#this shit took ages longer to post than normal

[orangeflavoryawp]

Jonsa - "No More Scars", Part 1

Jon gets Sansa out of King's Landing and they make their way to Riverrun, to reunite with family. A little speeding/condensing of the timeline, so Jon has died up at Castle Black and been revived already. He comes for Sansa after this. Everyone's aged up, as is my usual.

No More Scars

Chapter One: Quelling the Pain

“This is as far as we go.”  Jon and Sansa  - After rescuing her from King’s Landing, they have a long, winding road to Riverrun before them.

Read it on Ao3 here.

Part 1 | 2 | 3 fin

* * *

The first time Jon sees her in years, she is both half the girl he used to know and yet not wholly the woman he’d expected of her.    

“Did Robb send you?” Sansa asks, her brows furrowing over her wide, hopeful eyes.  

He isn’t sure whether the truth is welcomed or not, so he only reaches out his hand toward her.  “I’m here to get you out,” he tells her.  And it’s the safest truth, at least.  

She seems to think so as well, because then she’s tucking her hand into his, her mouth a tight line, her other hand clenching her robe closed over her chest, before he’s whisking her through the castle in the dead of night.  

She glances back behind her at the gilded cage of King’s Landing just the once, just enough to swallow back the bile.  

(He knows, because he sees her throat bobbing with it when he places his hands along her waist and hoists her up along the horse.  He takes his seat behind her and then they’re off.)  

She’s silent for the whole first half-day that they ride.  And then he veers off the road, takes them along a haggard horse-path heading northwest.  They don’t stop for many hours.  

When they finally drop from the horse for rest, she barely acknowledges him when he hands her a clean, simple dress.  She tucks behind the trees for cover and changes in silence.  Jon tends the fire in her absence.  When she returns, he has their bedrolls already set.  

He wonders if she will remark on the closeness of them.  

(He’s duty-bound to protect her, after all.  And he can’t do it from a distance.)  

She does not ask of Robb again, though he waits expectantly for it.  

Instead, Sansa only drops down quietly along her spread blanket, not even taking the offered bread he hands her.  And then she’s sleeping – quiet and still and deep.  

He watches her curl in on herself in her sleep, as he stokes the fire half-heartedly, before dousing it, and turning in himself.  

The next day is much of the same.  Hours and hours of riding.  Hours and hours of quiet.  

He thinks she understands now – the answer to her question.  

“Did Robb send you?”  

He accepts that he may have broken her.  

(Because to accept that they left her to be broken is far, far worse.)     * * *

“We’ll keep off the Gold Road,” Jon says, taking the pack from their horse, and dropping it in the dirt at their feet.  He then tugs the horse toward a nearby tree, looping a tied rope around one branch to tether it, before unbridling the animal.  

Sansa watches in a rather dumbfounded state.  

Jon glances back to her, slowing in his motions.  “Until we’re further north and closer to Riverrun, we can’t risk the main roads.  You’re a wanted fugitive by the crown now.”  

Sansa only nods, her lips pressed tightly together.  She glances around at the small clearing he’s stopped them in.  

Jon crouches at the pack by her feet, pulling out two thin bedrolls, and then stopping to glance up at her.  He works his jaw, eyes downcast.  “I can’t promise you comfort, Sansa,” he says, hands gripping the unfurled bedroll in his hands.  

She glances to him, hands limp at her sides.  

“But I promise to get you home,” he finishes, looking up at her.  

She watches him for many moments, her breath tight in her chest.  And then she glances out to the woods around them, peers into the trees, tries to decipher the darkness slowly creeping into the canopies.  

Jon sighs beneath her, continuing his task of preparing them for bed, no more words to follow.  

Sansa closes her eyes.  Thinks of her mother.  Hears Rickon’s laugh at her ear.  

A soft, watery gasp leaves her – barely there.  Her lungs tighten at the memory.  

She opens her eyes.  The forest is still there.  The sun still sinks beneath the tree line.  

But Jon is here, spreading out his bedroll to lie beside hers, his hand smoothing over the wool.  

She wants to cry suddenly.  

“Sansa, look, we just have to – "  

She drops to a squat in a single, sinking motion, arms wrapping tight around her legs, her head buried in her knees.  A staggering breath shudders from her.  

“Sansa,” she hears at her side.  

“I just want – ” she says, and then stops, the breath hitching in her throat.  

She just wants –   

A sob breaks from her lips, splashing against her knees.  She digs her head in deeper, another sob catching at the edge of her teeth.  

“Sansa,” he says again, and she feels the pressure of his knees settling beside her in the ground.  

She pulls her head up to watch him.  “I just want to go home,” she croaks out, the words bitter and lonesome along her tongue, her face crumbling instantly.    

Jon reaches for her hesitantly, before stopping, his hand hovering in the air.  

She only looks at him, the tears hot along her lids.  Her mouth tips open, but there are no more words.  At least, none as important.  “I just...”  

Jon’s eyes shift between hers frantically, worried and wanting and always unsure.  

“I want to go home.  Nothing more,” she cries out brokenly, before she buries her face back into her knees, the world a sudden rush around her – the years and faces and fears of her recent captivity an instant barrage, an unrelenting assault.  

Cersei’s sneering face.  Joffrey’s threats.  The bruise of a guantleted fist.  The harsh tear of her dress.  The Hound’s taunting.  Tyrion’s barely constrained touches.  The mocking court.  And the loneliness, the loneliness, gods the loneliness.  

Her breath catches, harsh and dry in her throat, her mouth parting on the sound, but the tears are familiar, constant, ever-present.  The wail she bites off at her knees peters out into a pained moan and then –   

Then his hands are around her shoulders, pulling her toward him.  His chest is warm and firm and broad.  His hands –   

His hands never let her go.  

She turns into his shoulder with a ragged cry, her fingers clutching his tunic, her breath stalled in her chest, and her cries, her cries, her cries –   

Muffled in his trembling embrace.  

It’s an awkward fumble of limbs, the way she falls against him, her knees giving out, her arms reaching for him like he’s the last gasp of air her lungs will ever know.  

And yet always, constantly, steadily in her ear, there is this:  

“I’ve got you.”  

His voice is warm at her temple, his lips pressed to her hairline.  She squeezes her eyes shut at the exhalation.  

“I’ve got you,” he breathes into her.  

The clutch of her fingers along his shoulders leaves marks for years to come.  

* * *

He’s packing up his bedding on the fourth day of their journey when she says it.  

He turns to her, finds her standing there with her woolen blanket folded over her arms, her eyes on his boots.  

“What?” he asks her, needing her to repeat it, afraid he’s heard wrong.  

She looks up at him, handing him her bedding to fold back into their pack.  “Thank you,” she says, even and smooth, only the trembling of her jaw giving away any hint of her uncertainty.  

Jon stays staring at her.  

She glances up at him, and then away, pulling the blanket back to her chest.  “Thank you,” she tells him, “For coming for me.”  

Jon remembers suddenly what her songs sounded like, and how she used to scowl so disapprovingly at Arya, and how she howled at him when he spilled his tea along her skirts once, and the direwolf handkerchief she’d knitted for Bran while he slept, and her curtsies and her sighs and her laughs and her pouts and her – and her –   

Half-brother, she’d called him.  

As though to spare him the pain of ‘bastard’.  

And yet, never enough to be just...  

(Brother.)  

Jon swallows thickly.  “Of course I’d come for you,” he says roughly.

She meets his eyes then, the blanket still tight to her chest.  

He opens his mouth, finds nothing there.  

Because of course he’d come for her.  She’s his sister.  She’s Sansa Stark.  

And she deserves to be fought for.  

She seems to crumple in on herself.  

Jon steps toward her.  

“I didn’t...” she starts, stops, swallows it down.  She licks her lips before trying again.  “I didn’t want to give myself false hope.”  

His brows furrow in confusion.  

She seems to notice, face pinching in consternation, and he knows now – what she looks like when she’s trying to word something as palatably as possible.  

It makes him feel dirty.  

(Because he knows now, that this was the norm, the standard practice for her – to be palatable.)  

“I just mean – "  

“You’re welcome,” he says, reaching for the bedding held tight to her chest.  

She eases her hold on it slowly.  

He pulls it gently from her grasp, his hand lingering near hers, the edge of their fingers brushing.  “You’re welcome,” he says again, the faint hint of a smirk tugging at his smile.  

She blinks at him, her shoulders bunching tight once more.  “Jon...”  

He squats down to continue packing their belongings away.  “You don’t really need to thank me, anyway.  I told you – of course I’d come for you.”  He feels her staring down at him for long seconds as he works, before she crouches down beside him to help.  

He pretends not to hear the quiet sniffling she tries to hide.   * * *

She always falls asleep first, her exhaustion unsurprising when they ride for hours each day. Sleeplessness is his companion now, anyway – has been since he first awoke with the red woman’s magic.  

He watches Sansa’s back in the dark, whittling the hours away before dawn.  

Sometimes he sleeps. Sometimes he doesn’t.  

But he never dreams. It’s just an endless darkness that takes him.  

Until Sansa’s hand at his shoulder rouses him, or the faint light of dawn peeking through the trees.  

He rises, like he did that first cold evening after death.  

And the journey continues.   * * *

“How did you leave the Watch? I thought those vows were for life,” Sansa asks softly, curling her knees under her, poking at the fire before their mats with a stick.  

Jon sits on the ground beside her, arms hanging over his bent knees. He glances to her at her question.  

Sansa pokes at the fire again, eyes fixed to it, before noticing his silence. She turns to him. “Aren’t they?” Her mouth purses in confusion.  

Jon nods, his throat bobbing. “Aye, they are,” he gets out roughly.  

Sansa lowers the stick in her hand. “So...?”  

“So, I gave my life for the Watch,” he snaps in answer.  

Her shoulders tense at his tone, her knuckles going white along the stick in her hold. She faces the fire once more. “I’m sorry, if I touched a tender subject,” she says diplomatically.  

He recognizes this side of her now. The side that braces for a raised hand. And he hates that he has stirred this in her.  

Jon sighs heavily, wiping a hand down his face, and then he reaches into the grass beside him, pulling out a fistful of blades. He starts to pluck at them and toss them one by one into the fire. “You’ve nothing to be sorry for,” he grumbles out.  

Sansa remains quiet, resuming her cautious exploration of the fire.  

Jon throws another blade into the flames, a huff leaving him. “I’ll tell you someday, I promise. Just... not tonight.”  

“Alright,” she says gently, eyes still on the fire.  

Jon looks at her from the corner of his eye. “My men betrayed me,” he gets out finally.  

The burned end of the stick in Sansa’s grasp settles into the dirt as she drops her hand to her lap.  “They betrayed you? Why?” she asks, looking over at him.  Her brows furrow in question.  

Jon heaves a breath. “Because sometimes you just can’t change hate,” he says simply.  

And maybe it is that simple. Maybe it always has been. Maybe he’s just been too blind to see it.  

He isn’t strong enough to change a man’s hate. Or his fear.  

Maybe his real mistake was never understanding that.  

“You didn’t deserve that,” she says suddenly, a fierceness underlining her voice.  

Again, so simple.  

And yet, it makes him turn his head, makes him meet her gaze.  

She reaches out a hand and squeezes his fist reassuringly, before settling her hand back in her lap.  

She hasn’t a clue what their betrayal truly did to him. She hasn’t seen the scars. She hasn’t witnessed his cold body on a slab. And yet – simply – to hear those words –   

You didn’t deserve that .  

It makes the air catch in his throat.  

“Thank you, Sansa.”  

She smiles – hesitant and barely-there. But she smiles.  

A direwolf’s howl breaks the silence over them, coming from over the hills. Sansa starts, twisting back to look through the trees behind them, finding nothing in the darkness. “Is that...?”  

“Ghost,” Jon reassures her, tossing another blade of grass into the fire. “He’s keeping watch from a distance while we’re still this close to the main road. He’ll join us further north.”  

Sansa stays turned in her seat, gaze fixed to the darkness at their backs, her eyes slowly watering.  

The realization comes to him then, suddenly and sadly. He swallows tightly before he asks her, “What happened to Lady?”  

Because he knows. He knows. Only death could have separated them.  

Sansa purses her lips, her jaw tightening, and then she’s shuffling back to her previous position, tucking her legs underneath her with a downcast gaze. “Father killed her,” she clips out, a hand going to wipe the wetness from her eyes, as though it had never been.  

Jon’s shoulders slump at the revelation. He feels her loss keenly, like a piece of him has been torn away. He thinks of Ghost. Thinks of the terrible rending his death would cause in him, the ache, the tear, the missing of something that used to be of him. And then he thinks of their father.  

Jon clenches his hands into fists atop his knees. “Father... killed her?” he chokes out.  

Sansa nods. “As punishment for Nymeria attacking Joffrey, when Nymeria couldn’t be found.”  

“Oh,” he says, the breath shuddering from him. He wants to reach to her.  Doesn’t know how.  

Sansa tosses the stick into the fire. “I resented him so much for it, you know? I was so... so angry. And hurt. And I never felt safe again after that. And I couldn’t forgive him for it. And then I never got the chance to, anyway.”  

Jon stares at her, swallowing heavily.  

She sighs, hands winding nervously in her lap. “Because then he was dead. And I was forced to look at his head up on that pike, and I... I couldn’t...” She stops, her voice catching. She sniffs back the break, tries again. “I couldn’t forgive myself for missing the chance to tell him before he died – ” She sucks a sharp breath between her teeth, turning to face Jon, her eyes wide and salt-sheened. “That I forgave him, and that I loved him, and that I wasn’t angry with him anymore, that I – I just wanted him to come back, to take us from there. But I’ll never get that chance again. Because he’s gone, just like Lady, killed for a crime he never committed. He’s just... gone,” she exhales on a spent breath, pulling her lip between her teeth. And then she laughs, short and dark, a hand going to her eyes. “It’s so – so stupid,” she mutters.  

Jon turns fully to her, his knees folding beside him when he leans over and grabs for her wrist, gently tugging her hand from her face. “It’s not,” he tells her. “It’s not stupid.”  

She heaves a steadying breath, eyes still fixed on her lap, but they’re dry now at least.  

Jon rubs his thumb along the arch of her wrist. “And you didn’t deserve that,” he says meaningfully.  

Sansa looks up at him, brows pinched together when he repeats her words back at her. And then she laughs again, wipes at her nose with her free hand, straightens her shoulders. “Quite the pair we make, huh?”   

Her voice and face are still pained though, he sees this.  

But her wrist is warm beneath his touch, and she isn’t pulling from him.  

“Quite,” he agrees, the lilt of a smile gracing his face, his thumb etching over her pulse point again.  

She nods, licking her lips. “I’m glad it was you, Jon, who came for me.” She turns her hand over beneath his grasp and meets his palm with hers. Her fingers tighten over his. “I’m glad you’re here.”  

“So am I,” he says, the words instant along his tongue.  

And he means it, he finds. He means it with all of him.   * * *

Sansa hates rabbit meat, she discovers,  

Jon laughs at her when she makes a face at the skinned animal he turns over the fire.  

“It’s so chewy,” she bemoans later, grudgingly taking a bite of the thigh meat Jon offers her, hunger winning out over pickiness.  

“You need to eat,” he says firmly, though the hint of a smirk still rests at the corners of his mouth.  

She pouts at him.  

He only laughs harder.   * * *

He catches sight of the scar along the nape of her neck sometime in the next afternoon.  It takes him a while, his eyes usually trained ahead.  But then she sighs, a hand going to rub at her eyes.  She’s tired, he notices, and he looks at her for the first time that day, seated in front of him in the saddle.  Her hair is brushed over her shoulder, thin wisps of it escaping the partially pinned style.  There’s the slightest red tint over the tops of her ears and the back of her neck, a mark of the sun’s constant watch over their journey.  Her shoulders are slumped forward – thin and brittle.  The fabric of her dress is dulled and wrinkled over the expanse of her back.  And all this he expects until –   

The faint, white line etching out from beneath the collar of her dress, arching over the space where neck meets shoulder.  

He almost stops their horse at the sight.  

Instead, he simply stares, the steady rocking motion of the horse only increasing his focus.  Unbidden, his hand rises up to touch it, fingers dragging down the edge of her dress’ collar to bare the scar more fully to him.  

Something sharpens in his gut at the revelation it gives him.  The scar does not end.  It only stretches longer, harsher – unseen beneath the rest of her dress.  If he follows the path, he knows it will curve over her shoulder blade, down, and down – perhaps fading out along the backs of her ribs, or perhaps continuing on, to the curve of her waist, tapering off past her hip.  

His other hand tightens along the reins.  

Jon suddenly realizes she has stiffened in her seat, her shoulders bunching up.  Her breath has stilled.  

