#this is a treat for myself for making it through my exam phase

[youalreadyhavefullresults]

the mindset journey

So hi.

My mindset has been evolving a lot ever since I started this journey, and I thought I'd lay it all out in one post. Subliminals, mindless affirming, scripting, visualization, states. I've tried so many things out, and I think I've finally figured out what works for me.

TLDR:

Stop “trying” to manifest or checking the 3d, you already have full results, creation was over like since forever.

Sure you know that you’re God, as the posts and everything you’ve seen tells you, but have you really embraced that internally?

It doesn’t matter how many posts you read, it’s up to you to actually change your mindset.

Logic is literally useless, be delusional (don’t you just wanna go ape-shit :), go get your fucking desires)

Time is not linear, and means nothing when manifesting.

Revision is so powerful, use it.

It’s just so easy guys, please just make sure you’re actually applying the information you see instead of just passively scrolling through.

And the rest is under the cut, happy reading <33

I started off in the subliminal community in Oct 2020 and just had so many limiting beliefs, it was sad. Not to shit on the community or anything, some of them are wonderful people and most of them have changed their mindset as well, but my initial knowledge prevented me from getting to this point until now. But, now I’m here, and a day after I wrote this in my drafts, I literally manifested my ideal life. I originally started this blog to collect advice from loa blogs, but honestly, I don’t need any of it anymore. Though I do like helping people, so if you have any questions, feel free to shoot me an ask.

The Initial Mindset:

I always read through countless posts that say “You’re God” and “You literally can get what you want without even trying.” While I understood the text and adopted the mindset, I still did little subconscious things that contradicted it. While I affirmed my self-concept was perfect, I would also cram-study for exams and worry I would fail. I would say I look perfect, but then also worry about the way my body looked. Also, the way that I literally became obsessed with loa media? I spent hours watching Sammy Ingram videos, looping subliminals, and reading tumblr posts on “how to manifest faster and better”. During this phase of my life, my mind was plagued with intrusive thoughts and my self-concept was slowly getting better, but still absolute shit. I would manifest things here and there, but nothing life-changing.

The main problem however, was the fact that I would treat manifesting like a task I HAD to do. Now that school was back in session, I literally would zone out during specific classes on purpose and just affirm to myself. I would feel bad if I hadn’t listened to my subliminal playlist for the day because I “wasted time in getting my desires”. There’s nothing wrong with vainly affirming or listening to subs if you believe it works, but for me, treating manifesting like a task meant that I was looking for an outcome. Clearly, now I know better, that everything is always done and that there’s nothing to complete, but back then, this was probably the main reason why I struggled to see full results easily. I was acting out of desperation and didn't believe manifestation already was done.

When Everything Changed:

I know that it’s different for everyone, but my “aha!” moment was probably when I read this post. Seriously, go read it, it made me realize that I was going about it all wrong. Now, it wasn’t learning how to perfect my manifesting, it was learning to pull out the tiny limiting beliefs that had burrowed its way into my subconscious.

For example,

“I need to do xyz so that I can get my manifestations.”

Why would I would need to do anything if I already have all of my manifestations hmm? It’s literally already done. Like there’s no need to put in that effort into something that’s already perfect right? So why do I need to even need to try? I literally get whatever tf I want without even trying. This doesn’t mean that every method out there is useless, but in the end, you are the one doing the manifesting, not the method.

“But... this makes absolutely no logical sense! How would this even work?”

I know that STEM me loves finding the logic behind everything, so that’s why I struggled a lot with the logic and time aspect. But darling, it doesn’t need to make sense. There are literally so many things in the world that scientists to this day can’t explain, including just how powerful and complex your brain is. Not to mention the fact that concepts such as logic and science are literally man-made too? What’s the point in trying to deal with logic? Just let go and have fun.

“I affirmed so hard, and I believed it. But then it never showed up when the time came.”

First off, your time spent affirming means nothing, sorry to break it to you. It’s about the mindset(your state if you will) you currently exist in that truly makes a difference. And just because it didn’t show up today doesn’t mean that you missed your window of opportunity. Revision is still manifesting, because time is not a linear concept. Anything at any time can just change with a snap of your fingers. You want to change all of your test scores? Bam, it’s done. you wish WW2 never happened? Bam, it’s done. You want to relive the past 5 years of your life? Bam, it’s done. It doesn’t matter what the event is, what time it is, or that you “didn’t do it before the deadline”. Whenever you do get it(which is instant/soon if you're persisting properly), it will be there, seamlessly blended in with your 3d. You don’t need to worry about a damn thing, your subconscious will take care of everything for you.

“Oh no! I just had intrusive thoughts, did I just mess up my manifestations?”

Why are you giving intrusive thoughts the power to do anything? Sure, you may get them, but that doesn’t mean that they have any effect on you. It’s the doubt they make you feel in your mindset that truly messes it up. Don’t give in. Acknowledge the thought, accept that it literally means nothing, and continue to persist. Your thoughts only have the power you give them.

“Nah, everyone has to be lying, this doesn’t seem real.” / ”Manifesting must just be a coincidence, there’s no way this is real.”

Oh? So you’re saying, the amount of posts you’ve seen, all of the success stories, all of the followers and comments, are you saying every single one of them is lying? No. I’m not saying that every single one of them is truthful, but there’s no way that every single one of them would lie and put this much work into something that’s not real. If you find yourself struggling to believe in the law, I’d suggest you try to manifest something small, and then build up your belief from there. I sure as hell didn’t believe in any of this from the beginning, but then, I manifested consciously for the first time. Again, and again. It became easier, and my life got better. It soon becomes apparent that literally everything you think happens. I always used to wonder how things I randomly thought in the back of my head always happened even though I literally didn’t do anything about it in the 3d. This proved to me that your mental state is more powerful than it seems.

“Can I manifest-”

Yes. Just yes. You’re GOD. GOD. Why tf is God asking some random loa account if they can manifest something or not? Ofc God would know that they can manifest whatever the fuck they want instantly. Do you think when God said “Let there be light”, he first asked people around him if he could? No. He took that shit and just fucking ran with it.

“But-but, what if-”

Uh-uh. I don’t want to fucking hear it. Like I said in the previous section, stop overthinking everything you do. Just go. Run with what you already know and manifest the life of your dreams. You don’t need to keep looking for new information, some specific post that changes everything for you. All they can do for you is steer you in the right direction. You’re the one who’s going to have to figure out our mindset and pull yourself together, no one else can do it. Take back your power, embrace it. I don’t care if you unfollow every single loa account or delete tumblr, just stop looking for the next post. Why would you need more information when you already have everything you need?

I wrote down everything I struggled with, forgot about it, and continued to persist in my new mindset. I ignored any negative 3d circumstances, and just vibed in the feeling that my desires were already here, that feeling of contentment someone has when everything in their life is just amazing. The main question I asked myself was, what would a person who had ____ think, and I went from there. Soon the things I wanted just started popping up in my life, just as I knew it would. I feel like the things I’ve said in this post are pretty much the same concepts you see all over loa tumblr, which is why it’s so important that you actively take in the information that’s being given to you and actually apply it. I was obsessed with tumblr and kept on scrolling through countless blogs and posts, and I was only able to fully manifest after I stepped away from all of that. There is no big secret. There’s no miraculous method that will fix everything for you. There’s just... you. And your subconscious. Whatever you tell your subconscious, goes. As simple as that.

How about, instead of scrolling to whatever next loa post you were about to see on this app, you close tumblr and just go live your best life? Don’t overcomplicate it and just do whatever feels natural to you. I hope this post helped, happy manifesting!

-cinna

[testajuliejane]

20 Something Woes

Lately, I’ve been reflecting on how common it is for people in their late 20s, like myself, and early 30s, to feel overwhelmed by criticisms. I often wonder: am I too reactive, or maybe even overreacting, when people criticize me? One memory that stands out is when I was maligned and slandered by a coworker, someone much older, who seemed to take a particular disliking to me. She was a middle-aged, single woman, and for some reasons including a very low emotional intelligence, low self-esteem, and extreme insecurities, treated me with disdain when I was just starting out at 23.

That hateful, envious spirit propagated among the members of her like-minded circle. Before long, the jealous sentiments of other disgruntled co-workers began to surface, each expressing their own frustrations in countless undesirable ways like maligning and ostracizing me, or attempting to block any learning opportunities for me. And it appears that they do these things probably for these reasons: not having lived their best lives in their 20s, feeling threatened by outdated or insufficient credentials, fearing that their younger counterparts are more equipped, living with regret, worrying that their children may not fulfill the dreams they once had for themselves, or dealing with a troubled family life.

Looking back, it felt like my age and potential success made people uncomfortable, especially those older than me. There seemed to be a fear that I might achieve something they hadn’t. It wasn't just my perception—many of my peers, especially those who perform at a high level, have shared the same sentiments and similar experiences in their respective workplace. It’s strange to think that my accomplishments, like graduating cum laude and earning the highest licensure exam rating among my coworkers, would make me a target, even though I’ve always tried to stay low-key. I never bragged about anything nor paraded any of my achievements. In fact, those are things of the past -- something that no longer weighs heavily in my present life. But ironically, my quiet nature, my tendency to stay reserved, has also been a point of criticism, as if my silence is something people don’t know how to handle. The more I tried to stay private, the more they craved for information as if I am more than worthy of their energy and attention.

These people even dig relentlessly into my personal life and personal whereabouts when I take vacation leaves and eavesdrop through private conversations, making me even more cautious with what I share. (If one of those people came across this page and this particular post, Wow! That person has a different level of obsession that he/she even found his/her way here. Whew!)

🎶...you wanna piece of me...🎶

But, what can I be grateful for in all this?

Despite the negativity, these experiences have taught me valuable lessons. I’ve learned to stay resilient, to keep striving for excellence despite the noise around me. Perhaps, some people in this life stage have to go through this phase. These are character-refining situations. The criticisms have forced me to reflect, to grow, and ultimately, to practice humility. These experiences give me an opportunity to be forgiving and to show love as Jesus commands me as a Christian to love my enemies. It's difficult to do these things but my situation provides me an avenue to practice this radical approach of Christianity in dealing with earthly life. I’m learning that I don’t have to react to every unkind word, that being misunderstood or criticized doesn’t diminish my worth or potential. I can be grateful that these challenges are shaping my character and helping me to become more compassionate toward others who face similar struggles and even toward my offenders who may be going through silent struggles. It has been said, "Hurt people hurt people." But as a healed child of God, I can be a person who could bring healing. After all, we all need grace. In this situation, I am being trained to trust in God's protection and to trust that He will fight my battles on my behalf. I am also learning the principle of The Audience of One -- to only seek the approval of my God Who is my Ultimate Master. I am being grounded in my identity as a Child of God the Most High. I am grateful that I have never been the same. Above all, these experiences remind me to keep my eyes on the bigger picture—my purpose, my growth, and my faith.

[namelessmewmew]

[Image ID: Shown is a rough pixel art drawing of an anthro zombie raccoon character. They have bright purple fur and high rainbow pigtails. They are wearing various accessories, including a rainbow spiked collar, a rainbow spiked tail band, rainbow sleeves, rainbow chains, a large pink bow, some pink and blue hairclips and a studded belt.  They are looking at the viewer. There a static/noise filter applied to the whole image. END ID]

Title: Z0MB1E RACC00N N0 CL1CKBA1T

Had alot alot of fun making this. :] The smiley's, stars and hearts are brushes I made X). Oh and I also made the static/noise texture! I wanted to create a old fuzzy image vibe but it’s also, like the watermark, meant to be obnoxious to nft fans/ai prompters! Two for the price of one!

Warning gigantic wall of text ahead.

Rambling: [about my irrational anxiety and ai prompted creations. I'm okay and please don't worry, k? I just wanted to mention alot of stuff that's been on my mind because lots of artists are probably also thinking stuff like this and might need encouragement. Their also may be typos and incoherentness, so if there is just let me know. probs will edit this later.]

Rambling [About anxiety] if you think that maybe some cheesy encouragement to make 'shit' art might do you some good.

Been going through the classic if I make bad art I am a bad person phase this year again and that combined with how busy I have been with studies and work I haven’t had time to work on improving my art so I have been telling myself that I just can’t make art so haven’t been making much this year honestly. [Again, I just have weird anxiety, please don’t worry k?] So, when making quick rough stuff like this, I feel alot more at peace with just creating stuff. I'll try to ride this 'you are allowed to make stuff that might be a bit or very shit' train for my sake for as long as I can. I feel alot more confident in making my rough paint 3d stuff, making a 'shit' voxel model, make something in 30 minutes in mspaint, draw something using highlighters and old lined exam pad.

Rambling [About 'ai 'art'] if you think that maybe some cheesy encouragement to keep going as an artist might do you some good.

I have been for awhile [and still am aiming for] my art skills getting to the point where I am able to make soft shaded anime paintings with amazing anatomy and super expressive faces and full detailed backgrounds, but with how AI Prompters have shown again how their are people [and big corps of course] that only care about the end product and could care less about human heart and soul, I have been thinking a lot about my relationship to the art I create and I think if you are self-conscious about your art not being good enough, or professional enough or reasonably feel mis-treated as an artist I think you should be kinder on yourself. That you should value the fact that you put whatever amount of skill and love for art you have into your art, whether you started a few seconds ago or decades ago. No matter if you think their are areas you really need to improve in or not. Wanting to improve or make grand things is wonderful and a good thing to strive for but like the whole point of art is just to connect with people, to express whats going on inside you, to analyze or interact with something you love like a video game, movie or book, to let your creativity fly and make your own thing, make a living off your passion by making paid art for people, or even just because you think it would be cool to make something! You, me and many other regular people that are artists and non-artists will continue to care about the soul behind art, about their being a person behind the art. We need to continue to care about human created art. If you are on fence about caring, I urge you to at least consider it. Not just but especially for the people that depend on it but also just for the sake about caring about such a base human thing that has been apart of our culture since basically since we started to exist!

I understand how it's hard lately to keep going as an artist and I am actively having to fight myself against discouraging 'I should just quit art' thoughts, because shit like Ai prompters getting hundreds of followers, selling ai 'art' commissions,  training models off specific artists works [including recently decreased ones, mind you!] is very disheartening [Especially with it seeming like they have support of many big corps and sites, including da!] No one should be trying to tell you as an artist or lover of art to not be upset! You have very right to be! Especially if art is your livelihood! Especially if art is very something personal to you! Especially if you rightfully think people should just give a shit about art!

AI Art does suck AND it is actively harming artists work. Especially artists that depend on surviving on their work. If I have a chance of convincing you, someone, anyone that is on the fence or is extremely pro ai prompted creations, I might as well ask you to listen to artists and let them have at least a change to explain why and how ai prompted creations are wrecking the world of art and why artists are rightfully upset.

Please if you can support artists, support them, especially those in need. Doesn't need to just be financially, sharing and engaging with art you think is cool is something that matters as well! We are all just regular people that all are just trying to survive!

Done Rambling:

All of that negativity and positivity leads me to a thing I made spontaneously in 3 days: A very silly very short [2-3 minutes] twine game about the above zombie raccoon trying to escape a rave forest. I really enjoyed making the art for it! It's ‘shit’ and I absolutely love it!

Character[s]:

xX Arc Doom Glitter Xx  [OC]

Have a good day/night further!

[MewMewMew~]

[tamariasykes-art]

Based on my post with Radagon headcanons here is a post with some headcanons for Godrick the Grafted. There are some hints of x (gender neutral) reader in there but overall the topics are pretty mixed. Some of these might also be subject to change if any new lore is revealed.

Godrick walks on the fine line between paranoia or carrying himself with overconfidence. He is well aware of the remnants of royal blood in his veins and his faiding mortality, which expresses himself in the nature of his grafting.

He viewed grafting first and foremost as means to end. A method for him to grow stronger and live up to the prestige of his bloodline, but as his knowledge of the subject began to grow so did his admiration for the art.

The act of grafting is also very intimate for him and he would probably ask to graft something onto you or offering to make whatever changes you would like to be made on your body. If you deny his offer he will pester you for a while after, but if you’ve made it clear this is not something you want, he will stop.

Godrick has always been doing the majority of grafting himself. Something which has become a lot easier for him since he acquired a Great Rune. However the easier it became for him, the more he indulged in it when his paranoia grew stronger again. His grafting began to escalated more and more after the Shattering and it wasn’t long before it lost any form and purpose. Gathering limb after limb from Tarnished and creatures alike which turned him into the monstrosity you will face during the game.

Godrick can be a difficult partner, mostly because he is quiet stubborn and unrelentless in the pursuit of his goals. You will need to be firm but patient with him, if you want to reach a compromise or talk him out of doing something potentially harmful.

For each day he is cold towards you there will twice as many where he is very passionate towards you. It is an up and down with him and his mood swings only worsens with each Tarnished that attempts to pass through Stormveil Castle.

He is afraid to show any form of weakness and tends to refuse help you offer. Once you get to know each other better and he feels like he can finally be vulnerable around you will he slowly begin to open up and tell you about his concerns. Give him reassurance in moments like this.

If you would like to do something nice for him, offer to braid his hair. Sit down with him, loosen his messy braids and before brushing it slowly and watch as he begins to melt away under your touch. He will be very quiet throughout the whole process right up until you are finished where he will mutter a quiet ‘thank you’ before resuming whatever task he did before.

And yes, he did graft a different dick onto himself. But I will talk about that once I do some nsfw headcanons with him.

[skzsauce01]

Angel Sent From Up Above

Anniversary Request Special

Synopsis: Hyunjin, a new guardian angel, has fallen in love with a human. His human’s girlfriend, to be precise. Angel AU, background college AU and skater AU.

Warning: violence

Word Count: 8.3k

Pairing: fem!reader x guardian angel!Hyunjin; fem!reader x human!Jeongin

“Is she healed now?” Hyunjin asks the moment Jisung flies in. He knows Jisung is probably exhausted from keeping maladies away from you, but he needs the answer now. “Is her flu gone?”

“Yeah.” Jisung’s wings are tinged gray with ruin, but he keeps them on display for all the other guardian angels to see as he walks past them. They are proof that he has been doing his duty. They’ll return to white soon enough anyway. “Your human’s her boyfriend. Why didn’t you try to check through him? He visited a few times even though she told him not to.” Jisung sighs and shakes his head. “What an idiot. He’s going to get sick himself.”

“He hasn't visited recently, so I haven’t been able to check through him. The Archangel’s forbade me going to Earth unless it was something serious. I think he’s worried I'm spending too much time with humans.”

Jisung shakes his head. “I think he’s worried that he’s going to have to Seungmin you.”

“I'm not going to get expelled.”

Jisung shrugs, and ruin falls from his wings like ash. “You better watch out. You checked up on her too much last time she got sick, so he's probably trying to make sure you won't abandon your human. He's banished people for less. Case in point: Seungmin.”

“She's important to Jeongin, so she's important to me."

Jisung sighs. “Sometimes I think you’re more protective of her than I am.”

He says it as a joke, but Hyunjin knows it’s the truth. He cares deeply about you, maybe even more than his own human, but he will never say that last part aloud.

Hyunjin used to believe that becoming a guardian angel was the best thing that ever happened to him. All of his afterlife, he had wanted to be promoted, to be granted the pure white wings and the crown of sun rays. Regular angels had wings and halos but never white wings and golden halos; silver and silver was the “regular” combination.

Watching over a human was considered the highest honor an angel could receive, and everyone clamored to gain the attention of the Archangel. Hyunjin was not immune. He worked as a messenger for years, delivering even the most inane notes between the higher ups. He endured the attacks, verbal and sometimes physical, and kept his mouth shut. Eventually, the Archangel recognized his efforts, and before dawn broke on Earth, Hyunjin was named the new guardian angel of a baby boy, Yang Jeongin.

“You will protect him. You will guide him,” the Archangel said. “He is your responsibility now and yours alone. Do you understand?”

From Heaven, Hyunjin could only look at the wet, wrinkled face of his human. His human. “I understand.”

Then the Archangel flew off, and Hyunjin flew to Earth for the first time to meet the baby. No one noticed him as he phased through the hospital walls nor as his giant wings folded back. Only Jeongin would be able to see his guardian angel.

“Hello there, little one,” he whispered to the swaddled baby. The boy was fast asleep, and Hyunjin gently stroked his face. “I just wanted to introduce myself. I’m Hyunjin, your official guardian angel. I’ll always be nearby now, and I’ll always make sure you’re safe. Sometimes you won’t be able to see me, but I’ll always be watching over you. I promise.”

Jeongin stirred awake and stared back at Hyunjin. Two sets of eyes blinked at each other, one full of curiosity and one full of tenderness.

“Go back to sleep,” Hyunjin said. He drew his hand over the baby’s face, and Jeongin’s eyes fluttered shut. “Sweet dreams, little one.”

Guardian angels talked about their humans like parents, bragging about how gifted they were and sharing complaints about what unbelievable thing they did the other day. Hyunjin mostly did the latter. Jeongin was an adventurous child, which was just a nice way of saying that he liked to play with danger. Hyunjin often had to fly in to save him or to redirect the threat somewhere else. The other angels joked that Hyunjin stayed on Earth more than Heaven sometimes. He didn’t mind though. Even with his human’s shortcomings, Hyunjin adored him. He watched from above as Jeongin said his first words, attended his first day of kindergarten, and got into his first fight.

“He’s a troublemaker,” Minho observed.

Minho was a guardian angel as well, but he tended to lurk on the outer edges of the realm as the other angels avoided him for a reason Hyunjin hadn’t figured out yet. Hyunjin liked him well enough and treated him like a mentor, sometimes a friend.

