for the sake of fitting in the less I did). Ultimately the bullying became so harmful l that I, an A to B student with real potential, dropped out of high school at 16 because I knew if I had to endure another 3 years of abuse my unsuccessful suicide attempts would eventually become a successful one. Bullying kills kids like me every day. Kids who are different like I was, kids who are overweight, LGBT, part of a racial and/or religious minority, or if they are in any other way strikingly different from their peers. In my case I was a strange combination of the above. I can’t even explain how much heartbreak I feel when I read yet another story on Facebook about a high school kid who killed themselves as a result of bullying. I feel myself die inside very time I read another name or see another picture. I know exactly what those poor souls were thinking as they took their own lives, because I thought the same thing. I could write a novel, hell a series of novels about the bullying that I had to endure, and about my adolescent self trying to cope with it. But I’m way more interested in writing about afterwards. What it’s like as a young adult trying to build a life based on such negative and self loathing social interactions. To show people that may be struggling even as they read this, that it really does get better. The bullying that I endured left me with many certainties about myself. I was ugly. I was worthless. No one would ever love me. These certainties didn’t keep me up at night or bring me to tears everyday they were simply facts like the description of a cell in a biology textbook. It has been studied, and verified by enough scientists that it can now be accepted as unquestionably true. I was surrounded by people who loved me. My friends and my family, and they fought to convince me that I was beautiful and worthwhile. But despite their valiant efforts I entered adulthood I with zero self esteem and even less confidence. A girl who had once been loud and passionate had become quiet and subdued. The bright Colors I once wore because I’m an ostentatious person had been replaced with dark colors that helped me blend in. When I was 18 I got my very first real boyfriend. He loved me. He thought I was pretty. He was with me on purpose. My mind couldn’t comprehend any of that. I kept waiting for him to realize all the things about me that I already accepted as fact. But he didn’t. It was a shock to my system. Our relationship was not perfect. he was the person I lost my virginity to, and as I became sexually active I realized new and amazing things about myself. Chief among those was the fact that I have an extremely high sex drive. My boyfriend however had an extremely low sex drive. Night after night I would try to initiate sex with him, and he would make excuse after excuse as to why tonight wasn’t a good night for him. On the nights we did have sex, it only happened after begging, when he would give in with a long exasperated sigh, and seem about as excited about it as you might be to take out the trash or get a root canal. After years of this I started wondering if I was the problem. Was I so ugly and repulsive that my own husband didn’t want me? Those Thoughts haunted me throughout my marriage. There were plenty of other problems in our relationship as well, such as the fact that as a result of his Asperger’s Syndrome he could never be my partner, more of an overgrown child who needed a live in Nanny, first in the form of his mother and then me. If I had not been bullied. If I had not been convinced over the course of my entire academic career that I was ugly worthless and that no one would ever love me, I probably would have left my boyfriend. I would not have settled for a guy who didn’t appreciate me to the level that I truly deserved. But unfortunately the way he treated me just helped to confirm what I already knew to be true. I really was ugly. I really was worthless. I just counted myself lucky that anyone wanted me at all. That’s why I married him when I was only 20 years old, even though I wasn’t happy, even though in my heart I wanted more than he could or was even capable to providing. I did it because even though I knew this consciously, even though I was fully aware that I was settling, I also knew for a fact that this was the best I could do. Only pretty girls got guys who truly loved, and wanted them. Only girls whom were worthwhile got the kind of guys that took your breath away. Only those girls got the kind of love that made the world make sense. It shouldn’t come as a shock that I was divorced four years later. Funny thing about marriage. The biggest difference between marriage and dating is that when your dating you can easily work past or even outright ignore all those little cracks in your relationship. From the hairline fractures up to the fault lines. But when you get married those cracks don’t go away. In fact they grow and deepen. Until you drift apart like tectonic plates. After my divorce I finally began learning about myself. I began dating my second boyfriend. He was much, much older than me, but he was also the first man who made me feel wanted. He made me feel sexy. That relationship wasn’t perfect either. I could write a whole other, whatever this is, about why it is never a good idea to sleep with a married man behind his wife’s back, but I overlooked that as well because he gave me something I really needed at that time. He gave me confidence. He helped me realize that I was beautiful, I was sexy, and I was worthwhile. I stopped hiding the body that I had always found repulsive under dark drab clothes. I started wearing clothes that made me look as sexy as I felt. I started flirting which I had never done before. It was a magical time in my life. When that relationship finally came to its inevitable end, I took my new found confidence and threw it at a guy that was attractive beyond my wildest dreams. He was the kind of guy that the high school version of me had fantasized about dating. Tall, dark, and brooding (sorry I can’t even type that without laughing g