Jon eases the horse to a halt, the words dead along his tongue.  He stares at the haggard white strip of flesh at the base of her neck, his fingers still curled along the dress collar, tugged only partially down, his thumb arching tenderly over her scar.  

They stay like this for many moments, his eyes slowly watering, a heat behind them that seems finer than rage – more honed.  A slow, bitter wrath builds inside him.  

Sansa turns her head just slightly, not enough to catch his eyes, but enough for him to see the stiff purse of her lips.  

He lets out a heavy breath.  “What did they do to you?” he croaks out, surprising even himself with how the words manage to find air.  

She doesn’t answer at first, tongue flicking out to wet her lips.  She draws a slow, steady breath in – the first he’s felt from her since they’d stopped.  Her lids flutter closed.  “They did enough,” she tells him.  

He sucks a sharp breath between his teeth, his thumb pressing firmer along the nape of her neck.  

That fine-honed wrath – it narrows.  Becomes a pinprick focus.  

“Sansa,” he gets out raggedly, his hand releasing her collar, dragging over her neck instead, anchoring there at the edge of her shoulder.  He shakes with it – this righteous horror.  

And then she slips a hand over his, her fine-boned fingers delicate along his calloused ones.  

He blinks at the back of her head, the salt sting of tears lingering just at the corners of his eyes.  

She dips her head toward their joined hands along her shoulder, her lips a whisper away from his touch, her breath warming his knuckles.  “But they cannot anymore,” she tells him.  And then she glances further back, meets his eyes finally.  “Because of you.”  

Jon’s chest heaves, his hand in the reins settling closer now, just along her stomach.  

Her hand slips from over his, her shoulders unbunching as she faces forward once more.  There’s an ease to her frame now, a subtle freedom.  

As though she feels safe in his arms, pressed up against his chest.  

As though she knows:  

No other scars will follow.  

(And she’d be right – because this, he promises.)  

Jon clicks at the horse to continue, his heels pressing in short and quick.  They start moving again instantly.  

He keeps his eyes on the sliver of white flesh at her nape, and his hand pressed firm along her stomach, reins tangled in his fist.  

The weight of her against his chest is almost enough to quiet his wrath.  

But not quite.   * * *

“Is there a lake nearby? A river?” Sansa asks, eyes roving the land before them as they ride.  

“There’s a small river along our route but...” His voice trails off.  

Sansa glances back at him to find him looking north.   

He frowns. “Not for many miles, I think.” He looks down at her. “Why?”  

Sansa turns forward again, shifting in the saddle. She considers her words a moment, before answering. “I’d... like a bath,” she says finally, lip caught between her teeth.  

Jon chuckles behind her, his breath warm at the nape of her neck.  

She narrows her eyes. “And you could use one, too,” she quips.  

He coughs unexpectedly, the laugh petering out in his throat.  

She smiles to herself, unseen.  

They find water shortly before the sun sets, and Sansa climbs down from the horse eagerly, heading to the edge of the lake. She hesitates only momentarily, before the grime and dirt of the last several days overwhelms her, and after glancing back to make sure Jon has set camp far enough away from shore, she removes her travel dress and makes her way into the water.  

When she’s back at camp, as refreshed as she expects to be, clothed in the robe she fled King’s Landing in while her dress dries from washing along the tree branches, she catches the faint outline of Jon washing in the lake by twilight. It’s barely an outline of him, the high moon not yet full, and the lingering trail of the sun’s rays diminishing over the horizon rather quickly, but it’s enough.  

He’s become a man in the time she’s spent away from him. She realizes she should have known that by the beard that sometimes brushes her shoulder when they ride, and the rough, calloused hands that hold the reins at her waist, and the broad expanse of his shoulders that hold her weight when exhaustion overcomes her and she reluctantly leans back against him.  

But seeing him now, etched in twilight, far enough away to nearly be a mirage, she understands that the man who came for her is not the brother she said goodbye to all those years ago.  

He gave his life for the Watch, he’d said, and she still doesn’t know what that means, but she thinks she’s closer to the truth now, when she watches the curved line of his back peeking out from the water, when he turns, just slightly, and she can see the dark line of wounds or scars or... something along his chest.  

She’s closer to the truth when later that night, as they lay beside each other before the fire, and she glances over to him, he glances back without her ever needing to speak his name.   * * *

“How much longer?” she asks, shifting in the saddle, her thighs beginning to cramp.  

Jon grunts behind her in annoyance. “We’re almost there.”  

“That’s not an answer.”  

“You wouldn’t like the answer anyway,” he quips back.  

Sansa huffs, throwing a look over her shoulder at him.  

Jon rolls his eyes. “It’s almost a month from King’s Landing to Riverrun, and that’s just taking the main roads – which we’re not,” he explains.  

“I know,” she sighs.  

“Because we can’t risk you being spotted.”  

“I know.”  

Jon pulls the horse to a halt, peering at her over her shoulder. “It’s going to take longer if we keep stopping like this.”  

“I know, Jon,” she snaps turning in her seat before him as much as she can, her nose nearly bumping his. She stills at the sudden closeness.  

Jon pulls back just a touch, just enough to keep his gaze on hers.  

Her cheeks are pink, her mouth pursed tight.  

Jon licks his lips. “Are you tired?” he asks finally, his voice rough.  

Sansa’s eyes shift between his, her mouth opening and then closing. She turns away from him, facing forward once again. “I can weather it,” she manages, hands curling over the saddle horn.  

Jon stays staring at the back of her head. He sighs out. “If you’re tired...”  

“I’ll be fine,” she clips out.  

Jon frowns behind her.  

“I’ll not complain further,” she assures him, shoulders tight. A faint pink blush etches over the tops of her ears.  

Jon waits another moment to be certain of her, before urging the horse back into motion.  

She doesn’t speak for the remainder of the ride.   * * *

He notices something’s wrong when she becomes unusually quiet along the road the next day. He doesn’t comment on it, but keeps a steady eye on her. Her shoulders start slumping. There’s sweat along the back of her neck. Her hands grip the saddle horn tightly.  

“Sansa,” he says, never stopping their trot.  

“Hmm?” she answers, never looking back at him.  

“Are you alright?”  

She straightens somewhat. “I’m fine.”  

He watches her for many moments from his seat behind her, before stopping them without a word.  

She sighs, glancing back at him. “I’m fine,” she repeats, a censure to her words.  

But she’s not. And he knows this.  

Jon slips from the saddle, boots landing along the ground in a puff of dirt. “Come here,” he urges her, motioning her to get down from the saddle.  

She frowns down at him. “Honestly, Jon, I’m – ”  

“You’re not fine,” he clips out, hands going for her waist. “Come.”  

She reaches for his shoulders reluctantly, an admonishing glare sent his way. “Jon, it’s just – ”  

“You’re clammy,” he says, dragging her from the saddle, steadying her against his chest. “And weak. You’re not well.” He motions toward the fallen log beside their horse. “Come, sit. We’ll rest for a time.”  

Sansa grudgingly walks toward the log, a hand at her stomach, as Jon goes to tie the horse off along a nearby tree. When he turns back to her, he catches sight of the small patch of blood along the seat of her dress. He stills instantly.  

“Sansa,” he gets out on a croak.  

She settles along the log, arm wrapped around her middle, her shoulders hunched over. She looks up at him, a brow arched in question.  

He raises a finger to point dazedly. “You’re... bleeding.”  

Sansa gives him a perplexed look for a moment, before understanding passes over her features, and she nods quietly, eyes slipping closed as she wraps both arms around her stomach now. “My moon blood,” she says in explanation, a grimace accompanying it.  

Jon stays rooted to the spot, unsure of what to do to help.  

“Will you build a fire?” she asks then, glancing up at him. “Heat helps.”  

He moves into action immediately, starting the fire, and gathering blankets, settling them into their nightly routine well before they should have otherwise been doing so.  

The sun is still low over the trees when Sansa curls into a ball along the blankets, facing the fire, her eyes squeezed shut.  

Jon sits just behind her, setting the waterskin beside her, within reach. He leans back with a sigh, eyes roving her body. The words clog in his throat. “So, you’re...”  

Sansa opens her eyes, hands curling in the blanket wrapped around her. She looks over her shoulder at him. “I’m what?” she urges him.  

Jon wipes a hand over his mouth, suddenly regretting that he’s even begun this line of thinking, but it sits in his gut anyway, waiting for air. “You’re not with child, then,” he finishes finally, unable to meet her eyes.  

Sansa works her jaw, eyes shifting back to the fire. “My marriage to Tyrion was never consummated,” she tells him, the words clipped.  

He can’t smother the sigh of relief that escapes him at her words.  

She tugs the blanket closer.  

Jon reaches a hand to her shoulder. “I didn’t mean... I only meant to ask if...” His hand curls back, away from her shoulder.  

“You only meant to ask if I was still a threat to the North – if I carried a Lannister babe in my belly.”  

Jon sucks a sharp breath through his teeth. “Sansa, no, I – ”  

“You’ve nothing to worry about,” she bites out. “There may have been some... unwanted touches,” she manages through clenched teeth, her voice wavering, “But nothing more than that. I’m still a maiden, don’t worry. And not a threat to our family.”  

Jon shakes in his sudden wrath, unseen behind her. He rakes a hand through his hair, his chest heaving. “I’ll kill him,” he snarls lowly.  

Sansa stiffens at the sound, unable to look back at him.  

“I’ll kill him for even touching you,” he says vehemently.  

Sansa finally turns to look at him over her shoulder. Her eyes are wide and unblinking. Her mouth opens, closes, opens again. “Jon.”  

Her voice seems to bring him back, seems to dull the haze that’s overcome him. He hushes her, a hand at her shoulder, turning her back to the fire, a brittle silence settling between them. They stay like this for many moments before she turns again, voice catching in her throat, “Jon – ”   

But then he’s settling into the space at her back, winding an arm around her waist, bracing her back against his chest.  

Sansa swallows tightly, eyes blinking furiously against the firelight. “What are you...?” she gets out shakily.  

“You said heat helps,” he answers into her shoulder, burrowing closer.

He doesn’t question this need. Doesn’t question this instinct to quell her pain. He only holds her. Firm and unrelenting.  

He holds her.  

And she lets him.  

[wyngigi]

ꕀ LUST FOR LIFE ꕀ prologue

↳ sex money feelings die remastered .ᐟ cross posted on ao3

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“ they say only the good die young, that just ain't right 'cause we're having too much fun, too much fun tonight ”

↳ synopsis: a group of individuals find that their first taste of freedom in the world brings more obstacles than expected. some of them, find solace by drowning in liquor or in the backseat of somebody else’s car. a lot of them have got to get their shit together. a lot of them won't.

mdni » story contains nsfw content intended for 18+ audiences pairings » member specific, not listed for spoiler purposes ↳󠁪󠁪 ateez x female reader, ateez x ateez ↳ genre » coming of age ↳ word count » 1.7k ↳ general warnings » substance abuse & consumption, sexual content, morally grey characters, unreliable narrators, internalised homophobia, angst, basically every struggle young adolescence can go through

00⌇be the air i breathe

Currently, Wooyoung isn’t completely sure why he finds it suffocating to love.

He’s trying to figure it out, but too much is weighing on him right now to know for certain. Maybe it’s to do with how he’s making his way to a place he feels he’s no longer welcomed. He swears there’s ropes winding around his heart, tightening every time he takes a step forward.

Is it the vulnerability of handing your heart to another and granting them a look into the darkest parts of the mind?

Through the stained glass of the store, he spots you. In that moment he questions why he’s here again. It’s not like there’s some poster of him with a big cross slashed across his face, yet as he locks eyes with you there might as well be one.

Perhaps the simplicity of loving so hard the human body’s actions will never match it. The incapability of expression, not proving just how much he feels his soul integrated with another, for it to not be enough for them to stay. For him to just not be enough.

You both look at each other, neither making a move to acknowledge the other. He’s not expecting you to do anything, while he’s stood still in front of the opened sliding doors, you’re the one working behind the register attempting to control your breathing. It’s not that he scares you, yet the sheer sight of him after some time makes your breath hitch.

For him, love was intricate yet so simple, with no bounds, no limitations to its power. If you asked him, he would describe it as an emotion. However, he chooses to treat it as something tangible. Something he can reach out to, latching onto it with all his vigour until his knuckles whiten and his nails dig into his palms, blood drawing to the surface in crescents.

The doorbell rings while he takes his first step onto the cracked floors. His first step closer to you in a long time. The almost stale smell of the store hits him, cardboard boxes line the shelves, and he has to refrain himself from immediately offering to help you open them to put the products up.

He walks past the fridge doors, normally it would cool him down, yet the moment doesn’t allow that. An uncomfortable warmth floods his cheeks as he approaches you. He curses his body’s natural reaction to your presence. And god, is it overwhelming. He feels the tips of his ears redden, heating up and he sends a silent prayer that his hair is long enough to hide it.

“You shouldn’t be here,” you state. He knows there’s more to your words than that; a question hides behind them. Asking why he’s back; why it took so long. Now that he’s closer, he sees you avoiding his gaze, focused on your hands, picking at a painful looking hangnail. He understands that. For him, it’s that he feels if he looks at you for too long, his brain will want to hold onto you again. You’ll feel too real for him, too tangible.

“I know,” a heavy exhale escapes him before he continues, “Can I just get a-” You nod curtly, “I know,” cutting him off. He observes as you turn around swiftly to grab a pack of cigarettes off the shelves, the crinkle of the packaging feeling louder with the absence of customers. He’s not the only one who wants to avoid the reality of why he’s here after all this time.

It's the cruel ways of the universe is it not? To give humans an ability to warm another’s soul with their presence, taking pieces of each other’s heart for themselves. Thus, when the love weakens for one reason or another, becoming more distant and less fulfilling, his response will be to fight for it. Even when the love is already gone—and all left is the illusion of it.

As you place the box back onto the counter, you hold your hand out to him. This is where he tests to see how much you’ve forgiven him. They usually cost forty dollars total, so when he hands you that and sees you take change out of the register to return to him, he can’t help the small grin he breaks into. You’ve charged him the staff amount; he realises he can’t really stand here saying nothing any longer.

So, he decides to take his chance. As he reaches out to grab the change he asks you, with a small voice, “What time does your break start?” Before you’ve even answered him he adds on, “I’ll wait outside.”

He's the type that wants to pursue love, regardless of the cuts and grazes he’ll gain along the way. Because his heart wants to believe the pain of absence is worse than the pain of holding on fruitlessly. His brain knows better, understands that it’s not the truth. That even if the emptiness will stay with him for an uncertain amount of time, there is a chance for more. Yet, he decides to allow his heart to lead, to do what it does best, love.

“You didn’t have to use your discount on these for me you know,” he flips the lid of the box to grab two out, handing one to you. You hum in response, placing it between your lips while you pat down your pockets. Wooyoung grabs your jaw gently, making you face him as he lights the end of the stick with his lighter. It’s the same one he’s owned since the first time you met him. Even with the addition of some unfamiliar black and white stickers, you know it’s the same because of the messy carvings on the side. JWY with a plus sign, your initials following shortly after.

“I know,” you pause, inhaling before letting the smoke drift upwards, “you didn’t have to come back either, but you wanted to. So yeah, you got a discount.” You were always like that, letting your true thoughts reveal themselves in the words unspoken. He hated when you did it at first, now he understands you. He nods, allowing the quiet buzz of the streetlights to fill the silence between you two. You were thankful for that, unsure of what words would next leave your mouth.

He watched as you turned your body to face him, feet kicked up onto the bench while your knees were tucked to your chest. The cold air of the night nips at you, he knows from the way you rub your shoulders. He’s unsure if it’s too soon to offer his jumper to you, or worse, to try and close the gap between where you both sit.

Occasionally, he’d dig his shoe into the cracks of the bricked footpath or bounce his leg up and down. His feelings were always present in his body language, nervousness on display. You brought your arm up onto the bench’s backrest, head leaning on it while you picked at the paint chips that were lifting up, your other arm loosely wrapped around your shins.

Wooyoung grabbed his cigarette with two fingers, hand now resting on his thigh. Clearing his throat, he murmured softly, “Do you think people love too much sometimes?” As you registered his question, he rotated his body to face you. His eyes held a sorrow heaviness to them, pupils darting back and forth between yours. You shook your head softly, “Not possible. Love always has to be too much, some people just aren’t used to feeling of having so much given to them, that it becomes scary. If it’s not, then it simply couldn’t be love.”

He nods, eyes tracing over your uniform. He knew you despised blue, so he can tell you wouldn’t wear it if it wasn’t necessary. “Thought your boss didn’t make you wear that thing anymore?” You chuckled; a brief smile stretches across your face. “He doesn’t. Laundry machine’s broken again, and if you remember, the laundromat’s a little too far to walk.”