“Hey, you’re not one to talk. Your human started a black market of candy at school.”

Minho shrugged. “I didn’t say it was a bad thing.”

Jeongin didn’t end up growing up into a troublemaker, to Hyunjin’s relief. The impulsive streak was still there, but he utilized his judgement more now. There were no car crashes or cases of alcohol poisoning, and when Jeongin asked out girls, it was with daisy bouquets and a suggestion to get lunch. Hyunjin slowly stopped making routine trips to Earth and chose to view Jeongin from the comfort of Heaven. It was there that Hyunjin noticed you.

“I think she’s upset with him,” Jisung abruptly says. “She cried after a video call with him, so if your human starts acting strangely, that’s why.”

The news makes Hyunjin stop mid-step, and he turns to his friend. “She cried? What? What did she cry about?”

“I don’t know. I was too busy trying to lower her temperature. Can you believe that she almost hit—”

“Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

“I just got back! There is no ‘earlier!’ Besides, we aren't allowed to interfere in anything that isn't dangerous. Heartbreak, if this is even what this is, is temporary."

“Humans do drastic things for love.” The movies has seen while watching Jeongin have told him that much.

“Which we will attend to when it happens. You’re a new guardian; you’ll understand them better over time. Not everything is life-threatening, fragile as they are.”

Hyunjin turns away from Jisung and glances down at Earth. The clouds part, and all of the brick buildings of the university rush towards his eyes as he focuses on Jeongin. He’s asleep at his desk, his lamp still burning bright above him. How long has it been since the video call? Or perhaps he’s just tired from the events of his day. But he looks so small and vulnerable in his chair. Jeongin isn’t fragile — the amount of situations he has gotten out of covered in bruises and blood is astronomical — but he is mortal.

“But she loves him,” Hyunjin softly says, “and he loves her.”

“Exactly. Humans fight over small things all the time, and this is one of those times.” Jisung places a hand on Hyunjin’s shoulder to placate him. “Trust me.”

“... I trust you.”

“Good. I need to rest, but we can catch up and see what stupid things they do after.”

The moment Jisung flies off to the rest area, Hyunjin goes against the Archangel’s orders and flies to your apartment. When he peers inside your bedroom window, he spots you sitting in bed in the dark, your phone screen illuminating your face. He phases inside and sits at your desk chair, resting his forearms at the top rail. You can’t see him, but he wishes that you could.

You mindlessly scroll through messages, sniffling every few seconds. Whether it’s from your crying or your illness, he doesn’t know. He can’t hand you a tissue or tell you comforting things or hug you like Jeongin can. When you wrap your blanket tighter around your shoulders, he wraps his wings around himself as well.

Suddenly you throw your phone beside you and let out a heavy sigh. “It can’t get any worse than this,” you say to yourself.

Hyunjin waits for you to say more, but you only stare at the ceiling with blank eyes. He can’t compel you to talk; only Jisung can, but he’s not here. So instead, Hyunjin knocks over the glass of water on your bed when you shift into a more comfortable position.

“Of course it can,” you sigh again and blot as much water as you can with your tissues. You pull another one out of the box with more force than necessary and furiously dab your sheets. “First I get sick, then I miss a homework deadline that I can’t make up because my professor lost his heart thirty years ago along with his hair, then my boyfriend breaks up with me for like no reason, apparently I have an exam tomorrow, and now I’ve spilled water all over my bed, so I can’t even sleep. Thank you, universe. I really needed this.”

He immediately regrets his decision.

“Worst freaking week of my life,” you mumble as you throw away the wet tissues. Hyunjin almost reaches out for your arm when you pass by, but he retracts it just in time.

When you climb back into bed, you draw your blanket up to your chin and begin murmuring numbers. They come out calm and even at first, but they become more tense as time passes. Hyunjin half-listens as he scans the contents of your desk. A laptop, a shopping bag, an open notebook with doodles on the margins, an uncapped black pen, and a pack of gum. He presses his forefinger to the point of the pen, drawing a tiny heart by touch. Then he stamps the heart among all your misshapen stars and imaginary flowers. You might just think it’s an ink smear, but he hopes you look at it and smile.  

You hit three hundred and forty-seven before you begin to sound drowsy. Hyunjin stands at the foot of your bed, watching as you finally drift off in the middle of three hundred and ninety-three. Serenity settles across your features.

“I’m sorry for what I did earlier. Good night and sweet dreams,” he whispers. He pats the corner of your bed before flying off into the night.

He needs to see Jeongin.

It was hard not to notice you when you were on a collision course with Jeongin. You were going too fast, and Hyunjin’s wings couldn’t carry him to Earth in milliseconds. With horror, he watched as you sharply turned the building corner on your skateboard and just barely jumped off in time when you saw Jeongin about to make the same turn.

“You okay?” Jeongin asked as he hurried to stop your runaway board.

“I should be asking you that!” you exclaimed as you followed him. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have veered that close to the wall. You’re not hurt or anything, right?”

“I’m fine, don’t worry.”

“Good. I can’t risk getting sued again.” Unsure of how to respond, Jeongin nudged back your board to you. You neatly stopped it mid-roll with your foot. “Thanks, by the way. See you around.”

“Yeah, see you.”

You kicked off, but before you left the area, you turned around and gave him a wave. Jeongin waved back, albeit more shyly than you. After a moment’s hesitation, he yelled out, “Be careful!”

“I’ll try!”

Jeongin laughed and turned the corner, looking at the brick wall with more wistfulness than most people usually did. Before he entered the building, he peeked around the next corner, as if he expected you to come speeding by again. You didn’t.

After that, he noticed you more often, usually swerving around strangers as you cut through campus. Whenever he had the opportunity to say hello, he did so with a smile, and you returned it with a waggle of your fingers before disappearing into the crowd. Once, you nearly crashed into a railing. You laughed it off and gave him another wave along with a funny face. Hyunjin felt something inside him melt. Jeongin must have too since he headed to his next class with the most lovestruck expression Hyunjin had ever seen on him.

It was then that Jeongin began forming a plan.

Two weeks after the first meeting, Jeongin waited in the quad for you to show up. Just as he hoped, you came walking down the steps fifteen minutes later, skateboard tucked underneath your arm. It was supposed to seem like a coincidence, but Hyunjin had followed Jeongin as he scoured nearby skate spots, asking around about you. Yesterday, he had learned where you liked to practice tricks. He got up from his bench, hands hidden behind his back, and approached you with the same moves and confidence he had rehearsed in the bathroom mirror.

“Hey! How have you been?” he called up from the very bottom.

Meanwhile, Hyunjin groaned. Jisung, who Hyunjin had tracked down two days prior to this, also did so.

“You said he was a charmer,” Jisung complained. “Look at him. He can’t even charm dogs with a treat.”

“For your sake, I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that. Just wait though. It’s going to get better.”

Jisung huffed. “It better. She deserves the best.”

Fortunately, you took it all in stride and waved hello at Jeongin. When you were finally beside him, you answered, “I’ve been good, thanks. You’re not here to sue me, right?”

“No! I was actually wondering if you could teach me how to skateboard. If you have time, that is.”

“Really? But I almost killed you that one time. I mean, I’d be happy to, but it’s kind of weird after what happened.”

“I’d rather skateboard than walk, and you seem pretty good at it.”

You shifted your weight to one foot, and Hyunjin chuckled when he saw Jeongin’s eyes wander to your jutted-out hip. Jisung made a noise of disapproval.

“Okay, what is this really about?”

“Skateboarding,” Jeongin said. Then he took a step closer and held out a bundle of daisies towards you. “And lunch, if you want.”

You broke out into a grin. “I am a little hungry right now. L/N Y/N, skateboarding extraordinaire and ramen enthusiast, at your service.”

“Yang Jeongin, also a ramen enthusiast. Nice to officially meet you.”

Jeongin is still sleeping at his desk when Hyunjin arrives. He shifts and exhales when the wind from Hyunjin’s wings create a small breeze but does not wake.

“How could you break up with her?” Hyunjin says. “She’s amazing and wonderful, and you decide that you don't want to be with her? Sometimes I wonder what’s going on in your head.”

Silence.

“If I were human, I would have never done that, but…”

Jeongin shifts again, burying himself deeper into the crumpled hoodie he’s using as a pillow. The table squeaks, and a mechanical pencil rolls off the desk. Hyunjin quietly places the pencil back to its initial place and shuts off the lamp.

“Take care of yourself, and make good choices, okay? I can’t do that for you.”

Instead of flying back to Heaven, he perches on the roof of the building across from Jeongin’s. Jeongin finally wakes up and notices that his light is off. He glances at it confusedly for a few seconds, wondering if he misremembered leaving it on. In the end, he decides it’s not worth the effort and falls into his bed. He didn’t even spare you a thought, a crime in Hyunjin’s eyes.

Then he realizes he may have a bigger problem on his hands.

Jisung.

Jisung is going to be very upset when he finds out about this.

Over the weekend, you brought Jeongin to the quad to learn the basics.

“Put both feet on the board now,” you said as you walked alongside a skateboarding Jeongin. He was borrowing yours to practice, so he treated it with more reverence than a well-used board would need. Even though he was pushing with his back foot, he was going at a snail’s pace.

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I’m going to lose my balance and fall.”

Perhaps it wasn’t reverence after all.

You shook your head. “No, you won’t. You’re not going that fast anyway. You can just step off if you really feel like you are. Give it a shot.”

To his credit, Jeongin lifted his foot a few centimeters off the ground before planting it back. “I’m going to lose control.”

While you did your best to persuade Jeongin to give it another try, Jisung gave Hyunjin a dissatisfied look. “I remember you telling me he was a daredevil. What is happening?”

He didn’t exactly know either. “He’s in front of his crush; give him a break.”

“These two better not end up dating. She deserves so much better than him.”

Hyunjin gave him a dirty look, Jisung gave him a “What? It’s true” type of a shrug.

You step in front of the board. “How about this?” you said. “You stand on the board with both feet, and I’ll pull you along so you can get used to the feeling and be less of a scaredy cat.”

“Okay.”

You took both of his hands and slowly guided him backwards. At the same time, you instructed him to put more weight on one side to change directions. Jeongin was surprisingly stable, and Hyunjin watched proudly as his human suggested that you increase your speed a little.

“See? It’s not bad?” you said. “Keeping balance isn’t that hard, right?”

“Yeah. Also,” he grinned, his meek demeanor completely gone, “we’re holding hands now.”

Your eyes widened as you glanced down at your joined hands, and you let out a delighted gasp. “You sneaky little—” Much to Jeongin’s alarm, you let go and smirked. “If you go past the bench without constantly pushing, I’ll let you hold my hand when you walk me home.”

“Kind of presumptuous of you to assume that I would offer to walk you home,” he teased, resting one foot on the floor. “Or is that what you want me to do?”

“You asked me to lunch with flowers. You were going to.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” Then he kicked off, skating past the bench with ease. Still going, he looked over his shoulder and shouted, “Do you want to grab doughnuts before you head home?”

“Watch the lamp!” you yelled as you ran towards him. “Jeongin, stop looking at me and turn around!”

The collision with the lamppost was unavoidable, so Hyunjin simply watched as Jeongin took a flying leap off your board and took a tumble on the concrete. While you fumbled for band aids — Jeongin’s knee was scraped and bloody — Jeongin patted his pockets to check that his phone had not fallen out.

“So doughnuts?” he sheepishly asked.

“Sure. I’ll buy.” You finally found one hidden in the bottom of your backpack along with an alcohol wipe. “Guess you get to hold my hand after all.”

“How are you so prepared?” he asked, nodding to the contents you had unceremoniously dumped out whilst rummaging. “You have tweezers and gauze?”

“My mom made me carry a first-aid kit with me when she found out that I skate to class. It comes in handy.” You ripped open the package. “This might hurt.”

“You can kiss it to feel better.”

You laughed and pressed the alcohol wipe to his knee. “You’re such a flirt, I love it. Does it hurt?”

“Yeah, hurts a lot.”

You opted to kiss the band aid instead, causing Jeongin to pout and Jisung to sigh in relief. When you stuck it onto his skin, Jeongin made a big production of being relieved from pain, which made you laugh and shove him.

“No! She’s in love with him,” Jisung groaned. His wings drooped, and Hyunjin swore his halo actually dimmed when you kept your hands in Jeongin’s after you pulled him up. “Well, Hyunjin, looks like you and I are going to be best friends.”

Hyunjin personally saw no issue with that. Like Jeongin, he had been charmed by your antics and your easygoing nature. Protecting his human’s friends, family, or lovers wasn’t part of Hyunjin’s duty, but he felt compelled to watch over you too.

Because if he were human, he would have fallen in love with you too.

In the midst of his lamenting, Jisung flies down and sits beside him on the roof. His wings are still slightly gray, and Hyunjin strangely begins to feel self-conscious of his pure white ones.

“Didn’t the Archangel forbid you from doing frivolous things?” Jisung says in lieu of a greeting. “I saw you at her apartment earlier.”

“I just wanted to check up on her. Not that I thought you lied,” he hastily adds. “I wanted to see for myself. She’s a little… distraught.”

“She got into a fight with her boyfriend. It’s normal.” When Hyunjin doesn’t reply or even make a sound, he grows concerned. “Is it something else? She’s getting sued, isn’t she? I knew it was going to happen someday. When I find that smug richie-rich, I’m going to—”

“Jeongin broke up with her.”

“What.”

Hyunjin repeats his sentence, trying to block the view of Jeongin’s bedroom with his body. Jisung looks like he’s ready to rain judgement onto him, and while Hyunjin is rather good at his job, he’s not sure if he can hold back an enraged guardian angel. Jisung takes several deep breaths before regaining the little composure he can muster.

“I knew I hated him for a reason. I knew he didn’t deserve her,” he spits out, though the venom in his voice wavers. “Why would he even break up with her? She loved him so much.”

Hyunjin shrugs. “That’s what I want to find out.”

“When you find out, let me know. I’m going to see her now.”

Hyunjin stays on the roof until sunrise. Jeongin sleeps without any trouble, and when he wakes up, he looks fresh-faced, no guilt hanging over his head. Hyunjin feels something inside him cracking apart.

You truly don’t deserve this.

“Do you think they’re going to crash and burn?” Jisung asked as he studied you and Jeongin walking through the park, practically glued to each other’s sides. “I think they’re moving too fast. It’s only been a month.”

Hyunjin really didn’t care about that. As long as you and Jeongin were happy, he was happy. “A month is a pretty long time for them. Mortal lives are short.”

“Exactly. They should be more selective about their life choices.”

Hyunjin only rolled his eyes and turned his attention back to you. You were pointing at the tiny carousel in the middle and tugging at Jeongin’s sleeve. You dragged him over and pushed a coin into the slot for the ride. The lights lit up and a carnival theme played while you struggled to wedge yourself between the saddle of an elephant and the roof of the carousel. Jeongin sat on the edge, beside the tiger, and chuckled at your flailing limbs.

Hyunjin suppressed his own laugh. You were something special. Just last week, the two of you had made it official and started dating. You had done it in the sweetest possible way.

You had taken him to a local skateboarding shop to help him pick out his first board. Once he had chosen one — the ‘one’ being a light blue deck patterned with multicolored doughnuts — the staff at the shop sent him to the back to try it out. Meanwhile, you made the age-old excuse of needing to use the restroom when you were actually getting the flowers you had hidden in the back.

Hyunjin had turned into a pile of fluff when you gave Jeongin the daisy bouquet and asked if he wanted to officially be your boyfriend. You were so earnest. Jeongin playfully pretended to think it over, a feat Hyunjin knew he wouldn’t have been able to do if he were in his position. There were no fireworks or confetti when Jeongin finally said yes, but the staff did clap and cheer. Jisung looked on with contempt. Hyunjin looked on with envy.

“You know,” Jisung abruptly said, snapping Hyunjin back to the present, “when her last boyfriend broke up with her, she had ice cream for dinner for a week.”

“Oh.”

“You see why I’m being wary of him now?”

Hyunjin did, but Jeongin was different. His previous relationships always ended well, and on one occasion, he remained friends with his ex. He sighed and decided that a change of topic was necessary so he wouldn’t have to potentially endure a tirade. “Did you hear about Minho’s human? The bank he worked at got robbed, and he got held at gunpoint.”

That caught the overprotective Jisung’s ear. “What? Is he okay?”

During Hyunjin’s recountment of Minho’s recountment, the carousel ride ended. You squeezed out of your spot, hitting your head on the roof, and Jeongin pulled you in for a forehead kiss. The world grew brighter when you smiled, he realized.

Hyunjin shadows Jeongin around all day, hoping to learn the reason for the breakup. Unfortunately, Jeongin doesn’t say anything. He does show some regret though, as he scrolls through past messages and old pictures. When he heads to classes, he opts to walk instead of skateboarding like usual and avoids the quad whenever possible.

In the evening, while Jeongin is chewing on his salad like a cow to cud, Hyunjin pays you a visit. He finds in the freezer section of the grocery store with three pints of ice cream in your basket. From the looks of it, you’re about to add another three to your haul. Peanut butter pretzel sounds equal parts delicious and confusing.

Hyunjin studies your expression, frowning at the same time you do. Your eyes are ringed with red, your jaw tight, and your eyebrows seem permanently furrowed. When he follows you back home, he half expects you to start crying on the way, but you hold fast and manage to open a pint of the salted caramel flavor before the tears finally come. There’s no wailing, just sniffling and the sound of you furiously wiping at your face with the sleeve of your hoodie. In the midst of it all, you find the strength to reorganize the freezer to make space for the other pints. Something about that makes Hyunjin’s heart drop.

By the time your roommate discovers you in the kitchen, the entire refrigerator has been reorganized and the ice cream finished. You sit in a dark room, your finger hovering above the ‘SEND’ button of a message to Jeongin. Hyunjin can see it if he flies above you: “Can you please just tell me why? You keep saying you did something wrong, but I don’t even know what it is. Please let me decide if it’s worth breaking up over.”

“Rough day?” she gently asks as she flips on the switch.

“Yeah.”

“Do you wanna talk about it?”

“Maybe tomorrow. I just wanna process it right now,” you hollowly say. You grab your skateboard — the same black, paint-splattered one you had last year — and unlock the front door. “I’m going out for a ride, but I’ll be back in an hour or so.”

“Stay safe.”

After you leave, Jisung phases through the kitchen walls and hisses at Hyunjin, “What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be with Jeongin?”

He nearly forgot about him. Eating dinner isn’t a dangerous task anyway though. Besides, if Jeongin does get physically harmed somehow, Hyunjin will feel an echo of the pain. Hyunjin glances at the door, and Jisung shakes his head.

“I’ll take care of her. Go back to Jeongin, and make sure he’s okay. You can’t keep leaving him all the time.”

“Fine, I’ll go.”

“Good.”

Hyunjin reluctantly goes back to Jeongin, who is still eating his salad. His resolve from last night is clearly gone as evidenced by his melancholy expression as he scrolls through even more photos. The one of you in mid-air makes him clutch his phone.

“Let me get one of you when you’re really high up,” Jeongin suggested. He was comfortable gliding around on a skateboard now, but nowhere comfortable enough to try any tricks. Nevertheless, that didn’t stop you from trying to get him to learn. The “pop shove it” was your favorite, solely for the amount of height you could get.

“Okay.”

As you did over and over again for your enthusiastic boyfriend who was unfortunately not that great of a photographer, Hyunjin observed from a rooftop behind Jeongin. Sometimes you looked like you were flying. He could imagine wings protruding from your back, and if the sun hit you just right, there appeared to be a halo as well.

“I got one!” Jeongin exclaimed as he held up his device to you. “Look.”

Hyunjin couldn’t see for himself, but your mouth dropped into an ‘o’ once you took a first glance. A flustered smile made its way onto your face, and everything about you turned soft.

“This looks amazing,” you said. You sidled up to him and rested your cheek against his shoulder, turning your head towards him. “I love you.”

The words hung in the air for a few seconds as both Hyunjin and Jeongin tried to process them. This was the first time you had ever said them, and it came seemingly out of nowhere. Hyunjin recovered first.

“Say ‘I love you’ back, you moron,” Hyunjin whispered, like Jeongin would be able to hear him from this distance. “‘I love you too.’”

“I wanted to say it first,” Jeongin finally said. “Ugh, I had it all planned out too. We were supposed to get doughnuts after this, and I was going to buy you one of those heart-shaped ones.”

You kissed him on the cheek and intertwined your fingers with his. “We can still do that.”

At the doughnut shop, he said the words second, and you kissed him again, leaving a crystal of glaze on the corner of his mouth. Hyunjin licked his lips as if you had left it on him instead.

“Did you find out?” Jisung asks when Hyunjin leaves Jeongin to check up on you. You’re skating around the city, making sharp swerves and weaving in-between lampposts. Jisung is trailing behind you in the sky, but he slows when he sees Hyunjin approaching.

“No, but—”

“Then go back to him. Hyunjin,” Jisung sighs, “I know you care about her, but she’s not your human. Jeongin’s your responsibility.”

“I know but—”

“Go back. And I’m telling you this not as your friend but as your senior. You’re a guardian angel, and you need to take your responsibilities seriously. I’ll get the Archangel involved if I have to. Do you want to get Seungminned?”

The threat of the Archangel strangely doesn’t scare him anymore, however. In fact, the Archangel being involved may solve many of his current issues.

“I’ll find you again when I find out,” Hyunjin slowly says.

