#the therapist has trauma who would have fuckin guessed

[spiritkindled]

“That’s my secret to helping clients with parental issues: I have them, too.”

[gnc-tits]

hate tht all the “support” for ppl who have loved ones w bpd is like just a bunch of nasty nasty self centered bpd is abuser disorder shit. like where are the bitches who can keep it real

[sincerestarlight]

The Introverts Guide to The Meaning of Life.

Yeah the title is a bit grandiose but I like it.

This is coming from a place where I wanted to be able to help people. I don’t always know the best words to express what I think when I speak but lately I’ve wanted to work in a space where I could just speak at length about what I feel I’ve learned in my life. About how I think and relate to people and the world at large. And I wanted to do so in a space I felt would maybe be seen and help a person or two.

Hence I made the decision to come to Tumblr.

Call it Madness or Wisdom, you’re still probably right.

So this is going to be my partial diary, partial wisdom blog, partial hard record for whatever therapist wants to look at me down the road. Hopefully they appreciate the documentation.

So I guess the first thing I want to kinda dwell on is, as the caterpillar asks…

Who are you?

TBH I think about this question a lot. Sure I can answer with my name, and that’s indeed who I am in society, but where I begin questioning is who I am to myself.

To anyone who is reading this, Lils is fine.

One of the things I’ve always had a problem with is trying to describe myself. The concept of ice breaking activities fills me with dread, or more commonly these days it’s the ominous “tell me some of your strengths and weaknesses”.

Whoever came up with that question needs to be sentenced to having to use the bathroom on stage in front of an audience.

Seriously there are no good answers to that question! If you say to many good things, or those good things in the wrong way, you’re perceived as arrogant. If you say to many negative things, you lack confidence, or worse they lowball you in pay cause they think you won’t fight back.

And the thing is that you should have confidence in yourself! We are in a big old universe that, as far as we know, stretches on for immeasurable lengths, distances where you can only measure in how many years it would take light to reach it *and it can still be millions of years*

On top of that matter that had at one point just been floating in the void floated into each other *so hard* that it became a giant floating rock. Then this rock managed, through scientific fuckery, make water! An atmosphere! *Fucking Life*. And whatever you think about *what* made life, the fact is that from there, millions of years passed, dinosaurs happened, then they stopped, then humans. Greece, Rome, Wars, and all that time has led to you.

You.

And then fuckin life happens.

Oh yeah, it’s a miracle but it doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck a whole bunch of nards. Christ almighty, it’s a miracle when a kid makes it out of high school without some form of lasting trauma. And then we mold ourselves around that trauma, in the worst case passing those issues onto the next generation.

Why bring up trauma? Well I think that’s why I have a problem with the initial question of who I am.

I used to really like ice breaking activities when I was younger. I always saw them as an opportunity to make friends, maybe if we have similar likes or interests, one of the peeps in my new class will like it too, and we can bond over it and then boom, friend made. So a lot of times, I would talk about what I liked, or things I learned from properties that I liked. It seldom worked the way I expected, but again, stories for another time.

That was my safe spot you know? The things that I liked. I knew those. Give me two options and I can tell you what one I prefer. Tv shows? No problem. Video games? Piece of cake. Sportsball games? I might not be super into them but I can tell you what team I prefer over a different one, even if it’s just based on their uniforms or mascot game.

But then everything changed when the question did.

See, you *have* to go to school. You *have* to do your homework. For stricter upbringings like mine you *have* to get good grades. Living within those confines is it’s own form of comfort. You know what you’re going to do, the question was doing it in a fashion that you like. And after many years of picking between Pokémon starters, that was an easy task. But then one day, maybe later than other people, I wasn’t asked “what do you like”

I was asked “what do you want to do.”

For some people, that question is easy. They know what they want to do. Doctors, artists, scientists, parents, people know what they want to do and the most tenacious of us make it with jobs in their chosen field and I am genuinely thrilled for people who follow their passion. But when I was addressed with that question, I froze. Want was never included in my world up to that point. There were things that sure, if I had complete freedom and unlimited money I’d like to do, but being invested in anything like that was merely fantasy. Sure, being able to lie on the beach in a nice chair with a book in hand sounds like paradise but it’s not really a realistic goal. Same with world domination.

After that I struggled…a lot. I started learning about the things that I like, maybe I could refine down what it was that I liked about them and magically, like an epiphany, I would see the thing that would make me happy, the passion and determination that others had when it came to their craft. But nothing came. I got a retail job after that and spent a good long time basically chasing that next bit of Serotonin. Nothing dangerous but definitely not good for my mental health. If passion wasn’t in my future the least I could hope for would be comfort.

Then I moved into my own place. I had a job that could (barely) afford, and then I looked around and said “well. Now what?”

That was the goal. Self sustainability. And I don’t mean to sound dour about the whole thing, it’s an accomplishment that I am proud of, but a ghost loomed over my head. The concept that now that I am self sustainable, what did I want to do? Obviously there are limits, but now I could exist beholden to no one but myself and…I didn’t know what to do with it. I still don’t. and it’s felt very lonely. Lonely because I feel this bright passion inside of me and I have no way to share it. No way for it to exist in this world.

I don’t know what I want to do but I want to do something.

I want to live my life in joy

I want to love whomever I want at my own pace

I want to be passionate and excited and run into the future with the confidence of the ball of conscious stardust that I am.

And even if no one reads this, writing it down helped a lot. The fact that the very thought exists somewhere helps.

[bitchapalooza]

Hetalia characters I could easily fight and how I would fight them

Germany is easy. All I have to do is tell him I have a dog waiting for me at home and if he beats me up he will die.

Austria is also easy. My arms maybe noodles but I am short and a short person's target is almost always the crotch, the knees, or the feet. Well guess what I have two fists and and I can choose two locations to hit.

I can confidently say I can fight Sealand. I am not above pushing an immortal child, who mostly likely has poor political tastes, into the mud. Our heights maybe a little balanced but I am the taller one. And hey I can also annoy him by screaming as high pitched as I can :) I annoy a lot of people that way.

All I have to do to win to against North Italy is tell him I have a body count and its about go up by one. And then he's gunnin' for them hills with his tail between his legs.

I could psychologically torture Greece tbh.

Okay look, Sweden is big tall man right? But big tall man is no match for child shield. That's right. I am willing to use to Sealand as my human shield against his own father. Its about survival dammit and I'm winning, Sealand is losing.

I will use Prussia's trauma as a weapon against him. I don't like it but this fucker could bend me in half. To him, I am a fucking kit-kat bar. I am 4'11 and not even 90 lbs, Prussia can crush me easily. So I will open old wounds. I feel bad about it but nothing else will work. I will call his support team and therapist right after and apologize too tho.

"I'm gonna break you." England tells me as he cracks his knuckles. "Yeah no your not." I say as I get into the deep end of a pool. I can't swim either but he doesn't know that so I still win even after I've drown.

I would immediately destroy Rome by telling him his grandsons hate him. Thats it. 1 2 3 and he's down. I fuckin win.

[oranicuhh]

i dont like that when i have depressive episodes, i’m still the one considering others’ feelings. i actually fuckin hate it. (im fine, don’t worry, i know my brain. she’s having a moment) but in all seriousness, i’m so goddamn tired of feeling like a superhuman capable of seeing every dimension at once, thus rendering me one of the chosen ones who can be there for everyone but has no one there for me. i’m tired of mfs trauma bonding with me or using me as a makeshift therapist, only to disappear or lash out when i really need them to reciprocate. i’m tired of feeling like a burden who’s simply lucky that anyone would even look to me as a source of light in any capacity. i’m sick of understanding duality and feeling this shit so heavily until i just don’t anymore. like how fucked up is it that i can wear my emotional isolation + the emotions of the people i love as a badge of strength? “look how bad i can hurt and still bounce back, guys! real nigga shit.” like that’s fuckin cool or healthy. it’s not & if i could change it i would in a millisecond. but the fact of the matter is that i don’t think i will ever experience the depth of love i feel for others being given to me. i don’t lol. i don’t think it’s possible. and not in some self-deprecating “i’m unlovable” way. i’ve been there & felt that. this is different. i don’t think i was put here to be loved at all. i love me, which i cool. cuz i’m a great judge of bad bitches, if i may say so myself. but there is not a single person on this dying planet who has the capacity to love me the way i need to be loved.

and i guess i gotta be cool with that.

[couriersiccs]

i finally got diagnosed with ADHD.

it has taken. twenty-five and a half YEARS of my life to understand and achieve.

it was never noticed growing up because no one knew what the fuck ADHD even WAS. it was a little boy who couldn’t sit still and that’s like IT that’s all anyone knew.

it wasn’t me having a stutter because, quoting my mom, “my brain goes too fast for my mouth to keep up.” (that is LITERALLY ADHD.) it wasn’t me being, quoting my dad, “silly-dally Sally” in the morning, getting distracted and taking forever to get ready on time for school. it wasn’t me in 2nd grade loudly saying “i already KNOW THIS” and falling asleep in class. it wasn’t my theater director WATCHING ME SPACE OUT while she talked to me. it wasn’t me lashing out against kids who bullied or teased me. it wasn’t me being the kid that everyone only knew as “quiet” and “nice” and “weird.”

i got good grades, and i had a couple friends, was “conscientious” and a “pleasure to have in class.”

but i didn’t get good grades through conventional methods. i found other ways. i figured out how much homework i needed to do to pass and did ONLY that much. i figured out how to write well, mostly because i loved writing, so i could make an essay SOUND nice even if it was 100% bullshit. i didn’t study - i NEVER fuckin studied. my notes were incomprehensible and usually incomplete. instead, i figured out how teachers wrote the quizzes and tests. i wrote what i thought THEY thought was the right answer. figured out how often they hid answers in previous questions. how they framed the correct multiple choice answer within the wrong ones. memorized facts, didn’t necessarily understand them. didn’t necessarily learn what they were teaching. i relied heavily on hard deadlines for the pressure as motivation, and usually turned shit in late, but not too late too often.

so because “nothing was wrong with me” my mom had certain expectations. and no matter what i did, i couldn’t live up to them. they always felt out of reach. part of me wonders, if i didn’t have ADHD, maybe i could’ve. but she was also an emotionally abusive alcoholic with undiagnosed BPD, so probably not. but still.

so then her fear-based, controlling authoritative parenting style, excessive criticism, and repetitive reminders of what i wasn’t accomplishing for reasons that were beyond me but still definitely my fault, and i GUESS plus being raised a repressed catholic, came the guilt, the depression, the anxiety. which, fueled by ADHD, became negative, shaming, cyclical rumination, which became intense self-loathing and hopelessness that went on for years. and YEARS.

my relationships suffered. my creativity suffered. i suffered, tremendously, and i didn’t even know why. just that i was hurting and the only culprit was myself.

and then i moved out at 19 and realized my mom had abused me. and then i fully accepted that i was gay. and then i had friends who really, truly supported and loved me, watched them grow. i had a teacher who showed me how his life and his work changed dramatically after addressing his mental health as an adult. and i decided that, if i was going to survive, i would need to do the same.

i’m going to start medication after next month’s appt and i’m so excited that it might help and so scared that it won’t because it just seems too good to be true, that everything that’s hindered me thus far will start to fall away and i’ll be able to live the life i want to live. i’m working with my therapist on the trauma front and i’m hoping to pick up new, healthy habits along the way, but it’s terrifying to imagine a future where it all works out and i’m happy and thriving because i’m still just worried it won’t happen because what if it IS just me, maybe it really IS ME, this is how i’ll ALWAYS be, and there’s NOTHING i can do to change that.

and then i hug my dog and breathe and then continue to take it one day at a time. i wanna get better by bleachers plays from the other room. i take a nap and schedule time to write fanfiction and take care of myself in the ways i wish i’d been taken care of before, but i wasn’t, so it has to be done now, and i’m the only one who can do that.