but we are getting to that) and even though my intuition warned me against getting serious with him, warned me that like a low voltage electrocution not only would it kill me it would hurt the entire time I was dying, I got serious. I felt like I needed to date someone like him to prove to myself that I could, prove that I was beautiful and sexy enough to date someone as hot as him. Even though I finally had confidence and self worth I still felt like I was dating way above my station even though in reality I had reached the bottom of the barrel and was now digging in the ground beneath. The first time he cheated on me was literally two weeks into our relationship. But I didn’t leave. He continued to lie and cheat for the entirety of our relationship and I never left. I had finally realized how beautiful sexy and worthwhile I was just to end up dating every bully I had ever endured all rolled into up into one handsome incarnation of everything evil. He methodically and quite effectively reminded me that I was ugly. That I was clingy. And just like before I accepted it all as fact. I knew I was ugly, and that if I wasn’t so ugly he wouldn’t have to cheat on me. And if I wasn’t so clingy he wouldn’t he to be so distant and unavailable. And that I could never leave him because I was so ugly and worthless that I would never ever be able to convince someone else to love me. And I believed all of it. It wasn’t just a belief for me it was a fact list like they had been facts in highs school. So I never left. Even after he cheated on me for the ten millionth time. Even after he gave me an STI and blamed it on me, even when I began to financially support him, a guy who made over twice as much money as I did so he could blow his paychecks on drugs video games and I’m sure sex with other girls. He finally left me when I had nothing else to offer that he needed. And in the theme of our relationship he made me feel responsible for that as well. He had tried so hard to love me, But I was just too hard to love. he needed to love himself enough to find something better, and I needed to die alone. And I accepted that he was right. I accepted that I really was this awful ugly worthless person that he and every person at school had convinced me I was. I had finally overcome the pain of my bullying, but this saint of a man had held a mirror up and shown me that they had been right all along. That’s why when I saw a guy who made my heart flutter the very moment I laid eyes on him, I didn’t introduce myself, I didn’t flirt. I knew I was ugly, worthless and impossible to love so I just admired him from across the room, fantasizing about what it would be like to talk to him, to kiss him, to be with him. Even after a friend (who didn’t know about my weird little crush) introduced him to me I still lacked the confidence to actually make a move. But I did talk to him. We talked for hours. Sharing and laughing. I found it easier to talk to this guy than I had ever felt talking to anyone before in my entire life. I didn’t hold back, I didn’t need to with him. He saw me. Making a move on him was literally the hardest and most terrifying moves I’ve ever made. I liked him, I was attracted to him both physically mentally and emotionally. I needed to know if he was attracted to me, but the terror of rejection, the terror of all of those terrible things about me being once again confirmed by a possible rejection filled me with dread that I cannot describe. But I did it. I made a move. It was 6 in the morning. Him and I had literally stayed awake together all night talking. And I was having so much fun talking to him that I didn’t even feel tired, even as the sun began to rise. After hours of plotting my move in my head I decided my move would be to lay down on the ground beside him and lay my head on his leg. Silly I know. But I felt like if he was attracted to me the way I was attracted to him he would allow my head to stay and if he didn’t share me feelings He would ask me to sit up or something else subtle that would be less soul crushing than a full blown rejection. Then we could just keep talking and I could pretend my move had never happened. So I did it. I laid my head on his leg, and to my surprise and delight he allowed it to stay. He didn’t say a word about it in fact, just started running his fingers through my hair as we continued to talk. We shared our first kiss that morning. I’ve been with him for over two years now. And I’m happier than I ever thought I could be. All those years of self loathing have become a distant memory. Because of him, I not only feel beautiful, sexy and wanted, but I feel an actual detachment from the memories of when I didn’t. As if they happened to someone else. Those feelings are no longer a part of who I am. I’m not saying my confidence is flawless. I’m still scared, more scared in fact than I ever want him to know that I will one day be replaced. That he will someday find someone better than me, that it wouldn’t even be that hard for him to find someone better than me, and he will abandon me like everyone who came before him. I tell him I feel this way sometimes, and he holds me and reassures me that I am beautiful and perfect and that he could never want anyone else. And I believe him. For the first time someone saw me. He saw everything that I was, everything that I had been or may yet become. He saw all of the things that are wonderful about me, and also the things that are not so wonderful. and he loves every bit bit of it. But the thing I love most is the gift me gave me. A gift I will happily spend the rest of my life thanking him for. He saw me, and when he saw me, he saw me so clearly, and so completely, that I couldn’t help but see myself. I saw myself reflected in his eyes, and finally after years and trying and failing, I was able to reconcile the me in my head to the me I saw in his eyes. I was able to see the me my family and friends had spent so many years trying and failing to convince me was there all along. I see myself, she’s a beautiful baddass, and I love the fuck out of her.