Right, he’s the one who would drive you whenever the damned machine would give up on you. He doesn’t fully grasp why you won’t get rid of it though; given that it’s let you down enough and he’s seen you have more than a few meltdowns over it.

Then again, the same—if not more—could be said for how he’s treated you over the last few years. And yet, here he is, consistently by your side. The thought provokes him to take another drag; a longer one. It burns his throat and lungs more than usual.

That night, as the two of you sit on that worn-out bench, he realises something. The thought comes to him as he notices you discard your cigarette butt to the ground, crushing it with your heel just to reach for the box again. You both did that, obviously. Every time one burns out, a new one takes its place.

Every time his own two feet lead him to the store, back to you, it’s him helping wind that damned rope around his heart. He’s aware of that now, yet he doesn’t leave you by yourself on that bench. Instead, he picks up the small box separating you two and brings his arm around you. Your body feels harshly cold against his. It shouldn’t be comfortable—it’s not—but he finds himself leaning into the feeling more.

As he brings the next cigarette to his lips, you hold his lighter up to the end of it. The flame waves around in front of him, making his face uncomfortably warm. As you both exhale, the smoke wraps around the two of you. It’s alright though, even if he can’t register if it’s you or the smoke suffocating him now. With just how much he relies on you, he would pray you don’t leave him, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t need to. He treats the smoke and the crisp winter air the same way you treat him as he stands like a lost puppy outside of your workplace. Uninvited, yet allowed in regardless. Without any real protest.

Wooyoung wonders if that’s the real problem. Not how suffocating love is, but when too much love no longer instils any fear in him.

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[allbark-no-bite]

i would’ve married you.

icemav x reader (wc. 2.4k)

summary: It had always been Maverick. It had been Maverick long before you met Ice and would continue to be Maverick until he took his last breath.

warnings: severe angst, mentions of cancer, vomiting, character death

authors note: for all of my followers, i know this isn’t something that i would usually post but i’m immensely proud of it. this is for all of my Icemav Topgun people out there

————————————————————————

You watch as he cinches his belt one, two, five times. But you didn't have to watch him dress to know how much weight he had lost. The gauntness of his cheekbones could have told you that. He could have told you that. But he doesn't. And neither of you talk about it.

He just trudges tiredly out of the bedroom, running a hand through his frosty hair as he passes through the door frame. It seemed as though out of all the loss you had expected to come along with chemo, both the tumor and his hair were insistent upon staying.

Tom had the kind of hair that one would expect a man aging into his thirties to have: still relatively thick, however dulling in color, and ever threatening to see it's final days. Except it had looked like this for the past ten years. So had you expected the chemo to finally push the bleach damaged strands over the edge? Yes. Were you surprised when it didn't? No.

Along with his steel cut jawline and the soft roundness that his high cheekbones had given his face, it worked for him. He seemed to be perpetually never aging, stuck between a spry young cadet and weathered admiral.

"Where are you going? You have an appointment today." You watch, unamused and arms crossed as he moves through the house, gathering his things.

"No, I have to go into the office today. I'm already behind on too much paperwork," he corrects, pouring himself a cup of coffee.

Tom has never been a coffee person, but these days he's totaling a minimum of two cups a day. That's not counting whatever he has while at work. It splashes onto the counter in his haste, but either he's moving too fluidly to notice or just doesn't care.

Normally his carelessness would have ticked you off, and you'd tell him off for the mess, tired of having to mother a grown man in his own home, but you're trying. Trying to be more gentle—be more patient. There is this tremendously guilty feeling that occurs when you yell at someone with cancer. Cancer. You hardly ever even say the word aloud.

It had started out as a persistent ear ache. Something he had chalked up to years of flying. He took antibiotics and that seemed to take care of the pain for a while. Then came the difficulty swallowing, followed by swollen lymph nodes, and finally the cough. It was the cough that he couldn't manage to shake.

"You can't keep missing treatments," you say, even though he knows. Sometimes you think it's worse that he's well versed about his condition. The first few weeks after finding out, he would come home, shower, and spend hours reading books that detailed symptoms and various treatments. Those hours bled into long anxious nights where the bedside lamp never turned off and neither of yourselves slept.

He knows what every symptom means; when it's good, when it's really bad.

Ice is already almost out the door, tugging on a coat that he snatched from god knows where, his combat boots shoved on haphazardly on his feet. His blonde hair is mushed from sleep, cowlicked on one side and only serving to add to his disheveled state. It's longer now, longer than it has been in a while. He'd always kept his hair cropped short in the time that you had known him, but now it was just long enough to stick out over his ears and brush the back of his neck.

"I agreed to do this shit as long as it didn't interfere with anything. It worked for a while but now I'm done. You knew the agreement."

The agreement. The agreement that you and Ice had settled on nearly ten months prior, back when he was just starting chemo—what seemed like a lifetime ago.

He hadn't wanted to undergo treatment. Hadn't wanted to endure the debilitating side effects that would come as a result. The doctors had given him a couple more years if he chose to do nothing. They'd make him 'comfortable' as they called it, and he could carry on with his duties until he couldn't. It was a guaranteed death sentence.

The chemo gave him a chance. You'd begged him to at least try. It was worth a try. Eventually he had given in under the condition that he would do the treatments until they started affecting his job. Your hope was that the chemo would stave off the disease long enough to buy him more time until then. At ten months, the tumor had shrunk in size, but Tom was feeling the effects of the radiation. He was nauseous more often than not and it was rare that he kept anything down. His joints stiffened and along with that came constant fatigue. The mouth sores were probably the worst development.

"That's not fair. You feel like crap because it's working," you argue, but it's like talking to a brick wall. He's not listening, tuning you out as he grabs his keys. He's been looking for an excuse to quit and it seemed as though he'd finally hit his breaking point. "If you skip again, everything so far will have been for nothing. You'll be right back where you started—"

His hand sliding off the doorknob, Ice turns to face you. He releases an exasperated sigh, fingers coming up to pinch the bridge of his nose. The crease between his brows seems to have become permanent these days. "The stupid appointment will be here when I get back. You will be here when I get back. My career, this opportunity, will not."

"You don't mean that," you whisper, fighting the tightening of your throat, but you don't even believe yourself when you say it.

For a fraction of a second, he at least has the decency to look guilty. Ice pauses in the doorway, his mouth opening then closing as he decides against whatever he was going to say.

"Tom...," you begin to please with him, your voice cracking, but the front door had already slammed shut.

A text comes from Slider later that day.

You need to come get him.

Had you received such a text twelve months ago, you would have assumed that Tom was being an intolerable ass and that the team was at their wits' end with him. These days he hardly even has enough energy to walk from his desk to the door, let alone raise any sort of hell like he used to.

It seems foolish to miss that kind of thing, but you do. You all miss the normalcy of it.

When you make it to the base, it is buzzing with life. The tarmac is lined with rows of aircraft and men, both returning and awaiting takeoff. Given today was the first day for new recruits, it wasn't unusual for things to be so chaotic. You find Viper behind his desk as usual, phone pressed to his ear. Upon spotting you, he covers the receiver and mouths 'bathroom'.

You find him in the one behind the showers in the locker room. He's braced over the sink, heaving. Maverick is there. Maverick is always there.

The brunette pilot is standing beside Ice, a hand on his back to steady him as he retches. Maverick's leant over, murmuring something into his ear, only taking note of you standing in the doorway as he straightens. He nods in greeting to you just slightly, a grim look in his green eyes.

You'd long ago become accustomed to the idea that Ice was not purely yours. The navy owned him first and foremost. That was sworn in oath and inarguable. But anything after that became a little less clear. There was Maverick, and then there was you.

But you knew that.

When you had first met Ice on a night out at the bar, you were completely and hopelessly swooned by his charm, convinced that you'd just met the love of your life. And then you met Maverick and realized that was never going to be true.

It had always been Maverick. It had been Maverick long before you met Ice and would continue to be Maverick until he took his last breath.

Knowing first hand that Tom doesn't like being crowded when he's like this, you wait until he straightens before making your presence known behind him. He doesn't even flinch at the feel of your hand on his back, and you take that as a bad sign. Usually he'd bristle defensively, snap at you that he could handle it on his own. You know his anger comes from a place of fear—fear of being vulnerable, fear of dying.

His face is pale and tired looking, even more so than usual. You press the back of your palm to his forehead but find that he's not unusually warm, which is good. His flushed cheeks and watery eyes must be from gagging.

Maverick now stands a few paces away, hands clasped together behind his back. He's always kept his distance when you were around, held back by not only his respect for you but the laws of the navy. One wrong move at the wrong place at the wrong time would have himself and Ice dishonorably discharged. Their careers would amount to nothing.

If it hadn’t been for DADT, you don’t think Tom would have chosen you. Had the government allowed it, he would have put an engagement ring on Pete’s finger instead of yours. You probably wouldn’t even be a part of his life. And you carry around a lot of guilt because of that. It’s been one of the most selfish things you’ve ever done, agreeing to marry Tom. But at the same time there’s a part of you that doesn’t feel guilty at all because at least that it meant you got to spend your life with him.

Tom was the love of your life, but you weren’t his. Tom loved you, he genuinely did, but he wasn’t in love with you. That was reserved for Maverick.

Tom sucks in a ragged breath, one that hurts your own chest, and a fit of coughing follows it You’re afraid you’re going to hear that cough and it’s painful sharpness for years to come, but what you’re even more afraid of is the day you don’t. You swallow the knot in your throat and pet a hand through Tom’s hair, tenderly brushing it away from his eyes.

The reality of the situation is beginning to hit you, and there’s little you can do to keep the tears from your eyes. Once he stops chemo, there’s no telling how much more time he has left. It could be a couple weeks or it could be years, but regardless, he’s done fighting.

“Pete,” you begin, your throat tight. The brunette pilot’s eyes shoot towards you, his eyes reflecting a look of surprise.

In all of the years that you had known him, he has always been Maverick to you, maybe even Mav on the rare occasion, but never Pete. That had been your way of distancing yourself from him, the man who your fiancé so fondly referred to as his wingman. It was hard to look at Maverick as a friend and at the same time, your fiancé’s lover.

“Pete, take him home, would you?” You ask, finally able to get your words out again.

Maybe he’s not sure if he’s hearing you correctly or he’s just genuinely confused, but Maverick tilts his head, his green eyes lit with confusion. “I don’t—”

Tom’s eyebrows furrow, mimicking an expression similar to his wingman’s when you slip off the engagement ring on your finger and enclose it in his palm. “(Y/n), what are you doing?”

With your heart in your throat, you engulf Tom in a hug. From a combination of him not expecting it and his considerably lighter frame, he has to shuffle a few steps back to accommodate for your sudden weight. Once recovered, his arms tighten around you. The weight of his embrace is overwhelmingly familiar, and it doesn’t hit you until now how much you’re going to miss it. You snuggle your face into the crook of his neck and breathe him in like how you used to when you first started dating.

You hear him struggling to swallow, but eventually he finds his voice. “I would have married you,” he says, his voice sounding full of regret. What he means is, even if it wasn’t exactly what he wanted, even though he wished things could have been different, he would have still walked down the isle and said ‘I love you’ and meant it. He would have loved you regardless.

Tears streaming down your cheeks, you pull away just enough to see his face. “I know, Tom. I know you would’ve.”

And as much as it breaks you to release him, you step away from him for one final goodbye. Turning towards the man standing a few feet away, you open your arms for him, crushing Maverick in an embrace. “Take care of him, okay?” you manage, your words muffled by the leather of his bomber jacket.

“Of course ,” he promises.

“I know you will. You always have.”

——

Six months later, you get a phone call from Maverick. Tom had passed in his sleep last night. The call was brief, Maverick could barley get his words out, but he just wanted to let you know before the navy contacted you. They do around noon that day and you help make arrangements for the funeral.

With Tom being an admiral, they make it into a whole production, something he would have hated but secretly been proud of. It a very emotional day, hearing the fighter jets fly by and seeing all of yours and Tom’s friends.

You intend to slip in and out, but as you’re leaving, Maverick catches your eye in all of the chaos. It’s good to see him. He looks to be holding up okay despite the situation. There’s a gold band on his ring finger that wasn’t there before. The sight tugs at your heart a bit because you want to know how long they got to be married, if they went to the courthouse or if they had a ceremony on the beach like Tom had always wanted.

That’s the thing about love.

Even if it wasn’t you and Tom in the end, you still loved him, probably always will love him.

And that was fine.

All the love you had to give was his to keep anyways.

[ugh-yoongi]

Jewel, I know your requests are closed but I desperately need to hear your thoughts on who in BTS would do this: https://www.tumblr.com/writing-prompt-s/739417828719034368/you-a-powerful-demoness-have-just-been-summoned

and why is it Namjoon (the potential for crack with this 148 IQ man who is also way more innocent than we think acc to one park jimin just takes me out)

i'm so sorry it took me so long to finish and post this but thank you so much for sending it bc i have been cackling about this scenario ever since.

the prompt: you, a powerful demoness, have just been summoned to earth. this man, this human, wants you to pretend to be his girlfriend for a few days so his parents will get off his back about it.

the gang summons a demon

pairing: namjoon x f. reader genre: supernatural au; crack warnings: reader is a demon and engages in demon behavior, swearing, namjoon makes mention of not being straight, heteronormative parental expectations, jk learns about arcane things on tumblr (which is not an original idea; i read a fic ages ago where taekook are tumblr witches but i cannot find it, so credit to that author or whoever came up with it first), unedited so any mistakes are mine. rating: e for everyone wordcount: 2k

It’s been years since you’ve been to Earth—even longer since you’ve been to South Korea.

“I haven’t been here since 1910,” you say, staring at the gobsmacked man across from you. He’s tall, with tanned skin and a bleached buzz cut; a smattering of tattoos dotting his toned arms—whites and rich hues of blue, imitations of some kind of ceramic art, you think; a golden hoop through his nose; cheeks with dimples so deep you’re sure they’ll crater. “People here definitely didn’t look like you back then, so I’m going to assume we’re pretty far into the future.”

“It’s 2024,” he answers, seemingly still a little dazed. He’s staring at you with wide eyes, jaw dropped. Normally it’s nice to be looked at like that, with all the reverence and awe you deserve, but Earth is not your favorite place to be. Doesn’t even crack the top fifty, if you’re being honest. “Did you say 1910? As in the beginning of the—”

You sigh. “Uh-huh. Hey, if you wouldn’t mind hurrying this up, I’ve got things to do.” The man continues staring. Could be a trick of the light, but you think he’s turning paler by the second.

Minutes tick by. Nothing but silence.

“Are you even listening to me?” you snarl, quickly losing patience you were never given. “I said I’ve got shit to do. My schedule’s booked solid for the next eight centuries, so I really don’t have time to be dilly-dallying in mundane human affairs. Your problems are always so boring.”

More silence.

Which is irksome, sure, but what’s worse is this stupid fucking circle you’re trapped in. Drawn crudely on the floor of (seemingly) this human man’s actual apartment, which would’ve told you all you’d needed to know, if you’d taken ten seconds to take in your surroundings upon first being summoned. This place has got books stacked floor to ceiling in every available inch of space, but you’re certain this person is a fucking idiot.

“Hello?”

The man shakes his head. “Oh, sorry, I just—I’m Namjoon? Kim Namjoon.”

“I don’t care.”

“Right, right.” He sucks in a deep breath. “Well, you’re probably wondering why I summoned you here today”—you roll your eyes—“and, uh.” Namjoon scratches at the back of his neck, anxiety oozing from every pore on his body. Definitely paler. “I am too, to be honest.”

“You what—”

“I didn’t mean to!” Namjoon hurriedly adds, all of that anxiety shifting quickly into pure panic. “It’s just—it was a joke! Mostly! Jeongguk said it as a joke, because everything he says is a joke, and I should’ve known that, but—I don’t know! I’ve tried everything else, and the longer its gone on the more desperate I’ve become, and suddenly what Jeongguk said as a joke didn’t sound so much like a joke anymore! I’m sorry! I didn’t think it’d actually work!”

It takes your brain a minute to translate and decipher the useless slush that just came out of his mouth, but when it does… oh, when it does, you feel absolutely murderous. “You summoned me as a joke?”

Namjoon must see it, too. There’s no way you’re looking cool, calm, and collected right now, because you’ve seen the faces of others that have witnessed your wrath, and they were almost always on the brink of (if not outright) shitting their pants. This stupid, clueless human in front of you doesn’t appear to be faring much better.

So you continue, just to watch him squirm. “Do you have any idea who I am?”

“Um,” comes his brilliant response. “Yes?”

“And who am I?”

He holds up his pointer finger and digs through the back pocket of his jeans. Pulls out a crumbled scrap of paper, nearly soiled from ass sweat and time, and his eyes squint as he tries to read it. “I—well, it’s probably not an accurate translation, you know, since—”

“What does that piece of parchment say, Kim Namjoon?”