[afniel]

Imma put some (heavy? I'm not sure? I don't go into any graphic details of anything bad but I guess it's a big topic, check the tags if you want to know more) mental health stuff under the cut, so, here's the cut.

I'm feeling like I can and maybe should be a little more open about this recently, so...I've realized that it's highly likely that I've got Dissociative Identity Disorder. Now granted, I'm not diagnosed at the time of this post, but it's something I've been living with for basically my entire life already, and I've got a ton of practice dealing with myself and working through shit, so I'm pretty sure it is what it is. Plus, honestly, how else do you explain containing several other people who are also me except all of these mes don't necessarily share access to each other's memories or skills*, which occasionally causes some really difficult shit for all of me. I'm self-aware enough that I notice missed time and holes in my memory now—we don't ask about the times I couldn't notice them, those are pretty bad times—and the only alter I have who's even capable of fully taking over if I blank out isn't even really distinguishable from me, he's just funnier. And I've got pretty decent communication methods with all of them, which aren't even that many at this point...I used to have a few more. (I would pay the super organized one with the great fashion sense to come back, though, damn.)

And yes, before anyone comes in like, "Well, Ackshually, you need to have experienced repeated, regular trauma before the age of—" ...don't assume that I didn't, man, because I did. I blocked it all from memory for years until 2020 started unearthing shit because I had nothing but time and nothing to do but introspect, and I just wasn't ready to accept it until then. To be clear, I definitely don't mean any sort of fun or self-induced kind of multiplicity, here, I mean the sort where at several points in my life I've had people tell me that I did/said stuff I don't even remember and would never normally do/say when I legitimately believed I was asleep. And then I blocked those out of memory too, because why not at that point. It's a self-defense mechanism, and one that's very hard to distinguish from ADHD and fibro and sleep disturbance memory problems, any of which are shitty enough on their own.

Honestly it doesn't mean anyone has to do anything differently around me. I'm still Me, I've just realized that I never quite got glued together right during some developmental stages because of environmental pressure to, in fact, not do that at all, because it was a lot easier to function that way. None of my parts feel like Entirely Not Me, they've got names and different voices and all but as a whole I don't want to be addressed differently, it's just this weird feeling of realizing that my brain runs very oddly, looking under the hood, and finding out that it's not even assembled but it's somehow managing to carry on anyway...and has been like this since I was a child, which is clear in hindsight now that I'm not involuntarily blanking everything about it out.

I'm gonna at some point here try and see if I have access to any therapists who can work with DID, 'cause man, it kinda sucks and I wouldn't mind managing it better. I'm not doing badly now, but I haven't been doing spectacularly in general with it, so, y'know. There's always room to improve.

(I'm especially mad that I'm funnier than myself, what the actual fuck. How does that even work.)

*Footnote: I discovered the hard way that my most functional guardian sort of alter actually can't draw, he just cribs off of my memory if he needs to do it because he's got nearly full access to it (though I have only middly access to his memory), but we switched so abruptly one time that I kinda shunted off into nowhere for a very confusing 20-30 seconds of staring at the tablet going, "Hey, wow, this is really good. Who drew—oh shit, I'm drawin' this? Oh no. I have no fuckin' idea how to draw, fuck, what do I do?" until everything kinda stopped bluescreening. Funny in retrospect but also very much an Oh No This Is Serious Isn't It moment.

Plus side, he also doesn't have fibromyalgia, which is GREAT but another sign that hey, uh, something is not working as expected here, because why would I just sometimes not have a chronic condition, but only when I'm in this REALLY specific mental state...? Brains are wild, y'all.

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #304

“she’s got a hold on me  /  maybe she is just what they want me to be”

How many foreign friends do you have? Only one that I know of that actually immigrated into America in their life. I think. In which countries do they live? She was born in Asia, either China or Japan. What was your dream birthday party as a kid? I either wanted to go to the skating rink or Chuck E. Cheese. Have you ever come up with your own game? As a kid, definitely. Whose hand did you hold last? Probably my niece's or nephew's if they were taking me somewhere. What was the last thing you planted? Habaneros, I think. Do you have a green thumb or are you all thumbs with plants? I don't really try with plants because I'm not interested in the maintenance. What or who was the last thing you gossiped about? Does telling your therapist about another person and what they do to stress you out count? lol Any books on your night stand? Wings of Fire: The Brightest Night. Would you ever consider going vegetarian? I was briefly one, but I had to introduce meat back into my diet because I just hate too many foods needed to keep me healthy without meat. I would love love LOVE to go vegan, but I just can't. When's the last time you helped a senior citizen somehow? Probably holding open a door for someone in a wheelchair. What's the most selfless act you have done? I don't know... Maybe letting my mother use all my Christmas and birthday money (which was a lot) to take care of bills to keep us from being evicted and losing the car. She was going to pay me back, but then cancer happened. Have you ever intentionally fed a house spider? No. What makes you feel lucky? The fact I have a roof over my head, food on the table, access to water... That kind of stuff. Never take it for granted. How many Lidls are there in your town? One. Last time you went to Ikea, what did you buy? I don't believe we've ever bought anything from there? But I wouldn't really know. How do you like your favorite beverage? Really cold in a can, heeeeell yeah. What's your big family secret? We don't really have one. What did you think you were good at, until you saw someone else do it? I remember thinking I was the "gifted" artist in school until I met my acquaintance Cailin in the 5th grade, lol. She is SO talented. What is something nice going on in your life right now? My partial hospitalization program is going well. I'm getting more comfortable with talking via things like Zoom, it's a good opportunity for me to socialize with like-minded people almost every day, and I ADORE one of the teachers so much so that I want him to be my normal therapist. I have never in the entirety of my life felt less judged and more cared for from any therapist before him, and it's almost supernatural how easily this man reads people. You could twitch a certain way and he picks it up. I'm ready for him to teach more of the sessions. What was the pinnacle of wealth to you as a child? The idea of owning one of those toy crane machines, haha. If I saw one in a store, I would like beeeeg for it. I remember I cried once when I came across one I adored, it was just too expensive, lol. I did eventually get a little one, I think. What's something that you hate, but can't live without? My meds. What skill do you not talk about, because you feel it sounds like bragging? I don't really brag about anything I think I'm good at because I feel bad about it and don't wanna emit a "better than you" vibe. Who's the worst person you've encountered on the Internet? Ahhh, a lovely "friend" nicknamed Shakes. God she hated me. If death wasn't a consequence, what would you try? Probably ride a motorcycle. I'm too scared to risk the possibility of crashing, and those wrecks are nasty. What's the dumbest thing you've heard someone say? There's this one video of a TV show host thinking the moon was a planet and it was just- What is the worst smell you can remember? This smell was forever branded into my memory as if it was fuckin trauma. When my late dog Teddy had a massive, infected cyst near his ~you know~ and also wore diapers because of incontinence with his age (also keep in mind he had a UTI we couldn't afford to fix, and that smells bad enough), changing the diaper he would wear overnight could, swear to God, be enough to make you puke. It literally came to a point that I personally could no longer do it. It sounds so so bad and selfish, and it probably is, but Mom had to do it before she left and came home from work; she's way less fazed by stuff like that than me. Yes, when we had the money, we got the cyst removed. What song gets better the louder it gets? Only like, every song I enjoy. The louder the better until it becomes obnoxious to others. What's the biggest inconvenience that does NOT ruin your day? Having to pee at like an unnatural frequency? haha What's something everybody should know how to do? Cook... which I don't know how to do. What is a great movie no one knows about? I'unno. I don't really know the success level of most movies unless you see stuff about it everywhere. What type of person could the world use less of? Rapists, pedophiles, monsters like that. What makes you tingle? I have this odd reaction to rubbing my hand while someone is holding it???? idk why????? What’s the best Wi-Fi name you’ve seen? Oh MAN, I wish I could remember 'em all. I've seen some goodies. What's easy to learn, but hard to master? God, it's pathetic that my immediate response is related to a video game, haha. Then again it's such a common idea that it's basically a meme in the World of Warcraft community. So, playing hunters in the game. They're argued to be one of the - if not the - easiest classes in the game that requires little to no skill, while as a hunter main, I disagree with the second part firmly. I don't know about the other specializations because I don't play them, but at least in beast mastery, it takes focus and thinking ahead to master your rotation for optimal damage and just to generally be a skilled player of the class. Not to mention you need to watch your pet(s), too. What's something you've changed your opinion on? Wow, LOTS. Tons of political ideas, like my stance on gay rights, transgender folks, etc... If you had a refilling bowl, what would you want it to contain? For some reason my mind immediately jumped to fresh strawberries. I'm picky with the firmness of fruit, so I won't eat them if they're older because ew. If your bedroom had three portals to anywhere, where would they lead? I mean this in the least creepy way possible, but Sara's house so we could actually hang out, Dad's house so I could see him more, and then uhhh South Africa to regularly see meerkitties. You can ask any author one question about their story. What do you ask? Oh, I dunno. I've got some for writers of other media, but I guess by "author," you mean this is for books exclusively. If you have caffeine late in the day, does it cause you to struggle with your sleep? Shit, I wouldn't even know because I essentially always have caffeine in my system. I don't believe it affects me. When you struggle to sleep, what do you do instead? Keep trying to sleep, or more common than not, I do exactly what you shouldn't do and get back on the laptop for a while. Who was the last person you spoke to for the first time? How did you come to speak to this person? My most recent therapist in the PHP. I love love love him. The therapists rotate the days they teach, and he was the last one I met. Are there any TV shows from your childhood that you still watch today? I'm not opposed to it if I actually watched television. Do you enjoy buying gifts for other people, or do you never know what to buy them? If I actually have the money to, omg yes. I honestly do think I create or buy very thoughtful gifts, and I just really enjoy reminding other people that I love and think about them. Who were you with the last time you went out for a meal? My sisters, Mom, and I went to the Cheesecake Factory for my birthday dinner. That place has come to oust Olive Garden as my favorite restaurant, haha. What’s the last thing you watched on TV? Is this a programme you watch regularly? I believe it was this amateur cooking show called Nailed It!, I think it was, with my mom when I sat in the living room with her for dinner one night. Do you have a favorite documentary subject (eg. nature, celebrities, history, crime)? Absolutely animals. Does having to wear a mask stop you from doing anything, just because you dislike them or find them uncomfortable? Do not fucking talk to me if you're anti-mask. If I set foot in public, I'm wearing a mask like a goddamn considerate human being. Do you prefer zip-up or overhead hoodies? Overhead. I really dislike the appearance of zippers on them. If you have a yard or garden, how much time do you spend out there? N/A When was the last time someone bought you flowers? What was the occasion? I think it was the first time Tyler came to my house. This was quite a few years ago. When was the last time you stayed overnight away from home? Was this with friends, family or in a hotel somewhere? What was the occasion? Hell, I'm pretty sure I haven't slept over anywhere since the last time I was visiting Sara, which was like, two years ago. What’s your favorite period to learn about in history? What got you interested in this particular era? The Renaissance; I always found it to be an attractive subject, art being in its "glory days" and all. My Art History course in college really hooked me in. What is the smallest thing you lose your temper over instantly? Homophobic bullshit. What's a job that doesn't get enough respect? As others have said before me, teachers might just top the list. The shit they gotta put up with for so little pay... What did you take for granted until you visited another country? I've never left America, so I wouldn't know. Who is your favorite scientist and why? I don't have a favorite; I don't know nearly enough about any. Do you prefer emoticons or emoji? I'm from the emoticons era, so I'm biased, haha. How did you meet your pet? Roman was the kitten of one of my sister's mother-in-law's females. They have quite a cat problem and wanted to adopt the kittens out, and Mom knew I desperately wanted a cat, so there we go. One day when we were over there, she showed me the kittens, and Roman caught my eye instantly with his beautiful blue eyes. Venus, I "met" via the Morph Market, a reptile hub website for selling, as the name implies, reptiles that are generally morphs of their species. I was clicking through the genes, keeping my price ceiling in mind, and really fell in love with champagnes, and I thought Venus in specific was just absolutely beautiful. I officially met her as a little thing mailed to me, and she was and still is just the sweetest. I wanna point out that when I chose Venus, I hadn't the slightest idea that champagnes harbored "the spider gene," as otherwise I would have avoided adopting her and feeding the market. Regardless, I love her to death and wouldn't trade her out. Did/Do you have any PEZ dispensers? I did as a kiddo, yeah. Do you enjoy erotic stories? If so, do you read them or write them? No; they make me really uncomfortable. When writing RP, some scenes can get sexual, but I have my limits for sure and know when to stop writing and just time-skip. If you had to choose, which one would you rather have: a pet or a baby? Keep the baby away from me. Gimme a plains hognose or tarantula, please. ^Why did you choose the one you chose? I don't want kids at all but would love the mentioned animals as pets. Do you live with your parents or on your own/with a partner? I live with my mother. What's the car of your dreams? I don't have a "dream car." Have you ever witnessed something or someone die? Animals, yes. Has anyone ever told you that you snore or talk in your sleep? I don't snore, but I talk a LOT. Do you have any houseplants? No. Are you more on a laptop or a desktop computer? I only have a laptop, and I prefer them for portability's sake. If you could do absolutely anything, what would you like to do the most? Entirely leave behind my anxiety, probably. Or PTSD. Do you think your parents raised you well? Yeah. Dad didn't really take much part in "raising" us/enforcing rules and stuff, but hey, my sisters and I wound up being good people. Do you have a Facebook? Yeah. Do you know any of your neighbors? Definitely not well. We haven't lived here long at all. Does/did any of your relatives have an interesting, nowadays unusual job? I'm sure somebody does. Have you met your ideal partner yet? I think so. Have you had a serious relationship yet? If so, how many? Yeah, two. Do you enjoy books, magazines or comic books the most? Books. Are your parents old-fashioned or up-to-date about certain things? Dad is more old-fashioned I think, while Mom is pretty up-to-date. Do you or did you at some point keep a diary? I very briefly did on a few occasions. I always had a journal I wrote in during all my hospital stays. Have you ever upcycled trash into useful items? I remember I once followed this craft idea on Animal Planet where you turn a milk jug into a bird house. We never got any birds in it, though. Which color Skittle do you like best? The only right answer is red. What’s your favorite element? Of the classic four, fire. If you had your own radio show, what would it be like? YIKES, I don't want one. Don't make me talk in front of (through a radio or not) people. What has been the biggest surprise you’ve ever gotten? An "impossible" breakup over Facebook Messenger lmaoooo. Is there a holiday you can’t stand at all? There aren't any that I "can't stand," but I do hold at least some degree of dislike of ones bastardized by religion. It's disrespectful as fuck. Who is your favorite person in the whole world? My mom. Has there ever been an activity you became obsessed with? I was definitely obsessed with RPing in my early teens. Like, I ALWAYS wanted to be writing it. What has been the strangest place you ran into someone from your past? I can't think of an occurance. What is something people tend to come to you about? Anything related to English and grammar. If applicable, what's the furthest you've traveled because of a hobby? For purely a hobby, definitely not very far, partially because I can't drive or afford travelling via plane or whatever. Do you have souvenirs from other countries? If so, what and from where? N/A What do you do when someone is talking to you about something you don't care about? Pretend to be interested to avoid being rude. Do you have Photoshop installed on your computer? Yeah. Do you put lotion on after you get out of the shower? No, but I need to. Has anyone ever given you a promise ring? No. Do you have any bruises on you? Yeah, on my shin. When getting in Ash's van the other day, I hit it against the thing that helps you step up into the vehicle. Because of my muscle atrophy, I, and I am not kidding, can barely manage to absolutely yank myself up there. And mind you, her van isn't even very high up at all. My legs are just that damn weak. Any changes in appearance lately? Gaining weight is fucking lovely. Who was the last person to call you babe or baby? Probably a gal friend commenting on a selfie or something on Facebook. Do you hate the person you fell hardest for? Sometimes. Do you actually care about other's problems? Probably too much for my own good. Have you ever gotten a teddy bear from someone? Besides my mom, I don't think so.