Jisung nods in approval before racing after you again. Hyunjin heads to Heaven, not to keep an eye over his human but to become human.

Ten months into Jeongin’s relationship with you, Hyunjin asked Minho, “Is it possible to give up your divinity?”

Minho gave Hyunjin a curious look. “Is being a guardian angel that taxing for you? You haven’t even experienced a full lifespan yet. I know, twenty year-olds are annoying, but it’s not nearly as bad as forty year-olds and their mid-life crisis.”

“I’m just curious. Or, as a last resort,” he added, hoping that Minho would stop being suspicious if he joked about it. “My human’s been making some dumb choices.”

A lie, but Minho fell for it.

“I told you he was going to be a troublemaker!” he cackled. He sympathetically patted Hyunjin’s back. “If I’m being honest, I thought about it a few times. I always get assigned to the troublemakers. Probably because the higher-ups hate me for not tolerating their BS. They’re always playing favorites. Anyway, the easiest way is to get expelled by the Archangel. It’s happened a few times before.”

“Can’t you just ask him?”

Minho smirked. “You don’t think other angels have tried that? He only expels the ones who don’t want to be. It’s supposed to be a punishment.”

“What’s the hard way then?”

“Same thing minus the Archangel getting involved: your wings getting cut off,” he matter-of-factly answered. “The halo will break once your wings are detached. It’s only been done once, by the way.”

Hyunjin absentmindedly rubbed the area where the bones of his wings met with his shoulder blades. All he needed were two clean cuts across his practically impenetrable back.

“How do you do that?”

“With the Archangel’s sword. Another angel has to cut it though; you can’t do it yourself.”

The Archangel would likely banish him to Hell for even asking about his weapon. If Hyunjin ever did manage to steal the sword away, Jisung would never agree to it. He couldn’t just ask any angel to help him.

“How do you know about all this?” Hyunjin asked.

Minho hesitated, something he rarely did. He quickly recovered, hiding his sudden apprehension with his usual devil-may-care nonchalance. “I can’t give away all of my secrets.”

“We’re friends, aren’t we?”

Friends. The word hung in the air like the sun, and Hyunjin knew that Minho would tell him because underneath all of his bluster was loneliness. Because no one liked Minho, or if they did, they still avoided him anyway.

“Yeah, we are,” Minho answered, smiling for a second before a strange expression crossed over his face, pride mixed with a touch of sadness. “Do you really think the Archangel would have expelled one of his favorite guardian angels that easily?”

“Who are you talking about?”

“Seungmin. He asked me to cut his wings for him.”  

“I need you to cut my wings,” are Hyunjin’s first words to Minho after not speaking to him for days.

To his credit, Minho is only speechless for a few seconds. The dove in his hand pecks at him for more headpats before he recovers. “Well, do you have the sword?”

“No, but I think I can get it. When I do though, would you do it? You’re the only one I trust.”

Minho sighs and tosses the bird out of Heaven, grimacing a bit when he hears it squawk. When he faces Hyunjin, he smiles the same smile he did when he talked about Seungmin. “It’s always me, huh? I’ll do you one better. I’ll steal the sword for you. The Archangel’s been pissing me off anyway.”

For once, Hyunjin’s thoughts are not on you but his friend. He imagined that Minho would be willing, but perhaps he’s too willing. “Are you trying to get expelled as well? We can go together.”

“No, I like being immortal. I hate all of the BS I get put through sometimes, but the Archangel can’t kick me out. He swore an oath to me a long time ago before he got promoted, and it’s pretty much unbreakable. Besides, even Heaven needs a scapegoat.”

That explains why virtually no angels interact with Minho, Hyunjin being the exception. He has never heard of the Archangel being oathsworn, though it seems likely that the Archangel wants to keep that a secret.

“How are you going to get it?” Hyunjin asks. “How did Seungmin even get it? The Archangel always has it with him.”

“Seungmin was one of his favorites,” Minho reminds him. “He had easy access to him, and the Archangel trusted him enough to let him borrow it for ‘a study.’ Don’t worry about me though. Just wait for me on Earth. Somewhere where no one goes. I’ll find you, slice off your wings, and the Archangel won’t even know what happened to you.”

“That’s not possible. He always keeps it on him.”

Minho shrugs, a gleam in his eyes. “I’ve done it before. Why do you think I’m the scapegoat?”

Seungmin. For Minho and now Hyunjin, being Seungminned didn’t mean being expelled for being frivolous anymore; it meant leaving of your own accord.

“What happened to him?” Hyunjin asked. “Why didn’t the Archangel grant his divinity back? Someone should have spotted him on Earth.”

Minho’s wry grin was back. “You think the Archangel wanted everyone to find out the golden boy of Heaven no longer wanted to be an angel? Plenty of angels already saw him roaming Earth. It was easier to let everyone think that Seungmin was banished. So when they saw him on Earth, he was just a fallen angel, nothing important.” He nudged Hyunjin’s arm, and the solemn atmosphere vanished. “A troublemaking human isn’t all that bad. Like I said, the twenties are annoying, but they’re manageable. Is he one of those partying types?”

“He goes out sometimes,” Hyunjin carefully replied. Jeongin liked hanging out with his friends and you — mostly you, now that Hyunjin thought about it — but he wasn’t getting blackout drunk every night. At least, Hyunjin hoped he wasn’t. He usually watched over you if you were ever in the vicinity. “Speaking of which, I should check up on him.”

Minho said his goodbyes, and Hyunjin flew back to Earth once he saw that you weren’t with Jeongin. You were studying at your desk, rolling a pen between your fingers, reading through a document on your laptop. The desk light casted a warm glow on your face. You frowned, and your lower lip swelled outwards.

He wished he were human.

Just as Minho said, Hyunjin waits for him to arrive in a secluded part of the university campus. The building rooftop is devoid of anyone, and the area surrounding it is empty as well. The evening turns into night, then night into the early morning when the sky begins lightening. Still, Minho has not come.

He distantly wonders how Jeongin is faring and his promise to Jisung. When he’s human, he’ll ask Jeongin directly, maybe in disguise of a survey: “Why did you break up with your last partner?” Even to him, it sounds stupid. However, that’s not the real reason why he’s giving up his divinity, so it hardly matters to him. Jisung is resourceful; he’ll find out eventually.

Finally, when the sun peeks over the horizon, Minho descends from Heaven, a familiar silver sword in his hand. He lands beside Hyunjin, a triumphant smile on his face. But his usual humor has been replaced with solemnity.

“You’re sure about this?” he asks as he rests the blade on the top of Hyunjin’s wings.

He has never felt so sure of anything in his life. “Yes.”

“It’s going to hurt.”

“Then make it quick.”

Searing pain shoots through his body as the sword pierces through the thin skin and into the bone. The process is not as nearly as seamless as Hyunjin hoped it would be, and Minho breathes heavily as he pushes the blade down. Bones snap, feathers drift to the floor, and blood trickles down his back. The pain only grows greater near the end, but Hyunjin grits his teeth and keeps quiet. Dawn breaks when his wings finally fall to the floor, no longer white but splattered with red. Soon they fade into dust, and the remnants scatter into the wind. His golden halo shatters into sunlight. The world dulls as the last of his powers disappear, but everything feels much better than when he was an angel.

“Thank you,” he whispers to Minho, who he cannot even look at anymore. His eyes would be burned.

“You’re fallen, not quite mortal and not quite divine. You won’t be affected by all of an angel’s power.”

When Hyunjin cautiously glances at him, Minho waves the bloody sword at him. “See?”

“Yeah.” He wanted humanity, but this is good enough for him. He just needs you to be able to see him, hear him, touch him.

“I need to go back before Heaven becomes Hell, but find Seungmin if you can. He can help you figure things out. Last I heard, he’s living somewhere in the mountains.”

“Thank you,” he repeats. “Minho, I can’t even put it into words about how much this means to me. Thank you for everything you’ve done.”

Minho pats his shoulder before stripping off his clean shirt. “Clean yourself before you leave. No one wants to witness a walking crime scene this early in the morning.”

When he flies back to Heaven, the last thing Hyunjin sees are his wings, still pure white.

“Hey,” you said as you laced your fingers with Jeongin’s. He had just finished class, and you had waited for him outside the building. Hyunjin had sat on the other end of the bench, savoring the proximity. That was the closest he would ever get to you. “Are you busy tonight? The skate shop just announced — literally an hour ago, those jerks — that they were doing a midnight drop, and I kind of want a new deck.”

“Ugh, I’ve been meaning to buy new trucks, but I have to meet up with my group tonight. Send me pictures though.”

Disappointment only momentarily flooded through Hyunjin. If it was anything like the last two meetups, it would be at the library, and the library was a safe place. Jeongin would be fine there. Hyunjin would be free to shadow you as you went to the skate shop.

“I can get it for you,” you offered.

He shook his head. “It’s fine. Maybe I’ll just wait for a sale.”

“Don’t be surprised if I do get you new trucks,” you warned. You let go of his hand and held his arm. “I still owe you for last month’s dinner.”

Jeongin shook his head again, a smile making its way onto his face. “You don’t owe me anything but a kiss.”

“Flirt,” you laughed as you pressed your lips to his cheek. “Never change, Yang Jeongin.”

That night at the skate shop, Hyunjin hovered above you as you stood in line, chatting with others. There were no unscrupulous characters around, but he stayed with you, only going back to Jeongin when Jisung insisted. However, by then, Hyunjin had already seen you eyeing the shiny teal trucks through the window. Hyunjin knew nothing about skateboards even after all those months, but you seemed pleased by them.

“You’re only getting trucks for sure?” your brand new acquaintance asked. “This is, like, the biggest drop they’ve ever done.”

You shrugged. “I’m kind of on the fence about the decks I saw on the email. I don’t know. Maybe wheels too?”

Meanwhile, Jisung hissed, “Hyunjin, go before something happens. What if a fight breaks out?”

Hyunjin sincerely doubted that one would happen at the library. He lingered around, taking his time unfolding his wings and stretching them.

“Your boyfriend’s lucky,” your acquaintance sighed.

“Nah, I’m the lucky one.”

Daisies, that’s what he needs right now. Choosing the rooftop of a building was not a smart decision, but the access door is thankfully unlocked, and Hyunjin races down all of the emergency stairs. However, with no form of currency on him, Hyunjin heads to the quad, hoping that he can pull up some dandelions for you. You need to be supported, and bright yellow flowers are just the thing.

What he doesn’t expect though, is to find you doing pop shove its at your usual spot. It’s so early in the day; did you even go back to your apartment to sleep?

“Good morning,” he calls as he walks closer. He waves at you, and you can see him! You tentatively wave back and give him a halfhearted smile. “How are you today? You look beautiful.”

“Thanks, and I’m fine,” you politely reply as you take a step back away from him. “What about you?”

Hyunjin curses in his head and takes another step towards you. “I’m good. Really good, actually. I was wondering if you could teach me how to skateboard. I’m new here, and skateboarding seems like an efficient way to get around.”

You flinch at his words, and he desperately wants to take them back. How did Jeongin do it? Why do his statements come out so stiff? “You seem pretty good at it.”

“Are you not cold?” you blurt out. Hyunjin curses again as he realizes that he’s shirtless. His old one was stained, and Minho’s was as well as the result of his cleanup. This isn’t how it’s supposed to go. “You know, I have to get going, but it was nice meeting you.”

“Hyunjin. My name’s Hyunjin.”

“Nice meeting you, Hyunjin.”

You grab your board and immediately head off to the direction of your apartment. Hyunjin is tempted to follow, but he stays where he is. A bad first impression isn’t the end of the world. The only thing holding him back is his lack of a shirt.

He wanders through the quad, scanning the grass for some flowers. Most of them are the white, fluffy dandelions, but he needs the bright yellow version. However, he takes the white ones anyway in case he can’t find any. The wind scatters the seeds, and he—  

“Hyunjin, I told you not to come back.”

Jisung.

Hyunjin turns around, dropping his bouquet onto the ground. To his horror, not only is Jisung present but also the Archangel. His sword is strapped to his side like usual, not a blood splatter tainting it. Minho did an excellent job of cleaning up the crime scene.

“Jisung, Archangel,” Hyunjin nervously greets. The Archangel frightens him now. “How can I help you?”

“Jisung, why did you bring me here?” the Archangel asks. “I have other things to attend to.”

“He’s abandoned his human too many times, and I don’t think he’s fit to be a guardian angel anymore.”

The Archangel grasps the hilt of his sword and studies Hyunjin, up and down, back and forth. He circles him, and Hyunjin can almost feel his mortality-divinity shining through his body. Jisung hasn’t noticed yet, but there is no doubt the Archangel hasn’t.

“Normally,” the Archangel begins, “the punishment for not fulfilling your duties as a guardian angel is being expelled from Heaven. But you have already fallen.”

“What?” comes Jisung’s shocked voice.

“It was a mistake,” Hyunjin tries. Minho’s words ring in his ear: He only expels the ones who don’t want to be. “I thought I wanted humanity, but I’ve realized that being a guardian angel is the best thing that has ever happened to me. Please. Grant me my divinity back. I will never abandon my human again. I will swear an oath if I have to.”

The Archangel smiles with no teeth, and a chill runs down Hyunjin’s spine. “I’m in a forgiving mood today, so I will do just as you ask. Your divinity will be granted back, but you will no longer be a guardian angel. I’m stripping you of those powers and those duties. You will be replaced immediately. It was my mistake for tasking you with such a large responsibility when you weren’t ready yet.”

With just a snap of the Archangel’s fingers, Hyunjin’s senses sharpen, and the world comes hurtling at him. Nothing is dull anymore, but everything feels so dark and wrong. You will never be able to see him, hear him, or talk to him again. And he will never be able to either. Power surges inside of him, and new wings burst through his shoulder blades, fanning out once they reappear. A silver halo hangs over his head. There is no physical pain into becoming immortal again, yet he wishes there was something. Everything he and Minho did was erased with ease.

Hyunjin swallows the lump in his throat. “Thank you,” he chokes out.

“You’re very welcome. Come along now. Only guardian angels are allowed to be on Earth.”

Hyunjin follows the Archangel back to Heaven while Jisung goes after you. The Archangel loudly deliberates on who he should be replaced with, and Hyunjin knows that his request was not granted with kindness. The Archangel informs that he will be a messenger again. Hyunjin barely hears him as he takes one last look at Earth. Jeongin is there. Jisung is there. You are there.

Hyunjin avoids Minho’s eyes as he flies inside the realm behind the Archangel and hides among the rest of the regular angels until he is called to send a message. The higher-ups recognize him, make snide remarks about his demotion, and make pitiful faces at him. He barely registers them. There is a hollowness in him, and no matter how many memories he recalls, it isn’t enough to fill the void.

A few weeks later, Jisung approaches him, but even he stays a healthy distance away. “Hyunjin.” The disdain is clear.

“Jisung.”

“You knew about the reason all along, didn’t you? You were there when it happened.”

“When what happened?”

Realization dawns upon Jisung, and he shakes his head in disgust. “I should have known. You weren’t with him that night because you left him like you always did! You could have done something. Make him fall off his chair or something. Make the girl lose her balance. Instead, both of our humans suffered because you weren’t there.”

“What happened?”

“A girl from his group project randomly kissed him, and he thought he had been leading her on and cheating on his own girlfriend, so he broke up with her because he thought that would be the right thing to do instead of just telling her what actually happened. They’re back together now because he finally got the nerve to give her closure. It took nearly a month. They were miserable for a month. All because of you.”

It stings. “They’re okay now, right?”

“They’re fine, no thanks to you.” Just when Hyunjin thinks he’s going to leave, he takes a step forward, lips curled into sneer. “You know, angels and humans aren’t allowed to be with each other. It’s been forbidden for millenia.”

“I know,” he whispers. “But I loved her, and I had to try.”

“She would have never chosen you anyway.”

He never had a chance, did he?

~ ad.gray

Yes, you did! I remembered it and wondered if you were going to come back! Hope you enjoyed this! <3

[twoidiotwriters1]

Copycat & The Spider-man —(Marvel Fem!Oc)

Words: 1,872

Phase two Masterlist

Previous Chapter // Next chapter

xvii: Homecoming

"You have a date?"

"I can't decide," Pietro wrinkled his nose. "My first and last homecoming... you sure you don't want me to take Liz?"

"No, it's fine," She smiled a bit. "I've come to the conclusion that if I'm not ready to be honest about my feelings, then I'm not ready to ask him out."

"So you're not going to homecoming again?" He frowned. "C'mon, C.C. don't bail on me..."

"Oh, I'm going," She responded. "I asked Ned. I have to dance at least one song with him, even though I insisted that I don't know, and I don't like dancing."

"Why's that? You love music!"

"Yeah but I like it better when I'm sitting down listening to the lyrics."

"You're weird," Pietro laughed.

"I'm a work in progress."

"I heard you asked Ned to homecoming," Peter tilted his head with a little smile. "I didn't know you guys were into each other?"

C.C. choked on her drink, she shook her head frantically.

"I asked him out as a friend!" She coughed. "I don't want a boyfriend!"

"I know, I know, I'm just messing with you," He laughed. "That was a really sweet gesture, he didn't have a good time last year, you know that..."

"I do," She bit on her lip, pulling a bit of the skin without meaning to. "Ouch!"

Peter dropped his pencil and got closer. "You okay? What happened?"

"It's fine, it's fine, I'm dumb," She pushed her chair far from his reach and covered her mouth. "I bit myself on accident, I'm okay..."

"Alright," He gave her a weird look. "I missed you these last few weeks, by the way, I'm glad we talked things through."

"Yeah, me too," C.C. ran her thumb over her lip, a bit of blood stained the tip of her finger and she winced. "I really don't like the taste of blood. It grosses me out. It reminds me of... well, I don't like it."

"Yeah, tastes kinda weird," He agreed, staring at her. "Can I ask you something?"

"As long as it's not getting your suit back," She tried to joke, but the boy didn't seem to hear it.

"Why did you stay?" Peter inquired. "You could have the craziest life, I don't get it. You're awesome. Why would you prefer to be just a student?"

C.C. took her time to answer, she was trying to find the words that would make him understand.

"What you call my life... that's only been a small part of the whole thing. I wasn't always a person. My file says 'mutant' on ethnicity, where my name's supposed to be it just reads 'subject zero'. They try hard to hide it, better than the doctor that created me, but no one ever saw me as a person until I got here."

With each word she let out, C.C. started to feel lighter, perhaps the truth was more necessary than she'd originally thought.

"You, Ned, and MJ treated me as an individual, and you wanted to be my friends. I can't explain to you how it feels to be hugged after a lifetime of nothing but punches and dry contact. I can't fully welcome it either, cause I can't process it right. Still, I want the late-night study sessions and the movie marathons with suspicious-looking pizza. I want the trips on shitty yellow busses and I want the silly stress the exams give me. I don't take those things for granted, I'm lucky someone like me gets to be next to people like you."

"People like me?" He asked in awe.

"People that hug when they're excited, that cries when something hurts, or laughs so hard they can't breathe... things don't come naturally to me, and if they ever do it's so shocking they end as soon as they start. You don't realize how free you are right now. Maybe by telling you this, you'll understand why I sacrificed my avenger status just so I could go to a homecoming dance with one of my best friends."

She gathered her things and put them in her bag, Peter was motionless on his chair, she patted his shoulder softly.

"You should tell Liz how you feel, she probably knows it but you know, I think it would be sweet if you tell her. She may think it's brave, and you could even ask her to the dance. I hope it works, it's been a hard start of the semester for you, you deserve to have fun at least for one night."

"See? I told you Pepper has a great fashion sense. Outstanding. You were born to wear that dress."

"Tony, shut up," She muttered staring at her reflection in the mirror.

The dress wasn't terrible, it was just... fancy. A sleeveless baby blue dress that reached just below her knee. A classic dress for a dance, Pepper told her, but she wasn't sure it was a dress for her. They had straightened her hair, but not too much for it to look lifeless, it was still soft-looking and according to Happy, it had amazing volume.

Nothing felt right, she would've never chosen to wear a chiffon skirt cause it was scratchy and she kinda disliked the feeling, but there she was. She liked the satin part around her chest, though, how it shined and felt. The high heels... she would get rid of those at the first opportunity she could get.

Pietro had opted for a white suit and a dark blue bowtie. It looked like him, it suited him. To her, the fancy dress felt like she was trying to play a part.

"It's just your nerves," Pietro told her when she shared her worries. "It's the first time you go to a dance, of course it feels unlike you."

C.C. would be staying at Pietro's place that night cause the tower was currently being emptied. In fact, they were moving everything to the compound while she was at the dance, it felt weird, having something entirely different happening in her life that felt just as important as moving day, but it was good.

So Pietro left her at Ned's home and then went away to pick up his date, some girl from his Geometry class. Ned's mom drove them to the school and asked if they wanted her to come to pick them up, Ned said he would call.

She stared at the main entrance and Ned nudged her arm.

"I know it's your first dance and you don't actually know how this works, you can take some time to feel comfortable."

"I'm fine, just don't leave me alone?"

"I could ask you the same thing," Ned grinned.

He offered his arm to her and she held onto it tightly. They were welcomed by really loud music. C.C. winced a bit, but she managed to show a smile when Ned checked if she was okay.

"Aww, you guys look adorable," MJ teased them. "Are you gonna take a picture?"

"Sure!"

"No."

Ned looked at her with a little frown, she stood on her tiptoes to whisper in his ear.