“Nothing,” he lies. “I can’t read it anyway, so… a-haaa…”

Patience officially worn thin, you snap your fingers, delighting in the startled shriek that escapes him as the paper goes up in a plume of smoke. “I am going to give you one chance to be honest with me,” you explain slowly, leveling him with a look. “Who do you think I am, and why am I here?”

Namjoon pales further. Looks like he’s trying to melt right through the floor into a puddle of useless slush, and you’d be more than willing to speed up the process if it weren’t for this god forsaken demon trap.

“Can I—can I sit down for this?”

Kim Namjoon, you learn, has a friend named Jeon Jeongguk.

Jeon Jeongguk, you also come to learn, has learned magic from a website called Tumblr.

“There, uh. There are definitely blogs for that sort of thing,” Namjoon explains, tattooed fingers scratching at the back of his neck. He takes a very quick glance at you. “Clearly not very accurate ones.”

You hum. “That’s the only smart thing I’ve heard you say since I showed up in this shithole.”

Namjoon gawks. “Hey, my apartment isn’t a shithole! It’s the best I could afford, alright? There was just an article in The Business Times about how archaic of a system jeonse is—”

“Uh-huh. And this… website?”

Namjoon goes red. Coughs into his fist. “Oh, right, yeah. I’m gonna be honest with you—”

“I already said that—”

“—my parents are coming to visit from Ilsan in a few days and I need a girlfriend.”

You blink. Once, twice, three times. Long enough to replace the rug that had been pulled from under you, because you’re pretty sure you heard this human man allude to having summoned you so you can pretend to be his girlfriend.

All things considered, you’re impressed by how calm you are. This is not a trait most demons have, you especially, and it makes you nostalgic for the days you used to rip men apart limb by limb for less.

“Are you insane?” you ask simply.

“In my defense,” he explains around a wince, “Jeongguk said it was a love spell.”

“A love spell.” Namjoon nods. “And you wound up summoning a demon.”

“It… appears I may have done that, yes.”

“And you want a demon to meet your parents?”

“I mean… when in Rome, right?”

“I’ve committed at least four-hundred and sixty-seven separate atrocities there, so no, probably not when in Rome.”

Namjoon’s jaw drops. He tucks his knees closer to his chest. “Christ, that’s a lot. How did you have the time?”

“I’m immortal,” you deadpan.

“Right, right. Anyway, to answer your question: yes.”

Your eyes narrow. “How bad are your parents that you’d want me to meet them?”

“They’re fine, mostly. I just… am not what they expected in a son? Like, I have the hair and the tattoos and I dropped out of my engineering program in university to pursue art and poetry, so the least I could do is find a wife and settle down and give them grandchildren, but I don’t even know if I want to ever settle down. I’m also not… heterosexual? Entirely? Do you see that a lot—”

You sigh. “Misconception. Not to launch you into some kind of existential crisis, but the gods really don’t give a shit who you humans sleep with.”

“Gods? As in plural?” You snap your fingers. Namjoon’s fingers immediately go to his temples. “Damn, I have a really bad migraine all of a sudden.”

“Yeah, that was me.”

“What’d you do?”

“Made you forget something.”

“Oh. What’d I forget?” It takes a second. “Oh, right, yeah. Um. What was the last thing I said?”

“Your parents wanted you to be an engineer and have a ton of kids but you like art and also not-women, sometimes.”

He flushes again. “I—yes.”

You sigh, arms crossed over your chest. All you want to do is sit down, or open a window. This apartment smells far too strongly of patchouli. “Look, I haven’t been to this place in a long time, but surely you aren’t undesirable by your society’s standards.”

“Are you saying I’m attractive?”

You scowl. “No. I’m saying there had to have been easier ways of doing this, and also can you open a window?”

“It’s February.”

“That means nothing to me.”

“It’s really cold outside.”

“I’m literally from Hell. Go put on a sweater, then.”

With a roll of his eyes, Namjoon stands and moves to the window. Cracks it open a millimeter, just enough for the cold to seep in, before he’s stalking off toward—you’re assuming—his bedroom. You think he’s shoving a garment over his head when he calls out, “You know, you’re really fucking bossy for someone stuck in a trap.”

You vow to kill him as soon as you’re free.

It isn’t often you’re held hostage.

Usually you can spot a trick coming a thousand miles away, but since Namjoon hadn’t meant to summon you at all, you’d been caught unawares. Doomed to be stuck in a demon trap, just like he’d said, which meant you didn’t have a ton of bargaining power.

At least that’s what you’re telling yourself, because as you sit across from Namjoon’s parents at some fancy restaurant, you aren’t convinced he isn’t a crossroads demon himself.

“So,” his mother begins, turning her attention to you, “what do you do for work?”

Namjoon elbows you beneath the table, giving you a silent warning to stick to the script. You’re only here under threat of force—because Jeongguk had stopped by Namjoon’s apartment, saw you in the summoning circle, and nearly fainted before going back to Tumblr to find a binding spell.

Except that one wasn’t great, either, because it only bound you and Namjoon together for three days instead of forever. And, as penance for all the chaos you’ve sown across the universe, Namjoon’s parents’ visit fell within that time frame, so here you are.

Out to dinner. With humans.

You’re pretending to be someone’s girlfriend.

You’re in for the most embarrassing ribbing of your existence once you’re home.

“I work with idols,” you respond, as convincingly as possible, because Namjoon had thought it’d be really funny. Get it? he’d said. Like false idols? You hadn’t laughed. “It’s very secretive, of course, but—”

You don’t finish your thought, because Namjoon’s mother looks delighted: face lit up with mirth, smile blinding, eyes half-lidded under the weight of her happiness. “Oh, how exciting! Has he told you he used to do performances to old H.O.T songs? Namjoonie, what was that one song you liked—”

“Eomma, please—”

“Wasn’t it ‘Candy’?” Namjoon’s dad offers from behind his menu. It’s the first thing he’s said all evening.

Namjoon whimpers, foregoing all social decorum and lectures on posture to sink further in his chair.

You do not, under any circumstances, feel a hint of fondness.

(Which dissipates not even twenty-four hours later.

“The blog was deleted,” Jeongguk says, eyes wide as saucers. “I—the blog is gone, I don’t know how to—”

“What do you mean the blog is gone?” The poor kid is overcome with panic and fear, tries to stutter out a response that makes no sense to you at all through his sobs. “Jeon Jeongguk, what do you mean the blog is gone?”

“I—it’s—I had it bookmarked, I swear! Once the binding spell wore off I was gonna send it to Namjoon hyung so he could send you back, but the blog is gone so the post is gone, too. I don’t—what do I even search for—oh my god, please don’t kill me, I think I’m having a panic attack, I’m gonna—”

And then this human man vomits all over your feet. Namjoon sighs as he goes to fetch a bucket, and you think it’ll be a miracle if any of these people—yourself included—live to see the end of the week.)

[beaft]

First of all fuck everyone who tells you, you just need to open your eyes to the beauty around you. These are the kind of people who have no idea what you are going through and you should acknowledge and understand that. They may mean no harm but it's an ignorant thing to say. It's up to you if you think it's worthwhile to educate them.

The first time I was very depressed was when I was 16. I loved to be outdoors, loved nature, loved to bike, to run, ride my horse. And then I didn't. The most devastating thing was that once i managed to go outside, I didn't even feel the sun's warmth anymore. I was constantly feeling cold.

That's what depression does. You won't find joy in your daily rituals, hobbys or any mundane every day things anymore.

I don't know where you are on your journey but my internal reaction to every little failure or just unnecessary deadlines or expectations I put on myself was to just go and kill myself or I hate myself.

I saw a post on here ages ago that said, you should switch hate with love whenever you're having these kinda thoughts. So whenever you think, I hate myself, go and correct yourself and tell yourself I love myself. It took me such a long time to adapt to this but I can tell you it's worth it and it did wonders to my mental health.

I'm at a point that I repeated this so much that whenever I feel bad about myself for nothing/I'm just overreacting I instantly think that I love myself. It may seem like such a small thing but it really helped me to not fall any deeper into depression. The way you talk to and about yourself matters.

Are you on medication/in therapy or is there any way you could work towards these things?

Take care and remember:

This hole is not your grave.

the trouble is, some of the people saying this shit do know what i'm going through. if it was just kale-eating, motivational-video-watching yoga mums telling me this stuff, i wouldn't care. but often it's other people who have had similar mental health struggles informing me that i should go outside and look at birds more often, because that's what helped them, and it's like:

being told "you should do this thing because it cured me" is frankly a really backhanded remark, because chances are i've tried it and it didn't do anything, which just makes me feel like even more of a hopeless case. positive self-talk is something i am trying to get better at. i am also going to try meditation, although we'll have to see how my ADHD feels about that.

i was in therapy last year, but i quit because my therapist was a complete hack (i've had enough therapists to know when they're helping, and this person was - i say this charitably - beyond useless). i'm on meds that allow me to function but don't really help my mood. on the surface, i am certainly better than i used to be; i no longer self-harm, i eat normally, i can hold down a job. every time my brain shoots me a "you're unlovable" or "you should kill yourself" i hit it with a hammer like i'm playing whack-a-mole. but some days it feels like i'm just going through the motions of improving, play-acting a mentally healthy person. i might look like i'm doing all right, but the lion in my living room is here to stay.

thank you for your words.

[eddiemunsonswhxre]

where have i been?

an update for those curious.

hey there my loves, long time no see.

i’m not sure how many of you will actually read this or care to see why i haven’t written in over a year now but typing this stuff out helps me process and get back into my groove.

well, today is january 16, 2024. the last thing i posted that was an actual one shot was posted on january 3, 2023. i haven’t written since. 2023 was my worst year yet and caused me to learn a lot about people and myself.

things were going alright in the beginning, i was in my second semester of college and my biggest problem was 2 of my 3 roommates (lived in a quad) hated each other so me and my bestie/3rd roommate had to play mediator and it was exhausting. i started liking a guy and got my hopes up. and i started to get more and more annoyed with school and my living situation every day. i was ecstatic to move out of that room despite hating my hometown. the day of move out, one of my roommates who i thought was someone very close to me blocked me and all of our friends on everything with no explanation but we knew she wasn’t coming back for 23-24.

i like where i grew up for a maximum of a week at a time, after that my depression just kicks my ass and im not having a great time. my plan for the summer was to work my ass off so much so that i wouldn’t have time to think of anything else. that backfired, because a few days after i came home one of my two jobs fell through unexpectedly and my other job was giving me less than half the hours they promised me. i was broke. everyone says it’s so easy to get a job these days because everyone is hiring but i applied to over ten places within a reasonable distance from me and didn’t get a single one. so i spent too much time with myself and that’s not normally a good thing.

to make matters even worse, in june my mom was sentenced to three years in prison for a crime she committed back in 2020. i don’t want to get into too many specifics, but my mom would never harm anyone she just has struggled with addiction. my mom was my constant emotional support, and knowing she was no longer going to be around ripped me to shreds. not even a month later after my mom was shipped off to prison, my dog died. and i know you might think “dogs die all the time it’s a pet.” but my dog was much more than that. she wasn’t even three years old and was a beautiful great pyrenees german shepard mix and she was the sweetest girl ever. i don’t care how ridiculous it sounds, because i know my soul and hers were meant to be together. i was even in the process of registering her as an emotional support animal so i could take her to college with me because she was finally old enough and for the most part out of the puppy phase. but one night out of nowhere she got really sick and within an hour of her showing signs something was wrong she died while i was holding her. not the greatest thing for a 19 year old who’s already struggling to experience. it took my over a month to stop seeing her like that every time i closed my eyes. call me dramatic, but that dog really was a child to me.

after that, i went to stay with my cousin for a few weeks and that was nice but i still knew i wasn’t feeling right. i moved back to school in august and had way too high of hopes that everything would fix itself. surprise, it didn’t. in fact, i just got worse. i reached lows i haven’t hit in over two years. i was having roommate problems, i was trying to do way too much at once, and i was neglecting my health. i had a breakdown.

the highlight of my semester was taking a week off to visit my best friend since age 2 for her birthday (she lives roughly a 2 hour plane ride away from me now) with our other two best friends. then i came back and immediately totaled my car. my car was a piece of shit yes, but it got me places. not having a car when you’re a person who drives around to destress is not fun. i was even worse mentally at this point and i was trying so so hard to get into my overbooked doctor to get my medications raised. the only constant i had were my three friends at school and my studies. so i threw myself into them. i was never alone and if i was i was nose deep in a text book. i was just avoiding the rest of my existence. i was able to get my meds upped and decided i was done wallowing. i started a diet that is actually manageable and enjoyable and discovered for the first time workouts that i actually liked doing. it was something small, but i knew i was turning myself around.

i went home for winter break knowing it was going to be tough. i also had to spend this time looking for a new car. it was an extremely stressful process to say the least. but i focused on myself, taking all the time for myself that i needed and processing everything that had made me get to such a bad place. i’ve always been very spiritual, so i dove more into that as well as trusting the universe.

i’ve decided that 2024 will be my best year yet. i got a new car, im getting a new job, im doing great in school, my mom is getting released from prison literally six hours after i post this, and im taking care of myself in more ways than one. while doing a lot of that reflecting, i remembered how much i used to love to write and how that passion just died after loving it since i was ten. i started small, doing short story exercises and getting into reading again. i finally, after an entire year, have my passion for writing back.

i can’t promise i’ll be consistent with uploads because i’ve decided that my goal for the year is to write a novel. so that project is going to be my main focus and it isn’t anything fanfic related, it’s actually a psychological thriller. more than likely i will be asking for opinions on here throughout the year as well.

with that said, my plans this year for this blog are to keep posting. eddie munson is mainly who i write for, but i want to expand my horizons. i want to challenge myself with genres and types of characters. i will greatly appreciate any requests you can give and i promise i will read through them. if i don’t post them right away, just know it may come out three months later. sometimes inspiration sparks at weird times.

if you’ve read this far, thank you. i hope this can inspire you to see that there’s light at the end of the tunnel but sometimes you’ve gotta dig the extra dirt to it yourself. beyond thankful to anyone who was here a year ago and has come back to read my new stuff- you made an aspiring writer really proud of herself.

much much love

-eddiemunsonswhxre 🤍

[firerose18991]

Learning Curves

Summary: Nothing can convince me Luffy wouldn't be a s*x addict if he wasn't a virgin.

Wrdcnt: 943

Minors DNI (AGE IN BIO!!!)

Like the two of you started one drunk night on the ship when you dragged him back to the girls room while the rest of the crew partied.  He sat there confused when you started peeling off your shirt in front of him.  

"Woah" He hiccuped as your tits bounced out in front of him.

You put his hands to your chest and pulled his lips to yours.  He was an awkward kisser but took a liking to sucking your lower lip and pinching your nipples.  The little sighs you let out each time encouraged him to continue.  Your hand cupped his crotch and he stiffened up.

You laid down and quickly shimmied out of your panties and invited him in with your open legs.

"Luffy…pants?" You looked up at him from the bed.

The warmth from the drinks and desire left you flushed and gasping below him.  Luffy got the message and tugged his shorts down to his knees and dove into you.

When he entered you he started slow.  Normally he only felt this sensitive when he was thrown in water but he knew there was something he was chasing from this feeling.  He pumped into you at a moderate pace still getting used to the feeling.

The two of you filled the room with pants, groans, sighs and squelches of pleasure.  

"Oh shit…" He panted in your ear as he got close.

You pussy squeezed him more and more as you neared your orgasm.

As he released you met your release.  He fell down on top of your huffing and promptly fell asleep where he laid.

From then on he'd sneak away with you any chance he could.  Post fighting, in between islands, even when hiding from enemy fire.  The man was sick.  More and more the sex became about him getting off, he'd get rougher with you, he'd leave you high and dry and just pick up his shorts and head back to the crew.

When the two of you weren't intimate you were just another crew member.  A large part of you was starting to regret pulling him into your room that night.

So the next time Luffy approached you on the deck you were indifferent.  He held your hips from behind and gave them a firm squeeze, this had become your signal over the past few weeks.

"Hey Luffy" you turned to him with an ambivalent expression.

You started walking past him to the cabins.  He followed looking over your shoulders.  He was a bit confused as you're never this plain about it, he had expected he would've needed to poke at you for a few minutes before you dragged him away from prying eyes.

You got to the room and shut the creaky wooden door behind the two of you. You walked over to the bed and unbuttoned the top of your dress and pulled up the rest up your waist.  Once again you opened your legs for him, though a bit disinterested.  He stared at you from the door across the cabin.

"Well?" You looked at him still stuck in the doorway."I promised Sanji I'd help with cleaning from lunch so you need to hurry."