[punkcryptids]

ramble

this is the one form of social media i can vent on and be confident no one is gonna find it, it won’t start drama and i can just go the fuck off

i have this ex friend right? really mf toxic, i cut her off last year n shit is all good, right?

anyways, last week i found out she has been consistently posting abt me on her tik tok, just indirects, since aT LEAST may, probably longer. and i told her the fuck off, made my own shit behind “obsessed” by mariah carrey, after some comments back n forth, the whole incident is said n done, she blocks me. ok cool

here i am, finding out the bitch is *still* making indirects. its a lil less obvious, so of course there’s the possibility it’s not me but knowing the situation im p sure it is-- the caption was like “if you side w someone because they’re crying but dont care about what they did, i hate you” or something like that. and im just at my wits end dude,, (a tiny bit of context; our friend group completely left her when i did, n all of them commented on my video + people who were kinda in our friend group but not completely if that makes sense-- one of the kinda in the group ppl commented on her video n she responded “wtf did i ever do to you” so thats why i think the caption has to do w me)

it doesnt make me as anxious as it used to but it makes me angry dude. n the indirects were really fuckin wild. im not tryna explain the situation too much because it was a whole year of verbal/mental abuse that i somewhat tuned out because *trauma*, but she was making wholeass posts abt my relationship. thats what is was, each n every time. 

makes sense bc it was the whole fucking issue when we were friends, but they were straight lies. shit abt how he cheated on me and-- she KNOWS its not true. SHE KNOWS, the whole issue is she was overly involved in my relationship because we were both her best friends.  

the whole reason this incident happened in the first place was because two days before i made my thing calling her out, she posted ANOTHER indirect. idk how many of yall are on tiktok, but it was the trend “introduce yourself as why you and your ex bsf dont talk” and gUeSs wHaT iT SaID?? “i dont like when my friends get cheated on”. its amazing the mental gymnastics she has to go through to feel correct in the situation. AMAZING. making up whole ass events that didnt happen (when we had our lil confrontation she cited him cheating on me when WE WERENT TOGETHER dnkjfheifjoewi) 

god this probably reads so weirdly because its a random insight to a situation without full context + it jumps all over. im sorry about that i just physically cannot dude. im a legal adult next year, class of 2021 babey and it fucking blows my mind theres still this middle school drama bs going on. and i cant do shit, because all she will do is block me when i call her out on her bs and then continue to post abt it. when it first happened it made me feel happy and relieved that i stood up for myself for once but then finding out shes doing the same shit shes just a fucking coward.

ig whats sending me more is the one comment she left on my video was “bell would you like to say this to my face” n then BLOCKED ME N CONTINUED TO SHIT TALK I-

i know i need to work on letting it not bother me-- she will talk her shit, she will spew her lies, and at least all of the people who were there for the situation know shes wrong-- n thats all that matters. but anxiety is a bitch sometimes. plus i guess it just hurts, she was such a gaslighting, manipulative person n it fucking hurts to see her lie and turn that shit on me. esp because my mind is littered with mental instability that i will start to bELIEVE IT HDhnfiujfo. it makes me mad that i have to deal with the trauma she gave me n she gets to sit there making tik toks lying about what happened to strangers online to validate her. what bothers me even more is it wasnt even about our relationship really. it was just about MY relationship with my boyfriend which feels so fucking weird. especially bc half of her tiktoks are directed at calling me a bad person (+saying how much better she is than me lmao) n missing my bf (who she calls her “brother” even though she gaslit him and manipulated him all the same djifhbdi) and the other half is like she misses me ??? considering the latest indirect (before she blocked me) was abt why we arent friends anymore

i cannot stress enough how fucking done i am. it stresses me out because i cut her out of my life so i wouldnt have to deal w it and i feel like i cant escape her and i hate it i want to move out of this fuckign town so i never have to have the possibility of running into her 

but if i do run into her you bet your ass im calling her pussy ass out >:) 

also shoutout my therapist who will get the run down (probably a summary of this post) of this situation tomorrow hehe 

[izzy-b-hands]

Loyalty

No idea where this came from, or why. Was sitting here bemoaning that I didn’t know what to write and nothing was coming, and then THIS!

This is set in the Modern AU, though there’s nothing in particular to designate it that other than my saying so and that’s how it played out in my head as I wrote lol. In a particular version of the Modern AU where they live in the same city in Texas as Florence and Burgie.

TW for allusions to suicide and PTSD, though nothing is mentioned real explicitly.

Fic title comes from the Kendrick Lamar song, because he’s all I was listening to while I wrote this, and I figure the word fits the sort of idea/theme in this in a weird way. Particularly the line ‘all we ask is trust’ because trust is definitely a Topic in this one. 

My love to all who read/like/reblog!

“He’s worried about you.” 

Snafu shrugged. “He shouldn’t bother.” 

Burgie sighed and dropped down onto the bar stool beside him. “You gotta stop this shit. The hell scared you now?” 

“The fuck do you mean?” 

Burgie damn near growled, mean, and he usually didn’t get that way with friends unless he was drinking, but he hadn’t touched the beer Snafu had ordered for him as soon as he saw him walk in. 

“You know very well ‘the fuck’ I mean, Merriell. You claim you want to be close, you want to be a good boyfriend, maybe even his husband someday? Then you gotta get over this gettin’ scared shit you do. Last time, you freaked out because he wanted you to go to some university function with him, and he went alone, and left early and called me in tears. Time before that, he tried to set up a nice vacation for y’all, that you both needed and deserved. You got scared he’d somehow fall in love with someone in that city that he’d meet, and claimed work wouldn’t give you the time off, and he knew that shit wasn’t true, and that hurt. So what is it this time?” 

“Like he doesn’t do the same shit to me.” 

Burgie sighed deeply. “I’m not saying he doesn’t. He does, and I need to talk to him about that too-” 

“Then go do it! If you’re so concerned with making this relationship your problem.” 

“Goddamn it, Merriell!” Burgie’s fist slammed the counter, and Snafu and half the club near them jumped a foot. “Shut the fuck up for two minutes, no more snide fucking come backs, and let me tell you what I see if you two dumb fucks break up for good.” 

He set his beer on the counter, and stared at Burgie. His friend’s face was red, his mouth twisted in a frown so angry it hurt to look at. Burgie had never been truly mad at him or Eugene, ever. 

“Before you two got together, y’all were messes. I know, cuz I’m the dumb ass that picked up every time one of you would call me, sobbing and scared and alone, which made me scared for you. And I knew if y’all got back together, it would be something like it was during the war, something good; two rocks adrift in a sea that can drift together and find shore, or break apart and let the surf wear them to nothing. Together, you both find shore. Apart...” 

Burgie sighed. “That’s why I urged y’all to meet up again. I knew I’d be attending funerals if I didn’t, and I can’t take another one. Another service revolver that should have been taken away but wasn’t, and another mother asking me if I’ll come over and help clean the wall in her boy’s room because the father can’t stomach it and she can’t bear to do it alone.” 