If you are reading this and can relate to this in any way at all, I want you to know…no….i need you to know that you are not ugly you are beautiful, you re not worthless. You are perfect. You are not weak, you are powerful. And someone will love you. Someone will one day look at you and wonder how they got so damn lucky. And if you end your life now you will never understand how wonderful that feels. I love you, and I pray you learn to love yourself.

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sarahburness · 7 years ago

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A Most Difficult Lesson: People Are Just Doing Their Best

“People are doing the best that they can from their own level of consciousness.” ~Deepak Chopra

My father passed away suddenly and not so suddenly several weeks back.

He had been sick for a long time, but it was a gradually progressing illness and not what ultimately caused his passing. So, it did come as a shock, and the last few weeks have been filled with all the random things you need to do when someone dies—change the names on insurance policies and automobile titles, call social security, etc.

The list seems endless, but now that the tasks are winding down, the silence that is settling in is leaving both my mom and I alone with our feelings.

I knew this silence would come, and I dreaded it. I was afraid I’d think terrible thoughts about him, and that in turn would make me feel like a terrible person. It’s a long story…

There’s no sugarcoating it: My dad was not a great father to me. He provided for our family and didn’t do drugs or drink. He bought us nice presents for the holidays. He did teach us a healthy respect for the rules. He also made it very clear he had a favorite child, and it wasn’t me.

He wasn’t affectionate to me, and he once told me as a child that he wasn’t interested in me as a person because I wasn’t interested in what he liked to do, and he followed through with that by withdrawing from participation in my various childhood pursuits. He occasionally, though not often, beat me with his hands and objects.

Nothing I did ever seemed to please him. When I got a job in addition to taking a full suite of university courses in high school (I was the only child of four who did that), he said I didn’t make enough money.

When I got into the university of my choice (an elite one), he said I should have chosen a secular school, and the one and only time he visited (it wasn’t too far from our house), he said it was “full of crosses.” I cannot remember him ever saying he was proud of me.

He was rarely affectionate with me, and he was loath to comment on my successes while he frequently reminded me of my failures and, above all, the expense I was costing him. The list of the scars I bear from my relationship with him could go on and on and on.

So, though I have always had a problem with the phenomenon of people being beatified when they pass away, I feared not responding to his passing with compassion and instead being accosted by negative thoughts and feelings about him during the silence that followed.

Silence of course invites in the ego, that often very negative voice in the head. I feared feeling and acting like an insensitive, ungrateful person and wondered how I would feel if my own family thought such things about me if I died.

Like so many times when we face a spiritual test, I surprised myself. Once the initial shock and overwhelming grief I felt passed, I found that my disposition toward him was surprisingly kind.

First and foremost, I just feel sorry for him—he suffered for a long time and died too young. Beyond that, I feel grateful for having him as a father because I know he did his very best, and I recall that as perhaps the most important lesson he taught me years before: people are always just doing the best they can. This lesson is a very difficult pill to swallow. Most everyone knows lying and stealing are wrong, and yet so many people do them anyway. Violence and aggression are among society’s universally believed wrong, and yet our world has way too much of them. In the grip of feeling oppressed or victimized, it’s almost impossible to hold this thought in our head—we’re too logical for that.

But consider for a moment: That lady in the store knew that hurling invective at the cashier who couldn’t figure out the correct coupon code is impatient, unkind, and probably unreasonable. The guy on the road who cuts people off knows he doesn’t like it when people do that to him, and he knows his actions make a road accident more likely. They do it anyway. How can we even think they’re doing their best?

One way is to think about it very cleanly: What would you say about someone who knows something to be wrong and yet cannot summon the self-control, patience, compassion, or whatever it may be to stop themselves from doing it?

In that moment, the person is not conscious enough to refrain from the hurtful action. The person is not connected enough to identify with those his or her actions are harming. Something is holding that person back from showing up fully and achieving his or her full human potential for goodness.

The maddening fact for those of us who skew to the hyper-logical side of the spectrum is that in 99.9 percent of cases, you’ll never know what that something is. In fact, no matter how well you know someone, the best you can do in terms of understanding his or her motives, subconscious thoughts and emotions driving behavior is an educated guess.

However, I knew my dad as well as he allowed anyone to, and I was very familiar with his personal history, so I had a pretty good idea what those somethings holding him back were.

He grew up in an abusive household, and his dad eventually abandoned his mom and him. He was poor. He lived in a tough inner-city neighborhood and was bullied terribly as a child.

His mom was a cold and distrustful woman with few if any friends and estranged from almost her entire family. She relentlessly hounded him about his every dollar of expense.