"Are you tired?"

"Yeah something like that." You turn your head to the ceiling and wait.

You felt the bed shift as Luffy climbed onto the opposite corner.  His fingers trailed up your inner thigh.  

"How come you don't do it like the first time anymore?"

"What?" You said harshly

"Well, the first time you jumped me it was fun.  Why can't we do it like that?"

"Because it's not as good as the first time" You rolled your eyes.

"Yeah it is."

"I don't feel as good as the first time."

"Why?"

You snapped "Because you're bad at making me feel good."

"Just make yourself feel good, that's what you did the first time."

Then it dawned on you just how stupid your captain is.  And also how stupid you've been.  You looked out the window to confirm that you were nowhere near land and walked over to lock the cabin door.

"This is gonna take longer than normal Captain." You walked back to the cot and tied your twists into a high ponytail.  Sanji wouldn't mind if you were a bit late.

"Works for me" he smirked.

  One thing your sex life severely lacked was foreplay and your captain needed to be brought up to speed accordingly.

"Fuck right there." You gasped as Luffy curled his strong fingers into you.

Once you had given him a goal he pursued it as mercilessly as everything else.  He pumped his fingers rapidly into your soft core precisely hitting the same spot.  Your juices sloshed loudly onto his hand and dripped down his arm to the bed.

"Okay mmm~ Luffy.  It's Good" you huffed trying to keep your composure.  "You can put it in."

He removed his fingers and quickly replaced them with his dick.  Now he finally realized what he was missing out on.  Your warm gooey walls embracing him as he trusted , chasing his release.  He folded you up to get as deep as possible.  You were babbling some nonsense about him being too deep but came all over him the next minute.

Luffy continued to thrust roughly, slamming himself into you with tough slaps until he came himself.

As you were cleaning up moments later the bruising of your hips almost made you regret enjoying your time with him.

~Fire rose

[athenasdragon]

2024 Writing Roundup

Tagged by @lykegenia! Thank you! <3

words posted: 11,588

additional words written: about 2k of the next two chapters of my current fic

grand total of words: about 14k

fandoms: BG3 and Dragon Age (Origins and Veilguard)

highest kudos: currently 110 on Five Times Lucanis Got Some Sleep, a Rookanis wip covering five unseen nights during the events of Veilguard

highest hit oneshot: Lemon Meringue, a series of scenes where I tried to parse my (and my paladin's) complicated feelings about the Gale romance

new things I tried: I thought Lemon Meringue was going to be multiple chapters, so normally I would have posted as I went. Instead I wrote the whole thing first, realized it would be better as a oneshot, and did several passes of editing. So basically just writing a lot more before posting!

fic I spent the most time on: Lemon Meringue took me a really long time proportional to its length, partially due to editing and partially due to me trying to wrap my head around the characters

fic I spent the least time on: even though it's longer than the other two things I posted, the first two chapters of Five Nights have just flowed super easily.

favorite thing I wrote: I'm just generally very pleased with In Death, Sacrifice, a oneshot where Alistair and my Cousland encounter Duncan's ghost in the ruins of Ostagar

At last she caught up with him. He was crouched behind the low remains of a wall, the firelight reflecting on his awestruck expression and the tears which ran down his face. “What is it?” Gwen whispered, apprehension gripping her, as she knelt beside him. Alistair did not answer—but he did not need to. He was looking at the fire where Duncan had kept watch. They had lingered by the site earlier in daylight, commenting despairingly at how the darkspawn had scattered the pyre and defiled the space with their presence. But now, the fire stood tall and proud as it had months before. Pale flames licked the sky as they devoured their unseen fuel. Before the fire paced a smudged and translucent figure, one hand resting on the hilt of its sword and the other swinging in a piercingly familiar gesture. “Duncan,” Gwen whispered hoarsely.

favorite things I've read: mostly because of the many excellent games I played this year, I did get back into reading after not reading much fic for a while! Just a few I bookmarked:

Rosemary and Citrus by @lykegenia/@laurelsofhighever is an outstanding slow-burn Rookanis fic with another Fereldan elf Thorne Rook who delights me

The Velvet Dagger by MissMontifaye is a Rookanis fic with established Rook/Viago (and hinted upcoming Rook/Lucanis/Davrin) that is uhhhhhh one of the hottest things I've ever read. Of anything. Ever. Holy shit.

I also played Disco Elysium this year and had a lot of fun checking out what folks were doing with that on AO3. we sleep under the moon by any_open_eye uses the game's unique writing style SO well and is such a prime example of smut as character study.

writing goals for 2025: my fucking dissertation lol. No, to just keep doing it when I feel like it! I never want writing to feel like a chore, so I really do just try to do it when I want. I'd like to write some more things for Veilguard, including that in-depth review, and also catch back up with Gwen Cousland (both filling in the time between Origins and Inquisition and filling out what she's up to during Veilguard). In terms of non-fanfic stuff, I just received a round of poetry rejections so it's time to do some revisions and submit again.

new works: Five Times Lucanis Got Some Sleep

Tagging for anyone who wants to do it! I'll also add @bbcphile and @truthisademurelady.

[tabieeee]

Has TCam or the engineers ever tried doing something like hiding Opti's tools or forcefully preventing him from working to get the poor boi some rest?

Oh shit hi Yep! It doesn't always go well though. Opti gets very frustrated and stubborn if somebody or something is preventing them from working. boi is determined to work work work

But they do eventually give up if they think fighting against whatever the engineering crew are doing to make them rest takes longer than just letting them win and resting to continue working later. they also fall asleep really easily 'cus that shithead is so tired all the time that the second they're comfy they're snoozing away lel

(for funzies here's some RPs we did ages ago where this dumb workaholic was defeated and took a break)

This was right before that other post I made where TCam and Opti argued. TCam played by @gamie99

and this was way earlier at some point, with @bethesecretreader's tvman and normal ass cat lmao

[sigmabateman]

thank you so much @velvetcrowbar444 for tagging me to talk about 5 things im obsessed with at the moment!!

this got longer than i anticipated so im putting it under the cut, but for simplicity's sake i'll tag people up here: @nights-decay, @boycentriccplot, @flaming-tsunami, @sourgelatin no pressure though of course!

persona 5... ok i have to be honest ive been really reluctant to talk about this on here and its why ive been quiet the past at least week or so. no idea why. i guess cause its so different from the stuff i usually post about that i feel like, embarrassed? but i started playing persona 5 royal around may and really liked it but i didnt have the time to properly get into it until now and it has completely taken over my life entirely without me even realising. to be honest i could obsess over like a rock on the ground if i saw it at the right time in my life but hands down persona 5 is one the best if not the best game ive ever played in my life. the story is engaging, the characters are distinctive and realistic and i really really care about all of them, the gameplay is so much fun and combat is buttery fucking smooth like nothing ive ever played before, the music is top tier and what got me interested in the game in the first place, and the ART DIRECTION. it speaks for itself to be honest ESPECIALLY compared to the older games. i was shocked starting persona 4 because of how different it is to persona 5 like, persona 5 has SUCH a distinct visual identity as well as tone, themes, imagery etc it is all just so stunning and perfect and i want to live in it. but i think about it so often like literally 24/7 that i may as well be. i <3 persona 5 and i <3 YUSUKE KITAGAWA. he's definitely my favourite character and he came out of NOWHERE but hes actually everything in the world to me. one of the characters ever.

persona 4 is it a copout to say that? i did try and condense both games into one bullet point but 1. they're such a mainstay in my life right now i was struggling to think of more points and 2. it kind of lost its precision and didn't effectively convey just how personapilled i am right now. i originally wasn't gonna play 4, all i knew is that it was more difficult and less good so i thought i should stay away. but if you go anywhere persona-related on the internet (which i would warn against, the fandom is a fucking cesspit the likes of which i havent seen in a long time as an obscure-shit-enjoyer) you'll quickly run into adachi. and as a lover of men with high-pitched voices and sexypedia entries... i couldn't stay away. before even starting the game i had made a d6 and d20 with different adachis on each face so really it was just a matter of time. and you know what... it's not that bad. the graphics were a SHOCKING step down but i find the low(er) poly style really charming. the adachi model is too cute T_T whenever i see it in the game world i just wanna sit with it for ages. i wonder if i could get it like 3d printed so i could keep him on my desk with me at all times... its bad for me ! the combat is fucking clunky espeically compared to 5 and i kind of hate it but that just makes it more rewarding when i can finally stop LOL. some of the characters (especially the main few (yosuke, chie, yukiko)) took a bit to grow on me but its kind of sweet.. its like authentic.. our relationship is growing as i get to know them better... but dojima and nanako ive loved since i first set eyes on them. too cute. it makes me feel so fatherless. its like.. a lot more magnetic than i expected it to be. i love it even with all its flaws. i saw a meme about it being like twin peaks and thats kind of so real. and you know i love a murder mystery... so yeah tldr i like persona now. but its hard to talk about it on here because it is such a big fandom but not like an active one like spiderman or like good omens or whatever slightly more normal people are watching so its kind of intimidating. maybe ill get over myself, maybe ill go silent for 3 months until i get into something new. we'll see i guess LOL

my gender identity TUMBLR MOMENT I KNOW but i dont know.. ive had a lot of time to myself recently and its kind of brought things to the surface that i just didnt have time or space to think about before. turns out there was a LOT OF STUFF i was repressing without even knowing. like that tweet 'im probably nonbinary but i have a job so idrc about that rn'. i posted on instagram "gender around cis people: boy, gender around trans people: girlboy, gender by myself: computer program" and that kind of sums it up i think. can i coin like.. complicatedgender. where your answer to the question "whats your gender?" is "it's complicated..." cause thats me. its just COMPLICATED okay!!!! but my pronouns havent changed or anything so its chilllllll

going to bed at a reasonable time. i phrased that like a joke answer but its true. i downloaded pokemon sleep and now i go to bed at 11:30pm cause at 11 i get a notification saying my pokemon are sleepy and shit i gotta take care of my pokemon!! i dont even know if its doing me any good to be honest like i dont feel much better when i wake up but making myself get into bed and shut my eyes means more thinking time and to be honest my favourite activity is thinking. even if as silly as it sounds i never give myself time to do it. its playing a weirdly big role in my life rn so yeah id say im obsessed with it!!!

this asmr video. im secretly always posting about asmr so really i could just say that, but like, ASMR | The Mortician (No Talking – You're Dead) specifically is such a mainstay i can feel its influence seeping into my life like an infection. this video would actually show up in my recommended for YEARS but i never watched it. gave me a major ick for some reason. but then i got into this guys stuff and saw it again and thought id give it a go and now its like an extra limb. fuck my 3rd bullet point, this is my gender identity. i could not articulate in words what it is about the mortician that i love so much, but i really really do. i am certifiably obsessed. cant believe i made it through this whole thing without mentioning alex. but there you are. yay this was fun :D

[raccoon-eyed-rebel]

Part 24 - Sy

Masterlist

Series Masterlist

Part 23 -- Part 25

Pairing: Sy x trans!ofc (Alicia)

Summary: The guys throw a New Years Eve party at 179th Crescent Street...

Warnings: SMUT, NSFW, 18+, MINORS DNI, oral (m and f receiving), anal fingering (m receiving), an interesting case (if I do say so myself) of phone-moaning (look it up if you have to). Brief mention of transphobic parents and mention of (child) abuse.

ETA: PLEASE, if I missed any tags/warnings, let me know. (Always let me know, but let me know for this one in particular. It's way more likely I accidentally missed something that can be triggering for someone here.)

Word count: 3.6k

A/N: I'm on the verge of having a panic attack over posting this. Not because I think it's bad - I personally love this chapter - but because Sy is such a crowd favorite and I'm a little nervous about how this will be received. Also: Liz is the first trans character I've written at this point. So much research went into this, which is part of why I struggled with writing this so much. We're still horny on main, though, as always.

It's obviously a first for Sy, too, and he says some stupid shit - he also really likes this girl, which doesn't help with foot-in-mouth-disease, obviously. Bear with him, please.

@deandoesthingstome @geralts-yenn @summersong69 @peaches1958 @fvckinghenrycavill @keanureevesisbae @livisss @sillyrabbit81 @ellethespaceunicorn @ylva-syverson @poledancingdinos

Charles punched a guy. We’d all love to get through a night out - or in, apparently - without something like that happening, but it doesn’t seem to be in the cards for us. That said, I think he was right to do it, and if I’d been within arms reach of the guy, he’d have had me to deal with, too. Harassing Dani was wrong, but to do it right in front of our eyes… That’s just plain stupid. When everyone’s back to their business, I turn back to Alicia and watch her as she takes a sip of her beer. 

“What?” she asks. 

“Nothing,” I say. I huff quietly when I hear myself speak. Little too much emphasis on that ‘g’ at the end. I’m hiding my accent. I like this girl. 

I first noticed it when I talked to Mike after the chaotic house meeting from a few days ago. I say ‘chaotic’, but it wasn’t exactly out of the ordinary for us. It’s not our fault! Who puts eight guys our age in a house and calls it a day? Anyway, he told me one of Dani’s roommates wanted to find out if Dani had been lying about my… Let’s go with ‘skills’. Apparently, the review was pretty good. Now, I’ve seen Sloane. She’s on the hockey team, and I normally wouldn’t dream of passing up an opportunity like that, but I just… Couldn’t care less, to be honest. And then Liz texted me and Mike caught me grinning at my phone like an idiot. Which he pointed out while also grinning like an idiot. And now here we are. 

“Say that again,” she teases. Fuck, I’m busted. How about I don’t answer her, and just shake my head instead? Will that work? “I like the way you talk, Sy.” 

There’s a hint of a drawl to her voice. It’s definitely subtle, but it’s there. At first I wonder if she’s messing with me, but when she asks where I’m from, I have my answer. She’s not mocking me, she’s from Georgia. Which my stepfather would say is even worse, but I stopped listening to him right around the time I turned six. The longer we talk, the clearer her accent becomes. Makes me wonder when she lost it. And why. Takes me a while longer than I care to admit to ask her that… 

“My aunt from New York took me in when I was twelve,” she answers. “Parents kicked me out for… You know… What about you? What made you move away?” It doesn’t bother me that she doesn’t finish her sentence, because I have a perfectly good idea of what she would have said if she had. I feel like everybody would have known. When Mikey found out Liz and I were texting, he asked me if I knew. I told him I did. Then he asked me if I cared, and I told him I didn’t. I meant what I said. 

“The short version is that I tried to hit ma’s scumbag boyfriend back, hit ma instead. Can’t come home unless I apologize to him. Which I ain’t gonna do.”

“Ouch, you win. More beer?” She’s on her way to the kitchen before I can even answer. 

Now that I’ve got nothing else to do, I look around the room. Charles has disappeared - probably with Sloane - and Leon is still chatting up Ariel, Dani’s other roommate. They seem to know each other, which means she might be the same Ariel he always competes with to be first in his class. Marshall is up to something that involves Vivienne Chase. I know the type. We all do. I know Marshall has referred to her as a ‘puck bunny’ before. He seemed pretty annoyed by her at the time. Guess that’s over now. I don’t know what’s been bugging him, but it can’t be good. I reckon there’s an eighty percent chance that this ain’t the way to solve it, either, but it’s none of my business, and I’m gonna treat it that way. 

Alicia and I play a few more rounds of horrible childhood bingo, until people around us start counting down. It’s a countdown to a first kiss I’m shockingly nervous about. Luckily, she’s braver than I am, putting her bottle down while reaching for mine. Then, when that’s put to the side as well, pulling me closer to her by hooking her fingers into the pockets of my jeans. I expected to not have to lower my head: she’s nearly six feet tall. What I didn’t expect was that I’d be looking up slightly. She’s wearing heels, too, fucking hell. It takes everything I’ve got to keep with a certain level of decency. Yes, practically everyone in this room is doing the same thing I am, but that don’t mean… Alright, she doesn't seem to care about propriety half as much as I do. 

“I’ve got a perfectly nice room upstairs, with a lot less prying eyes.” Why am I not surprised she’s coming with me?

Goddamn, this girl can kiss. I’m already dizzy, and something just tells me I ain’t seen nothing yet. The way she’s clawing at my back makes me think she likes it rough. I don’t mind it one bit: I ain’t exactly built to be gentle. She moans loudly when I pin her against the door. Her dress was already creeping up her thighs when I walked her upstairs, but is now only inches away from exposing that gorgeous ass completely - I didn’t let her go first on the stairs for no goddamn reason, and now that we’re in private, whatever fabric stands between me and that ass is frustrating me to no end. 

“Hm, eager,” she chuckles as my hands push her dress up further. I groan as she makes a point of grinding her hips against mine. 

“Well, you’re a hot piece of ass, so…” She laughs when I pull her away from the door, towards my bed. 