“My parents are dead.” 

“So then I’d be cleaning your bedroom wall alone,” Burgie replied. “I won’t do it, Merriell. For you or Sledge. You’re both better and smarter than you’ve been acting, in general and with each other.” 

“It isn’t that easy-” 

“You think I don’t fuckin’ know that? What the fuck do you think Florence and I talk about in therapy when we do our sessions together? We go over that shit, what scares us, what we worry about with each other, and you know what we find out every time?” 

Snafu shrugged.

“That our fears are irrational, borne of trauma and confusion and other things in our lives we hadn’t come to terms with yet. I’m not saying therapy would solve everything, but I gave Sledge the number for ours. She does Skype sessions, though they cost a bit more, in case y’all ever move like you keep talkin’ about. It might be worth it for you both.” 

He shrugged again, and bore holes into his beer as he stared at it. 

“I know you don’t wanna break up with Sledge, and I know he doesn’t wanna break up with you. You wanna know why?” 

The tears burned at the corners of his eyes, and he couldn’t respond. 

“Because neither of y’all ever pack a bag, or even take your fucking wallet with you. You didn’t this time, did you? Just a few twenties to pay for the drinks, right?” 

Snafu pulled the two twenties and fifty out of his jeans pocket and showed it to him, then put it back. 

“See? And then one or both of y’all call me and ask me to talk to one or both of y’all, and I come by to help you, and as soon as you both sit and talk through what weird shit is in your heads, you feel better and things go back to normal. You just gotta do that with each other, without me. Or with the therapist, but definitely gotta learn to do it without a third party too. It isn’t actually difficult, exactly. It’s just...being vulnerable.” 

“What if he doesn’t like me like that?” 

Burgie’s eyes softened, and the frown disappeared. “Why wouldn’t he?” 

Snafu shrugged. “I don’t like me like that. It feels weird to cry in front of him.” 

“But you did during the war. I know, I watched it happen.” 

“That was different.” 

“Why?” Burgie stressed, leaning towards him, taking one his hands in his. “Or did you just not think about it because of where you were?” 

It was like a light bulb flickering in his head. “...yeah. I guess so.” 

“Okay. So what makes you feel like anyone could see you at home with him, talking shit out and crying if you need to?” 

“I...I don’t know.” 

Burgie nodded. “That’s okay. You can figure that out later. You got time. You just can’t let it take over your head, y’know? Or let those nonsense fears that you know won’t ever be true or come to pass take control. You gotta focus on what you know is true. Tell me.” 

“What?” 

“Bout you and Eugene. What’s true, about you two.” 

“...I love him. He loves me.” 

Burgie nodded again, encouragingly.

“He makes me feel safe, and I do the same for him. We can both sleep without nightmares when we’re together. I don’t worry about anyone breaking in to kill us as much when he’s beside me at night. He likes to read to me, and I like to hear him read, even his stupid textbooks that are boring as shit. I like the chores he doesn’t, and vice versa so we always have an easy time keepin’ the apartment clean. He buys fresh flowers for me, but knows to keep ‘em in the high vase mounted on the wall where the cat can’t get ‘em, so she won’t eat ‘em and get sick. And I make sure he takes breaks when he studies, otherwise he won’t eat or move and that’s not good for him, and I know he knows that, but he gets goin’, ya know? And-” 

Burgie’s hug was warm and soft and made the tears finally fall. 

“Let’s get you home, and go talk to Eugene, okay? He needs to hear all that, and I know he’s got a bunch of the same sort of stuff to tell you.” 

“You think that therapist has openings sooner rather than later?” 

“She let me set up the first appointment for y’all, though you gotta fill out a bunch of paperwork that day so they can finish gettin’ you set up in their system. But I got y’all in next week.” 

The tears fell all the way back home, in the passenger seat of Burgie’s truck, and fell even harder like a summer storm when Eugene met him on the sidewalk of the apartment building property, running out to hug him so hard it took his breath away.

“I’m sorry.” 

“So am I.” 

“I’m ready to do better. For both of us,” his voice shook as he let his head rest on Eugene’s shoulder. 

“Me too.” 

The scent of the tulips Eugene had bought him greeted them as they walked inside to their apartment, Burgie right behind them, and it smelled like spring and freshness and a new start. 

Tulips would be a good wedding flower, for later. For a spring wedding, when they were ready and healthier and happy and doing better overall. He’d make sure the church (for Eugene, with his religious family) was full of them. 

He couldn’t wait for it all, the work towards better as hard as it would be, and the wedding. 

They were going to be okay. 

[tfw-no-tennis]

mtmte liveblog issues 4&5

its delphi time babey

I'm sorry but drift & co look like such fuckin nerds on their scooter things on the cover lmaooo

oh god. seeing the first page just reminded me of how horribly confused i was for this whole little arc the first time i read it. i was like ok, who are all these new characters, and also why does everyone look so similar

anyways now i now what's going on. i love first aid

love the running continuity of rung being the literal only psychologist on cybertron (except for fr*id but that's later). no wonder everyone's fucked up they all have to share a single therapist 

ok i find it extremely funny that first aid was demoted from doctor to nurse, as if that's a thing that happens EVER - I mean it'd be one thing if first aid was a nurse practitioner (which i doubt is a position that exists here), at least that demotion would make sense, but like...the doctors i work with don't know how to do most nurse stuff (like BP, cathing, vaccinations, hell even using some of the thermometers - that's all stuff nurses/etc do), so demoting one to a nurse would be a disaster (just like promoting a really good nurse to a doctor would be a bad idea). anyways i know I'm being pedantic but it Be like that when you work in the medical field and read something that has medicine-related stuff in it

i love swerve giving ratchet the tiniest free drink ever lmaooo

is that skids being a rowdy drunk in the bg lmaoooo

unironically i love medical statistics. keep it comin

i love magnus’s giant sternal chestpiece thing. its like a bird’s sternum but without the massive pec muscles attached 

i love magnus and rodimus’s dynamic so much

oh pipes....im so sorry but this fun space adventure is going to be not so much fun for you

ratchets ideologies are certainly interesting, and i liked seeing how they changed over the course of the story

drift: why would i be SCARED of the DJD, I've got a SWORD, two swords even,

hvbhajkhfbsdjkf pipes really said ‘oi, you two - what's this, then?’ that's the most british fucking thing, that's literally something i say when I'm doing an overexaggerated british accent, oh my god,

PIPES IS SUCH A TINY DUMBASS. ILY SIR BUT WHAT ARE YOU DOING

aaaand now you're covered in dead bodies, pipes. look at your life, look at your choices

drift epic sword moments

drift confirmed for the kinda weird guy who has katanas that he uses to like, cut up fruit and water bottles in his backyard while rodimus films him

‘i thought i heard...bickering’ lmaooooo

ah, so its covid

this arc is how i feel working in healthcare lmaooo especially now that i probably have covid 

so rewind condensed the entire war into an 11 second long cringe compilation. nice

seeing the mechanical stuff past tailgate’s visor is so cool

poor tailgate, this guy is getting slammed with history from multiple sides. and like, bias is inevitable in ANY sort of recounting of events, especially controversial historical events, so poor tg just kinda has to take it all in and decide who to listen to 

that’s...not really how immunity works, guys. also, you shouldn't be exposed to so much disease with proper ppe usage

is there even such thing as ppe in the transformers universe?? there are fluid- and contact-transmitted illnesses, so there SHOULD be

is there even OSHA in this universe??????? unbelievable 

first aid, holding a giant fucking claw clamp: we haven't tried EVERYTHING............

first aid read a human wikihow article on how to jumpstart a car and took notes 

i love tailgate’s ‘mom says its my turn on the xbox’ pose 

tailgate has a point - he’s from pre-war times, where things weren't as grey so of course he would try to divide the two sides into ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’

CYCLONUS BE NICE DONT HIT UR FUTURE HUSBAND

go get some character development and then maybe you'll feel better

seeing the word quarantine is making me twitchy w/my possible month-long complete isolation quarantine on the horizon

drift pulling his swords on pipes and ratchet pushing down drift’s arms...lmao

poor pipes...even tho this is completely his fault, its still rough

also jesus, pharma and ratchet look so goddamn similar, reading this was so confusing the first time around 

drifts idea of subduing pipes involves turning into a cool car and also posing with his sword

also. never gonna be over drift’s massive thighs. jesus man

ooof now drift has the rona. ouch 

poor drift, his covid realization is getting overshadowed by pharma being flung around

first aid bustin thru w/the epic medical nipple clamps and some Big Boi Backup

ok that's an epic pre-beatdown speech from fort max right there, daym 

im just gonna continue on w/issue 5 now for continuity’s sake. yay!

the cover of tailgate in magnus’s autobot school is so cute

and we open with an incredible shot of fort max str8 up ripping a guy in half. i mean, to be fair, he DID just give an epic speech about how much he was gonna do that, and he certainly followed thru

yeahhhhh, fort max is not doing so well atm

when he puts that dudes head in his chest vent thing and then snaps it shut....man 

also i fucking LOVE when their faces are shaded all in black w/only the eyes/mouth fully drawn...fantastic stuff

ratchet: phew i am not equipped to deal w/this level of Fucked Up Mental Trauma. u good m8?

ratchet is already writing up a referral to rung for fort max as this is happening

drift is just laying on the ground dying like, oh hey yeahh I'm still here too 

i fucking love when punctuation is drawn in story - like here where first aid has a little ? over his head....fav

ratchet holding drifts hand ;_; 

ok tbh ambulon having switched sides 10 yrs ago is wild bc like, 10 years is barely any time for these guys, especially in a war that lasted 4 million years. that would be like a human switching sides in a war like, 3 months before it ends. probably. i sense some math bs, I'm just extrapolating here

all that mexican standoff shit is going down and first aid is just like But That's None Of My Business

ah so ambulon is an asymptomatic carrier 

and there's first aid with the save! iconic

pharma calling ratchet ‘buddy’ hbvakjdsbfhkasdf

ooooh i love that they figured it out - and i love that twist, that transforming is what triggers the start of symptoms. remember when drift turned into a cool car? yep

s/o to Ambulon Transformers for helping me in my medical terminology courses, bc now ill always remember: Leg(tm)

also this explanation makes a ton more sense (in universe, at least) than the whole ‘i guess we as medical staff have been exposed to enough Germz that we’re more immune to this or something’ theory 

ah, i love the meaningless (to me) alien robot medical jargon 

drift and ratchet hhhhhhhhh

‘I'm too wide’ fort max L O R G E

also once again drift is forgotten in favor of a bunch of other dramatic stuff happening vbhjksdfbjhskdf

godddd i love tailgates little flashbacks where we see how Important and Special he is, complete with his ‘bomb disposal’ arm label...augh its so good! 

and tailgate’s autopedia page even reflects his lies! like, did tailgate go edit that first thing upon waking up??? seriously, I'm fascinated by tailgate’s meticulous dedication to his fake life

also the fact that ultra magnus believes everything he read on autopedia is amazing lmao

ultra magnus: you think somebody would just go on the internet and tell lies? 

fuckgin love magnus’s long ass name/title placard 

tailgate hvbahjkdfbjhaskf i mean, he’s gotten the abridged version of everything else, of course he would assume that’d be the case here too...but not on magnus’s watch

magnus cant even say ‘fun’ hvukdasdbjfkjsadf i love my uptight law dad

love rung implying that upon questioning, he would easily divulge a patient’s name and maybe even information about said patient’s treatment while under him....love the disregard for patient confidentiality and hipaa in general 

not that hipaa seems to exist here, at least not in a fully realized form 

also i mean the above genuinely, i think rung’s tendency towards at least slight malpractice is very interesting 

poor red alert....super bad luck that HE was the guy to get roped up in that overlord business 