"Oh, okay," He nodded, then looked at MJ. "C.C.'s camera shy, but maybe we can take a group pic with my phone, later?" Ned waited for confirmation, she nodded shortly. "Cool."

They approached the kids that were part of the academic decathlon and started up a conversation, Pietro was dancing with a group of seniors.

Then Peter and Liz were there, and then Peter ran off. Pietro and C.C. locked eyes, standing on opposite sides of the room, he shook his head. She turned to Ned and found him already looking back at her.

"He'll need us," He sentenced.

C.C. looked around again, what had made Peter run off without an explanation? He looked frightened. What was important enough to disregard Tony's last warning and abandon Liz?

"Oh, all right, I'm getting involved," She groaned. "Let's go."

C.C. and Ned ran through the halls, then they felt someone grabbing the back of their clothes and they got dragged at a remarkable speed to the very end of the school.

"Here I was thinking I'd have to find a proper excuse to get rid of them..." C.C. mumbled, staring at her feet. Her shoes fell off at some point thanks to Pietro's velocity.

"That was crazy!" Ned shouted. "Have you always been able to do that? I would use it all the time! Why do you use a bike when you can just run everywhere?"

Pietro raised a brow. "That would be dumb and tiring."

"Yeah, totally, I get that," Ned agreed.

"Why are you helping us?" She asked. "If we mess up you'll go down with us..."

"My sister escaped and she didn't come for me," He told her with a dark expression. "I'm making sure you don't give them reasons to take you away. I already lost one sister, I'm not losing you too."

A loud crash came from the parking lot where the school busses were, C.C. was quick to make a plan.

"Okay, I'm gonna need my suit but that's at your place—"

"I can get it, give me like—" He looked at his watch and huffed. "Ten minutes. What will you do with whatever's happening?"

"What I do best," She shrugged. "And Ned— Ned?"

He'd charged out without waiting to hear their instructions, she cursed under her breath.

"Go get my suit, then we'll figure out the rest!"

Pietro was gone in a heartbeat and she ran out to the parking lot. Being barefoot was a little awkward after getting unaccustomed to it, but her comfort wasn't a priority at the moment.

"Guys?" She said loudly. "Where are you?"

"Over here! Ned just helped me take out the vulture's assistant!"

She found Peter using his old onesie.

"Guys, the man with the wings is Liz's dad!" He explained.

"What!"

"I know— I gotta tell Mr. Stark! Call Happy, C! Ned, get a computer and track my phone, I left it on the guy's car so we could follow him—"

"Did you make that plan on the spot?" She asked in surprise. "Good job!"

"Wait, Pete, will you be okay?"

"Yeah, hurry we gotta catch him before he leaves town!" Peter jumped to a near streetlight.

"Wait, I'm coming too!"

"You don't have a suit!"

"Pietro's getting it for me!"

"Fine, then get it and come find me!"

He went away, C.C. and Ned returned to the school.

"Ready to be the guy in the chair?"

"You have no idea how happy this makes me," He turned on the first computer he found. His phone started buzzing and he connected it to a headset. "Go for Ned."

The door slammed open and Pietro showed up with her suit all wrinkled and held against his chest.

"Go change, go!" He pushed her forward. "What's the plan?"

"Call Happy and tell him Peter's found out who the winged guy is—"

"You stole Flash's car, that's awesome!" Ned laughed behind her.

"He did what?" C.C. looked over her shoulder but Pietro raised his voice.

"Focus, Copy!"

She half-yelled in frustration. "That's all I know, Peter didn't—!"

"Moving day!" Ned said loudly.

"What?"

"Peter said he's stealing the jet Happy's taking to the compound!"

"There you have it," She slapped Pietro's chest lightly. "I have to help Peter!"

She ran out with the suit in her hands, found the nearest bathroom, and changed. She only stopped briefly to hand Pietro her dress.

"I'm sending to your phone the coordinates of Peter's current whereabouts," Ned informed her. "Good luck!"

"I'm still trying to reach Happy," Pietro told her. "I'll call you once I do."

C.C. put on her helmet and left the school.

Next Chapter —>

Taglist.

@ieatpanicattacksforlunch​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ @jesuswasnotawhiteman​​​​​​​​​ @siriuslysirius1107​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ @greengarsstuff​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ @itsyagirl01​​​​​​​​​​​​ @23victoria​​​​​​​​ @espressopatronum454​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ @jkthinkstoomuch

[goldmajesty]

✨ “get to know me” tag game ✨

Rules: answer the questions and tag people you’d like to get to know better.

tagged by: @tangerinefluff and @brazil-hinata i’m so touched, thank you for tagging! i gained a handful of followers recently and this seems like a great way to introduce myself.

tagging: @burgundyscarves @39point1 @kagehjna @dedicated-powerhouse @msbynice @bokutohq @brokuro ​ @bktart ​ @porco-galliard  feel free to not do this! i’m just curious to know you all 🥰

answers under the cut!

What do you prefer to be called name-wise? 

sher.

When is your birthday? 

nov 20.

Where do you live? 

canada.

Three things you are doing right now: 

listening to instrumentals

procrastinating hard on my exam studying dkdkdk help me

trying to relieve arm pain

Four fandoms that have piqued your interest? 

atla (since i was 10 lol)

marvel

doctor who

hq, which takes the title for having the most superior storytelling i’ve ever come across. and yes, it beats atla, which is a masterpiece in its own way, flaws and all.

How has the pandemic been treating you?

not too bad! i read the hq manga during the pandemic, rewatched some seasons, and got a friend to fall in love with the story as well! hq inspired me to be more active and it certainly changed my perspective of a lot of things and continues to do so.

A song you can’t stop listening to right now? 

hq osts. been on repeat since march of this year. yes, i’m aware this isn’t a song bUT WHAT OF IT (ง •̀_•́)ง 

How old are you? 

23.

School, university, occupation, other? 

currently doing a post-grad program in cardiac sonography though i wanted do something in literature, particularly in the editing stream.

Do you prefer heat or cold? 

cold ❄️☃️

Name one fact others may not know about you.

when i was in hs, i wrote like 40-50 chapters of a story and then a few years later, deleted the entire thing off my computer, threw out all my notes, and erased all things relating to it on any and all platforms. yes, it was that awful.

Are you shy? 

not anymore.

Pronouns? 

she/her.

Biggest pet peeves? 

disorganized and unkept environments. oh, and people rifling through my things without permission.

What is your favorite “dere” type? 

didn’t know this was a thing until recently. i guess deredere?? meh, not really hung up on any type.

Rate your life from 1-10, 1 being crappy and 10 being the best it could be.

a solid 7.86. i’m blessed with a lot of goodness, however, it’s certain personal choices and rationalities that keep me up at night.

What’s your main blog? 

this one! i’ve been on this site for...…a really long time. revamped my blog bc talking about stories make me the happiest than any aesthetic phase i’ve gone through on this blog.

List your side blogs and what they’re used for. 

i won’t list them but i have two side blogs that serve the same purpose; i used to reblog posts onto the side blogs that i wanted to post on my main blog bc the “likes” section on this site is a nightmare buuut now i’m back to just liking posts i’ll eventually reblog. so. uhh. the sideblogs are useless sdjsjsj.

Is there something people need to know about you before becoming friends? 

i’m quite open and friendly! but if you’re the least bit disrespectful to any person(s) and non-living entities, don’t interact with me. 

also, to all the artists, esp manga colourists, following me, i want you to know you’re incredible and so dang talented. i recognize all the effort you put into making what you make and pls don’t ever stop blessing us plebeians with such quality content 💖

[vonnyphant]

To Blog or Not to Blog?

“You should start a diary and write about your experiences. It may help people going through the same thing.”

Honestly? If there’s one thing I discovered about this diagnosis, it’s that it makes me pretty damn selfish. I don’t want to help other people (not just yet, anyway). But putting some thoughts down about this time in my life may be of some sort of therapeutic value, and I do want to help myself. 

(Maybe for once, saving the world can wait. Do you remember how, soon after the pandemic hit, people stopped avoiding plastic and single-use items? When your health is at risk, suddenly rainforests and polar bears and the planet are deprioritised- not that anyone will admit to this. But this is my diary and I can say what I want!* Writing for myself it is.)

Having established my less-than-Mother-Theresa-like reasons for this blog, my conscience cleared, it’s time to start. This is where the Lifetime movie shows me, in a half daze, mellowed out on drugs while they sew a mediport into my chest to start administering chemicals. A fast lane to my bloodstream. A docking station. The soundtrack? Hopefully ‘Across The Universe’ by the Beatles (possibly Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. If I get a say in it, I veto The Walrus) Time to pump this body full of drugs that’ll make my hair fall out. 

Wait, what?

Voice Over: “Yep. That’s me. You’re probably wondering what I am doing here…” //record scratch - freeze frame - fast rewind to the psychedelic outtro of A Day In The Life//

Two months ago, during rub-a-dub-in-the-tub (less naughty than it sounds, was just washing myself), my mind inexplicably went to an episode of Beverly Hills 90210, s1 (aired in 1992- yes, I am that old), where Brenda Walsh has a breast cancer scare. I say inexplicably, because my usual shower fantasies do not include Ms Shannon Doherty - if I was going to pick a shower lady, I’d opt for Charlize Theron, Kiera Knightly or Winona Ryder in their short-hair phases, but that is neither here nor there. 

Say what you want for 90s television- weird outfits and ponytails notwithstanding, in their AfterSchoolSpecial PSA way, they dedicated a whole scene to the girls giving themselves a breast exam, including how-to instructions**, and eventhough I was only 11 years old when I saw it, I remembered what to do, and for the last 30 years, every now and then I have randomly carried it out while wondering how I always preferred Brandon over Dylan and how my tastes have changed over time.

But this time - my hand actually found something.

I took a deep breath and calmed myself down the same way I did after finding spots on my skin, lumps on my head and every time I sneezed since covid-19; by telling myself to fucking snap out of my hypochondria tendencies. One cannot go to the doctor every damn day after all. Breast tissue is pretty lumpy and I assumed it was just imaginary. I made an appointment to see a therapist, and  put it out of my mind until a few weeks later, when one of the kids came crashing down on me (literally) and faceplanted in my boob (as they do). 

Now this always hurts af, but it just hurt that little more that day, so that I grabbed the appendage in question and went “WHAT THE--!” And I felt it again- the lump, more defined than a few weeks before. 

Cue a lot more freaking out than the first time, and after a sleepless night, imagining what my funeral would look like (as one does), I decided to go to the gynocologist the same day or risk never to sleep again.

After a long wait and an ultrasound, my doctor assured me that while there really was a mass, it had every indication of being benign. We should keep an eye on it. If I was worried, I could schedule a second screening, but would not likely get an appointment before April. I scheduled one and tried to focus on preparing our first lockdown Christmas. 

But over the holidays, the lump started hurting, even when I wasn’t poking it or having a kid catapult themselves into my chest. I’d be Netflix and Chilling, and suddenly - ZAP - like someone stuck a hot needle into it. Repeatedly. My nipple would go numb or start tingling like a bodypart that fell asleep. It freaked me out, and in the new year, I realised I couldn’t wait until April - I had to get it checked out again or I may worry myself to death.

My gynocologist did another ultrasound and again, told me not to worry. I told her it was way too late for that as I had been worried for weeks, and I wanted the thing biopsied (they gave Brenda Walsh one too, after all! It’s the only way to be 100% sure). She referred me to the hospital. At the description of my symptoms, I could come directly, and the radiologist told me in no unclear terms: “I will not let you leave this room until we draw blood and take several biopsies.” Okay- not exactly what one wants to hear at that point, but at the same time, I figured knowing would be better than guessing by the shape of it.

Test results took a week. I went in, being prepared to be told (like Brenda) it was a harmless clump of random cells or a cyst we could have removed like a wart. Only it wasn’t. It was breast cancer, an aggressive, fast-growing kind, and had I waited until April, that could have had disastrous consequences.

While the doctor explained we now needed to determine the scope of the spread and take more tissue to determine what kind of chemo (if any) could be applied, all my 2020-PTSD brain could think was: 

“.............of course”. 

Didn’t hear much of what she said afterwards.

Another harrowing 4 days went by, with a CT screening with contrast solutions that gave me an intense stomach ache as well as a migraine, and finally, a fully rounded diagnosis and treatment advice could be made. 

Thankfully, all my organs as well as lymphnodes were clear, so it appears to be a localised tumor. And here we are - to fight this thing with chemicals and then cut out whatever is left. Genetics testing to see about the likelihood of a recurrency (and a possible double mastectomy if so - ‘pulling an Angelina Jolie’, ‘not saving the tatas’, insert ‘Think About It meme’...can’t have breast cancer if you don’t have breasts! THINK ABOUT IT***). 

Chances are good. I need to cling to that while I wait for this port and treatment to start. I have accepted the inevitable hair loss, have scheduled a ritual ‘crazy hair cutting party’ with my kids for this weekend (as I would rather shave it off in one go than clean up clumps and strands over the course of weeks and look like Gollum), and I have sewn several funny little hats for inside wear and ‘going out’ (though where will I be going in pandemic, idk). 

I was going to end this post on a light and happy note - but I must admit my confidence just took a really big hit in real time, as I googled how to spell Shannon’s last name for this blog entry and found out that she was treated for breast cancer in 2015, initially succesfully, but it reappeared metastasized in 2020 (again: ‘of course...when else’) and she is now in stage IV. Fuck 2020.

What are the odds that the woman whose character made me discover my own breast cancer is now, in fact, dying of the same disease? This will surely haunt me for a long time to come.

More tomorrow? Or soon? It may take a while. Until then: outro to It’s Getting Better.

*also for the record I would like to state that I’ve sewn my own masks from upcycled pillowcases and continued using fruit- and vegetable nets to avoid plastic; maybe that makes up for me being utterly selfish at the moment. Karma +1?

** https://youtu.be/pkgYXITkrfw (the scene from BH 90210)

***cis men / trans women without breasts can also get breast cancer (even though it’s rare) so this meme doesn’t really hold up, but that’s the whole point of the meme ;)

[bichlordstories]

2: Exams are a b!tch.

⚠️Warning⚠️  we got some nasty words and some deku hating. And blood and violence.