That dress comes off easily, but not before she pulls my shirt over my head. That look in her eyes as they glide over my chest, the way she takes her bottom lip in between her teeth… This chick is driving me fucking nuts. I enjoy the way she looks at me for a while too long, apparently, because she reaches behind her back to undo her bra and tosses it aside. Now it’s my turn to stare and her turn to revel in the attention. ‘Great tits.’ That’s it. That’s the only thought I have. Anything else, my brain just refuses to process - like the ringing of her phone, which I hear faintly in the background somewhere. The only reason I know I’m not making it up, is because I watch her pull it out of the purse she dropped next to my bed, and hang up on whoever is on the other end. Other than that faint notion, that rack is really my whole world right now. Fucking magnetic. I mean it. It’s as if gravity in this room has somehow shifted, and everything is now pulled towards her chest. Alright, maybe not everything, but God knows I am, for sure. 

The few quick kisses on her neck are out of a kind of twisted courtesy - pure pretense, to separate myself from a fucking caveman by a hair or two. As much as I hate to admit it, all I really want right now is to get more closely acquainted with these boobs. They’re far from the biggest I’ve ever seen. I wouldn’t say they’re the nicest, either - although they’re definitely up there. But, damn, I’d be lying if I said there had ever been a pair I’d been more curious about. I have a strong feeling she won’t appreciate it if I say something about that, but unfortunately there just ain’t enough blood going to my brain right now for me to think straight…

“Can’t believe these are fake.” Once I realize what I’ve said, I look up at her like a deer in headlights. 

“No worries, you’re good,” Alicia laughs when she sees my face. “I mean… They are fake.”

“How ‘bout I just try ‘n’ keep quiet from now on?” It’s gonna be tough, but I wouldn’t forgive myself if I accidentally say something really stupid and ruin this.

“Oh no. They say you’ve got a dirty mouth. I wanna hear it.” That’s all good ‘n' well, but I’m gonna keep my mouth otherwise occupied for the time being. I sincerely hope she won’t mind.

My nerves about saying something stupid end up on the back burner when her phone rings again. I fucking hope it's a protective friend or something.

"Jesus, who keeps callin' ya?" This is the third time in ten minutes. I gave it a pass the first two, but now… Why doesn’t she turn the damn thing off?

"My ex," she groans. Not what a man wants to hear, honestly. The phone stops buzzing for a minute, and then it picks up right where it left off with call number four. The good news is that she seems as annoyed as I am. The bad news is that continuous phone calls from the ex of the girl you're trying to nail are a really effective boner killer. Liz sighs and hangs up again, while I give up on trying to ignore this issue. 

"Bad breakup?" I ask lightly, barely taking my lips off her skin. I'm fixing to get as much quality time with these tits as I possibly can, ex be damned. 

"The worst," she groans. "She cheated." There's two words in that sentence, and I have no clue which one confuses me more. 

"Cheated? On you? Now that's just stupid." She laughs in reply - a sound that turns into a moan when I bite down on her nipple. 

I’m a little disappointed when one of her hands reaches for my chin and pulls me back up. I was having a great time! Must’ve looked sad, too, because she laughs and looks at me with feigned pity in her eyes before kissing me. I wonder if that’s the only great way she has to cheer me up… My hands continue their exploration. It’s almost impossible to move on from her boobs, but I eventually make it further down, and my hand finds its way between her legs. Hm. 

"Sy," Liz has clearly picked up on my… surprise? Is that the right word? It's a good thing there’s a hint of a chuckle to her voice, because I'm just confused at this point. 

"Yeah?"

"This vagina was brought to you by the wonders of modern medicine. Doesn't get as wet as you’re probably used to." That actually explains a lot - and nowhere near enough. It sounds like lube would fix most of that problem, and I have some, so we’re good there. Thing is: it tastes horrible. Luckily, Liz manages to solve my dilemma before my indecisiveness really gets to me. 

“I’ve heard too many good things about that allegedly incredible head game of yours,” she says coyly. I chuckle as a grin spreads on my face. Knowing her expectations are high should probably make me more nervous than I already am, but it doesn’t. I know what the girls I’ve been with say about me, and I take pride in that particular skill. Does that make me a cocky jerk sometimes? Absolutely. They don’t seem to care when they’re screaming my name, so why should I?

I kiss my way down Alicia’s body. Slowly. I may be impatient but I enjoy teasing ‘em a little too much to skip that part… She clearly disagrees, trying everything in her power to push me down faster. It’s cute, and it makes me laugh. 

“Ain’t gonna work, sugar,” I say in between kisses pressed to her stomach. “The more you try, the longer I’m gonna drag this out. Be good for me, okay?” She agrees - reluctantly - meaning I can continue my journey south. 

Not being able to use my hands is going to be a challenge. One I’ll gladly accept, that’s for sure, but a challenge nonetheless. It takes me a minute to find something she likes. Thank God she’s not shy! Actually, she’s pretty loud, which is fantastic. I love a woman who just offers up the intel on what she likes unprompted. Makes me look like I know what I’m doing, because… well… I’ll know what I’m doing. She’s all moans and whimpers and ‘right there’-s and breaths hitching as my fingertips dig into her hips. Her hand is on the back of my head, pulling me closer to her… I can’t wipe this smug grin off my face - she’s gonna cum in no time.

Fuck! That goddamn phone again! I stop what I’m doing, raise myself up on my elbows and look at Liz. 

“Pick up the phone,” I growl. I’m done with this bullshit. 

“What?” Liz asks me, slightly dazed. I understand her confusion, but I’m seriously over this. 

“Pick up the goddamn phone,” I repeat. My grin widens as I watch Alicia accept the call and put the phone to her ear. 

“Kelly. Hi," she says. She’s clearly not happy to even speak to her. Doesn’t matter. I’m gonna try my best to make this the best phone call they ever had. I can’t help but chuckle as my mouth finds its way back to where it was a minute ago, and goes right back to doing exactly what it was doing before we were so rudely interrupted. When I look up, Alicia stares back at me, eyes wide with shock, begging me… to keep going. 

“Eh, no. I - ah - I’m not home.” She’s trying hard to keep her voice steady, I’m trying hard to break her. Neither of us have it easy right now. And ultimately we’re both still playing for the same side. 

“Why do you even give a - fuck!” Honestly? Nice timing. Kelly’s voice - which I can barely make out from where I am - starts to sound more agitated. Apparently, the answer to that question is a long one, because Kelly keeps talking for a while. That gives me just the right amount of time to really drive Liz nuts. 

“It’s literally - hng - none of your business - hmm - what I’m doing,” Liz suddenly snaps. “Or who I’m doing.” I almost choke on my own spit when she adds that last bit. 

“Because we broke up, remember? Jesus.” There’s no way she can last long now. 

“Kelly, seriously, stop bothering m-oh my god, Sy!” It’s a good thing she can’t see my face, because I’m grinning like crazy.  

“That was fun,” I tease when I lie down next to her again. “Turn that thing off.”

“I doubt she’ll be calling back,” Alicia says, but she turns her phone off anyway before turning to me. “You really are as good as they say.” 

It’s a reputation I never asked for, but I can’t say I mind having it. And I certainly don’t mind honing my craft, so to speak. Besides… most girls are willing to trade good head for good head - in my personal experience, at least. I can't complain about that. 

Her fingers leave goosebumps on my skin wherever they move - and they move absolutely everywhere but the place I actually want them in, while she kisses me fiercely. It’s far too easy to lose myself in her touch, especially when she finally does go where I need her most. 

I’m prepared for the soft gasp I hear when she wraps her fingers around my cock - anything else there is to notice gets lost in the sensation of her lips all over my chest and abs as she makes her way down. Her tongue feels amazing as she slowly swirls it around the tip of my cock before taking me all the way down with no issues. 

I'm staring. I know I am, and I don't give a damn. It's been a while since I've been this impressed with a girl's skills. Fuck me, she's good. Her eyes are on me the whole time she's down there, slobbering all over my dick - pardon my French - and I'm in absolute heaven. Until… 

"Whoa!" Those fingers are headed directly where no man - or woman, for that matter - has gone before. Not on me, at least. 

"What's the problem, Sy?"

I curse softly under my breath and pray Geralt isn't listening in. "I'd say somethin' along the lines of me not bein' used to a girl tryin'a stick a finger up my ass," I mumble. Judging from the grin on her face, she heard perfectly. She slowly climbs up until she's lying next to me again. 

"I strongly recommend that you give it a try," she says in a sultry tone, with eyes that put 98 percent of pornstars to shame. 

"Normally I'd ask ya why I should trust a girl on this," I sigh, "but I reckon you would know…" 

"First-hand experience," she replies. I don't know what it is, but something about this is intriguing. 

"Is it good?" I ask carefully. I'm not saying I will… just that… I might.

"Like you wouldn't believe," she purrs in my ear. That's it, I'm blaming her. It's her. She is impossible to resist. 

"Alright, I'll bite," I say, and I can't believe my own ears. "I'll try it." She's made me fucking curious. Dammit. Oh well. If I don't like it, I don't ever gotta do it again, right?

"Told ya," she grins. I'm still dizzy. That was hands down the best fucking orgasm of my entire life. Fucking hell. And there she is: smug smirk firm on her face, and soft lips torturing my earlobe.

"Gimme a break, sugar," I moan softly as I gently pull her head away from my face by her hair. She seems to like that. 

"That good, huh?" Yeah, yeah, missy, you're awfully proud of yourself. Well… she's not wrong. It really was that good. 

"Yeah," I sigh. "But why not go for the… more traditional…" What I want to know is why she didn't…

"You want to know why I didn't let you stick me." That would be one way of putting it, yes. 

She takes a deep breath and looks at me.

“Cards on the table, Sy: There’s no way you’re gonna fit,” she says. Are my eyes deceiving me or does she look embarrassed by that? 

“Alright, that explains that,” I say, pulling her into a hug. 

“You’re not disappointed?” she asks, her voice as full of disbelief as the expression on her face. I shrug. Of course not! Why would I be? 

“Nah.” It’s the truth, however hard that may be for her to believe. It’s not even the first time this has happened. You never know what the reaction is going to be when girls first find out what you’re blessed with. At this point, I’ve seen everything from nerves to sheer terror to excitement - sometimes on the same face, within the same minute. This ain’t nothing new to me. But it bothers her. And it bothers me that it bothers her. 

“Hey,” I say as I put a finger under her chin and make her look at me, “I’m okay with it if we don’t have sex.” That’s not what I should have said, but I hope she doesn’t jump on it…

“We are having sex,” she says, one eyebrow raised. Fuck. 

“Yeah… I know that. Sherlock pointed that out a few days ago, I’m just… I’m still… adjusting my vocabulary.” The grin on her face spreads slowly while I scramble for words, and I glare at her. 

“I’m sorry, Sy, I shouldn’t be teasing you like this,” she laughs. 

“No,” I reply, “you shouldn’t. You’ll have to make it up to me.”

“Well, there’s always anal,” she says. There’s no way she doesn’t actually hear the record-scratch in my brain. That whole thing came out a little too point-blank for her to be joking. I think. At the same time, I’m not even sure she said what I think she said. I have to have made that up, right? There’s no way… 

“What?” I blurt out. And lo and behold: She repeats herself. There it is again. ‘There’s always anal.’ She really said that. Alright.

“Hold on… Your pussy can’t handle me, but your ass can?” I don’t mean to sound as surprised - or crude - as I do, but I can’t help it. This is very… counterintuitive to me. To say the least. 

“The downside of designer pussy is that it doesn’t really… stretch easily,” she says softly. I can’t stop myself from letting out a chuckle when she says ‘designer pussy’ - two words I’d probably never expected to hear that close to one another. 

“Hey, I’m not opposed to the idea,” I say. It would be another first for me. Definitely something I wouldn’t mind crossing off the list. But not tonight. Not after that blowjob - that's what we're gonna call it for now, I'm still getting comfortable with that other thing that happened. Not after that orgasm. Not after all those beers. She seems to understand perfectly.

"Do you want me to leave?" she asks. I look at her, completely confused.

"Literally not even one bit, darlin'. You're stayin' right here." 

[aquariumgirls]

vei lorepost. (tldr at the end before the cat picture. also this is a huge vent about how being on the internet so young (i was seven) damaged me as a person in a way that i fear may never be truly fixable and also i hate myself)

when i was young (like seven. i was on the internet too young) it was the ship and let ship/dont like dont read era of the internet. being a small child with autism i wanted to consume as much content related to the things i liked as possible, and ended up stumbling upon spaces i should not have been in nor been able to access at my age.

most of them were pertaining to things that i know understand are problematic. it damaged me fundamentally, as i only exited those spaces and realized all the things that i thought were normal were wrong, when i was 13 years old. it was traumatizing for me. it desensitized me to things that i should not be desensitized to. things that are disgusting to me now. and it fucking sucks when people say that fiction doesn't affect reality, because it absolutely fucking does. i am literal proof of that.

when i was eleven, i got my friend into undertale. it was the early days of the fandom, and i liked it because i had watched a youtuber play the demo of the game a few years prior. certain ships were popular. because i was eleven, i thought certain things were normal, and i was in nsfw spaces despite being so young, because it was practically everywhere.

when my friend got into it, she also got into one of the most popular problematic ships. she gave me a nickname pertaining to it, and despite me not knowing why, i was ashamed and embarrassed when she would call me that.

i (obviously) am not pr*ship. i am not neutral, either. i resent pr*shippers because people like them normalized things for me and exposed me to things that i should not have seen, and that should not have been normalized. i still get intrusive thoughts about it. i still feel ashamed of who i used to be. i still feel disgusted with myself when i have said intrusive thoughts. i am in therapy, and it took me a while to realize that it was traumatizing. i didn't just see gross fictional content, i saw real gore, shock videos that made me nauseous, videos from depraved people that i watched on a dare, among other things.

my first anime was hetalia, which im very much NOT proud of. you can imagine the shit i saw in 2011/2012/2013. i also had homestuck as a special interest until i was around sixteen, and by then i had been actively trying to avoid it for about a year.

basically: fiction affects reality and i am legitimately traumatized because of it. to be real i havent told anyone this. im afraid of being judged. i dont want people to think im like the people who exposed me to traumatizing and damaging content when i was little. these things make me physically nauseous with shame. you obviously dont have to read this post because its long as hell but i know that some people my age have probably had similar experiences. i dont call myself an anti anymore because im nineteen years old, but i deeply DEEPLY resent and hate pr*shippers. i also know that some of them are coping in unhealthy ways. but it doesn't change the fact that they exposed me to things i shouldnt have seen when i was a young, impressionable child, and it doesn't change the fact that they're still doing it now.

i am in therapy. i avoid and block every pr*shipper i see and religiously scour blogs to make SURE they aren't one. anytime a blog i like gets exposed for being one in secret, i feel sick.

i was in those damaging spaces longer than ive been out of them and sometimes i think that ill be damaged like this forever. ive done things im not proud of. things that make me so ashamed that i throw up. sometimes i wish i could wipe my memory from up until i was 13. i dont think ill keep this post up very long because frankly i dont want people to think im some sort of freak or whatever, but ive been thinking about this recently and i need to say it to SOMEONE before i go fucking crazy.

tldr: i was in pr*ship spaces until i figured out that shit was wrong and by then i was already 13 (in eighth grade) and by then the damage was already done and now im left with trauma, intrusive thoughts that make me physically nauseous, and a fear that im actually secretly like the people who exposed me to those traumatizing things.

cat photo to thank you for reading.

[sisterwolfsbane]

MINORS GO AWAY, THIS IS A KINK BLOG

I'm awake, reminiscing on when I realized that I had caught feelings, then shortly after fell in love with my boyfriend. I know he's gonna see this and come up in our Discord server or even this ask box like 'WHAT?' 🤣 I'm sorry, love, bear with me lol.

So, I think it was November or December of 2023, when I first felt something stir. I quickly dismissed it for a few reasons:

One, I was stoned off my ass, and two, it had only been a month or two, since I broke up with my ex of nearly half a decade. It was too soon.

"Huh... Am I feeling attracted to him? ....No, Wolfsbane, you're stoned, go listen to Uncle Acid and The Deadbeats."

Except the feelings didn't fade the next day I was sober. They were still there, even after I took a tolerance break for a good while. And then when I realized I had in fact fallen for him, there would be periods where I'd feel this deep sadness. A longing.

Now, I hear you going, "Sister, why didn't you tell him??"

Because at that time, he still saw me as the sibling friend. (We're not related, at one point in our friendship we referred to each other as siblings)

And I didn't want him to think I was weird or some shit, I didn't want to cross that boundary from friendship to romance. I didn't want to be so quick to confess my feelings. So, I did what I normally do with scary emotions- that I'm now working with my therapist on- bottled it up.