I'm glad that, at the very least, red alert was able to prove that he was Actually hearing something to rung, rather than get brushed off completely 

god magnus and tailgate’s interactions are golden 

also tg is much more sarcastic/quippy than anyone gives him credit for tbh

‘thought warfare,’ ultra magnus says with complete seriousness. god i fucking love this comic

now i can tell pharma apart from ratchet bc pharma has let his true Petty Bitch nature emerge and you can see it in his expressions

the whole ‘tarn is addicted to transforming’ thing didn't really go anywhere, right? i feel like i noticed that on my second readthru as well 

also pharma is such an interesting character given the context of him like, trying to strike a bargain w/the djd to keep them from destroying delphi, but that arrangement inevitably kinda making him lose it as the situation escalates. he’s also just really entertaining bc i feel like he kins the joker or st and probably gets into really heated arguments w/people on twitter about just abt anything

‘sound bomb’ i love this comic

another important facet of pharma’s character becomes clear around this time as well - how he’s really into ratchet. i also choose to read them as awful exes tbh, it makes their dynamic even more entertaining

‘killmaster, with the wand’ is one of my favorite running remarks lmao

also, was killmaster even a character before mtmte? or, if he was, was he an important one? it would crack me up the most if he literally didn't exist at all, but any way you spin it is still funny 

ratchet’s tiny humansona facing off against pharma is wild

‘I'm miles from anyone i truly care about’ brutal, ratchet, drift is dying like 2 floors away (im p sure)

SUDDENLY DRIFT IS HERE, ACTUALLY 

oh don't worry first aid, that sure isn't the last we’ll be seeing of pharma 

so like, did first aid save everyone by posting that data log to his wreckers fan blog or something? lmao love it 

i love the pretty fucked up reveal of ratchet having stolen pharma’s hands. like, damn dude. 

and that wraps up the delphi arc! our first true ‘arc’ of mtmte, and a fantastic one at that. short and snappy and fresh, with some very clever writing and cool new characters, and a lot of great plot threads to be picked up later. plus, we got to see the beginnings of drift and ratchet’s whole thing (and ratchet and pharmas whole thing). and the lost light gets some much needed extra medical staff, so everyone wins! 

well, we’ll see how fort max feels about this all pretty soon.....

[blackandblueandstars]

It's Okay Pt11

TRIGGER WARNING: Discusses mental, emotional, physical, sexual abuse. Especially sensitive for LGBT readers.

Pt1 Pt2 Pt3 Pt4 Pt5 Pt6 Pt7 Pt8 Pt9 Pt10

Kamilah stood, trying not to take it personally that Amy didn't want to see her. She knew it was hard. She wanted to avoid it. And Kamilah made it hard to avoid. But, it still hurt, as much as she didn't want it to.

She grabbed the nurse and let her know she would be in Sam's room, if Amy asked for her. Then she walked down the hall.

She knocked on the door, entering.

"Hey," she said softly.

"Hi," said Sam. "How's Amy?"

"She's good," Kamilah said with a smile. "Asking ahout you, actually."

"I'm glad," said Sam. "She kept me safe, made me feel safe in that terrible place. I'm glad she's safe now."

"Me too," said Kamilah. "How are you doing?"

"Okay," she replied. "A social worker came by, they aren't sending me back to my parents."

"How do you feel about that?" asked Kamilah.

"Relieved," said Sam. "They hurt me so much. But...also sad. Afraid. They hurt me, but at least I knew what to expect. And I still love them. Now...well, I don't know what's next for me. Foster care, I guess."

"I understand how that would be complicated," Kamilah responded. "It's okay to have conflicting emotions."

"Maybe I'll be lucky and end up with a family like you and Amy," said Sam. "I hope so, anyway." She looked at Kamilah, suddenly embarrassed. "Sorry, I didn't mean...I didn't mean to be so forward, or make things awkward."

"You didn't," smiled Kamilah. "We're all good."

A nurse knocked on the door.

"I'll leave you to it," Kamilah said, returning to the hall. She pulled out her phone.

"Hi, Gloria," she said. "I need you to do me a favor."

"Anything," said Gloria.

"I'd like to get approved to adopt a child," she said. "I need you to start the process. Anything you can do to speed things up, please do. It's important."

"I never thought I would hear those words come out of your mouth again, Ms. Sayeed."

Kamilah laughed lightly. "Me either," she said honestly. "But I never thought I'd be standing where I am today. Not even last week. So...things change. And I guess sometimes good things can come out of bad situations. I mean, I hope so anyway. That depends on you."

"Of course, Ms. Sayeed. I'll take care of it."

"Thank you Gloria."

Kamilah returned to Amy's room, ready to sink to the floor again.

"Ma'am?" a nurse asked. She turned.

"Here is a chair for you," she said.

"Thank you," Kamilah said, touching her arm. "You're very kind."

She slid the chair against the wall, sitting down.

Her phone buzzed with a text. Adrian.

"Have you been home yet?" he asked.

"No."

It buzzed again, but she put it in her pocket. She didn't need a lecture from Adrian on how she needed to take care of herself. She needed to take care of Amy. But Amy wouldn't let her.

She sighed, feeling exhausted through and through.

She pulled her phone out again, searching for therapists that dealt with this type of trauma. Amy would needs someone to talk to, someone who could help her heal, and she wanted to give her the best. She deserved the best.

Kamilah didn't remember falling asleep, but she was jerked awake by shouting from Amy's room.

"NO!" shouted Amy. "NO, please no! Stop!"

Kamilah quickly ran into the room, surveying its contents. No one was there. She looked at Amy, asleep, tossing and turning. She walked over and touched her gently as nurses sped in behind her.

"It's a nightmare, darling," she cooed as she gently roused Amy from sleep. She looked at her, disoriented, eyes wide in fear.

"It's okay, Amy, you're okay. I'm here, you're safe, everything is okay."

Amy buried het face in Kamilah's side, and Kamilah stroked her back.

The nurses returned to their work as Kamilah soothed Amy.

"I'm so sorry," Amy sobbed into Kamilah's shirt as she tried to comfort her. "I'm so sorry."

"Shh," Kamilah said, "Baby it's okay. You're okay."

"They made me, Kami," she said. "I didn't want to. I told them I didn't want to. I didn't want to cheat on you. I didn't want it, I'm sorry."

"Hey, hey," Kamilah said, kneeling on the ground and pushing Amy's hair out of her face. "Baby, none of this is your fault. I'm not mad at you, I don't blame you, and you didn't cheat on me. You were assaulted. Don't you worry about us, we are so good, my firefly. I am here for you and I am not going anywhere. You just worry about getting better. And you're not alone. I'll help you. Lily will help you. Adrian and Jax will help you. We've got you, baby. I've got you, Amy."

Kamilah held Amy while she sobbed, until she fell asleep. She climbed into bed beside her and held her, gently.

"I've got you," she promised again.

When Adrian walked into Amy's room, he saw Kamilah laying with her, both of them fast asleep. He couldn't help but smile, seeing them both reunited. He left the bag on the table - some food, a change of clothes, her phone charger - and left Kamilah a note.

Then he walked out, texting Lily and Jax.

"Meet me at the office," he said.

The three vampires sat in the conference room.

"Amy seems to be doing a little better," he said. "So I want to focus on something else."

"What?" asked Jax, arms crossed in front of him.

"Destroying the organization that did this to her. But I'm not sure how."

"Murder them all?" asked Jax.

"As tempting as that is," said Adrian, "they're too large."

"We need to send them to jail," said Lily.

"How?" asked Jax.

"I have an idea," she said, eyes gleaming.

Part 11

Want a fan-fic written just for you? Check out my follower appreciation post.

Author's Note: I had the idea to write this after watching a segment about a conversion camp. This has been particularly hard for me to write, but it feels necessary to me to explore the horrors that people exactly like myself have experienced. I wanted to add some resources where people share real stories of their experiences and survivors can go to find help:

National Center for Lesbian Rights

Love is a Rainbow

Article from The Cut

Tag list: @h-doodles @scarlet-letter-a0114 @idkbutkamilah @lightning-fury @galaxyside-0 @blogsupitssam @ilovetaylor13m @la-guera-69 @adrianrainesworld @iam-the-fuckin-queen

[moonprincess92]

so social distancing has naturally given me a lot more time to read and i’ve just recently finished “In at the deep end” by Penelope Janu. i apparently needed a few days to stew in my eMOtions because bOY DO I HAVE SOME FUCKIN OPINIONS(TM)  

- the tl:dr version is this book is absolute Trashfire and i hated it 

- for more opinions, please do continue 

- i originally picked up this book (long before being confined to my house, for the record, i was just far too optimistic about having the time to read it back then) bc the cover claimed it was a ‘quick-witted romantic comedy about losing your cool’ (spoiler alert: it is not) 

- the back was also an interesting premise: she is a feisty explorer/geography teacher, he is a badass norwegian navel officer, her boat sinks and she nearly drowns bc she can’t swim. he rescues her and will help fund a new ship if he teaches her how to swim 

- so u got the perfect ‘let me teach u this skill and while we’re at it lets fall in love’ trope and hOW DOES THIS BOOK MANAGE TO MESS THAT UP 

- LETS START WITH WHERE IT GETS PROBLEMATIC 

- girl wants to go to palau island on the new ship they fund. dudebro will ONLY let her go if she learns how to swim. he is the one who will determine her ‘readiness’ to swim. he is the one who will be teaching her. 

- DUDEBRO ISN”T EVEN IN CHARGE OF THE SHIP???? WHY DOES HE GET TO DECIDE???? 

- book also tries to pull the ‘enemies to lovers’ trope by having the two main characters literally hate each other but forgets the all important FRIENDS step thats supposed to happen in btwn so basically u hate the very ship ur supposed to be shipping 

- reason girl cannot swim is bc of a trauma in which the car she was in crashed into water. her mother drowned and her father was seriously injured and later died in this event 

- girl suffers from SEVERE phobic symptoms of water. she cannot touch water, or even think of putting her head under without suffering panic attacks, migraines, and vomiting. it is clear that this girl needs psychological help to get over her phobia 

- DOES THE BOOK EVER TOUCH ON THIS???? NO IT FUCKING DOES NOT WHAT IS THERAPY ONLY THE POWER OF BONERS CAN CURE HER APPARENTLY 

- dudebro even says at one point “i don’t think you have post-traumatic stress, yadda yadda why can’t u do this??????” LIKE ARE U A FUCKIN PSYCHOLOGIST??? NO UR FUCKING NAVY GO BACK TO THE NORWEGIAN SEA U IMBECILE 

- while we’re at it are u even qualified to teach someone how to swim?????? I know ur navy and shit which i guess includes knowledge of swimming but just bc i cook a mean pasta for dinner doesn’t mean i’m fuckin gordon ramsey???? 

- as he teaches her how to ‘swim’ book tries to make it that they have this undeniable cHeMIStrY but bc these characters also Hate(TM) each other you end up hating both of them 

- like she even has to tell him ‘i do not want to be touched inappropriately by u’ which is supposed to come off as Sexy and ‘ooooh the tension is so WILD they can’t keep their hands off each other!!!’ but instead comes off as creepy and like he’s a predator 

- dudebro also has the personality of a potato 

- the first time they have a sexual encounter, there is NO consent???? literally they are arguing and he reminds her of the rule she made about not touching her. he doesn’t want to have sex and suggests they meet the next day. she says no, purposefully angering him into breaking the rule and saying (AND I QUOTE) “You wanted this, so you can’t accuse me of acting inappropriately. Is that understood?” 