What do you expect? Your quirk is literally blood based.

~~~~~~~~~~

Exam day.

What is there to add to that?

Today is the day you prove to everyone that you’re meant to be in the hero course. Not just the examiners, the UA teachers, or even the potential UA students, but everyone.

The nurses at the hospital wished you luck, even some of the regular patients there.

You were ready physically and mentally... for the physical exam. The written part... Eh, you figured that you would do well enough to pass. You ain’t the sharpest tool in the shed... but not the dullest either.

You nearly fell from the weight bumping into your back and growled out a curse, turning around to tell the person off.

Green eyes locked with your irritated ones and you felt rage pump through your veins.

“...You.” You spat gutturally in disgust, almost growling the word out.

The greenette immediately sweated bullets and squeaked our sorry excuses.

“I’m so sorry, I thought I could catch him on time!” A brown haired girl squealed nervously, blushing brightly when her eyes trailed down your bare arms.

Unlike everybody else, you wore a skin-tight, short sleeved shirt that hugged your figure quite nicely, showing off your nice (s/c) skin and powerful looking muscles while not looking too muscular. Everyone else wore something warm in the cold weather, but you didn’t look all that bothered.

You let out a huff at her and looked back down at the short boy, wanting nothing more than to curb stomp the brat.

Luckily for him, you had no interest in losing the chance to get into UA and you simply turned away without a word, leaving two scared and bewildered teens.

Man, you were just finding more people to want to murder in cold blood.

You hated the green brat, but this four-eyes moron was wasting your fucking time. You began tapping your heel against the floor, creating soft thumping sounds. The blonde next to you turned to you with an annoyed look, earning a dirty look from you. You were about to ask, no, demand him to speak the fuck up when you were interrupted.

“-and you! The tall one with the nasty glare and is making all that thumping ruckus! You are interrupting the rest of us, if you aren’t going to take this exam seriously, you might as well le-“

“oh my nonexistent god, do you ever SHUT THE FUCK UP!?”

The whole room fell silent before you continued.

“First of all, the man was going to fucking explain the 0 pointer, asshole, there’s no way U-fucking-A would make a dumb fucking error. Second of all, you are wasting people’s time. I was getting annoyed by that shit stain kid over there, but you’re just pissing me off. I was tapping my foot to keep myself from rushing over there AND CAVING YOUR FUCKING FACE IN.”

You could almost feel the regret in you bubble after people continued to stare at you wide eyed in silence. Almost.

Luckily, the said man cleared his throat and forced a smile on his face.

“Wellll, seems like everyone is nervous! Tensions are high, and we just want to get through today, Yo!” The hyper man answered the still stunned, muscular geek anyways with an explanation on the robot and then began informing you all about the rules.

Unfortunately, you couldn’t fight each other, meaning you couldn’t break all of the green brat’s bones (no that you had to, deku’s got it covered).

He got out easy. Lucky fucking bastard.

The rest of the exam was a blur, nothing to write home about. Luckily, you brought a whole bunch of towels, water, and iron pills with you.

You were practically tearing robots apart left and right, leaving almost none for the other kids. They would have complained. would have. But seeing a 6 ft monster covered in blood with even the whites of their eyes completely crimson took the complaints (and air) right out of their mouths.

All except one.

The same blonde bastard back in the briefing area was blasting through different machinery, snapping at you to back off whenever you both targeted the same robot.

The guy called you an extra a few times, almost daring you to fight him, but you didn’t. You were able to redirect your rage towards the robots instead. However, he was getting on your nerves, and you decided to snatch some prey from him.

Boy did that piss him off.

But he didn’t attack you. No. Instead, he smiled the scariest smile anyone could ever create and pointed a threatening finger at you.

“Ho Ho... you better be accepted into UA so I can kick your ass, bitch.” He said loudly in a low voice.

“I was about to say the exact same thing, c*m dumpster.” You said unenthusiastically.

The teen responded by flipping you off and then disappearing away with an explosion.

Blood began to fill your mouth and you spat out blood in the guy’s direction before continuing to hulk your way through the exam.

After the said exam, you stood at the side surrounded by others, who either stared at your blood covered form in horror and disgust or avoided eye contact with you all together.

You managed to wipe off most of the red substance, allowing some of your (s/c) skin to show. The old lady, who you learned to be recovery girl, almost had a heart attack seeing you covered in blood. She immediately grabbed your hand and pulled you away to get you treated while you awkwardly leaned over and let the short old lady hold your hand.

While getting pulled away, you noticed a mop of lavender hair and pretty lavender eyes.

Oh. It was the brainwash guy from your school.

You heard about him through nasty rumors, which you chose to ignore since you knew how back-stabby the kids were, and even met him once or twice in the hallways.

You both never really said anything, but you both acknowledged each other through simple eye contact and nods.

You didn’t even know his name, yet you couldn’t help but respect the guy. It was as though you both had some mutual understanding.

He didn’t seem all too phased when seeing you covered head to toe in blood, most likely knowing about your morbid quirk.

He nodded silently towards you, to which you nodded back before disappearing with the sweet old lady.

“You gave me quite the scare, young (lady/man), I thought one of those nasty old robots got you!”

“I’m fine, really. It’s a natural part of my quirk, no injuries whatsoever.” You said reassuringly.

The old lady sighed and continued rearranging medicine before pulling out iron pills and a water bottle.

“Oh I’ve heard of you, dear.”

“You have?”

“Yes! Practically everyone in the medical field has heard of you and what your blood can do.” Recovery girl placed the pill into your open palm along with a piece of candy and gave you the water bottle in the other hand.

Despite having brought your own pills and water, you still took it, chucking the pill and candy into your mouth and chugging the water bottle down like a fish dying of thirst.

“You are already a hero, you know.” The older woman said.

Your cheeks were filled with water and a little bit of blood, keeping you from speaking, so instead, you hummed in response.

It sure didn’t feel like it.

“Earlier, I had to treat a boy today. He broken nearly all his bones in his arm, the poor lad. I thought I would have to encounter similar injuries with you.” She said.

“Oh?” You said, trying not to sound uninterested.

“Yup, he’s a green haired kid, acts as though he just got his quirk too!”

Your ears twitched at that.

Your eyes darkened at the mention of the color green, mood immediately souring.

“Really?” You said in a ‘do go on’ tone.

Your back was turned to the woman, but your mouth was pulled into what people would be a tight grin, when you were actually gritting you’re teeth, keeping yourself from accidentally activating your quirk. The last thing you needed was to fill your lungs up just from somebody mentioning that brat.

It was getting hard to though.

Beads of sweat and blood began to form on your forehead, but you simply wiped the blood away.

If that bastard passed, you were going to punch a hole through something, probably the green bastard.

God. You just hope your mother isn’t making broccoli tonight.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Special thanks to quotev.com/LazyLivingBeing  and deCLAWed2!!!!

Thank you guys for sticking with me along with everyone else!

[stevemoffett]

A Hard Nap, The Fall of Math, The Star Wars Holiday Special, Disco Point, and There You Are

In January last year, I noticed a sign in myself of the same cancer my dad had back in 2008. Unlike the usual symptoms that set off my paranoia, it wasn’t some vague feeling, it wasn’t an intermittent pain, and it wasn’t a general ill feeling—it was clear and unambiguous, out of the ordinary and one of those symptoms that, if you google it, is under the list of “call your doctor if you experience any of the following.”

It was also nonspecific: this symptom could mean cancer, but it could also mean about five other cancer-unrelated conditions. I called for an appointment that morning with my general practitioner, who said that the earliest available date was about two weeks later.

I knew that the only way my fear would be effectively relieved was with the one sure-fire diagnostic tool for this type of cancer, one that’s recommended for everyone, but not until about age 50: a colonoscopy.

For the two weeks before my GP appointment, I mentally prepared for death. For the record, I do this every time I interpret my body’s signals as cancerous, but the mental preparation usually stops after a few days when the symptom either goes away or when a clear alternative cause presents itself. This time, I didn’t get that kind of relief and, in fact, the symptom repeated more than once between setting the appointment and going to it. Each time, it was like an intrusive thought come to life: you’re going to die. You’re going to go through surgery and chemotherapy like Dad and you’re either going to die early, or find out like he did that the cure is worse than the disease, or maybe you’ll hang on just long enough to experience both.

Winter mornings in Texas can sometimes be surprisingly cold. While stepping out the door on a midsummer morning is like walking into someone’s hot exhale, as you might expect, a 33-degree morning is more like a slap in the face. When I packed everything I figured I’d need to move here a couple of years ago, I threw away my winter coat, thinking, I won’t be needing this anymore. (The coat was also about ten years old at that point.)

My first winter in Texas, I layered a bunch of shirts underneath a light jacket and wore a scarf on freezing days. The second winter, I decided that I’d had enough of being cold. After all, I rationalized, here in Texas it was monetarily possible to never have to feel cold again if you really don’t want to. So I bought the warmest coat I could find, an unstylish, bulky parka made by Caterpillar, the company that makes construction vehicles. No more layering, no more checking the weather before leaving in the morning. I could just put this coat on and not worry about it.

But now, under the shadow of a cancer scare these January mornings, wearing the big coat made me feel less like I was smarter than the weather and more like I was trying to smuggle a terminal disease wherever I went. Under my coat, tie, button-down shirt, undershirt, skin, fat, and muscle, something was growing silently in the dark. While maybe it had slipped up and showed some of its handiwork to me, it was already too late to do much about it now.

Since it has affected my life several times before, and since it is such an exquisite mixture of dread and uncertainty, cancer is one of my mind’s biggest bogeymen. I feel personally insulted by the idea of it. I treat you so well, body—why would you betray me? Was I not nice enough? Is this poetic justice for my vanity? Is it, as the old anecdotal saying goes, due to my worrying?

Not only did I feel like I was smuggling cancer under the big coat, I was also warming it up by drinking my coffee. I was feeding it directly when I ate something too sugary. And I was probably even giving it an evil sense of satisfaction when I got stressed out about it. If I was able to keep my mind off it by working in the lab, mixing and pipetting, using kits, and doing arithmetic in my head, it would come crashing back into focus when I was pulling my gloves off to wash my hands.

I pulled up incognito mode on my phone’s browser during my breaks, googling “5-year survival rate colon cancer age 35.” “Cancer staging colon prognosis.” “Colon cancer smoking.” “Colon cancer smoke one pack in college.” “Colon cancer smoke one pack 18 years ago.” “Colon cancer smoke one pack after seeing Luke Wilson smoking in The Royal Tenenbaums.”

At home, I suddenly started noticing the expiration dates on my nonperishables. What will last longer, I thought, the freshness of this baking soda, or me.

I knew I wasn’t going to be comforted by the first GP visit. After all, they’re usually the first stop to a specialist, unless you have a PPO insurance plan, which I don’t. The doctor listened to my symptoms and family history. “Well,” he said, “Given your history, it’s a good idea to refer you to a GI. But, you seem like you lead a healthy lifestyle otherwise, with none of the other risk factors, so we’ll see what he says.”

I made the GI appointment and had to wait two more weeks for it, with the same circular worrying and googling. At the GI appointment, I sat in the waiting room, the youngest patient there by a few decades, and I felt a little bit ridiculous. On the other hand, I’d also just read a harrowing story about a woman in her late 20s who had colon cancer and died from it. That was a real person, I thought, who at the first phase of it probably went through all the same feelings I was now, the I’m-being-ridiculous and is-this-worth-the-time-and-vacation-days, all the way up until her diagnosis. Not just because I was scared, I felt a pang of sympathy. A disease of the old picking a victim from the young is terrible luck.

And I figured, if it could be her, it could be anyone. But most of all, it could be me.

That last bit, I think, is one of—one of—my greatest flaws, the vanity of always thinking that the worst things will happen to you, in spite of the odds. It’s a way of making yourself feel special, but it has no upside. You don’t feel confidence with this type of special-feeling. In fact, you’re more likely to be timid and self-centered, and you just come across as weird to the outside observer. They might think, There’s only a few steps between that guy and Howard Hughes. Somewhere, deep in your mind, they think: Wires are crossed.

Shortly before I went in, another patient arrived, a man around my age or maybe younger who, despite a dozen or so free seats, declined to sit down. My name was called, and I passed a sign on the way to the back that said, “If you have recently traveled to China and have a fever you must let our staff know.”

This doctor’s exam rooms had floor-to-ceiling windows, the kind you’d see in a movie, instead of the usual dull and bulby, off-white plastic exam room interior. A Spanish medical student came in to give a pre-appointment questionnaire and to take my vitals. He asked, in much better English than I could have mustered in Spanish, “So. There is some blood in they crep?”

When he came in, the GI repeated what my GP had said, and since he was also the person who would be performing a colonoscopy, he said I should set an appointment for one with him. I managed to get a date three weeks later.

From other people’s stories, I knew two things about colonoscopies: they are no fun, especially the night before, but the general anesthesia on the day of the procedure, on the other hand, is fun. I was nervous enough on the day before that I actually asked someone at the pharmacy for help finding the items I was looking for: Polyethylene Glycol (or PEG, which we use all the time for lab experiments, and which I was going to have to drink 2 liters of), Gatorade, and laxative pills. I had to take about 800% of their recommended dosages, each.

The bodily effect of those chemicals was dramatic, and I will spare the details. The worst parts of it, I found, were the generally exhausting physical toll it took, and the feeling by the end that I had some kind of dangerous sodium imbalance: I was sweating between my fingers, for example, but the rest of me felt as dry as paper. At 10PM, I was too tired to do anything, but too nervous to sleep for more than a few hours.

One smaller worry that I felt the next morning, as I took a selfie in my hospital gown to send to a friend back home, making a backward peace sign to show off the IV sticking into my hand and also how brave I was being, was that I might just die right there on the table from the general anesthesia. Part of my grad school research was on Propofol, the most-used general anesthesia nowadays (which, incidentally, also killed Michael Jackson). This was the same drug I was to be given.

I’d never been fully put under anesthesia before. It was astronomically improbable that I’d have an adverse reaction to it and die (and by the way, Michael Jackson abused it, using it far outside of medical praxis—if you’re afraid to get a colonoscopy yourself, don’t be, it could save your life), but keep in mind what I said about my vanity.

“Hey, I’m really scared,” I told the anesthesiologist. He said something, muffled by his mask, that sounded like, “It’ll be all right.” Then he busied himself with a syringe, connecting it to my IV. He depressed it about a third of the way. “This should help you,” he said.

The last thing I said was, “Whoa…I feel it.”

After what felt like a hard, late-afternoon nap, I said, “Hello?”

My head was wrapped with something. When I touched my face, I could feel that there were cotton pads underneath the wrapping, holding my eyes shut. I guess that at some point either mid-procedure or after, my eyes had opened, unseeing, and they’d done this to keep them from drying out. “Hang on, sir,” I heard a nurse say, and my head was unwrapped.

“It’s over?” I asked.

“You’re all done,” he said.

“Gimme a minute, please,” I said, my South Jersey accent peeking out. “I feel a little weird.”

Eventually, I sat up. Two of the nurses helped me stand, and I pumped my arms like I was lifting light, invisible dumbbells. As I put my glasses on and looked around, I thought that they all seemed like they were fighting to not smirk. What did I say while I was blacked out? I wondered, with a twinge of panic, before deciding that it would be worthless to speculate. It could have been anything. There are literally millions of possibilities. Again—it would be worthless to speculate, I told myself, firmly.

An Uber driver, I had been told by hospital staff during a consultation, was not a legally strong enough party to take responsibility for me at discharge. Someone I knew would have to escort me to my apartment. Also, they said, they really would do that thing where you’re back in your own clothes, and they push you to the exit in a wheelchair when you’re all finished. After my procedure, my co-worker stood waiting in the discharge zone with his car as an orderly wheeled me out of the hospital exit. I stood up from the wheelchair and got into the passenger seat of his car, for some reason more aware than usual of the heat coming from the vent and the smell of the car’s leather upholstery. “I still feel weird from the anesthesia,” I said to my friend.

“I’ll bet you do,” he replied.

It was about lunch time, and I had taken the rest of the day off from work. When I got home, I ordered a pizza and lay on my bed. I ate the pizza and watched Star Wars. I had not felt any euphoria when I woke up, I thought hollowly. And my first solid meal in almost forty hours tasted unremarkable. I was still groggy, but not in a pleasant way. I felt cheated.

The hospital staff had put a manilla envelope into my hands as I left. It contained sheets of images the doctor had taken during the procedure. Once lucid, I leafed through them and compared the thumbnail-sized images on printer paper with googled images of cancerous tumors viewed through a colonoscope, trying to diagnose myself.

A couple of the images on the papers had shapes that looked weird, with what seemed like variations in the texture or color of my colon wall that to me, at least, appeared one hundred percent fatal. It was another two weeks before I had a follow-up appointment to go over them with the surgeon.

“See this?” The GI said, two weeks later, pointing to one of the images that had seemed completely normal to me, unlike other ones I had thought were much more scary and unusual-looking. “That’s a low-risk polyp. Of course, now it’s a no-risk polyp, ‘cause it’s gone.”

This medical episode ended only three or so weeks before the whole world changed, but I was all the more grateful for that. If I’d waited to be checked out, then I would have been weighing whether it was worth getting tested against the possibility of being infected with COVID.

The doctor recommended that I get a colonoscopy every five years from now on, but added, “If you want, you can go earlier than that.” I told him thanks, but once every five years sounded fine.

*

I wrote about the first seven weeks of the pandemic in my last entry. After that, May and June passed in the same way as March and April had. I went back to work in mid-June for two weeks before the first summer COVID spike closed things back up. I continued to play Quake, and I continued to fret about my family.

I had a job interview for a position in northern Maryland in April. I didn’t get it, but I had a good idea why I’d been turned down: the position wanted people with proven math skills. Which makes sense—for the last few years I’d said repeatedly that I wanted to have a job that involves less lab work and more data analysis. This was one of those jobs.

My graduate program gave me a degree in “Computational and Integrative Biology.” Sometimes I shorten it to “Integrative Biology,” or “Computational Biology,” but I always feel sort of dishonest when I tell people my degree. (Apparently this feeling is common among grad students). My own reason for feeling dishonest was because, in any other college, the work I was doing would probably just fall under normal old “Biology.” While it was true I had done course work that reflected “Computational and Integrative” Biology, they were courses taught in a remedial way.

When I say remedial, I mean that they were courses designed to get biologists up to speed on how to do higher-level data analyses with their experiments. For instance, in my “Biomath” course, we went over ordinary differential equations and graph theory. Those are both intermediate-level math types, ones you’d encounter in the later part of an undergraduate math degree program. Throughout that course, there was a lot of handwaving whenever I asked questions.

“Eh…,” the professor might have responded to something I had asked, “that requires a lot of background explanation we don’t need right now to handle the problem here. Just take it as a given for what we’re working on.”

In grad school, it’s common to be well-versed in only your narrow little research tunnel that leads outward to the edge of “known” biology. But a few times each month, several of us students would head to the bar down at the city’s waterfront after work to talk about our research. It usually began with a complaint—“This is the third time this kit wouldn’t work this week and it takes twelve fucking hours to run it each time,”—but to give us a more context for their problem, whoever was griping would have to go back and start at the beginning, recounting all the steps leading to their experiment’s failure.

This was a useful exercise, since a pair of new eyes on your work meant that at least you could get feedback on how to better relate the subject matter when you talked to a non-science audience, and at most, you might get a real solution for the problem you were bumping up against.

But I would sometimes get privately upset, as I sipped my beer and glanced out the window at the river, when a math-centered Computational and Integrative Biology student would start talking about their research. As someone who feels an unpleasant, TV static-like anxiety in my chest the moment I see letters in italics, or one of those big, orphan sorority sigmas following an equal sign during a math seminar, this upset feeling was directed at myself. Because, as a result of my insecurity, I would start listening to the beginning of the math student’s explanation of their research, trip over the first unfamiliar term I heard, lose the thread of what they were talking about, give up, and zone out. The math students, overall, just seemed light years ahead of me.

A critical vocabulary word that I began to mentally tie to the situation—slumming, these math types were slumming when talking to us biologists—was the grain of sand to my insecurity’s oyster. By the time I got my diploma a few years later, it had developed into a little pearl; now I had the feeling that I was, relative to those who’d come from a math background, a fake computational biologist.

Unhelpfully, the people in charge of hiring for the jobs I want nowadays seemed to agree. All the job listings I was interested in applying for made me feel the same panic that advanced math symbols on powerpoint slides did. The subjects they wanted their applicants to have experience in—machine learning, deep learning, regression analyses—were all frightening, impregnable terms, reminding me either of some kind of giant machine made up of endless tubes and valves, all spitting dangerously hot steam, or of a highly secure, underground bomb shelter that requires fingerprints or eyeball scans to get into. I knew from my previous learning experiences that if I didn’t understand the fundamentals and learned only the higher-level, applied stuff, it was just going to make me feel unworthy, and I’d forget it at once.

But summer had come—it was midsummer now, in fact. The pandemic wasn’t going anywhere, so what was I going to do if I didn’t start learning something? I ended up registering for three classes at a community college back home, which offered their fall semester online. For two thousand dollars, including textbooks, I got a spot in Introductory Statistics, Linear Algebra, and Calculus III.

Calculus III was a risk. I’d taken Calc I and II in undergrad, now about seventeen years ago, and I had earned Bs back then. I didn’t remember much of the material from either class. I’d tried watching Khan Academy videos at various points in the meantime, but could never stick with it. I’d watch several videos in a row, feel like I understood things, try a practice problem, get it wrong, and forget about it after a day or two. But now, I had put actual money into it and, in a few months, a grade would be spit back out, so this time I had real skin in the game.

But I had misgivings that I was too old to learn new stuff, or that I would be one of those students I remember when I was in undergrad, the older students who would grind class to a halt with their endless questions. Or maybe I would get worse grades than I had in undergrad, despite taking things more seriously now.

Two of the classes were taught asynchronously, meaning each lecture was a video that you could pause or replay at your leisure, and all tests were take-home, but the other class, Statistics, was done over Zoom. You might think a Zoom class could be a better way to learn—clarifying questions can be asked immediately, for instance—but for me, at least, it was not. Instead of focusing on the material being taught, the whole time I’d be thinking, “They can see me. Everyone here can see me. I can see me, and I have a dumbass expression on my face. Can they tell that I have a bedsheet instead of a curtain over my window blinds?”

My mind wandered during class just as much as it had while sitting in a lecture hall when I was eighteen, but now, these classes were held later at night, after I’d been working all day and had eaten dinner. As a result of this, and the fact that I find Statistics to be boring when it’s taught as a series of don’t-worry-about-how-we-derived-it formulas to plug numbers into, I did the worst in Statistics.

But Calc and Linear Algebra were more interesting. When I watched the class videos, I got familiar with the disembodied voices of the teachers, who each seemed to be trying to do an impression of Khan Academy videos. My Calc teacher, with his strong Vietnamese accent, would punctuate every few lines of derivation or proof with, “So what does that mean then?” Every time—new topic, new chapter, new problem, exactly the same tone of voice: “So what does that mean then?”