I never said anything for a long time. I thought keeping it inside was the best course of action until, maybe, just maybe, he'd feel the same way, one day.

This didn't exactly work because so many times, the emotion 'leaked out' so to speak. By that I mean, I caught myself staring at any selfies or pics he sent for longer, complimenting what I found the most pretty in said selfie.

And then I did a very millennial thing lol. I know people my age did this on MySpace- and still do it on some platforms.

I started posting bits and pieces of song lyrics to express the now storm of emotions on my old side Tumblr lol. Mainly Sleep Token. (Yes, sweetface, that's what that was >///<)

I started listening to bands like Death Cab For Cutie, and my dramatic, musical theatre ass listened to 'On My Own,' God knows how many times, feeling like Eponine, even though he wasn't in love with someone else sdgffgdfgfg I was an absolute disaster and nobody knew it lol.

Cut to April this year. Around January or February we decided on being platonic partners because we were so close. I still hadn't said anything yet but oh man, it was building.

Around April, we were having another one of our deep talks like we do every so often. It was mainly how we couldn't believe we'd been friends for three years now, and how much the both of us have changed.

At one point, he said he saw myself as more to him than just a platonic or even romantic partner. That his love for me went deeper than that. He saw me as more than just a soulmate too.

(Note at the time, we came into the belief that we were each other's soulmate, due to the circumstances of our friendship. It is not my place to talk about his personal stuff but we believe there was a reason we met for sure.)

I told him, I did too. And that I wanted to be with him for the rest of my life. I didn't want to spend the rest of my life without him.

And now we're here. Planning a marriage for when we meet, move in together, and spend more time with each other. We're not going to rush! I don't think I've ever been this happy and nor have I ever felt this way about another person. Not even my ex.

I love him to the moon, back and beyond the farthest reaches.

[mermaidsirennikita]

ARC Review: Plot Twist by Erin La Rosa

3/5. Releases 11/14/2023.

Vibes: much social media awareness, flipping through past exes, crafting, and the anxiety that comes with putting your life back together.

Sophie released a hit of a romance novel--and nothing else since. Feeling the pressure to drop her next book, but very aware that she's never actually been in love herself, she sets up a project on TikTok to track down her exes and figure out why she never fall hard. Roped into the deal? Her landlord and (sort of) friend Dash, a former actor who now works on crafts as he works through recovery. Their chemistry is immediate, though Dash isn't ready for a relationship; but if he waits much longer, one of Sophie's exes may just snap her up.

This was fine. It didn't annoy me, but it also didn't stir me. Erin La Rosa can for sure write, and can definitely write some heat, but I just wasn't bowled over. I did appreciate some of the representation (Dash as a recovering alcoholic, the very casual queerness of Sophie's past relationships) but the story didn't grab me.

Quick Takes:

--So, the good. Like I said, I do think the writing is solid, and you're not bored. The setup of going through the past exes leads to some interesting takes, and the fact that Sophie just has a nonbinary ex, just has a female ex, is very much attracted to Dash--is just normal? Was really nice to see, and still not as common in romance as I think some imagine it is. You feel the tension rising between Dash and Sophie in a dynamic that is in some ways a slow burn and in some ways very much not.

--Where I started struggling with the exes project is... the TikTok of it all. TikTok is a surprisingly big part of this romance, and while the summary (on Netgalley, at least) does mention Sophie gaining millions of new followers, I don't think TikTok is mentioned by name. She actually documents her project on TikTok, and Dash is kind of a bigger name on... CraftTok?

And I feel like I have mixed emotions on this. Social media here to stay, and I don't think that making it a part of a romance novel automatically "dates" it, any more than including the Internet dates it. These are big parts of contemporary life, and they're not fleeting. That is, social media in general isn't fleeting. The concept of recording and posting your actions--blogging, sharing videos, etc. That's not fleeting. That will stay for the long haul, I think.

But when you get into specific mechanisms and sites, I feel like you're really toeing the line. Twitter may have seemed like a mainstay, but suddenly it's not even called Twitter anymore. Facebook was The Shit for a while, but now I would side-eye a contemporary about a twenty-something who's allll about FB. TikTok really hasn't been around that long, and while lots of people use it--let's be real, the people who really, really obsess over it tend to be confined to a somewhat small age range. It's all about trends, by design. I just don't see TikTok being this big a part of your romance novel (it's baked into the premise) aging well.

--Another issue I did take with the book was that Sophie seemed like a really passive protagonist. And perhaps that was part of what the story was trying to confront, but until then, it came off as her just sort of going with the story, not really pushing much of it forward That makes it hard for me at least to bond with her, and I had a hard time getting invested in her character.

She's a grown woman, and there is a moment in which she allows her high school boyfriend (now a married father!) to guilt her about teenage bullshit. That just didn't work to me, and it kind of felt like I was reading therapy speak, but from the perspective of a character who bought into it.

--I did appreciate Dash; his love of crafting, his focus on recovery. This was also something that I do think kind of made Sophie a tougher sell. At points, it felt like Dash was doing the work in a way that took, well, a lot more work than Sophie. This is a man very literally in recovery, doing his best. And while that doesn't invalidate Sophie's issues, it does mean I'm much more invested in Dash. I mean, him coming from a complicated famous family added to his appeal. He's just got more going on, and it felt to me like there was an uneven level of depth to these characters.

The Sex:

I've seen some saying this isn't explicit and uh... it is? She's riding his face like, halfway into the book. But there is a reluctance to go into full on intercourse on Dash's part, because of his perception of recovery (he's past the point when AA would typically recommend waiting on sex and relationships). Frankly, I found everything else they were doing super hot, so that hesitance worked for me and kind of added to the story.

While I can't say I was thrilled with this novel, I did find it interesting, and I will try more from Erin La Rosa. I'm curious about what else she's done.

Thanks to Netgalley and Canary Street Press for providing me with a free copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

[chitrolls]

I have no idea how to format this. Putting it into a post instead of an ask felt like the right thing because this turned out way longer than I thought it would. Thank you, @spectrology for the ask! I look forward to answering all the rest. This is really helping me knock some dust off. :)

CONTENT WARNINGS: Nightmares, mention of children in extreme poverty, immolation, and implied canon-compliant body horror that comes from being shoved in a helm, but nothing gory or detailed; just mention of the fear of it.

Running Delphi Electronics was a daymare in the early nights. It didn’t take long for word to get around that there’s a legitimate clairvoyant living around the Stacks and not another one of those boring psychics that flipped some cards and told people to think inwards. Things got so busy that you, Almaaz, and Lovelace (still only going by Rhiana at the time) went down to the old space docks to steal a bench. With things getting so busy, a bench was the only thing between you, your employees, your customers, and a fire code violation. One of the downsides of a combination psychic-electronics repair shop.

Now that you’ve long wizened up and keep your readings on an appointment-only basis, the bench doesn’t get the same traffic it used to. Sometimes the girls and Eli meet out there for their lunch. Or maybe you condemn Tyckho to the bench to keep him from ragequitting when he’s got to clean a spectacularly disgusting PC casing. Even you like to stretch out your long legs and have a quick smoke of herbs and dry mind honey when you feel like you’ve got enough privacy.

Tonight, you’ve got some gutter rat from Grub Town stuffing their face with a couple grilled cheeses. There’s no doubt Amoura is to blame for this. A Glossolalia lifer herself, she grew up in Grub Town until you took her in and gave her a job selling trinkets and oddities at your shop. Seeing scrawny wrigglers running around always gets her upset. Not being able to take it anymore, she put a bunch of sandwich shit in the break room fridge and bought a sandwich press. Kids quite literally started crawling up out of the sewers. It wouldn’t be so bad if they, at the very least, weren’t so sneaky about it.

Your loiterer stares up at you with this massive pair of gray eyes that say they aren’t afraid of you. Even as you take a seat on the far end of the bench, they continue to enjoy their sandwiches. You kind of recognize them through the grime and melted cheese. They know you aren’t a threat, but kids around here know they have to put on some kind of a tough front to keep the city’s adults from squishing them underfoot.

When they do start to ease up a bit, they open their little mouth.

“How do you know when, like. Your dream is a vision and not a dream?”

The streets have been talking about Delphi Vitale and speculating about how his amazing clairvoyant abilities work for sweeps. There’s also the crisp, laminated print affixed to the shop’s window detailing some of the services you provide. In-depth dream visions are one of them. You have to give the kid this stupidly animated shrug in response. It’s the only way to genuinely convey what you’re feeling with your face hidden beneath a heavy hood, some gaudy sunglasses, and a smog mask.

“You kinda just get a feelin’ for it, kid.”

What you’re not going to do right here and now is trauma dump on someone you don’t even know; especially when that someone is a kid trying to suck crumbs and the memory of cheese from beneath their fingernails. Still, you can’t help but wonder how well this kid sleeps during the day.

Growing up, you were a fitful sleeper. You were kept up all hours of the day by this terrifying daymare of a man on fire. You were half this kid’s age, maybe even younger, when the daymares began. Up until that point, you had most of your visions while you were awake with the occasional prediction shoved in some background scene of your rare “normal” dreams. You can admit to yourself that you still find the image of that man scary. Or maybe it was his presence that kept you unnerved.

In the early days of your burning man dreams, he’d be standing right at the side of your pool of sopor slime. You’d try to force yourself awake, but that just made things worse. It made his looming feel all the more heavy and even with your eyes just cracked open, you still saw him there and you always knew it was him by the sight and the smell of his burning flesh and his Empire-issue helmsman uniform.

As you got older, you learned ways to manipulate your dreams. It wasn’t much, but figured out how to fling yourself out of your body and watch your dreams like a fly on the wall. He still loomed over your body as you slept. Your dreams only changed to suit whatever in your life was different as you aged or moved hives. The closer you inched towards young adulthood, it was like the man knew you were not in your body anymore, so he started screaming for your attention.

By this time, you had surrendered yourself to the Empire to join the helmsman program. You felt there was no other way for you to survive with your chrome and, besides, you were doing pretty well for yourself despite it all. You didn’t have to deal with your sleeping daymares and waking ones that came with needing to live under the radar to survive. This new lifestyle also provided you with a small solution that kept you running for nights without needing sleep: charging stations. You’d just plug in for a while and last a couple nights on electrical currents running through your ports and brain without needing so much as a wink.

There were PSAs about running on charging stations for too long, of course, but you were fine. You figured out a system. You’d get at least one good day of sleep after several without and you were peachy. Really, you weren’t. Sometimes you’d get a bad discharge running through your ports that made you jerk and jolt about when the worst of them hit. Once you had a series of them that couldn’t have been more than half a minute, but there he was, just outside the edge of your vision. His screams became resigned sobs.

Maybe that’s why you were so off the night you were finally able to carry out your big assignment. The program wanted you hooked into some newfangled experimental ship built for navigating the more dangerous parts of deep space. A clairvoyant in the column meant they crew could more effectively navigate without getting torn up by microplanet sized space debris or sucked into a dying star.

You tell yourself things went south that night for a number of reasons. One of them being that your discharge was worse than usual. Shit, you were also pretty damn scared of being plugged into a ship for unknown stretches of time without someone around that’ll say it’s time to be dismissed for the night so you could rest your ports and get all your psionic energy back up. You didn’t want to wither away until your body let go of your extremities and eyes and senses to preserve and feed the part of you the Empire found useful.

Unfortunately, it was too late to worry about any of that. Too late to say you don’t want to be in this program. Too late to beg for a different assignment, something planetside where you could use your abilities to predict rebel activities. Too late to do anything about the sparks your ports sent up through the helms column that made an impressively long wick out of your ponytail. And it was way too damn late for you to finally be realizing why you spent your entire life haunted by daymares of a man on fire screaming for his life.

“Yeah… You get a feelin’ for it.”

[jodilin65]

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2015 Might not finish this entry today, but to get started… I began to panic when Tom started to take off by himself to go to Walmart, so I stopped him and went with him. I guess I felt it was too soon to be left alone after Friday’s attack.

So we went out and didn’t have any close calls on the road like yesterday when some bitch in a Mercedes pulled out in front of us. Luxury cars are great at stopping fast, even at 12 years old.

I got Click My Hyperpink Megalast lipstick by Wet-n-Wild and it’s definitely hard to get off just like that girl said. It looks great, and lasts long, but is a bit dry and stiff, so I have to go over it with lip balm. I hate my lips overall, though. Too narrow, too thin.

Meanwhile, the first toilet is installed! It took almost 2.5 hours, and I didn’t even panic when he left me alone to go get longer hoses after I TOLD him 12” would be too short since these are taller toilets. Sometimes his wife really does know best.

Lifting toilets that weigh nearly as much as I do isn’t easy, but yes, I’m doing nearly as much work as he is. It definitely takes longer to pull the old one out than to get the new one in. The hardest part is setting the new one down because you don’t want to disturb the wax ring or the silicone along the base, yet you also want to set it down straight. We’re about to install the master bath toilet, so more details to come later!

Later…

Both our 32-year-old giant toilets that flushed super slow and took forever to fill are now gone. History!

I assisted with gathering tools as he needed them… Allen wrenches, crescent wrenches and a hacksaw to try to cut through the rotted bolt holding the tank to the toilet, but it just wouldn’t let go. He had to carry out both toilets as a whole using a dolly.

I thought it would stink like hell when the hole in the floor was opened but it didn’t. Actually, the silicone he applied around the base of the toilet stunk more.

They also don’t flush when you stand up like I thought they did. You have to wave your hand within 3 inches of a button on the side of the tank. It has 4 AA batteries and should last at least a year. The button has a blue light when it’s activated that glows red when the batteries get weak, and a small gray knob to do a manual flush. What’s amazing is how FAST they flush! The old ones flushed slower than I’d ever seen any other toilet flush. Even Andy said he’d never seen a toilet flush like that when he visited nearly a year ago. It took so long that sometimes it had to be flushed twice just to get the toilet paper down. These flush in just two seconds and fill up much faster. They don’t flush any louder than regular toilets, as Andy asked. Toilets only flush super loud when there’s no tank, like in public bathrooms.

I like that you have to wave the button to flush it rather than have it flush when you stand up because then every time we went near it the thing would flush.

I’ll go ahead and post this tonight, but pictures and other details have to wait. We’re just so beat. He’s already gone to bed.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2015 Very long, busy day, so I’m gonna update as quickly as I can as I’m getting a bit tired.

Had blood drawn yesterday and the nice Asian guy had to use a butterfly needle on my tiny veins. Wondering if skipping my meds last Sunday is going to really affect the numbers all that much or not. I hope not, or else I’ll have to explain that I skipped that day, but will probably just say I “forgot.”

I totally dread seeing her next Tuesday! What has to be said in person that can’t be said online or over the phone? I want to go back to 75 for now and that’s that. End of story. I like the woman, she’s fairly attractive for her age, she’s intelligent, but she also has a very commanding and somewhat intimidating personality. I know my body. Again, she may be the expert, but I know what’s normal for me to feel and what’s not, and I know I feel like shit on anything over 75. I’ll just tell her this and that I can always try 88’s again later on and see what happens, and hope she’ll be willing to consider how I feel and not her numbers (not that 10.61 was that bad anyway) and hope she’ll leave it at that. Some doctors have an all-or-nothing attitude where you either do as they say, or they won’t see you. I’m not refusing the meds altogether; I just can’t stay on a dose that makes me feel like I’m gonna die on and off. I just really hope I’m not going to have the hassle of having to find a new endo, even if one that’s closer would be convenient.

Either way, it’s been an overall good day health-wise. I felt a little questionable a couple of times where I thought my heart was going to race and as if it was thumping a little too hard, but nothing serious. It was probably just because I was standing out in the bright sunlight for a while and was dressed a bit warmly. My pulse was a little over 100 today like it was the day before yesterday. During the medication attack, it probably shot up to 140.

We first went treasure hunting at Goodwill. I got a small cute doll and a cat figurine for less than 2 bucks. He browsed the electronics, as usual, but didn’t find anything interesting.

Then we hit Carl’s Jr. I loved the girl’s lipstick that took our order, though that particular color would probably look like shit on me. It was very vivid and even and she said it doesn’t wipe off. It’s Wet-n-Wild’s Megalast. Looked it up on Amazon. Kinda like Pinkerbell.

Anyway, we got two deluxe motion-censored toilets with easy-to-clean bases that oughta be way cool. They’re American Standards and they’re supposed to have great flushing power because of the size of the hole that fills the tanks faster and all that. The only thing that sucked was that sure enough, a piece on the tank was broken and we had to return it. They were kind enough to switch it out for us, rather than tell us to return it for a full refund like Home Depot did, and then buy all-new ones.