- I”M SORRY THATS NOT HOW CONSENT WORKS????????????????? 

- they also don’t label their sexual encounter as “””sex””” bc it wasn’t P-in-V like mmmmmkay 

- by this point i hate the book and am slowly descending into Madness but am determined to see it to the end, so carry on reading i go 

- eventually, we get to the point where it’s nearly the deadline where she has to know how to swim and so far, she can only sit in water that is waist deep. girl is SUFFERING and yet somehow she still never goes to a therapist????? 

- even tho she’s been struggling to even SIT in water, she suddenly decides one day fuck it, i’m gonna just dive in the deep end and put my head under??? (it reads like its supposed to be a clever tie in to the title, but reality is its really inconsistent with her progress!) 

- SOMEHOW THE MAGIC OF FUCKING BONERS HELPS HER PUT HER HEAD UNDER????? 

- DUDEBRO LITERALLY SAYS “Breathe. Through. Me,” (direct quote) AND THEY ROMANTICALLY KISS UNDER THE WATER????? LIKE THIS GIRL WAS VOMITTING AT THE THOUGHT MERE DAYS AGO 

- like i am in no way an expert in phobias and PTSD but like i’m like FAIRLY certain this this isnt supposed to be how they work?????????? 

- idk what this says about our author Ms Penelope here, but i literally lost count the amount of times she writes about the girl’s “erect nipples” 

- she is also obsessed with calling dudebro an ‘action hero’ like wE GET IT HE’S SUPPOSED TO BE A DREAMY BUFF DUDEBRO WHO CAN BENCH-LIFT CARS AND SHIT 

- the first time they have sex(TM) they get real weird with the idea of contraception. they’ve only known each other a few months at this point, they are not even officially together yet and THIS is the interaction they have: 

“I don’t have a condom.”  “You’re a commander. You should be better prepared.”  “I bet you’re not on the pill.”  “No.”  “So you want to have a baby straight away?” 

- WHAT THE FLYING FUCK????? WHO SAYS THAT TO SOMEONE THEY’RE HAVING SEX WITH FOR THE FIRST TIME???? the conversation is awkward and about as sexy as donald trump in a bikini 

- at this point i want to hurl myself into the Abyss 

- anyway, book plays up the trip to palau as her big goal she’s working towards. somehow, she magically manages to learn to swim with like a week to go or something (AGAIN HOW???) dudebro says she’s not “””””ready””””” tho and bans her from going anyway ? ? ?  

- this shows how throughout the whole book, these characters have NOT had a healthy relationship. their every interaction clearly shows that dudebro has a LOT more power over the girl and this power imbalance makes u hate the ship ur supposed to be rooting for 

- anyway blah blah PLot ShiT girl gets to go on the trip, but when we do get to the trip, literally none of it is covered????? it’s like one(1) sentence saying she gets to go and then pages about how she misses dudebro 

- U WERE PLAYING THIS UP TO BE THE BIG CLIMAX TO THE STORY, THE BIG TRIP WE DESERVE TO SEE I AM RAGING BY THIS POINT  

- im fuckin tired, story ends with the girl “surprising” dudebro on his mission in Antarctica and them saying they’ve fallen in love and other bullshit, neither of them has grown as a character, i hate them both and all in all this book is utter tRASH 0/10 WOULD NOT RECOMMEND 

- like, Penelope........................GIRL................look I just wANT TO HAVE SOME WORDS(TM) thAT”S ALL 

- THANK U 4 READING, I HOPE YALL HAVE A WONDERFUL DAY IN ISOLATIONx

- PS. IF I EVER SEE THE WORDS ‘ERECT NIPPLES’ AGAIN I WILL FUCKIN FLIP A TABLE 

[your-localghost]

so um who wants to read a 50 page essay of me and my mom's journey through the IT movies?

too bad you're reading it

so like i saw this goddamm clown, and i, also being a clown, said to my mom, also a clown, "lets watch this clown movie lol" and she said yes. and in the like first five minutes we are already awwing and stuff because??? omg georgie and bill are so cu- oh. oh my god. oh this us not what we thought at all-

so enter Losers. instant RELATE i am also a LOSER hellO?? hAh look at these 2 idiots theyre bickering like an old couple an- oh my fucking GOD of course there are bullies. one of them looks like draco malfoy??? guYs did draco malfoy play in this movie we see him like 2 times-

oh my god oh no poor bill he is trying to find his brother :( but alsO BEV IS SO PRETTY??? IM SO GAY???? and yeah i really feel the New Kid On The Block like same man i didnt even get to meet a pretty girl and a buncho losers who will go jump into lakes with me

OH and the lake scene? it bites me in the ass later. i fucking passed it off as a "theyre bonding" moment and then it transforms into a feelings plane and crashes into my house

--

me: they just keep leaving their bikes

mom: well It takes kids, not bikes

--

fastforward and??? the fight secene?? the fuckijgn fi Ght SCE ne??? o H M Y GO D

bill was so desperate to find georgie?? richie was so scared he would die??? beN BEING SCARED HIS FRIENDS ARE GONE?

i AM ALL OF THESE FUCKERS

and oh?? bev's dad??? hate the vibe this dude gives to me. like this dude def did more than mentally abuse her and im so glad she beat him up

uhHHH??? WHY DOES NO ONE TALK ABOUT EDDIE STANDING UP TO HIS FREAKSHOW OF A MOM??? HOW HE WAS SO MAD????? HE THREW HIS PILLS ON THE GROUND HELLO, HE STRAIGHT UP YEETED HIS FANNY PACK??? MAN the things a gay goes through for his friends

bill's speech on georgie, like, dude just fucking stab me it will hurt way less

fastforward more, the oath??? how scared stan was??? like i ddint really feel any connection with stan other than his actor played my fav character, stan, in ianowt, but uHm? i still love him??? so mUCH???

oOOOH i just realied i didnt talk about mikey

ahem

THE ROCK FIGHT THE FUKING ROCK FIGHT THE ROCK FIGHT OH MY GOD

THESE LOSERS ARE SCARED SHITLESS OF THOSE SHITBAGS BUT THEY SEE ANOTHER LOSER AND THE FIRST THING THEY DO IS THROW R O C K LIKE FUCK YEAH YOU FUCNKY LITTLE MIDDLE SCHOOLERS STAND UP FOR YOUR FELLOW BULLIED I LOVE MIKEY SO M7CH OH MY GOD

__

so between the 2 movies we realized it wasnt on netflix and went on various websites to watch the 2nd movie, got progressively angrier until i got my laptop and just watched it blindly because we are both blind

--

okay heres the tea yall

they completely erased bev's character in the 2nd movie. in the first it was emphesized SO MUCH just how brave she was compared to the others. she took the first step, she wasnt afraid to go into the house she fought her abusive dad and in the 2nd movie it was all gone. i really liked the fact that bev wqsnt a damsel in distress until in the 2nd movie she was. while in the 1st movue you forgot that gender roles existed in the 2nd it really seemed like they wrote bev as a "woman" rather than "bev" you dig me??? okay rant over. basically fuck the 2nd movie bev and im not just saying this because her 1st movie actor made me realize i was a lesbian. on to the movie

oh mY GOD HOMOSEXUALS??? WILL THEY HAVE A PART IN THIS STORY OH MY IM SO EX- oh. right. oh hey theres mikey :D

___

me: who's this??

mom: its bill look, its his surname

me:

me: you remember bill's surname but not richie or ben's names?

---

oh theyre all grown up!! oh bevs fighting an abusive man again and uh

___

mom: i have a feeling stans gonna kill himself

me: hah can you imagi

---

STANLEY??? BABEY BOY OH NO???? and also are we gonna let the spider with the baby head thing pass?

WHAT DO YOU MEAN THEY DONT REMEMBER ANYTHI-

"this is like a virus its been eating us for 27 years!" YEA MIKEY ITS CALLED PTSD YOU FOUGHT A FUCKING DEMON AND DIDNT SEE A THERAPIST????

also the whole tribe thing seemed really out of story and like it didnt belong there at all? idk maybe its just me but i dont wanna believe that bill's 3rd eye opened after he got drugged by his friend idk

so like hightlights because ive got many rants about the 2nd movie

what the fuck do you mean bev got out of jer specilized hell after ben recited 1 fucking poem are you kidding me are yOU FUCKING KIDDING ARE WE REALLY DOING THE SAVED BY LOVE BULLSHIT AGAIN OH OKAY

OH OKAY FUCK YOU

SO BEV GETS SAVED IN THE FIRST MOVIE AFTER BEN KISSES HER WHEN AT THE TIME HE PRIBABLY THOUGHT LOVE WAS AT ITS PEAK WHEN YOU GAVE YOUR 2ND GRADE CRUSH A BADLY WRITTEN POEM

AND UFKCING HELL IT HAPPENS IN THE 2ND MOVIE TOO??? DOES PENNYWISE JUST THINK "oh these bitches hetero bettet keep them alive" BECAUSE YOU KNOW WHAT? THIS WOULD ALL BE OKAY IF

IF

IF EDDIE LIVED TOO

FUCK I RELATE TO RICHIE SO MUCH??? HIS FIGHT WITH HIS PEERS AND HIS FIGHT WITH HIMSELF OVER HIS YEARS LASTING CRUSH ON EDDIE?? OH MY GOD IT WAS SO OBVIOUS THIS MOTHERFUCKER WAS GAY AND I DIDNT REALIZE UNTIL THE 2ND MOVIE WHEN HE HAS A BREAKDOWN BECAHSE HIS SOULMATE GETS STABBED BY HOMOPHOBIC FORTNITE DANCING CLOWN WHILR HE TRIES TO SAVE HIMA DN THEN FUCKIN G DIES EVEN THOUGHT THESE 2 IDIOTS HAD MORE CHEMISTRY THAN BILL+BEV AND BEN+BEV COMBINED OH MY GOD IM SO MAD THE HETEROS GET TO LIVE BY TRUE LOVE BUT THE GAYS DONT AND UG G H H G G HH "hes dead" NO HE FUCKING IS NOT THIS ISNT FAIR I LOVED EDDIE SO MUCH

well uh now that we got my love for richie on papet um

the lake scene

i cried and i had to watch heteros kiss underwater while wiping my tears. its only cool when percabeth does it guys

the lake scene aside i full on BAWLED LIKE A BABY at the ending because i felt so bad that stan died already and i felt bad that not only was richie facing years if bullying and homophobia anf the loss of his friends it finally is confirmed that richie had a crush on eddie and i

i just cried man? it hurt me so much as it weighed on me how many jokes richie made, how scared he was when he saw the missing paper of himself, his flashbacks to people calling him names, his speech to eddie and that he had to get dragged out because this fucker obviously couldnt let go of his feelings. and between all of that and stan's letter my brain blocks out everything and focuses on one

R + E

oh my god

OH MY GOD NO

NOW i dont really like watching movies. as a writer myself im really critical of everything involving the world building, the characters, the plot and all that jazz and usually the acting is so bad that i dont feel for the characters but THIS ONE. T H I S O N E

my mom turned to me and was SO SHOCKED to see my flat out CRYING because i just dont do that man, and she just asked my what made me cry and i just made a noise like "hhhnnnn" and she nodded and went "richie's love story" and i, still crying, went "hhhnnnn" but in a higher pitch

and im just so mad? that eddie didnt get to live?? we didnt get an "i love you" or even a "im gay" from richie??? we didnt get to see them holding hands and letting go of their trauma together and being gay and happy yet

yet the fucking bad-writer-white-boy and boo-hoo-i-had-no-friends and not-bev get happy endings??? mike can get a happy ending because he is a well thought out character

thESE 3 ON THE OTHER HAND OH MY GOD

bill had to change his endings which really makes me angry because ima writer yada yada

bill has been bullied his uh what whole life? he got told his opinion didnt matter and from what i remember even his parents shut down his ideas and i feel like he should have made the endings how he wanted instead of changing to what the public wanted. thats what he defended as a kid, thats why he was in the losers club unwilling to change, because they were losers. yet he changed.