Eventually, in my head, his cadence merged with the tones of Woody Woodpecker’s laugh, and I began saying it to myself as I did chores around my apartment. “So what does that mean, then?” I’d half-sing at my garbage can liner as I cinched it shut. “So what does that mean, then?” I’d say to a wrinkled button-down shirt, enjoying the pepper shaker-y smell of my iron when it’s turned up to its hottest setting. “So what does that mean, then?” I’d say to the window blinds, when considering whether I should replace the bedsheet I’d hung there with an actual curtain, before answering myself that No, this apartment is too temporary for something as tony as curtains.

Sometimes I’d say it three times in a row, like Woody Woodpecker himself:

“So what does that mean, then?”

“So what does that mean, then?”

“So what does that mean, then?”

I kept a Google Sheet of how much time I spent doing work for each class, and found that I averaged about 20 hours a week total. That broke down to approximately an hour and a half each weekday, and on Saturday and Sunday I would go for about six or seven hours each. I’d get up at 7:30 those weekend mornings and brew a pot of coffee, then sit taking notes and working through every part of each assigned homework, not moving on from a problem until I understood everything about it.

I think that those Saturday and Sunday mornings may have been the happiest I felt during the year 2020. In the middle of a difficult Calc problem, not having the answer yet but certain I was on the right track, while also buzzing on caffeine, as a beam of early horizontal sunlight hit my kitchen backsplash and filled the apartment with more brightness than all my lightbulbs put together, I for once did not feel worried. I was unworried about my parents, my sisters, my brother, my sister-in-law, my niece and nephew, and all the pets. Unworried about COVID, or cancer, or the work stresses of the week. Unworried about getting older, about being alone still, or about enjoying being alone too much; unworried about letting all of this time go by and still feeling like real life hasn’t started; unworried about my dad having another stroke, or about my mom just suddenly up and dying out of nowhere, or cancer, or whether my hairline is changing, or the fact that my heart has been skipping a beat sometimes lately, or whether my friends who I speak to on the phone were getting sick of me, or whether I am too graphic when I describe symptoms I am afraid mean I might have cancer, or whether my apartment neighbors will keep me up with their noise again tonight, or whether the tooth sensitivity I feel drinking cold water lately means I need to risk a dentist visit during a pandemic, or whether I will be able to have healthier boundaries with my parents whenever I return to the northeast, or whether I’ll ever feel truly satisfied and content, or whether I’ll ever feel actual joy some day, or whether my hang-ups, and anxieties, and fears, and regrets about my personal and professional choices will end up all ganging up on me at once, or, of course, whether at any given moment, I might have cancer.

My attitude going into the classes was that I would disregard whatever grades I got and simply aim for as much comprehension as possible. But about halfway through the semester, I lost my nerve and began to think of my grades as a direct indicator of my level of understanding. So I started fretting about my grades, and on days of Calc III exams during the second half of the semester, I took vacation time so I could spend the whole day working on them.

It got a little crazy toward the end, but finally, it was over, and I managed to get all As. That made me happy, even if I knew that that kind of satisfaction is a bit immature. But I felt like I was making up for some of the sins I had committed as a college student, my laziness and my previous lack of appreciation for education finally, in a small way, absolved.

*

I spent Christmas here in Texas. When I think back on Christmases from previous years I find that I can remember the past two years very well because I flew home and packed a lot of family and friend time into a few short days. Before 2018, though, I can’t remember any specific Christmas well enough to recount anything that happened on the day.

But when I was a little kid, I remembered each Christmas perfectly, mainly due to the gifts I got and the room where we put the Christmas tree—where “Christmas happened”: in 1990, it was in the back room and we got a magic set, and also my brother pretended to faint when he saw he’d gotten Reebok Pumps. In 1991, it was in the family room, and my brother and I got the Nintendo game “Base Wars.” In 1992, it was in the living room and we got a Sega Genesis along with the game “Sonic 2.” In 1993, it was in the family room again, and I got a Hot Wheels Key Force car, and my brother got the Genesis game “Hard Ball 3 With Al Michaels.”

In 1994, my grandfather died a few weeks before Christmas, and we got a Sega CD. That was the year I became aware that the Christmas spirit was vulnerable to external forces, one’s first experience with death being the most offensive of those forces, and after a few months I also became aware that a hot new gaming console like the Sega CD could “fail,” slipping into obscurity with a small and unremarkable library of games. As a result, the indestructible-seeming sheen of Christmas fell away, leaving behind a better idea of what Christmas really is: a bare, thin-glassed lightbulb plugged into the middle of the year’s darkest period. After 1994, I can’t really remember what happened each Christmas.

This past Christmas will always be memorable, though, because I spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day pretty much doing one of three things: playing Quake (yes, that hobby still refuses to die), watching something Star Wars-related, or video chatting with my family. At any time when I wasn’t speaking to family, I had Christmas music playing in the background, including while Star Wars was on. I turned the heat up in my apartment to 75 degrees and enjoyed how money-wastingly hot it was getting, until my nose started to bleed from the dry air.

I want to take this opportunity to say that I much prefer Christmas Eve to Christmas Day. Christmas Eve is generally all anticipation and guest arrivals, buoying the mood long into the falling night. From the viewpoint of Christmas Eve, any miracle might happen the following morning. But then after a late, over-buttered breakfast on Christmas Day, there’s nothing much else to do except think about cleaning up and regret how much you’ve eaten. The “anything could happen” feeling is now all gone, collapsed from a dazzling infinity’s worth of possibilities down to one homely outcome.

I hadn’t put up any decorations for my apartment, unless the Christmas music can be considered a decoration. This ended up being a good thing, though, since I didn’t have to take anything down once the holiday was over.

*

I started taking walks pretty early in the pandemic, my first walk happening after about one week of lockdown. That day there was a surprisingly large amount of people also walking. We all stayed far away from one another, since none of us were wearing masks—the width of even a modest suburban Texas street is still impressively wide, so there was no safety issue. I always took the initiative to be the one who crossed the street if I saw someone, exaggeratedly swinging my arms as I crossed so the person walking toward me could see my intentions even from far away. I did this because I figured it would be harder for the dog-walkers to wrangle their dog across the street and get out of my way, and the people without dogs were either old or were walking in a group.

In the beginning I was walking maybe twice a week, which then became three times, which became five. It held at five times a week during the fall semester because I’d have to be on Zoom from 6:30-8:30 PM Tuesdays and Thursdays, which took up the whole span of time in which I would usually walk. Nowadays, no longer taking classes, I walk every night.

For a while, I tried to get home before sunset, because I’m afraid of being hit by a car in the dark. After the clocks shifted back, I had to choose between walking earlier, during rush hour when everyone was arriving back at their houses from work, or waiting to walk until after the sun has set. I ended up buying one of those reflective construction worker’s vests for $8 on Amazon and waiting for nighttime. I feel like a dork when I wear the vest, but most of the people walking at night who I see are also wearing reflective clothes. Theirs are more chic than my vest, though, looking like they were ordered through an expensive fitness-wear catalogue. I’d buy the same type, but to me, walking is a meditative, solitary act, and I don’t want to feel that I’m catering to externalities like looking stylish while I’m trying to feel solitary. It also acts as a tacit acknowledgement that I’m not a criminal: “I’m making myself as visible as possible! I’m not casing your houses to break into them later on!”

Even though the focus of COVID is on the transmission of disease through shared, respired air, I still pay a lot of attention to contaminated surfaces. When I go out anywhere, I have a routine: first, I put on my going-out clothes (newly clean), then my shoes, which are possibly dirty, since I have to re-tie them sometimes with unwashed hands, so before I touch anything else after tying my shoes, I wash my hands. Then, I put on a mask, turn off all the lights except the one at the front door, pick up my keys with my right hand, slip my phone into my left pocket, and walk to the door. I put my keys in my right pocket (my wallet is already there), open the door with my right hand, turn out the light, step out the door, and take the keys out of my pocket to lock the door with, again, only my right hand.

I use my right hand pretty much everywhere outside—to push or pull open doors, to open my car to retrieve something from it, to open my mailbox and carry my mail in—because I know that if I use my left hand, my phone-operating hand, I’m going to have to put the phone into a little UV light phone-sterilizing box that I bought when I get home. And for some reason, I feel like it’s a small moral failure to have to use that UV box, so I try to keep my left hand from touching anything except for the phone. But I know that if I drive anywhere, all bets are off—both my hands touch the steering wheel, my left hand touches the car door handle while getting out, and I push open doors with both hands whenever I get somewhere. I’m sure that my left hand ends up touching something that may have SARS-CoV-2 on it as I carry out an errand, and therefore into the UV box my phone must go when I get home. But, when I go out to walk, there’s a good chance that I won’t need to touch anything with my left hand between leaving the apartment and coming back. If that’s the case, I can use my phone freely while walking if I want to, but when I get home, I can still just take it from my pocket and place it on my desk, no ultraviolet sterilizing waves needed. But of course then I still have to wash my right hand.

The walk is the same route every night now. It’s a vaguely circular, level 2.7 miles, starting northbound, bearing west, south, then east. It takes about forty minutes for me to walk the whole thing, plus or minus four minutes, depending on how warmed up I get while walking. My heart rate generally goes up to about 115 beats per minute for most of the walk, according to my watch, then spikes to 135 as I climb the stairs to my fourth floor apartment at the end.

Insulated by the sound of music or an audiobook on my headphones, and with my hands stuck in my pockets, actually holding onto the cloth pocket linings themselves, I feel less like a person on a walk and more like someone steering a large, inertia-filled thing—a sailboat that I have to tack against an unfavorable wind, or a bobsled whose blades I have to turn out of deep ruts on the ice. But despite feeling bodily awkward, I find suburbia to be a soothing place to move through. I really don’t understand how some people think of the suburbs as some kind of dystopia, to be honest. My neighborhood has wide streets, as I mentioned, and the houses are almost all ranch-style. The trees, like the houses, are shorter than they are in the northeast. Some of the trees look more like very tall shrubbery. As for the ground, the blades of grass are wider, and the soil is just a bit sandier. Sometimes, I see two-inch-long cockroaches, what people back home would call “water bugs,” creeping across the sidewalks.

I can’t remember the names of the streets on the walk, except for Forrest Street, which I noticed once when I saw the street sign while I was running and it made me think of “Run, Forrest, run!” and Kenilworth Street, which has the same name as a street back at home. Other than those, I only know points along the route by the informal names I’ve assigned to them. There’s a road where it changes direction from heading north to heading east, and it looks over a little park. The lack of houses there gives an unobstructed view of the western horizon. For that reason, I call that part of the route “Sunset Bend.” At another point on the route there is a house where, in the beginning of lockdown last spring, a family was always outside, the parents sitting motionless in Adirondack chairs while their kids all went nuts on the front lawn, playing with the sprinkler, or doing hopscotch, or sitting at one of those tiny plastic picnic tables, playing some board game. That part of the walk I called “Kidville.”

There were other houses that were always so inactive, so abandoned-seeming—the blinds were always closed and there wasn’t a car in the driveway—that I started to wonder if anyone lived there at all, and whether maybe the neighborhood association was mowing its lawn to stave off the shabbiness. But after the switch from walking in daylight to nighttime, I saw that some of those houses, while still shut up and silent, had lights on inside in rooms not facing the street. Looking at those houses is like staring into the vents of a space heater in a dark room.

Eventually I started thinking about how the walk is exactly 2.7 miles. Then, idly, I realized that if you multiply 2.7 by 30, you get 81. That number of years, eighty-one, seems like a decent amount of years to hope to live—it’s not greedy, you’re not asking for a hundred years, for example—but also, maybe when I get closer to 81, there will be better medical treatments and 81 will seem younger. Assuming that doesn’t happen, though, I think of 81 years as more or less “a complete life.” It is very sad, but not exactly a tragedy, to die at 81.

With this in mind, I started translating the distance along my walk to human ages. For instance, 1.0 miles into the walk, times 30, would equal 30 years. And 1.2 miles times 30 would equal 36 years, which is how old I am now. Since by the time I’d discovered this “conversion formula,” the walk was already so familiar to me that I had a very good perspective on how far into the walk any given point felt—the precise moment when I sense that I’m transitioning from the middle to the end phase of the walk, for example. So when I came up with the multiply-by-30 conversion formula, I was interested to see exactly what part of the walk 1.2 miles, or 36 years old, corresponded to.

The answer is that it was later in the walk than I’d hoped. The moment I reach 1.2 miles is long past the most scenic parts of the route; it’s just after a left turn that puts me on a long straightaway of modest houses leading to an arterial road, known to me as the hook-around part of the circuit where in past walks, I had thought, “Now I’m on my way back home.”

Over the next few evenings, I noted other points, ones that had come before the 1.2 mile marker, and compared them to parts of my already-lived life: I graduated high school at 0.6 miles into the walk, which was the beginning of Sunset Bend. I got my master’s degree in a spot where, at nighttime, a streetlight shines through the leaves on a tree, giving the street a dance hall, disco-ball kind of lighting (hence, “Disco Point”). That friendly, lighted patch of street, with a jaunty-looking house standing next to it, makes it my favorite part of the walk. As for points I have not yet reached: still ahead of my current age distance, at around 1.5 miles, is Kidville, but I haven’t seen anyone in the front yard there in months now.

Toward the end, almost back home, there’s a large school property. I’ve never seen anyone on the grounds, except for the occasional person who sneaks onto the running track to jog it. Along one of the fences that borders the school, in springtime last year, someone started zip-tying laminated sheets of paper with jokes written on them to the chain links. The jokes are all clean, and pretty lame—these days it seems like almost all kid-friendly jokes are just puns, like “How did the farmer find his wife? He tractor down!”

One time, I saw a kid about ten years old on his bike, riding along the sidewalk and stopping to read each joke. The fence ends at a small park for toddlers. There’s a big plastic sign at the entrance of the park, faded but still legible, that has a boy’s name displayed on it. Below his name is written a tragically short span of years, and below that, a message: “This park is dedicated to the memory of (the boy’s name), and to all of the little tykes of (the neighborhood).” Whoever it was putting up jokes on the schoolyard fence stopped replacing them with new ones some time during the fall, and I walk too late to ever see anyone playing at the playground. Well, that’s not quite true: very rarely, around 9 PM on warm nights, I might see what appears to be a young mother scrutinizing her phone as her kid swings in the dark.

*

I haven’t been to the gym to lift any weights since lockdown started. I’ve been able to do cardio in my apartment, but the result of all the cardio and all the walking is that I’ve lost a decent amount of lifting strength, as well as about ten pounds. This is consistent with how life in general has evolved: I have also reduced the list of spaces I travel to, leaving my apartment only to go to work, to pick up groceries, and to walk through my neighborhood. My body, and the edges of my life, have gone through a great miniaturization, but my perspective has adapted with it—each feature within this smaller space seems more detailed, and the day’s moments are of a finer grain. Inside my apartment, I have realized how much the lighting affects the atmosphere, and as a result the mood, so I can change which lights are on when to reflect the mood of each time of day. When I walk at night, sometimes I have the same feeling I did the week before I moved here from New Jersey, a sort of farewell feeling. That feeling started in the fall as a dessert-like flipside to my happy mornings spent doing math homework. Those evenings, I also felt like I was saying goodbye, to a more insecure, more ignorant version of myself, I guess. Nowadays, I get the feeling that I’m saying goodbye to the person who had, until now, always feared that he was missing out on things.

There will be a time, closer to now than now is to the beginning of the pandemic, when I will leave Texas. I will be happy and relieved to return home, whenever that is. But at the same time, there’s a new feeling that is starting to take root, and it’s a weird one: for all the hardship that the pandemic has presented to me, the anxiety for my family and the limitations it’s put on my mobility, social life, and career, for more than ten months now, its most memorable effect, unless I’m affected by the illness itself, will be that it made me love my neighborhood. I have walked more than 500 miles of it over the months, and scores of miles remain to be walked before I move away. I’ve walked during steaming afternoons, during cloudy sunsets, in pre-dawn twilight on cool mornings, and during soft, breezy evenings. It’s always picturesque, pleasant, very green. The houses look inviting, and the dog-walkers wave to me. I listen to music that suits my mood and do the geographical equivalent of palm reading. That’s all, really.

Can a person love a place? Feel gratitude toward landscaping, houses, parked cars, and people viewed only from a distance? Can someone feel affinity to a fox seen in a churchyard and streetlights shining through leaves in the night? Affection for lawn mower exhaust, for the noise of an approaching SUV slowly carving out a bend? Love for landmarks that correspond to moments in one’s past, or to moments that one might encounter in the future?

There will be a time, I hope, when my years in Texas are far in the past. But some day, I will hear a song, or see a house with a certain architecture, or smell a variety of grass, and Texas will return to me. At the same time, I also hope that it isn’t too overwhelming. I’ve found that I can never tell how potent a memory of a particular time or place will be until there’s a lot of distance between me and it. Sometimes, a memory will come gently, settling on me like a haze, ready to be indulged, even laughed at. In such cases I turn up the music that brought the memory, or take a luxuriating whiff of the scent, and I think back on the time, feeling only a little bit sad.

But other memories swoop down like some kind of predatory bird, and in those cases, the nostalgia feels more like the punch of the bird’s talons in the back of my neck. The sense of missing is so strong that it feels less like nostalgia and more like a distilled, portable homesickness. Ridiculously, I’ll even want to return to the memory’s time and place, despite knowing that in reality it had been fraught with pain or unease. Which makes the sneaking feeling growing during this time, at this place, all the more uncanny. I mean, all that this span of time has been, is me, and some terrain, and the wind, and the light of the sun or the moon. No one else. My nostalgia for anything before this was always about times and places with other people. So who will I be missing?

Someone once said, Wherever you go, there you are. But now, I wonder: is that really true?

[charmed-asylum]

👨‍🍳# FOODIE👨‍🍳

#Foodie, Part 2

Summary: Something happening in Easter Hills. Something that effecting everyone under the surface. Could this just be a phase a trick that no one can shack off? Is this something that will pass with another or can we all be heading for destruction

Declaimer: #Foodie has some curse words, blood, making out, and maybe a dead body or 2??. Also, I do have dyslexia who happens to do her own proof reading so be easy with me!!!

A/N:So who would think after doing a love story I go be switching it up to some sci-fi. Let me know what you think or want to be added to the taglist. Or simple to sit my butt down and stop with the dramatics xoxo Tia

MASTER LIST // Previous Chapter (1) 

Tagged: @weapinggwillowss​ @kittykatlow​ @alagalaska @deansblackbeauty

2 weeks later 

My fingers intertwined with his as he locks and kisses them. He doesn’t know I know but he a snuggle monster the reject monster from Sesame Street. Another secret I love it. We haven’t had much time as I will hope with one another. Even though he was back from the war he still was working as deputy while he was home. I pout like a two-year-old who got denied a brand new toy from a toy store. But we made it work. He moves me close as he whispers praise in my ear in his deep voice that makes me shiver a cool chill.

I only had 15 minutes left of my break with him. God how I miss him. After Janet left me teary-eyed in the abandoned hallway apart of me felt I was in old westerns like I was waiting for her around and draw her guy. That night he came over and hold me as I cried into his strong chest hands wrap as far as I could around his broad shoulders. Each night I founded my self there. Even if I was asleep he sneaks in and holds me. Letting me know he was never gonna leave me. 

He looks down into my eye out time coming to an end with a bit of sorrow regret. Hopping up so I can reach his face I pepper kiss him with each hop. Watching as his smile spread from ear to ear he loves when I did this be my silly tiny self. Knowing he always be my savior. His eyes were dark like midnight sky but were as bright as the sun. Others wouldn’t see this wouldn’t think he was more than a brick wall but he was more. Just like me more than meets the eye. Each day I’m happy god loves me to bring him to me. Bring me someone that made me feel things I never did before. 

“ I gotta go. I was only supposed to drop off another animal to you, baby “ He said in muffled from my lips. 

Lending back hold his hands close , “ Yeah but it was you who  wanted to start kissing me. I’m only here to basket it all this”.

This was been a familiar thing the last two weeks animals found dead somewhere or sick with some type of rabies. Blood from Mr. Fuzzy Bear only adds to the mystery. Blood work consists of an unfamiliar source. I went anymore I know and even the internet god the internet. After weeks of looking non stop trying to find anything to make me more at ease. NOTHING. I wanted to express this to KP but he only tells me to stop worrying.

“ BABY” KP tickle me under my underarms. I twitch and almost trip. “ I was talking and you did that moody thing you do. Is this Janet” he asked. YES NO I DONT KNOW I rub my forehead gently and peek up at him and nod.

I hate lying most importantly very bad at it. Even though he knew it was more he still allowed it to be, this time. 

“ I am taking you out. Show you off. Remind folks who you belong too. Which means I want you to be out this little head of yours. Janet she many things but all with reasoning. Give her time didn’t you say she nods at you other days” KP said. God his voice.

“ Your right probably PMS. Or something. Where we going” I asked looking down. I could hear my name-calling for me and some chaos.

“IAASC I KNOW HE SEXY EYE CANDY BUT GET YOUR ASS IN HERE-OW” Ethan scream out. I giggle and peck his cheek and ran off.

“ I CALL YOU ILY “ I shouted over my shoulder.

He ruffles his thick black hair across his hands as she smirks at me.

“ILY2” He said.

Everything was like walking into the war zone. Ethan was sitting on a chair holding her arm that was gushing blood out and Casey walking back and forth. I swipe up a rabies shot and quickly gave it to her and took her arms into my arms to looks at it. So much blood my arms got painted red. With a finger snap, Casey passes me the 1st aid kit as I dress the wound. Ethan was laughing all while. After thanking Casey ask sending her off for a break treating her like my child even though she was twice my age I gave the tickle me Ethan my attention.

“ You need to go to the hospital. That looks nothing like something seen before where the animal that did it” I asked looking around.

“ Killed it” She said like it was nothing. My eyebrow bent at this as I look her.

“ I need to call KP back he and sheriff can come over and help” I said pulling my phone out my pocket.

“Shit that fucker a bitch. I go okay I go I’m fine I go later. You did everything right by the way. It’s dead. We take it to the trash and that it” She said then look at me finally. I was a mess. To say the least. I bit the corner of my cheek till it bleeds and the iron the mint of him I was chewing on earlier.

Her eyes look glassy and she had a gentle sweat coming down her forehead. Didn’t it bit her not even a half-hour ago? I walk over and grab the bloody towels and help her up to sit down in her office under the AC. Closing the door I look hands it still had traces of her blood on it. I close my eyes and tried to relax. Taking deep breaths I went over to the sink and started to scrum till my hands were bright red from the friction.

“ Is she alright? “ Casey asks poking her head into the exam room. I peak over and back at my hands.

“ Yeah, she huh. Resting. Hey, what even happen that was so like the strange right” I said adding extra words to sound like I wasn’t just obsessing over it.

Casey pulled out a cigarette from her pocket and pluck it in her mouth getting ready to share something.

“ While you were outside smacking lips with Mr fuck for brains and takeout outside” she stops and looks at me.

“ I was upfront talking to Rachel about our lasted book club meeting. And she was talking about this new craze when one of the animals that came in just bounced up to life and start making sounds hissing and shit. Went sideways. The animal was acting all crazy like Bob does when he drank that moonshine and whiskey during October fair of 2003. Anyway, I rushed back and she was swinging at it with a paperweight” she said raking in another inhale of her cigarette. With a few coughs and tap, she looks around before talking some more.