Not surprisingly, he carried the pain of this upbringing with him throughout his whole life, and he had no example of what good parenting looked like.

Without that example and with all the wrong lessons and accumulated pain he carried, is it any surprise Dad had difficulty expressing affection?

Given how little positivity and support he had growing up, how would he have known how to or even that he should have expressed those things to his family? With his mom being estranged from so many people, how could we not expect him as a child to have learned this as a normal state of affairs?

Indeed, he struggled to improve on key parts of what was lacking in his childhood. He was singularly focused on materially providing for all his children—even after he strongly established his financial security—because he knew what it was like to be without material well-being.

Though he definitely was abusive to me at times, this was something that was not a normal state of affairs in our household the way it was in his. Thus, the ways in which he was traumatized most reflected in his parenting, in some way for the better and in some for the worse. It must have been difficult for him.

I can’t say that this realization came easily to me. It took time and distance and only came to me after I had left home for years, during which my time personal hurt gradually faded.

As my life began to fall into place literally on the other side of the world, I saw from afar all the dysfunction unfolding in my family. Not only did I realize that I should be thankful I was removed from it, but I understood it was the best they could do.

As an outsider in the family, I had observed the various inter-personal dynamics at work, and I could identify with how powerless and ill-equipped Dad must have felt to deal with all of it.

This understanding gave me such peace and even empathy, and it freed me from my youthful anger and resentment toward them. Nevertheless, it was only years later when I had my own spiritual awakening that I fully understood the implications, universal applicability, and power of this lesson.

But the truth is that you’ll never know most people that well, and even if you did, you may never even think you understand the ways in which they’ve been damaged. Some of the most unfortunate people are against all circumstances among the most joyful, while many of the wealthiest and most popular celebrities are miserable and lead tumultuous lives.

The mind and the ego are capable of creating their own narratives, which their hosts typically completely identify with. We can never fully understand, but that’s just it—people themselves are rarely aware of their reasons for doing what they do and feeling what they feel.

And there it is: Peoples’ level of consciousness—their awareness of their own feelings and mind (i.e. their ego) as well as those of the people around them—determine how well they can see their own actions and behave with grace.

Dad had a lot of accumulated pain, which had never been given voice, and he didn’t even realize it to be able to strive for better. What he did realize, for example the insecurity of poverty, he tried mightily and indeed succeeded in improving upon.

Likewise, when I beat myself up for responding to others’ plight with coldness and distance, I need to remind myself that this was the model I had growing up, and unless an outside observer was really familiar with the dynamics of our family, there’s no way he or she would understand that about me.

When I feel shame at failing to recognize others’ efforts and accomplishments, I need to remember that’s how I was raised. This was the next step I made after my spiritual awakening—I was able to broaden the whole “they’re doing their best” lesson to myself and others.

And now the next step—the most challenging one—is to try and remember this each and every day.

When faced with that lady yelling about the coupons or the guy who just cut you and four other people off as he sped down the highway, in the midst of your indignation, can you take a breath and remember that they’re doing their best?

How do you know if that lady is maxed out on her credit cards or has a sick husband or just lost her job? Perhaps the angry driver is rushing home to see his sick son or has an anxiety disorder. Whatever the circumstances—and in these cases you’ll never know what those are—that is quite simply the best they can do in that very moment.

When your coworker takes credit for your work and tries to hide it from you, can you accept that she’s operating from a place of pain or fear and that you will likely never understand what exactly that looks like?

Knowing that the coworker is still doing his best doesn’t mean you can’t respond appropriately to right the situation, but can you do so from a state of compassion and not anger? If you can summon the empathy to do so, you’ll likely realize how much more effective your response will be.

So, though it may annoy you to no end, you’ll never know how people process their own past and how that past is expressing itself in the present. In the grip of a terrible situation when you just want to ring someone’s neck, try to remember that. Moreover, when you find yourself remembering, give yourself credit. You may surprise yourself, as I just did with my father’s passing. I’m still grieving and will be for some time. The pain and fear my dad felt for so long… it just isn’t fair. He didn’t deserve that, just like I didn’t deserve my lonely childhood.

None of us deserve what happens to us, right? We’re born innocent, and yet we all suffer through a lot, whether that be physical or emotional—totally in our own heads. Just try to remember that—we’re all in this together.

Thanks, Dad for teaching me that lesson to live by, and so long.

About Joshua Kauffman

Joshua Kauffman is a recovering over-achiever and workaholic. Leaving behind a high-powered life in business, he has become a world traveler, aspiring coach, and entrepreneur of pretty things. Amateur author of a recent memoir Footprints Through The Desert, he is trying to find ways to share his awakening experience, particularly to those lost in the rat race like he was.

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