ben should have stayed fat or at least have abnornal weight because that also defeats his story with bev. it makes it seem that suddenly and magically when ben is hot bev can BEGIN to consider that she loves him.

i already ranted about bev.

mike is decent i guess? i like that he didnt stay with whoever the fuck that was in the first movie because he seemed very aggreasive to me. im glad the chose to research into pennywise because others were too stupid not to (RICH AND EDDIE GET A PASS AGAIN BECAUSE THEY SHARE HALF A BRAINCELL AND I LOVE THEM)

well stan is just tragic

___

me: who the fuck is afraid of spiders why do they keep showing up

mom: its stan?

mom: he brought the hair things and all

me, about to cry: oh m y god

---

so TL;DR: we really liked the first film! the acting, the plot, the creepiness is overall better and you get to relate to a bunch of Losers who get abused by their parents

the 2nd film doesnt exist. i refuse to acknowledge it exist EXCEPT for the ending where stan writes a letter about how he would like to meet hks friends again while BREATHING and richie and eddie carve their initials on a piece of wood and get to be gay.

if your name starts with B your opinion is invalid in the 2nd movie

also can anybody give me fanfics where the fortnite dancing clown doesnt exist and richie goes to therapy to heal from the bullying and once he gets over his homophobia he gays with eddie??? specific i know but im willing to write it if it doesnt exist

[umbillicalnoose]

i think that you would think im pretty and would like my poetry and i want to share it with you. im shy.

to be honest, im very apathetic these days. im not the nice “cutesy baby flower petal boy” i used to be. a lot has happened & im bitter & sullen & all in all, a pretty shitty friend/person to know. i used to possess some redeeming qualities, believe it or not, even if they were construed by the subconscious in an attempt to be likeable - a facade, even tho its only a facade, is still tangible, still there, is still something, even if not authentic. is poorer character forgivable in the name of presenting more authentically? but nah. that makes it sound like im putting effort into being a better person, which im not. im just sort of fried & done. its been a very long time since i played the role i built for myself on here of the “small fawn boy who wants to help girls” lmaooo. how embarrassing. altho, i was just a kid, & i guess, if you had a tumblr as a teenager, you went thru some cringe (i know the use of that word has fallen in on itself & adopted its own definition but for lack of a better one) ass phases, whether it was kinning or malingering mental illness or oh fucking christ, all that gender bullshit, etc etc. from what ive observed, tho, loosely following kids im still casually friends with that i met on here, i think we’ve all managed to Grow The Fuck Up, at least a little. most of us have jobs or r in school or have partners - growing up & moving on is a very surreal experience to watch/go thru. im moving at my own pace & ive accepted that - im still currently using & starving myself & concocting a suicide plan every day but at least i use clean needles as much as possible, i actively & honestly do strive for the bare minimum calorically, & um able to work with the mentality of “well ill have this when i need it but todays not that day” a lot more readily, in relation to suicide shit. ive finally found a therapist who Really Gets It, is a frontrunner internationally on ritual & extreme abuse & mind control. its pretty incredible what a few years with a good therapist can do. anyways. im sorry, i know you didnt ask for all this & im not even sure why i divulged. i guess, what tipped me off, was your attempt at sounsing “cute” - dude, cut that shit out, i promise youll be a lot better off. & i know everyone interchanges aspects of their personality based on who theyre talking to/who they percieve themselves to be talking to, but i feel like not a lot of people give enough credence to the internet & its hand in shaping/molding young people, kids, vulnerable dumbasses, especially tumblr (tho, i get that its a relatively new phenomenon) - u get a bunch of the “weird”, “alternative”, ““ostracized” kids together on a website, of course its gonna nurture a culture of hypervalidatoon & pretending to be sick in order to fit in to the point that its not an act anymore & exacerbation of symptoms & basically, just sucking each others dicks, sitting in ur own shit, & never ending coddling. & then, you have the older group of kids, who have played this game before but instead of helping or ignoring the Dumbshit kids, they indulge their own normally-buried-but-unleashed-by-internet-anonymity sadism/human instinct to just be fucking dicks & so now you have this vicious cycle of anger & hatred & fucking melodrama up the urethra. im sorry, i know im comig off as/am being harsh but god fuckin dammit yknow? also, this isnt directed at you, specifically, more of a generalized thing, @ myself included. so uh. i mean, if u still wanna share it with me after reading all this, id be happy to read ur poetry. i used to be over the top nice & then reverted to Major Asshole & am now trying to find that sweet middle spot - honoring & allowing myself to share my pain without putting it on others. which is really hard!! cuz becoming a Dick was difficult in that it forced me to be more honest with my true self & as such, more vulnerable - now in trying to become Kinda Nice again because despite being a pulsating scrotom, ive had the intense desire for friendship & human interaction, while simultaneously doing things that i was consciously aware was pushing others away - but then, if i pretend to be nice, where does that authenticity i worked for & was so scared of go? & i dont mean telling someone their new haircut looks nice even when it doesnt - thats just not being a dick. but i guess, those r the normal trials & tribulations of any relationship & adolescent developing identity. which is weird too - dealing with “normal” issues, i mean. whats the point if your life/limbs/breaking point arent at risk? whats the point when your best friends already dead. im sick of people calling "survivors” (despise that word, so fucking female-originated & overdramatic) “brave” & “strong” - surviving is not brave or strong. its just survival. you wouldnt call an animal brave for running for its life from a predator but you would call a dog courageous for going into a burning building to save its owner. premeditated action on the notion that you are probably going to be hurt is brave. being subjected to pain with no choice is not. theres no “silver lining” or anything “good” to be drawn from it either - sure it may have made x a more compassionate person or made y more introspective & gentle but you know what would have been even fucking better??? if the shit hadnt happened in the first place! let x be an asshole & y be self absorbed - the “benefits”, so to speak, do not outweigh the cost, not by a long fucking shot. its not only patronizing to hear garbage like that, but a slap in the face to know that anyone could possibly see anything good coming from that nightmare & that the characteristics, good or bad, you developed either in response to or as a result of, are worth praise. dont tell me im strong for doing what i had to to escape a torture chamber - tell me im perseverant for studying my ass off & passing that test last week. in the words of one of my dearest & most fucking brilliant friends, “pain doesnt owe me/you purpose - the need to intellectualize & assign meaning to pain & death is not only futile, but harmful.” & honestly, i think that it stems from weakness (in most cases - i realize theres a plethora of other reasons such as those who r just desperate for something to hold on to or r hyperintellectual & analytical or who have been pressured by external “support” systems to find the “good” etc etc) - while the majority of people view the person who “can find the good in everything” (strictly speaking only in relation to trauma/tragedy here & more in denunciation of those that celebrate this trait as opposed to vilifying “survivors” who respond this way, though in my experience, its very very very rarely the “survivor” that perpetrates this ideology ) as strong, i sort of see it as a weakness - their inability to sit with & absorb their own pain or that of others is so strong that not only do they have to frantically pull rainbows out of the teeth of a meat cleaver, they also have to exist within this strange (tho, not malicious - more subconscious) superiority complex. like, nah, dude, some times shit is just awful. you cant tell me anything fucking good came out of a four year old girl being kidnapped, gangraped, & tortured for two years, before being impaled & left to die on a stake. her mom opened a non profit organization? oh well thank fucking god for that!!! those that believe the latter to be more “enlightened” or whatever the fuck r the same people who say shit like “dying is easy - living is harder” & i get that that its supposed to be interpreted metaphorically for the most part - giving up is easy, trying isnt (which also.....isnt true??? admitting defeat & fully accepting the fact that ur fucking helpless is beyond hard lmao???) - but pretend youre somewhere, anywhere outside ur sunny little fucking yoga studio full of white women whos biggest issues r the pta & johnny whos failing math, & lets say your life is in real, imminent danger, a gun is to your head & i want you to not scream or cry or beg for ur life since dying is “easier”. if dying is so easy, why do the majority of ppl cling to it with such desperation - why is suicide illegal? why do some ppl go thru 100s of chemo treatments even tho the doctors say theyre just prolonging the inevitable, ppl who cut off a diseased arm so it wont spread, those who walk dozens of miles every day for food & water, etc? & i know & understand the survival instinct better than anyone, even when i wanted to die more than anything, my natural instincts would kick in with no conscious neural input & id do what i had to do. im not condemning those who cling to life (ok - a little. ur wasting resources out of ur own fear. but i also realize thats just me being a Fucking Asshole As Always cuz technically, im doing the same thing tho its more due to lack of opportunity rather than fear. i just think, societally, death should be more normalized, discussed, & not made out to be so unknown & scary), instead just reprimanding those who say shit like that (inspirational facebook quotes). especially cuz most of the ppl who do spew that shit have never gone thru anything even remotely difficult - their worst nightmare is a Big Scary Black Man grabbing them on the street, mugging them, & touching their tits. & i also know that these stupid ass sayings are to be applied to bullshit like exercise & fitness (“no pain no gain” is another one of my Favorites) & not fucking torture or even just ur run of the mill rape, even that would probably smash the rose tinted banana republic shades off their beverly hills tanned faces. but ive heard the no pain no gain one a handful of times in the last few weeks, specifically from doctors performing procedures in preparation for my bottom surgery. & i know its supposed to be encouraging & they have no way of knowing, but its just like, buddy, u have no idea who youre fucking talking to. & im starting to understand what THEY mean when they say it - pain with a reward is infinitely more tolerable than pain just for the sake of pain; like, a tattoo, it hurts, but u know, when its done, its gonna be sick as fuck. when u r able to fall back on the idea that its for something u rlly want, its A Lot easier to handle as opposed to pain thats Just Pain - theres no reward for it except, i guess, that the more u experience it, the closer u r to the end of it lmao. i mean, i still hate when ppl say it cuz for most of my life, pain was just pain, & the “reward” was the opportunity to go home at the end & so whenever ppl say that, my mind just immediately resorts back to that & im just like haha fuck u. but im trying to remember my experiences r definitely not universal & im starting to sorta understand what they mean i think. but, flipping gears here, & going back to the sentiment of “everything happens for a reason”, the base philosophy of psuedo deep Fuckwads - a girls dad didnt fuck her “for a reason”, everything doesnt happen “for a reason”. like ok, hypothetically, the kid he impregnated her with & that she was forced to have at 12 may surpass all odds & not become a homeless junkie & instead become a world renowned doctor who finds the cure for cancer. but she wasnt raped repeatedly from the age of six for that “reason”, no matter what anyone says & honestly, the liberation of the masses does not justify the suffering of one, especially a child. in my eyes at least. but again, im a bitter asshole. sorry i just Went The Fuck Off here oh my god.....if u read all this, thanks, pal. if not, thats cool too. but yea, send me ur stuff, id totally be down to read it. as for me potentially thinking ur cute, i have to look at my disgusting shitstain of a “face” every goddamn day so everyone else to me is fuckin aphrodite. but im also tryin to not put so much worth into physical appearance- its not something that should be complimented cuz its just smth a person was born with which is the same reason it shouldnt be insulted. this is gonna sound gay & stupid but i personally find that a persons essence & personality really permeates. you can meet someone who, objectively, isnt all that great looking, but once u get to know them, u really see their beauty - how the sun catches in their hair, their dilated pupils looking up at u from under long eyelashes in the dark, the birthmark on their right shoulder that they despise but that is so Them, the gap in their teeth, etc. & idk how to phrase this without it sounding like “well ur ugly but at least ur a good person”, cuz that only reiterates the societally indoctrinated emphasis on appearance & my kneejerk reaction to assure the person in question that thats not what im saying is only another result of that!!! its inescapable!!! but no, really, its not just a matter of “its on the inside that counts” - physically, they change or maybe, actually this is more likely, when i first meet them, my “default” eyes r just looking for features that i know im immediately attracted to (tall, blonde, sickly as in sunken eyes sticklike pale but still looks like she could & will beat the shit out of me) but as i fall in love or get to know them better, my eyes adjust & i notice & adore the beauty that was there all along. so uh. idk if ill think ur “cute”. but probably, yes, ill think ur an angel.