“ You know a lot of shit been happening around here. I have been here all my life sadly and I would know. You know what it is huh?” She said putting her cigarette out with the bottom of her shoe. “ Damn Liberals. Probably put some damn glitter dusk on shit and made folks all crazy “She said as if it was a known fact. Did I not mention she a bit of a blowup doll racist. Try to explain to her just because I look Spanish doesn’t mean I am. Now she always says Ho Lay. Like that means something more than being a bitch. But she Casey and there no one like her.

“ You never know. So where is it now the animal ” I said drying my hands?

“ Out in the front. Sucker ugly mug tosses a blanket over it” Casey said nodding to the front. I nod and look around trying to let everything sit. Before she could walk off I without even thinking grab tight to her arm and pulled her into a hug. My hand ran up and down as I hold her tight.

“ Stay safe. Cas” I said. She chuckled and pat my back before going. I don’t know why I did it. Maybe a part of me knew something was gonna happen. That I was about to head down a steep drop something I will never be able to recover from.

The animal or what was left of it was like Casey said a mess. Scattered with its brains and head mushed. I poke it a few times before taking my pocket knife and stabbing it in the brain just in case. I wasn’t trying to live my life in a horror film. When I took the knife back out there was a strange goo mix with the blood. What the fuck I whisper to myself as I knee down and got closer to look. Just like I thought it was just like Mr. Fuzzy Bear. This was not a dog and this in on ways was a house pet. How strange how can two things so far from one another by going through the same thing. Can it be a generic trait from mammals? Or animals?

Ethan was quiet for the rest of the night. She didn’t move out of her office and when she did she was still sweating and shivering. I knew I promise KP not to worry but I couldn’t.

Me: Promise not to laugh but I have a question

Mi Amore: Haha what up sweetie

Me: Have there been any strange animal behavior or attacks? I know I’m coo-coo 😛😛

Mi Amore: 🤔 idk. Yeah, old man, Nick has been coming about some behavior. But that’s about it. Ur not crazy just crazy beautiful. Y??

Me: Remember when I was called in. Ethan got bite by a stray animal. Just wondering. I miss U  💋 💋 💋 

Mi Amore: Never stop. If you promise to stop worrying I keep an eye on it. And stop by to check out on Ethan tonight or tomorrow. Alright babe

Me: Kk thnx KP 

Mi Amore: ILY let me know when you get home

Me: ILY2  😘

Old man Nick was crazy still believing that aliens were never in Roswell but here. But his word is not so reliable he is married to his chicken Cheryl. I paced around that night in my room thinking trying not to think. He was right I need to stop worrying. I pulled out my pink paper and my fuzzy pens from my desk and sat on my bed and starting to write. Could me not having Janet be making me acting like an old man Nick, god I hope not. So I did what KP did and after my letter to Janet, I decided to not worry about it.

My feet bounce from one to another as I ran across the neighborhood. I felt a bit of sweat coming from under my lavender purple sports bra and forehead. Hair swinging from left to right right to left as I power through. In theory, if I wanted to I could run my whole town form one end to another. Music blast though my Bluetooth Air Pods. As I turn I reach Bloom Ave I made a quick left and push through till I reach a familiar two-story house at the end of the dead street. It sits back in the dirt a bit with a few stubs in the ground that somehow went perfect with the grey clay outer skeleton with huge windows and white curtains and a bright red wooden door. No cars in the driveway weren’t unfamiliar. Janet's mom or body double was always out at the local bar on some table dancing talking about her glory days. Janet hates that and even though she never told a soul she always fears she becomes that. Be stuck in the middle of nowhere no love and memories of when life was fearless Couldn’t ever be like that I told her as sat back on a black and white blanket sipping on my organic lemonade. She smiles and asks why. Because I will be there no quicksand right. She smiles and nods no quicksand.  I wipe my eyes as I came up to the front porch. I knock a few times before I gave up. Hail Mary twisting my neck a bit I look around to the empty street. From the corner of my eye, I could see the shades move. I turn my head around so quickly I got dizzy. I ran towards the window and tap at it. Trying to look in. It was blurry but I can dang sure I saw someone. I called out and bang it a few times. She was not gonna answer. With a exhale I turn and leaned against the window and slide till I was on the ground. I never gave up but this was starting to look like the only thing I could do. Was not doing that stupid drug that big of a deal. More. More I thought about it I got anger mad-sad even. Whipping my eyes with the back of my hand I got up and grab a few rocks. And started hitting the window calling out for her. Pissed I storm in circles across the front door like a madwoman. 

" I don't know what wrong but FUCK IT. YOU KNOW I CARE ABOUT YOU AND YOU DOING THIS IS FUCK UP. BECAUSE OF BLOODY DAMN DRUG. YOU PROMISE ME MOON AND STARS WE ARE NOTHING WITHOUT THE OTHER. SO IM NOT LEAVING IF I HAVE TO WRITE TO YOU AND LEAVE A FREAKIN LETTER OR CALL I AM. I KNOW SOMETHING FUCKIN WRONG. WHAT WE ARE YES IT IS COMPLICATED AND NOT WAY OF THINGS BUT I DO ANYTHING FOR YOU. THIS SHIT CHILDISH. YOU FUCKIN PROMISE J. They all leave me and you promise you won't" I stumble to my knees and hold onto my face with my hands and cried. I can't hate her even when I wanted to I can't. I cry and cry to the point my sweat and tears were blending into one.

Slowly getting up I look at the house once time. I lost. I lost over something so stupid. Crazy as it is if I could go back knowing what I know I still won't take that duck fuckin drug. I would just fight more so Janet wouldn't.

" No quicksand " I whisper before I walk off in defeat.

At work I didn't move much I just sat there listening to Casey about how Ethan couldn't make it something about going to the urgent care next town over. Casey was pleased because it meant she could leave early. Cleaning up the back exam rooms I recognize the towel Ethan used when she got attack day before. FUCK IT. I Peak before I snoop over to the magnifying glass and cup a piece of the towel and took a look. I tried squeezing my eyes but it wasn't close enough DARN I crushed at myself as I ruffle my hair through my hands. Biting the corner of my lip I look over for something anyway. JACKPOT. I rushed over and bent down to go through old equipment until I found the microscope that I remember Ethan told me about when I first started helping out. Sometimes about it not working right but if there one thing I was work with what you got a type of girl. It is I tap the metal table till the light came on. Grabbing the piece of the towel I place it over and fetch my glasses out my chest pocket and kiss my eyes to the lends. At first, it looks right till I saw a few things in the corner that didn't look quite right. The light kept flicking above me with an annoying buzz. Was it stupid yes but who said I was smart. More I tried to focus louder the buzz got. Till the office phone ring making me jump out my damn skin with a loud final act scream. AHHHH.

After a second to realize it was the phone, I quickly answer it. Hello, I said slightly out of breath. I heard heavy breathing. I repeated my self. Still nothing but heavy breathing. This isn't funny I said about to poop a golden egg. Still, it was heavy breathing. I can't hear you breathing I said looking around second-guessing every life decision I ever made. I gonna hang up I said but something stops me. Three words. No QUICKSAND. My eye widens Janet. I scream into the phone for her a bit excited and more so worried. But all I got was a dial tone I tried to call her but she didn't answer.

Each night around the same time the same message those three words. Of course, I tried to make her say anything else but no. My mind races trying to figure it out till each time I came to the same conclusion, she did not want my help or worst she could not ask for it.

I tap my foot as I look at my planner trying to figure out what to wear for my date with KP today. Strawberry favor purple teddy bear he got me on our first date sat on my lap between my thighs. He did tell me much but just it was a casual date no restaurant this time. We need that a few times when he was in school ones out of town. I liked those I could be anyone I wanted to be even though I could only drink the bottled water and had to bring omg own food. If they didn’t have things like organic apples. The third one we did he told me of his dream ones that included me. I like those a lot. Even after the two years when he went off to the army to take down the bad guys. Each letter you write adventures about life we were gonna have. I told him I didn’t care just wanted him there to hold me and love me. Stupid I know but stuck in a small town you can get caught up in those dreams.

After a few minutes of debating I pick up my feet push and turn around and around in my chair holding the hand of teddy. Hoping off after a few turns around I click on my radio and just decide to go with the flow whatever I was feeling. REMEMBER A DAY BY PINK FLOYD starting to play. I bop my head and shake my hips as I look through my denim.

Remember a day before today

A day when you were young.

Free to play alone with time

Evening never comes.

Toss a blue denim skirt with a beach wave cut on the bottom and round bottoms on the front. I lose myself in the beat that was creeping through my soul. Singing off-key look over my shoulders and pull out short sleeves stripe blue and black with a hint of the orange shirt.

Climb your favourite apple tree

Try to catch the sun

Hide from your little brother’s gun

Dream yourself away

I walk backward as I sang with my teddy in my hands the outro plucking out my round black shades to complete the outfit. Licking my lips I look into the mirror with items place in front to imagine how it would look. Something was messing I look behind and saw one of his old button-ups he left one night he stayed. Taking I deep breath in I look up to my ceiling knowing if things go well maybe I go a step forward. Or maybe not.

He came at exactly at 12 o clock. Rolling up in his 2010 Black Ford Raptor with the music blasting. I hope up without thought ran over as soon as it stops. Before I could get in I saw a few blankets on the passenger seat. Peaking up I saw him staring at me with those intoxicating midnight eyes that match his thick cut on side and swoosh in the front black hair. That I love to tug and play with between my dainty fingers. His smile was so wide that it shows off his perfect pearly whites. Reaching closer I smile into a kiss and I felt a lift as he pulls me in and into his lap. To deepen our kiss the taste of his toothpaste and hint of orange juice he must have had before coming over. Recently he taught me the fun of French kissing and art of a tongue. Pulling his bottom lip with my teeth I glance at him his strong muscular hand grip tight to my thigh.

“ Looks like someone wearing my clothes again” He said rubbing little patterns on my thigh with his index finger.

“ Want me to take it off and give it back. Baby” I asked playfully. With one last glance and shook his head no and tilt his head to look at me.

“ You know it drives me crazy seeing you wear my stuff. Let’s not forget the football jersey incident” he reminded me. It was 1st time I allow him to fell my thigh and butt. Thought alone brought a heat running down my body. Something Janet told me was normal. Playing with his hair I look down at what he was wearing. Black jeans with a red t-shirt an leather jacket.

“ So this the big date. Just sitting in your car. I could have told my parents we were staying for lunch then” I said playing with the collar of his jacket.

He ponders the question for a bit before he started to laugh. Picking me up he helps me over to the passenger seat. Left his right hand on my thigh and drove off with his left hand. After a few minutes, I wrap my hand with his and lean back and look at him as he drives. Few times he will peak over even throwing me a silly face which I then gave a few my own. Got to a light I peak out to the street. Crazy for a Saturday the usual busy with folks at the town square or at the farmer market that would be along Main Street it was pretty much close to deserted. Looking back as we drove off I sat back and ponder about it.

“ Did Bucks say anything about not having his produce today?” I asked.

“ Huh yeah sweetie it was postponed. Something happened to some of his vegetables. Think some kids piss on them. There also that beauty pageant in San Pedro. Took a bus over to watch” He said to bring my hand to kiss.

“ Yea yea I forgot. You know with Ethan gone. I feel like I’m working all alone forgetting the days. Where we going “ I asked.

“ Don’t worry we almost there. Would you put that scarf around your eyes it a surprise? Isaac” he said.

I took the red plaid scarf and wrap it around my eyes. The realization was starting to dawn on me besides our movie dates or him staying with me at night. This was our first date since he came back. Worried wasn’t even the word for it my whole body became snuffled with nerves. My mouth was dry and my neck felt warm.

“ Hey hey you okay,” he asked with a serious tone. I nod yes and hold on to his bicep tight.

“ Sorry just excited. Is all” I whisper holding on.

I didn’t know where I was but I felt the ground being a bit rough against my converse. One hand-grip tight to his other feeling my way. I could feel the moisture from the air and leaves. Before u even lifted the scarf I knew we were at our special hideout in Lover Lane.

Close behind me, he squeezed my shoulders gently as he whispered words of sweet nothing. I felt like Alice walking through wonderland. What if I look clearly through the darkness between the glitter and tiny rainbows I could find mad hatter drinking morning tea or the queen of hearts out by her garden w brush covered in red paint. Endless wonders who will I be would I be Alice full of innocence and wonder, the white rabbit who always running with of anxiety, Chester cat who full of the finger brings back cross and a smile with a bit of darkness inching to come back or maybe just a poor bystander. Most say I could pick out those three or add one in but today I didn’t know.

The blindness of the light brought me back from that rabbit hole of thoughts. Blinking a few times to adjust I saw a blur of trees and blue sky. It was beautiful right in the middle among all the flowers and grass was a big red planet blanket with a wicker basket in the center.

“ Surprise My Ama. Like it” KP said with a huge grind with his hands stretch out as far as possible. I didn’t know tears were coming down till KP came over to kiss them away. I hold his hand tight and kiss his hand before kissing each finger and look deep into his deep space eyes.

“ Did I do something why are you crying?” KP said a bit worried. I felt my lips playing peek a boo with teeth. I wish I knew why I was crying. I don’t even know anymore.

Instead of the truth I pull KP by hand and pull him onto the blanket before I let go and lay across. I curl my finger and motion for him to come over to sit by me. He lay his head on my lap. Right by edge of my skirt and he help right with his head facing my lower stomach. Playing with his hair between my fingers I came close and kiss his forehead gently. He holds me close and mumbles something. Maybe today I’m Alice before she found that hole.

The sun felt so good again my smooth rich terra- cotta skin. My hair was slip to the side taking in the sun raises. I could here KP reading from his old worn-out copy of The Last Man in the background still laying on my lap. He always had a fascination with Pre-American Gothic and an unseen classic from popular authors. Could read anything that was calming may you forget the world around you and drunk of his voice capturing his presence. Once he read House of Leaves to me when we were both in head and sound like a lullaby.

What is there in our nature that is forever urging us on towards pain KP read.

I bent down in front of the book to block any of the words and cup his cheeks in my hands and kiss him. Putting the book beside him he returns the kiss and pulls in deeper and turns me over to he was on top. My head rests on my honey scent shampoo hair. I could smell the woody scent of his Guilty Pour Homme Spray by Gucci he always put on. He moves his hand to crest cheek eyes match my woods brown eye with his. I could feel something hard pressuring against my thigh. With a sigh, I look at him and then down. Once again. As if he could read my thoughts he slowly pulls away.

“ Should probably not continue this before we are both in trouble huh baby?” KP said in his deep chocolate voice. I slowly nod and place my hands against his side and rub it against the pants being the only thing stopping me to go further. I need an escape something to stop my thoughts stop me from jumping face-first onto the hole. I felt moving his hips with movement with my palm. Kiss trace down my neck gently I curve into his touch wanting more. God, he knew how to make this girl feel good. His hands while rough with warn and tares always was gentle. Without thought I let out a sigh as we continue till out nowhere I thought I heard some birds. A lot of birds. Opening my eyes corner of my sight I see a family of birds flying in a flock west of me. I bent my head back as I follow the birds until they disappear. My mind drifts off to where they were going what would they do once they are there.

“ Ama I gotta tell you something alright something very important and I need you to listen can you do that” KP asked as he kisses my neck some more. I nod and mouth yes.

“ You know when I left I thought I was strong I thought I was brave. I wanted to protect you so badly from all evil all darkness I went onto war. But honestly, it’s not what I thought baby. The world we live in full of chaos more I tried to fix it stay in line I found my self missing you thinking what if I stay with you” KP said and continue to kiss me between my chest. Feeling brought old feelings I haven’t felt in more a year ago.

“ This world needs order. And I can’t do it all alone. Many nights I was barley holding thinking of ending my life but I got your letters and face times. If it wasn’t for you I will be lost in this huge empty world. I have been thinking and well what if after you graduate we leave pack all your shit and leave. Nothing d holding us back” KP said. I blink and look at him he stops kissing me and look back up at me with huge night sky eyes. I could hear some strange noises from behind me. KP was still speaking and all I could do was stare at him with drunk haze eyes.

“ Would you run off with me?” KP asks turning to go get up to look at me. No words can describe the look in his eyes passion fear worry lust doubt. Galaxy with million and one thoughts hiding in plain sight. Could I leave and blindly follow him into the unknown future. FUCK YEAH, I WOULD that promised I gave him so long ago.

Before I could say anything everything happens in a flash. The gravity pull was distracted in a minor of seconds. I felt him pushed my down covering me with his chest I look and I could feel something wet. Stumbling back on the blanket my breath gets shorter and I start to feel dizzy my fingertips were numb I felt like the more I tried to breathe more I fell deeper into the darkness. Then were the two muscle arms scooping me up from behind?

“ ISAAC ISSAC AMA AMA BABY BABY LOOK AT ME. Come one before you go into shock “ KP shout out. I look away from the body and at him. His thick finger covers my flushed cheeks. I slowly start to nod and look back at the body.

“ Is he.... is he dead we gotta do -“ I stop as I could see man chest rising a bit he was saying something. I let go and slowly follow the mumble I was a foot away before I felt a hand on my shoulder stopping me. I couldn’t freak out not like before a deep breath in I slowly turn back around.

“ Not safe. Take my phone get services and called for help” KP said in his deep savior voice he does when he serious. I glance back at the body. It gosh out blood to point you couldn’t tell where the actual puncture wound was. Where was it that was gonna be on his death certificate. From where I was it looks like his had puss and some strange black markers. He spoke to me but I did not answer him instead I remain quite till I heard the 911 operator.

“ He Hello. Yes huh, this is huh Amaryllis Isaac Smith I’m with my boyfriend Kindred Phillip” I could hear KP be reaping the word deputy. I nod and look at him he was hovering over the body almost studying it. “ Deputy Sargent Phillip. We are huh mm KP where are we” I stop and scream again where are we.

“ Lover Lane South East entranced a quarter-mile away from the lake. TELL ME THE PEEK A BOO SPOT they will know” He shoot out.

I repeated words word by word what he said. I heard the words by I couldn’t answer.

“Yes, there a man baby hurt. PLEASE HURRY” I said. Placing my hand to the phone I look at KP. “ Is he breathing KP “ I shout out. I couldn’t see one of his hands he was knee down to the body his back facing me. I waited but he didn’t answer just slowly got up and brush his hands on his thighs and grab the phone.

“ He dead. We wait to cops come. Maybe an ambulance my girl she a bit shook up. That’s okay Baby ... Baby” KP asked looking down at me. I couldn’t breathe anymore my hands wrap around his broad shoulder for my dear life my right cheek pushed onto his chest till I could hear his heart. Far away by the now dead body, I saw flames surrounding it. Tears gently fell more flames the closer I pulled into him till my vision was blur form fabric of his shirt. With one last breathe I was free-falling down that hole.

[purplesurveys]

996

This is originally an ask game that’s making the rounds here on Tumblr, but in this blog of course I answer everything. Quarantine Ask Game; questions by ghostly-nblm What’s your go-to snack? I haven’t really have one throughout this lockdown. I just snack on whatever’s available in our pantry - usually we have potato chips, salted egg chips, nuts, etc. And then sometimes my dad will whip up something for us himself, like wicked Oreos, churros, corndogs, and chocolate chip cookies. What’s a movie you could watch over and over? I could probably watch The Proposal everyday for the rest of my life and I doubt you’ll hear a complaint out of me. It’s just so funny, so lighthearted, and the entire cast meshes very well together. Favorite show to binge? Again when it comes to comfort shows/movies, I pick the lighthearted ones because they get me to relax and laugh a lot. That said, my favorite show to binge would be Friends. I recently started binge-watching it again and it feels good to come back to it after several months of not seeing an episode. 5 songs that make you want to dance? Shut Up And Dance - Walk the Moon Cinnamon - Hayley Williams Don’t Start Now - Dua Lipa Caught in the Middle - Paramore 7/11 - Beyoncé So, basically, Top 40 shit because it’s that genre that produces the most dance-y songs anyway. Pls don’t judge lmaaaaaao I like other artists I swear

5 songs that make you feel less lonely? I don’t know if I’ve ever turned to music to feel less lonely...I never really seek out that particular feeling. If anything, I listen to certain songs because I feel alone and I would want it to stay that way for the meantime.

Favorite meal to cook yourself? I always blank out at these cooking questions because I don’t know how to make anything, soz. When I start earning my own money I swear I’ll start experimenting with ingredients in the kitchen. You heard it here first. Seriously guys, when I finally get a stable income and you notice me spending it on unnecessary shit, feel free to nag me and tell me to start cooking!!! How do you “treat yourself”? With food. Food has always been my reward to myself after a long week, a hard exam, a bloody presentation, and basically after getting through something I had been dreading for a long time.   Favorite thing to do when doing self care? Surveys. Who have you been talking to the most? My family, I guess. “The most” is really pushing it though; I don’t talk a lot these days and it’s been difficult for me to sustain a conversation and not drain my battery in the middle of it. One thing you really miss right now? The past. I normally don’t think about it, but if there’s something from the past that I do miss, I end up pining hard for it. If you could be self-isolated with anyone who would it be? Angela. We haven’t seen one another in seven months so we could definitely do with spending seven months together lmao. We miss the shit out of each other. Do you have any pets? Yes :) Small update on my dogs: so for the last four months Kimi has hated having Cooper around and snarls every time he senses he’s nearby. But, and we have no clue what changed, now he has started humping Cooper and wants to be near him all the time...ugh. Favorite video games? At the early early phase of the lockdown I played Mario Kart 8 on the Switch all day long. Then for some reason I stopped and I haven’t played since like April. I haven’t played other video games. Favorite podcasts? Ear Biscuits. Andi has also started their own podcast and it debuted like a week ago; it looks extremely promising, but I’m super behind since I’ve deleted all my socials. I’ll catch up once I’m in the right state of mind and am feeling better enough to come back on my accounts. Favorite YouTubers? The main channels I watch are Good Mythical Morning and The Try Guys. But throughout the quarantine sooooooo many local celebrities have started their own vlog channels and majority of them are super fun to watch. My faves would be Andi Manzano’s, Manny Pacquiao’s daughter Mary’s, and Bea Alonzo’s. Wake up time? These days I try to be out of bed by 8:30 so I can sufficiently prepare and clean up for work, but early on in the lockdown I liked staying up all night and then waking up at like 9 or 10 AM. Sleep time? Anywhere from 10 PM to 1 AM. If you could go anywhere right now where would it be? I’d be in Sagada, vacationing by myself and doing some hiking, spelunking, reflecting, and soul-searching. I wish I can go back there someday; I just reallllly need to be out of the house and out of the city for a while.

What’s a change you want to keep when self isolation is over? There is nothing I wish to keep from this quarantine. It turned my entire life around and I wish I had all the things I had before it instead. Have you learned something? Yeah. Some of them the hard way. Any new skills? I took up a course on marketing last month so that was a lot of fun. Hobby-wise, I’ve been thinking of getting into cross-stitching so I can’t wait to buy my own kit and start with that. I’m also learning a lot of new and super helpful skills at work, like coming up with PR tactics/executions, knowing what will work for a client and what wouldn’t, photo editing, etc. It’s been the best internship experience ever. What’s a hobby you’d like to start learning? ^ The latter. I’d also love to learn how to bake, and maybe? start a vlog because it’d be nice to have an outlet where I can express myself and do new things while sharing my experiences with other people. What’s something you’d like to get better at? I constantly want to improve at my job because perfectionism. What food do you wish you had right now? Coffee shop pastries. :( God I haven’t had one of those in a while; I miss them loads. Your go to quarantine outfit? I don’t have one but man, when I do go out I tend to overdress because I rarely get an opportunity or have a reason to drive out these days, so I allow myself to look cute and all dressed up even if I’m just meant to pick up food at my grandma’s or something. What have you done today? I’ve been taking this survey, taken a shower, cried for a half hour, played with Cooper, cradled Kimi like a baby, checked my emails, and taken a few sips of coffee. Any plans for tomorrow? Work work work. What’s on your “to watch” list? The second volume of Unsolved Mysteries is finally out on Netflix so I’m hoping I get around to watching a few episodes soon. Any musicians/bands you’ve discovered? Most recent one was Chase Atlantic but I discovered them like back in July. Since I’m not listening to a lot of music these days, I’m not expecting to find new bands or singers to get into any time soon. Post a selfie right now!! Eh. Post pictures of your pets! I don’t feel like raking through my photos this morning. Maybe some other time. When was the last time you drank water? Last night at dinner. When was the last time you ate? Last night. When was the last time you got up and stretched? I can’t remember when I last did that. I usually stretch in bed, though.