[besmirchthis]

this was a couple years ago, i guess.

i think about this a lot. partly maybe because it’s a kind of representation slash particular manifestation of a bunch of things that’ve fucked with me. partly because i guess i haven’t talked it out enough. partly because… well. there’s a path for thinking there, but we’ll put it aside for now.

first off, i’m sure the place i’m going to grouse about works for some people, has served some people well or at least all right, etc.  i don’t know for sure; i’m not going to go seeking that right now.

but like.

god. so the gist of it is that during my final semester of creative writing grad times, i agreed to go to this ed recovery center place. i didn’t WANT to - i deeply didn’t want to leave kristine or laramie - but the timing worked as well as any, i did wanted to get some of my act together, and i had the insurance to cover most of the cost, so. so okay. so i went.

and the gist is that it was fucking wretched, or i found it wretched.

the gist is that i found myself unheard or/and misunderstood or/and ignored.

the gist is that everything in me reacted against that place, left me feeling fucked in that place, and that over and again i was told to endure it. left to feel like it didn’t wound me the goddamn way it did.

i fucking. hate it. i hate that fucking place; i hate the people who kept me in there.

it isn’t that i didn’t try to give the place a chance. like yeah negative goddamn reaction from day one, but i fucking tried. and kept trying. and let myself be talked into staying longer, then longer, every goddamn day rending me.

i didn’t feel okay there. i rarely felt anywhere close to okay there.

i disagreed with… so fucking much about their philosophy? also about the ways certain aspects of eating and eating particular foods were framed like. i’m not going to talk about that here but just. there were some insidious messages woven in here and there and many, many places.

this may have been just me with people, but as far as i can recall, i rarely felt comfortable in group therapy sessions; there was always i think more performance in it than i liked. (i mean on my part. i mean partly because i couldn’t just keep talking about how Wrong the place felt to me, how fucking badly i wanted to needed to leave because 1) nobody in treatment needs to hear much of that probably 2) i absolutely didn’t need to hear more of my peers telling me ‘oh u just need to keep waiting you’ll see’ and 3) idk just like… i don’t know i had a three, it’s gone, whatever.) i don’t. feel like going into that further, so whatever, here i go, move along.

related: i was fucking. frustrated and at times nearly infuriated with myself, because it was easy to frame myself as someone Who Was Willfully Resisting Treatment or Who Didn’t Want To Get Better or Who Was Being A Bad Patient (which hahahaha is fuckinggg bullshit anyway heY). like ‘oh no why can’t i just focus on RECOVERY and do what i’m here to do?’ OH YOU KNOW WHAT? IF YOU’R FOCUSING ON HOW TERRIBLE THIS PLACE MAKES YOU FEEL, THERE’S PROBABLY A GOOD REASON!!!

and again, and again: ‘you need to focus on other things.’ ‘it’s fine.’ ‘sometimes treatment is uncomfortable.’ ‘you’ll see.’

like look fellas, pals, i am and i was real sick of this eating disorder bullshit, all right? i’m sure some part of me is clinging to some parts of it, but like. i wanted to improve my shitty relationship with myself and whatever with food. i want to connect to me, and i was fucking looking for ways to do it, ASKING for goddamn help in finding those ways.

and the aid provided was just. not enough. not nearly enough.

like ‘oh you can go sit in your room for an hour at x time (never mind the loud fucking fan in there that fucks with your comprehension) but really this is going to count against you even though we won’t TELL you that until you return to group and we’re like OH YOU ARE IMPROVING LOOK AT YOU BEING AROUND PEOPLE’ like hi fuck you but i don’t need to. socialize the ways you want or participate in all of these fucking groups i feel little belonging in to goddamn be ‘improving’ or whatever.

like ‘here have some earplugs’ okay i’ll try okay guess what THIS IS STILL NOT HELPING.

like mostly, like primarily ‘journal about it! give it another week! you’ll feel more at home!! you just need to give it time!!!’

at no point (i don’t think? i know i forget a lot of things but also if it did happen it was fleeting) did anyone on my treatment team seem to seriously entertain like. the idea that maYBE THIS PLACE WAS JUST NOT GREAT FOR ME. probably it would’ve helped for me to like. set myself up to enter some other program, but the entire Being There thing shook me enough and tbh tbf did set me up with some strategies so that i felt capable of going the fuck back home. (also lmfao like i had money to enter another program, hm.) and also? and also. i wasn’t near like. an actual danger point.

oh and by the way i loved, really super loveD the way my therapist kept questioning my relationship with kristine like. yes i know i talked about her a lot BECAUSE I WAS FUCKING WORRIED ABOUT HER and because i’m a sentimental shithead and like look we’ve had our whatever bumps of figuring things out but she’s super fucking supportive of me and in general i think we do a lot of good for each other? and this therapist was just. clearly super doubtful, hinted and hinted in a ‘this is unhealthy’ way that ours was a codependent relationship and my dudes, i do NOT care for the directions she seemed to be heading in.

also just. therapy sessions - individual as well as group - weren’t helpful to me, and from the sounds of it i had one of the less objectionable therapists. i tried to express this a few times, but she’d be like ‘oh we’ll get to that eventually.’ ‘oh, there’s no rush.’ like excuse me wait are you like?? just kind of pacing out your time according to a certain schedule like what the fuck this isn’t helping so i’m supposed to?? wait another three weeks and maybe, MAYBE then we’ll get to something moderately useful?

like holy shit every session felt useless felt like i was being pulled in directions i didn’t care for felt like i was being scarcely tolerated and you know what i get that it was probably tiresome listening to me talking over and again about how terrible i felt just being in that place, but mayyybe you could have listened to what and why i was saying, rather than continuing to brush it off as ‘deal with it’ and ‘oh sometimes people feel that way at first’ and ‘no i don’t think you know what you want.’ also hi that wasn’t the only thing i tried talking about but you were helpful ummm literally never bye.

and like. thinking on said therapist, there were certain… malevolences, subtle but working their way through her and a would-be ig quirky persona and like. it did not feel great. i did not feel great, anyway.

rarely did i feel even remotely okay in that place. and i know treatment centers aren’t fuckin. famous for being comfortable or whatever but like the alienation i felt was just… it wasn’t entirely related to like. my relationship to myself generally or to my relationship to my body or. i mean. shit and shit and shit, i have a hard time getting at the core of this, or anywhere close to it. my alienation felt very specific to that place, and most everything left me feeling further fractured, fragmented. like i was being taken into pieces and not in ways that worked toward rebuilding. like i was being or allowing myself to be erased with a glance.

i have a history of, i guess, being quietly devastated by other people. particularly people who are supposed to being providing some kind of care.

and it feels strange to me, hearing in a place of supposed recovery that what i’m asking is too much, that i’m just not trying the right way, that my instincts are wrong.

can i fucking. tell you something about my gut instinct, trauma-honed as it’s been for decades? IT TENDS TO BE REAL FUCKING ACCURATE. especially when i meet someone face-to-face or am physically in a place. like. look, i doubt myself about a lot of things, but my reactions are usually pretty solid.

and every impulse in me. every goddamn instinct was telling me GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE. fucking shouting it within the first hour of being there, and yes i told myself give it a few days, give it a week, because yes sometimes you can get used to things or i can. but this? the shouting continued. it was like. a constant fucking battle to muffle this impulse almost the entire time i was there.

like yes, once in a while i was able to convince myself that things were getting a little better and maybe it would be all right to stay after all. but most of that?? i think was like. trying to cling to the stasis of ‘oh this is life now why shake it up?’ because you know what else i’m real good at??? enduring shitty situations in which i feel like i’m being ignored slash my needs aren’t being met, ayyYYYYYYyy.

i’m sure there are things i’m mis-speaking here, misrecalling. but the overall of it feels right. i am… angry. and i am not angry often.

okay also this feels and felt like a minor gripe but also it… really wasn’t? and maybe it simply wasn’t possible to change but like. look it fucked with me, whatever. point being that there was a very large, very loud air vent in my room. and like. i have a hard time concentrating slash functioning slash processing anything where there are constant loud noises happening. (cold’s nearly as bad; no amount of layering keeps me from shutting down in chill.) it wears me out and i cannot, 100% cannot relax. and like I FEEL SO SHITTY BITCHING ABOUT OH NO A LOUD VENT IN MY ROOM but it amped my anxiety up, made talking on the phone real fucking difficult, made writing reading thinking pretty much impossible. every time i told them they were like ‘what can ya do’ or ‘try the earplugs’ but like. whatever. anyway.

something else: i was thirsty all. the fucking. time. which 100% happened the first time i was in treatment, and after like two months of hospitalization they were like OH HUH I GUESS YOU DID NEED MORE WATER ALL ALONG like thanks guys okay. but yeah this treatment center was round two for thaT. i brought it up multiple times, spaced out over days or weeks or fuck if i know. and it was brushed off like ‘no you’re not.’ or ‘live with it.’ or ‘your urine looks fine in the morning so there’s nothing to worry about.’ like cool story fuckos and i get that maybe you think you have reasons for caution but it doesn’t change the fact that i am always thirsty and thirsty in that like painful way? i am just asking for like?? one small extra water drink even once a day? …no? cool. thanks.

i did my shitty journaling, you assholes. i tried to communicate. and do you know what i heard? nothing, nothing, fucking nothing week after week.

and ha. HA. when i did finally screw myself up to leave? when i reached the ‘you know what i can’t keep living like this i have other places to fucking be where i can be me and work on healing with the people i was working with before this’? my treatment team dove hard and heavy into a campaign of ‘oh but if you leave against medical advice, your insurance might make you pay for everything!!’

over. and over. and over.

what i should have done was call my insurance. i’d say i don’t know why i didn’t, only lbr, i’m terrible at phone calls, terrible often at doing what needs to be done, and i was fucking scared like. i don’t know. i don’t fucking know. but i also don’t think anyone suggested that i contact my insurance? which?? is weird, in retrospect (or not weird at all). and like every goddamn day once i’d declared my intention to leave, they just kept hammering it in, and in, and in. and like, really?

i don’t know what the were told. what they might have heard, what they might have known, to what extent this might have been a scare tactic. but i eventually found out from my insurance that it was never going to be an issue. and like. i have some heavy fucking doubts about their intentions in taking that route so very, very hard.

i think there are other things i maybe meant to say.

mostly, i’m just tired. and angry. but too tired to write any more of the angry.

like hey, to be dismissed time and again. to be told my instincts are awry, when i goddamn know they’re telling truth. just.

thanks, fuckers. thanks for the terrible fucking trip.