Favorite song right now? This has been asked on every damn survey recently. I’m sure you’ll find my answer within the first page of my blog. Favorite social media to scroll through? It used to be Twitter until the lockdown hit and everyone stopped going out and having interesting updates. Before I deactivated everything, I loved spending time on Facebook. What’s the last thing you ate? A slice of pizza. What’s the weather like where you are? It’s a little cloudy and cold. I’m expecting it to rain today. Have you been playing animal crossing? No, but I know so many people who have been. How are you feeling? 50% meh, 50% just going through the motions. Who’s the last person you texted? Ate Alyanna. We’re both going through rough patches at the moment so we were cheering one another up. I needed that positivity a lot this morning and I’m glad we had that interaction. What does your last text message say with no context? ”Waaaaaaaa cute” Post a meme that made you laugh recently:

Outdoor activity you’d like to do right now? Hiking, mountain climbing, camping. Anything that’ll help me get disconnected from the world for a few days, really. Something you’re looking forward to when quarantine is over? Doing all those ^, traveling, being able to actually go to a workplace (once I have one), seeing my friends, going to bars again. Someone you’d like to see when quarantine is over? Everybody, man. I don’t give a shit as to who it is. Any new games coming out you want to play? Not really. I’m just waiting on GTA 6 even though there’s been like 0 updates on that front. New shows you’ve discovered? I revisited The Crown, but that’s it. I haven’t discovered anything new. Most comfortable piece of clothing you have? I find all of them comfortable; that’s why I wear them at home haha.

[pitiless-achilles-wept]

Lost Weekends: Chemo Progress Report

Hi friends,

I'm writing you from my sofa, where I spend an increasing amount of time (much to the delight of the cat), at the end of my second post-chemo weekend. My last update was a month ago, right after I had done the considerable work of enrolling in the clinical trial at Penn that looks at treatment with chemotherapy and the immunological agent atezolizumab vs. just chemotherapy. My first session was on January 30th and I had a bit of good luck (for a change) and was randomized to the arm of the trial that got both the chemotherapy agent and the immunological agent, rather than the control group! (That's why I look improbably happy about my IV infusion in the attached photo.)

So far, the side effects are pretty tolerable. They don't really show up until days 2 or 3 which, since I go on Thursdays, pretty much means a Lost Weekend to symptoms. There's nausea, but I'm able to manage it with medication, and then there's very intense fatigue. I said to a friend at the outset of this trial that I consider myself a connoisseur of fatigue, having suffered chronic fatigue for years that was bad enough for them to do a bone marrow biopsy to verify that I didn't have cancer. (That's how I know I didn't have it in 2016.) This particular strain of fatigue is both familiar, in that the physical effects are undeniable and demand immediate rest, and unfamiliar because I get foggy-headed in a way I didn't before. Some folks refer to memory and concentration problems they encounter as "chemo brain," but I think this is less intense, more like being sleep deprived or a little sick. Honestly, the whole package is like having a bad flu. It lasts about 5 days and the symptoms are pretty similar. So, not great. But also not the worst. On this study, I go to Penn for treatment every 3 weeks. It takes all day, in part because when you get treated with a drug that's in trials they have to release it from the "experimental pharmacy," a process that can take multiple hours (as it did last Thursday). I'm really glad I only have to go every 3 weeks (plus visits for scans) and not every week, as I was doing before, both because it gives me the opportunity to recover from the side effects and have a bit more of a normal time in between visits. Also, they are a huge pain.

I know that may seem obvious, since chemo is clearly a terrible way to spend a day. But the truth is that it's actually less bad than the exhausting apparatus surrounding the visit. I tend, as usual, to minimize the more distressing aspects, both to myself and others, because it's just what needs to be done and, in a situation as colossally unfair as this one, the inconvenience or annoyance of actually going to the hospital pales in comparison. But, if you're curious, here's what it's like.

A day going to chemo for me starts pretty early since I live about 45 miles from Philadelphia and since I-95 is always terrible. Driving can take anywhere from an hour and ten minutes (without any traffic) to 2+ hours (if there's an accident). So if I'm supposed to check in at 8:30am I have to leave the house ideally by 6:30--which I NEVER manage to do because I have a lifelong hatred of mornings--but definitely before 7:00. This means getting up around 5:30 or 5:45. Again, I know people get up this early all the time, but if you know me you know that I am basically incapable of falling asleep before 1am (unless I'm very sick).

So I set out on this early venture, but not alone. I have an intrepid and sleepy friend with me to drive, both because I'm not allowed to drive myself home and because parking at the hospital is such a nightmare that often I have to hop out at a corner or intersection to make my appointment time. I did, however, learn that you get completely free parking if you get chemo! (This isn't true for other kinds of appointments.) My intrepid friend will meet up with me again in the cancer center and, usually, work remotely throughout the day while we sit in a series of chairs and check in with a series of doctors. I'm really grateful for this company because something that no one tells you about cancer is how incredibly boring it is a lot of the time.

The first medical thing that happens is that the nurses at the "infusion center" (which always sounds more pleasant than it actually is, as though it should come with scented oils) access the port through which they draw blood (usually about 10 tubes of it) and through which I'll receive chemo later. After they collect blood samples, I head to the waiting room for my oncologist, who I have to check in with before I can receive treatment. We have to wait for my blood tests to come back to prove that my body is functioning well enough for me to poison it. That sounds kind of backwards, but basically I have to have baseline body functions that are good enough for me to withstand chemo. (Oh, at some point they also do my vitals--height, weight, blood pressure, heart rate, oxygen saturation--which they'll collect again several times.) I also consult with my oncologist and the study coordinator about any side effects or questions and have a physical exam of the palpable tumors.

Next, assuming my numbers look good, I can check in for chemo. Penn has private rooms, which is different from the infusion center in Princeton. Some of them have lovely views of the city and some are windowless prison cells. I've had one of each. It's just luck of the draw. But I can certainly confirm that having natural light makes a big difference. By this time I've been at the hospital for 2-3 hours. The next phase is the most frustrating, which is waiting for the experimental pharmacy to release the immunological agent, which I have to receive first. The first time it took about 90 minutes, the second almost 3 hours. Once they get that, they can finally start the infusions. I get the immunological agent, followed by pre-meds for chemo (a long-acting anti-nausea drug, a short-acting one, many others to make the process less awful by controlling my reaction), followed by chemo itself. Together, all the infusions take about 3 hours.

My total time at the hospital is something between 6 and 7 hours. The driving, total, is about 3 hours. So, all in all, it's a 9-10 hour day. I often manage to use this as a time to enjoy the company of the friend who goes with me, since how often do you get to spend that much concerted time together? Often one or both of us is working, though increasingly I get spacey enough that I prefer to read, listen to a podcast, or just nap. Once I get home, I usually nap and, hopefully, see another friend who brings by dinner. These little acts of company make the biggest difference to me. I feel somewhat bad, since my exhaustion means I'm not often up for long visits, but just having another person around is tremendously reassuring. Dropping by, or being there while I nap or read, does a lot to break me out of the isolation that I can feel by being trapped so much in the physical symptoms of my treatment experience.

Illness is very isolating and makes you very vulnerable. No one else can endure the treatment for you and, in a way, the pain and discomfort is fundamentally incommunicable. Yet the emotional experience doesn't have to be similarly incommunicable and company (or well wishes) is a major antidote to that risk. So, as I wrap up this post-chemo weekend, I'd like to say thanks for reading and sharing it with me.

Love, Bex

[aayushanandblog]

                                                                               THURSDAY, 23RD JULY 2020 They say, life throws you a curve ball and everything happens for a reason.Sometimes, when one is in the edge of the storm the greatest experience of freedom is in surrendering and allowing the play of the divine to unfold. A tough challenge, but a perfectly designed learning experience. One of those experience of mine is that of contracting COVID-19 virus. I did not think it could ever happen to me. The fact of the matter is- You NEVER know.

Covid-19 has been a killer virus and taken the world on with a pandemic no one anticipated or prepared for. I was symptomatic with fever, headache, dry cough and fatigue. My infection was limited to my throat only and did not reach my lungs. Therefore, I did not develop any breathing difficulty. This was because I went on time to get my test done. Lack of smell followed by continual pungent smell settled in my nasal tract was the worst thing that could happen to me. I had developed vomiting sensation because of irritation from that pungent smell. Finally I got rid of it after 12 days. 

This pandemic is away from being just a medical phenomena. They disrupt personal and professional lives severely. Mental anxiety of having coronavirus is more deadly than coronavirus itself. It takes 14 days for coronavirus to heal but mental anxiety affects our mental health for a longer period. Sudden change from social life to that of isolation life where we have no one to talk with is the real test of our anxiety management. Initially I had mixed feelings when I was tested positive, it was obvious thing to happen. I did not had any anxiety or fear throughout that phase. I was reading. I also have exams coming up, so I studied. I surrounded myself with positivity.

Frequently we hear that Bihar government fails in its healthcare. Covid-19 gave me an opportunity to see exactly where the loopholes are. Bihar healthcare in handling coronavirus seems to be specious i.e. hollow from inside. The only person whom I saw wearing PPE kit was the person who collected my swab sample. Even the doctors handling more than 50 corona patients in my isolation centre did not feel the necessity of wearing PPE kit or even face shield. The problems faced by doctors are exacerbated by a ruthless hospital administration. The job of doctors and nurses were confined only to their allotted dispensary room. They never felt that they should take a inspection round and ask patients whether if any problem persists or not. Cleanliness and Hygiene is the utmost priority in covid-19 but here it seems to be the most neglected part with stinking toilets, bathrooms and basin areas. I was lucky that I had lack of smell as I did not had to smell anything there. No doubt the Covid-19 pandemic is putting huge pressure on the already- fragile healthcare system.

COVID-19 is leading to a new wave of social stigma. People who have defeated coronavirus are Covid survivors. Alien behaviour from the society was least expected but somewhere I felt it. After emerging from hospitals, people are being forced to navigate a world that clearly is not yet ready to welcome them back into a still- sheltering society even after 21 days of isolation. People be like ‘’why are outside, you had coronavirus, you should be in home ‘’. I feel like replying them ‘’ Till when should I be inside? Forever?? ” Discrimination occurs when stigma becomes visible. A drug or vaccine will cure the disease, but it remains to be seen whether it can tackle stigma and discrimination.

Every coin has two side. Relating to Covid pandemic everyone knows the cons face of it i.e. The affinity of the virus makes itself high transmissiable. Very few knows the pros face of it that it Coronavirus is one of the weakest family of virus. Only people with vulnerable immunity elderly succumb to this. There is two way of treating Covid-19 viz. Preventive and Curative. Curative treatment applies when one is prone to Covid e.g. through allopathy . But Preventive measures prevents it from happening i.e. through Ayurveda. Ayurveda medicines builds our immunity which prevents it. There goes a saying “ Prevention is better than Cure”.

I believe we need to learn to live with the virus as this is the new normal. Building immunity is key at the moment, till a vaccine is available for the population at large. We need to remember that a huge percentage of people are infact recovering , so stay positive and strong. We will get through this. We need everyone’s participation to Flatten the curve. After this pandemic gets over, I think people will find more reasons for being grateful to god. “My name is Aayush and I am NOT INVINCIBLE. And neither are YOU !! ”                                                                                                            --Aayush

[krowsfeet]

wh. what did you do to your media teacher

ok well sorry if this is long but it’s A Story for sure

this was back when i was still kinda edgy and didn’t like feminism (i still don’t ID as a feminist now for personal but i agree that it’s Good) and, edgy little fuck that i was, when we were told we could write a faux-essay about any topic we wanted i wrote about sexism against men - luckily i was kind of coming out of my dickface phase so it wasn’t full of like WOMEN R FUCKING EVIL TO MEN WEHHHH it was, tbh, not a bad essay at all! at one point i mentioned something about how mainstream feminism could be seen as vilifying men or smth (which ofc is wrong but again, 17 year old edgelord)

my media teacher was a staunch feminist and would frequently let us know this, loudly, which i didn’t have a problem with per-say but i did find it annoying since at the time i was being flooded with faux-alt-right anti-sjw teachings on the internet like 24/7, and i kiiiinda wanted an excuse to pick a fight with her (although this story honestly 100% has her in the wrong and me just... being a 17 year old), so when i was writing this essay and i knew she would have to read it i was wondering whether or not she’d say smth. so we’re all sat on the computers typing our essays, my friend next 2 me is writing something about kpop, etc. media teacher who i’ll from now on refer to as P comes over and is like “oh. why on earth are you writing about that?”

so i explain that sexism against men blah blah who cares, and she tuts and says “so i assume you don’t call yourself a feminist?” with this rlly incredulous look on her face. and i say “well no, for my own reasons i don’t”. now, keep in mind that this teacher also knew that i was trans, gay and autistic. she then shook her head and laughed and said “you’re only saying that because of how privileged you are” and i got kinda mad lol, considering that (apart from being white, which she also was) i was def. not privileged, and explained this to her - also bitch i’m not gonna out myself in front of the whole class just to remind you that i’m not exactly what most would consider “privileged”

so i said smth about how it was rude of her to assume that, because i didn’t have the same opinion as her, i was somehow better off than her, and i remember saying “to be honest, miss, you don’t know jack about me or my life to say that”. she backed up like IMMEDIATELY and stood at her desk which was probs like another metre of so away, and her hand starts shaking. i was a lil mad at this point but i was still sat down and honestly not... rlly worked up at all. she quietly said “okay...” and sat down to read some paperwork or smth

the class kinda quietly talked amongst themselves because oh gosh i sassed a teacher etc etc, and then i heard a voice say my name and it was P again! and she goes “excuse me, [deadname], you need to leave” - i said umm pardon like... i’m still writing my damn essay lol. she goes “can you please work in another computer room? i just can’t have you in here right now”. so me, very annoyed by this lol, i just went “um no? i’m gonna sit here and finish my essay, you don’t have to talk to me if you don’t want to” (which probs didn’t help), she starts tearing up and says “you’re making me feel very frightened right now - you need to leave. now.” 

looking back on it, i would be honest if i was actually being aggressive but if ya’ll know me u know i talk a lot of shit but i’m not an aggressive person at all when it comes down to it, so i ended up getting REAL mad that she was treating me like some kinda animal, so i said (oh-so delicately, as a 17 year old is wont to do), “fine fuck you” and went out at which pointed i walked rrrrrrrright on home and refused to come in for like 4 days lol. my mum ended up getting the school involved and they got P in with some of our head of years & higher up staff to give me a proper apology and stuff, during which she was just kind of staring blankly thru me but she did apologise so we were like aight it’s all good!

but then when i walked into class the next day she ended up leaving halfway through and just didn’t come back so we were like uhhh. ok. and we visited the teacher next-door who we all got along with like “hey miss where tf did P go” and she was like “umm P’s just having a rough time rn don’t worry and just continue with your exam stuff”, and then P didn’t come back for like 2.5-3 months! when she did she was fucking.... idk the word. like, basically drugged up lol and smiling all the time and didn’t mark any of our work bc she was like “it’s okay, you’ll all do great anyway, i don’t need to read it :)” and singing all the time, and when one of the other asshole kids was like “hey miss wtf is up w you” she just said “i’m on a lot of medication right now”

so not SPECIFICALLY I caused her to have a mental breakdown, but i was definitely the straw that broke the camels back lmao

i remember posting this story back on my old blog and ppl being like FAKEEEEE LOL and i was like [shrug]

#long post

[the-annie-king]

First things first

Before I post some of my art here, I feel like I should say something about me first. To put it briefly I am a victim of domestic violence. My mother abused me both physically and mentally and after some time my father started to mentally abuse me as well. I never went to police or contacted social workers because I thought it was completely normal... that all kids are treated the same way as me. This changed when I was 12 years old. I met my grandma (mother of my mum) for the first time in my life. Until that happened my mother used to say that our nana is dead (drowned or drank so much that si died) or that she doesn’t know what happened to her. 

I fell in love with my grandma the minute I saw her. She saw me a couple of times when I was a baby. But I was nervous ‘cause she wasn’t the only person I was supposed to meet that day. The other person was my stepgrandfather.... grandma’s third husband. He was born in the Czech Republic (that’s where I come from) but he used to live in Canada for 40 years. He was intelligent and knew a lot of things and I was afraid I would say something stupid and embarrass myself. I couldn’t help myself but love them both from that very day. And when I and my sister were staying at their place for the first time I couldn’t fall asleep on the first night. I wanted to tell them what my mum was doing to me a whole day but my sister would tell her about it. So I waited until she fell asleep and told them everything. From that time they began to tell me that if it would become unbearable for me I can go to live with them. And next year I lived with them... but my sister too. Mum spent more time in Prague (we live in a village near a small city about 50 km away from Prague), as she said, due to the pain in her back and spine issues. But later I realized she was staying at her boyfriend’s place most of the time. 

After some time my younger sister went to live with our mum and I stayed with my grandparents. I felt so much of freedom I’ve never had. I felt happy and finally alive. But when I turned 14 both of my great-grandparents passed away and nana started to worry about the thing in their apartment... paintings, china and many more. The flat was accessible for any thieves and she didn’t want anything to happen to things that her parents left there. I was helping to move the thing to our apartment and left my phone in a car. My mum called me and I didn’t pick up ‘cause I simply couldn’t. When I called her back she was really upset with me and wanted me to visit her the following day. 

I did visit her and I was boiling with anger from all the lies she told me about nana. When I started crying from all the anger I played it like I was sad about the things nana did to my mum... what a good actress am I. I won’t bother you with more details. She drove me back to nana’s where my mum accused me of making all the things up and that she never told anything like that. I told grandma everything through phone call when I had an opportunity to make fun of mum’s lies before we went back to nana’s apartment. After that, my mum left and she wanted me to spend rest om my spring break at hers. 

Shortly she forced me to move with her and her boyfriend who I hated because he is an alcoholic. I shared a room with my sister and it was really small. It was driving me crazy ‘cause I didn’t have much personal space and she wouldn’t stop occupying my bed... the only place in the whole fricking apartment I wanted to have just for myself. Multiple fights between my mum and her boyfriend happened. Later when it was time for entrance exams for high school I wanted to learn how to play the flute and my friend who plays for more than 7 years offered me some help. After few times I went to her place after school I was forbidden to ever go to her place to practice ‘cause I sent a message to my mother to let her know that I would come a bit later from the school. She just texted back that I have to go home immediately. When I came “home” she yelled at me and told me “How do I know that you’re really at your friend’s place and practicing and not hanging out with some guys!”. For your information: Guys weren’t interested in me and she knew it. And I won’t lie... I wanted to yell back at her that I’m not a whore or how can she think about me I’m some kind of whore or something I that. But I didn't say a word. From that day on I used to practice in the basement because my sister would annoy me and mum didn’t seem very happy about the whole flute idea... don’t know why.

In summer 2018 my mum decided that she had had enough of her boyfriend’s drinking and wanted to move to her own flat. I was so happy and excited. In August we moved away to our new apartment. I had my room but it wasn’t that good as it may sound. While my sister had a nice and cozy room, I had all the mum’s stuff on the one side of my room and she was saying that we have to help her with it. But she never came to us with words: “Okay girls... let’s do it.”. And on top of that, she invited her boyfriend to our place. This repeated many times... she began leaving us on our own with our father at the weekends. I was 15 at that time. That was the time when dad started to make fun of me and supported my sister in being nasty to me. That I deserve it after all the thing I’ve done to her. We have 4 years gap between us and since I was 10 I had to look after her 24/7. And she never obeyed me. And siblings treat each other badly from time to time. But I was the bad guy, the lazy one and the one with puberty so I was responsible for everything and so on. I hated to stay at home and I wanted to live with my nana. Everything got to the point that I wasn’t allowed to go out... for no reason. Go home straight after school... no drama club... say goodbye to all your friends... no other free-time activities. I don’t know what I did and when I complained to my father about that, he told me not to be that surprised I’m grounded when I came home late and didn’t tell anyone I would. My jaw dropped... What again? I did what? The only time I was coming home late was in summer when I had a part-time job. But mum always knew I would come home late it was in July and August.... but it was already November!

Things got worse and I once decided I’ll run away. But the next day I rather tidied all the packed up clothes. I was scared to do it. But later in February I got sick, had a fever and my throat was burning. Do you think my mum took care of me, cooked me soup and made a tea to make me feel better? No, she didn’t. She left me alone with my sister. My sister was going to school and she was staying at her boyfriend’s. She came only twice during the first week a was ill. Once for clean underwear and toothbrush and for the second time to sleep there. And for some unknown reason, she thought I was feeling well enough to do housework and looked like she would bark at me if she was a dog when she was around. I didn’t do anything... just taking my meds and lying in bed so I would feel better soon. At the end of the week, I decided that I had had enough and called grandma on Monday that I thought about running from home and moving to her again. I was sure about it but due to the illness and fear, I experienced a panic attack. I took a shower, calmed down and started packing up things I knew I have to have with me when I go away. I stopped when my sister got home and pretended everything was okay. She fell asleep and I packed the few things that I needed. Then I started to write letters... one for mum and one for sister. I cried... a lot. When my sister left the next day for school I was already awake and anxious. I left the letter on her bedroom door and went out of the apartment. I was glad it was the day for a check-up so my mum wouldn't suspect anything if she entered an empty apartment... and if she would find the letter for my sister I will be safe at nanas by that time.

When I arrived at nana’s place it was the time to text my mother. I guess I wrote about a quarter of the letter when she called and asked what does it mean. And I told her the rest. She was silent and then she hung up and texted me that she doesn’t have enough money so I could stay with my grandma and I will have to stand that she won’t pay any attention to me so I can have the peace I wanted. I wanted her to change her behavior and to start treating me as a young lady I am... not to abandon me and act like I don’t exist while living under the same roof. I stayed with my granda.

While I was writing this I was shaking. I and my mum haven’t met since then and I’m so glad about that. It’s a year and two months now since I run away and entered the new phase of my life. Sometimes it’s hard because I don’t do always what I’m supposed to do. But who does 100% of what they are supposed to? Nana is supportive, loving and caring. She allowed me to live like a normal teenage girl and I’m grateful. Now she is my mommy and the only real family I have. I would exchange her for nothing and nobody.

I told you so to explain why some of my pictures seem depressive.