We were going to get basic toilets for $100 each, but then realized it’s not like we do this every year or even every few years, so we might as well go all out. It’s going to cost close to $500 after the rebates, but should be well worth it for the 12-30 years we may be using them for. Wish us luck with tomorrow’s installation!

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2015 I have both great and shitty news. The great news is that my wonderful endo messaged me online to inform me that my thyroid numbers are now perfect. Perfect! My TSH is 3.71 and my T4 is 1.3.

She also let me know that they would retest me to check for accumulation but that she has labs ordered anytime I need them before our scheduled December test/appointment. Lastly, if my symptoms worsen, go to the lab and come see her sooner.

Well, yesterday I had mild tightness in the lungs and mild anxiety, but today’s the day it really got me, booming heart and all. As always, I was batshit terrified. No wonder I thought I was going to die the first time I experienced this and didn’t know why. It is the most scariest and miserable feeling I have ever experienced. I would rather have the worst period cramps in the world, puke my guts out, gain 50 pounds, and have all my teeth pulled at once.

I felt anxiety well up within me, then I felt warm and my heart started racing/booming, along with the other symptoms of lung tightness, the runs, low appetite, a little weight loss (despite not watching my calories or working out the last few days) and jitteriness. My legs felt like rubber and I could barely type the message I sent to my doc or Skype Tom.

I’m now virtually certain that the tightness is not something in the air and the IF diet isn’t what triggered my anxiety. I’m also sure there’s no way I can continue on this dose, perfect numbers or not. I’m going to have to dive back to 75s and try again in six months to a year or so. Sometimes the second time’s the charm for me. It was with the 75s and with endo docs, after all. I swear the more I learn from her, the more I realize just how much information my old doctor withheld from me.

I won’t be able to get in to see my doctor until November 3, but I am going to the lab today when Tom gets home from work. I was so terrified earlier that I almost had him come home. I’m surprised I started feeling better as fast as I did because it usually takes time to recover from this sort of thing, but this time around I was armed with lorazepam and a doctor who actually gives a shit. I didn’t have to resort to the beta-blocker, though.

I don’t know if it was caused by a pocket flare within the gland or what, but I just know I don’t ever want to go through this shit again. But it seems I do whenever my numbers dip below 8 or so. I would still rather be a little hypo than suffer. I respect the fact that the doctor thinks this is the right dose for me, and while it might be the right dose number-wise, it’s not the right dose for how I feel. I could kick myself for agreeing to go to the 88s when I had been feeling so good on the 75s. Again, maybe we’ll try again in the future.

Will write more later when I’m not as busy and not as rattled.

Later…

Doing another entry now because I expect to be busy over the next few days. We’re going to be picking up the toilets tomorrow and installing them on Saturday, and NaNoWriMo starts on Sunday. Still feeling stable after this morning’s terrifying scare, but worried it’ll get me again at any moment. It’s random and unpredictable.

Here’s a health update on Tom. He went to his doctor yesterday and he got right in in no time at all. As he said, he’s Middle Eastern so no one wants to see him. Female doctors are definitely way more sought out the male doctors, especially American ones because nobody wants to deal with the funky accents of foreigners that can be very hard to understand. As for me… while I do prefer females, as long as I can understand them and they know what they’re doing, any color or race will do.

His blood pressure is up even more so his doctor doubled the dose of this medication. This medication (I forget the name of it but it’s a very standard drug) doesn’t make him cough nearly as much as the stuff he was on before. It’s a diuretic so it should help the swelling in his feet.

I asked him why he has high blood pressure and he told me it’s because he has a family history of it, is obese, and isn’t getting enough exercise. He sits at the computer all day at work and then he works such long hours that when he finally gets home he has no energy left for working out. He just wants to eat, watch his show, and go to bed.

He’s determined to change this and lose 30 pounds before the trip. I’m the last one who would ever condemn, pick on, or discriminate against heavy people. Some people truly can’t help it, especially if they’re older or have certain medical conditions. But I’m all for him taking steps to a healthier him. Now that I know the IF diet wasn’t causing my anxiety (I figured as much) I may even eventually lose 20-30 pounds if I can, just not right now. One thing at a time. First I have to get my medication regulated so I don’t have the “heart attacks” from hell. It’s not as critical for me anyway because I’m just overweight whereas he’s obese.

He’s going to work on getting his passport next month, and next month we should definitely have vacation dates.

Marie happened to catch me on Facebook yesterday, which I use more for messaging than anything else, and she was going crazy due to her situation. I figured it was girl problems. I’m just glad I was there for her because she’s been there for me in the past. I guess Lori gets a little touchy-feely with men and she doesn’t exactly like it. I told her that no relationship is perfect so if she’s just flirting and not actually acting on any of her attractions/fantasies – which we all have – then I wouldn’t call it quits. As she said, Lori is really sweet otherwise. Besides, she’s not getting any younger, and she herself said she doesn’t want to die alone.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2015 Not much to say today. Tom’s got an appointment with his PCP and I’m still waiting for my thyroid numbers to be posted online.

Still doing my experiment too, to try to isolate the main cause of what was making me anxious. At this point, I’m still leaning toward the dosage increase, regardless of what the numbers may say, but will know for sure around mid-November. I’m skipping Sundays for 3 weeks, then I’ll go back to 88s every day. I want to see if it backs off by skipping (and so far it has), then returns when I’m on 88s daily. The IF diet may still have had a hand in it, but probably not much of one.

My lung tightness was minimal yesterday and I made sure I didn’t burn any incense. As Tom said, all it takes is one new ingredient I may be allergic to to have a negative effect on me. As much as I’ll miss it, once what I’ve got left is burned up, that’s it. No more. I don’t want it staining our beautiful new chandelier or other things. Smoke is smoke be it from cigarettes, incense or something else. I’ll still have the wax warmers.

I finally mapped out basic plots to 5 short stories for NaNoWriMo in which each story will be about 10K words.

Also, I finished categorizing thousands of pictures I’ve saved from around the web and am arranging boards on Pinterest. Then I’ll back up to Facebook and Amazon’s cloud.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 27, 2015 Got through yesterday without tightness or anxiety. Today I feel a bit tight, though, and again I’m not sure what to make of it. I just hope it’s something in the air that will pass soon enough and isn’t connected to my medication. It’s supposed to be cloudy today and rainy tomorrow. Hopefully, it really will rain and that will cleanse the air a bit.

Today I have been keeping a journal for 28 years! Not bad, huh?

I dreamed I was in jail (I don’t know why) and went off on one of the guards for some reason. She had been yelling at me and I shouted back about doing the best I could or something like that. Then I wrote a letter to Tammy.

Then I was watching TV somewhere and a news report said some woman who shot someone in self-defense wouldn’t be charged as she was left to pick up all her scattered possessions in some field somewhere.

Then I got a text message or voice message from Paula to which I replied by asking her if she’d be ok with spending just a couple of days out here and not half a month. I doubt I’ll ever hear from her again, though, and personally, I don’t want to any more than I want to hear from Nane. I looked in on Nane's latest travel pics in real life and she still looks good, but the longer I go without hearing from her, the less I miss her. She was just too judgmental. People that bash fatties, then bash you for bashing violent groups of people is no one I wish to associate with.

In another dream, Tom had brought some bottles in to be recycled and he complained that loud music was blaring all around him every time he did. We were standing by the car as he told me this and I looked up and found an umbrella floating high above the car that was tied to the back bumper like a helium balloon.

MONDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2015 Going about my business while embracing myself for the inevitable storm to come. Sooner or later the anxiety will bite, my lungs will tighten up, and on top of that, I’m sure someone around here will annoy the shit out of me with their noise. If the tightness is due to something in the air, though, as Tom suspects, then why is this the first fall that I’ve experienced it?

I’m trying to think positive and hope for the best as hard as it is. I’m doing a test where I skip my meds every Sunday for 3 weeks. This will put me back down around 75 mcg. If the anxiety subsides, then it was likely that 88s were just a bit much for me. I will then ask my doctor to put me back down to 75 and try again at a later date to do the 88s. Sometimes the second time around works out. It did with the 75s. Meanwhile, my lab numbers should be posted soon too, but regardless of with they may say, it’s how I feel that counts.

I felt well during most of yesterday and became a bit anxious and tight toward the end of my day at which time I took a lorazepam.

We ate at Denny’s and went to Walgreens afterward. There I found a dual Chapstick, something I’ve never seen before. One side is banana and the other is strawberry.

For just a couple of bucks each, I got body mist in a pink glitter bottle and one in a purple glitter bottle. The bottles look nicer than the sugarplum and strawberry scents smell. It’s like the smell has been watered down or something. It barely smells.

Got a headband with clear gems and a similar-looking barrette wide enough to gather my thick hair. It’s not as thick as it used to be, but it’s still kinda thick.

Got pink glitter duck tape that was to be strung across metal bands we were going to string across the couch and dresser legs to keep Roomba from getting stuck under there, but then Tom read that all we have to do is just glue little knobs on top of it. So now I have all this beautiful tape, but nothing to tape, LOL.

After we came back home we took the bikes out and it was after that that I started to feel bad. So just maybe there is something out there. We’re skipping our morning ride today. I’ll hit the treadmill instead.

We decided that rather than get taller oval toilets with an overflow system, we’d just get shorter round toilets like what Jesse had. Our toilets seldom overflow anyway.

I asked Tom if he thought we stood a chance of ever moving to Hawaii and said that I didn’t think we ever would because all we could probably afford was attached living. Well, even if we were all on one floor with concrete foundations where you couldn’t feel the vibration of heavy footsteps, we’d still get the blasting TVs and other things that you don’t hear in houses. Old folks love to blast their TVs, and if there were cabinets along the dividing wall, you’d hear those being closed too. Unless there was a firewall between the units, of course.

I lived in a couple of different 4-story brick buildings back east, a common apartment set up there, and never heard these two sisters whose place ran alongside my kitchen and bedroom. That was because of the brick firewall between us. Meanwhile, I could hear the lady on the other side of me playing the radio that sat on her kitchen counter from two rooms away.

What was funny was the point he made in his response. He said, “I can’t possibly know what the future holds. Had someone once asked me if I’d ever move to Oregon, I’d have said probably not. If someone told me I’d drive a Cadillac someday, I’d have doubted that, too.”

LOL, I’d never have guessed I’d leave New England, learn so many languages, quit smoking, be happily married for so long, share my journal online for all the world to see, or publish books even if I didn’t make shit doing it, etc.

A large boat “crashed” ashore in my dreams last night, though I don’t know what beach I was on. It struck me that that was just how those kinds of boats “docked,” and I watched as people began to trickle off the boat.

Then Tom and I moved into a strange house that was in the shape of a long L. Its long corridors and polished floors suggested it might have once been used as a non-residential building. Tom’s bedroom was at the very end of the long part of the L, toward the left. Mine was further up the hall on the right. I was standing in the doorway of his bedroom where he was trying to sort blankets that were twisted around him in his twin-size bed as he readied himself for sleep. I asked him if he wanted me to close his door, saying I didn’t care if it was left open or not, but I needed to know so I could be sure the rats didn’t wander in there.

Then I ran up the hallway, shoes echoing off the painted brick walls, past my bedroom where my sound machine softly played white noise, and over to the rats’ cage on the left, straight across from the short end of the L in which the kitchen and then the living room were located.

In the last dream, I might have been in a therapist’s office. The woman, whoever she was, told Tom, who sat next to me, that when I called it “home” and not just “where we live,” I would then be in the right place.

The dream therapist then asked me to close my eyes, visualize myself in a nice place, and then describe it to her.

“I’m floating on a cloud,” I said. “Only that cloud is the ocean. I think it’s in Hawaii. There’s so much color all around me. So many pink flowers.”

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2015 Just when I thought my endo was going to blow me off, especially being a Saturday, I received a message from her confirming the lab for both yesterday as well as the week before I see her in December. So I’m back to loving Doc O again, just not her location, LOL.

As soon as I got the message, we got me to the lab and I not only didn’t have to wait long, but Kylie was my vamp for the second time. She always gets my tiny little veins on the first try.

It turns out she was Doc O’s patient as a kid before Doc O started seeing adults only. She liked her a lot, saying she was the only one that seemed to really care. I agree. I’m just not sure she always gets just how much a dosage increase really does affect my anxiety levels. I know levothyroxine is the same thyroid hormone our bodies are supposed to make anyway, but for some reason, normal or not, an increase seems to be a bit of a shock to my system. The extreme dieting may have had a hand in it, but dieting has never affected me to this degree while this medication has. I’m still leaning towards the medication as the main culprit.

Until it gets close to my next lab check-in, I’ve decided to skip the meds once a week to lower my levels just a teeny bit (this will almost put me back to 75 mcg) until I feel better. The anxiety has been coming and going. I’ll have a day without it and then I’ll feel anxious, and back and forth and back and forth… I’m not going to tell her that I’m skipping, of course.

It was great to be able to grab a bite to eat and have my coffee the instant I got up, just like old times. It sure would be nice to be able to have my coffee as soon as I got up on vacation so we could get going sooner, but I can’t go a whole week without it. I would feel horrible as my body began to crash. This can take months to recover from, too. I passed the point of no return a long time ago. Just a short break from this medication and I feel like shit, gain a million pounds that never comes back off, and retain enough water to solve all our drought problems.

I’m going to have mixed emotions if my numbers turn out okay. If it were the medication, it would be simple enough to adjust the dose. If it’s not, I may wonder if the diet really did screw up everything. I started the IF diet around the 8th of October. It was on the 13th that the anxiety kicked in. Seems a bit long if it was the diet. Shouldn’t I have felt anxious that day or at least the next day? I still think it’s the medication which means that after I’ve had time to adjust I can one day attempt the IF diet again since it works so well. I will probably wait until after our vacation.

Maybe the numbers don’t have to be bad, though, to make me a little anxious. Or maybe I have simply developed an anxiety disorder after last year’s trauma. I just don’t know for sure and not knowing is what makes it frustrating.

Receiving broken toilets is also frustrating. We were going to install them today, but when Tom pulled one out of its box yesterday he noticed it was broken. He called Home Depot and they said they wouldn’t replace it. Instead, he had to bring it in for a full refund and buy another one. Not trusting that the second toilet didn’t have cracks in it, he returned them both for a full refund and on Wednesday he’s going to go to Lowe’s for replacements. Hopefully, we’ll install them on his next three-day weekend.

Last night I had ratty dreams, but don’t remember much about them.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2015 Bob’s back to being loud and distracting. Yesterday he was hammering something at the lower side of his garage door. The only thing I can guess that’s in that area might be the gutter. My first thought was, great, he’s going to keep me up all day. But I didn’t hear anything when I got into bed. Either the sound machine did a good job of blocking him out or he stopped. Still, how many weeks is this new project going to take? I’m tired of having one of the noisiest people in the park being right next to us. Just totally sick of the computerless, restless outdoor neighbor who never wants to be indoors. The only thing this guy doesn’t have that Jesse had is the motorcycle and mutts.

Sure enough, the doctor didn’t confirm that it would be okay to go to the lab on Saturday, as I asked her to, and if she still wanted me to go to the lab the week before I saw her as originally planned. I'm sorry, but there's no excuse for this and I don't care how many patients she has. This may not be a matter of life or death, but she - or someone - should be able to handle that much. Her not having time to respond to my second to last message, as I was told by the nurse I spoke to, is no excuse either. If she had the time to read it, she could’ve jotted down a quick reply. Her answer didn’t require much thought let alone a novel. I mean what’s the point of the portal if you’re not going to use it?

Maybe the negative feelings I sensed in her the last time around weren’t in my imagination after all. It was nothing she said but just something I sensed like a dog senses fear. It was in her body language and while she may have a bit of a commanding personality no matter what and she might have just been having a bad day, I really think she dislikes me and doesn’t have much tolerance for dealing with anxious people.

She may be knowledgeable and she may be sorry that I was traumatized last year, but could it be time to look for a new endo? I have been considering it regardless because she is just too long of a stressful drive, and the valet parking is a real nightmare.

In last night’s dream, I had just woken up in the late afternoon. I stumbled into the living room with a yawn where half a dozen people stood waiting for me. I muttered something like, “Sorry. Been working graves online. Government project.”

Then I noticed one person was a woman wearing a long fancy gown which I complimented.

Next, I was back in the bedroom where the radio was playing and a new song came on that I liked. As I listened to it I looked at the window before me and noticed that the curtains were fading. Then the bedroom melted away and I was in a pool with some guy and what I assumed was his daughter who was in her late teens or early 20s. The water was cold at first but then it felt nice. Sitting on a nearby lounge was a naked girl of about eight years old. Ignoring the odd sight, I turned back to what was probably her older sister and said, “New curtains are definitely in order for the bedroom.”

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2015 After my last entry, my anxiety picked up to the point that I took a lorazepam, and even my stomach decided to get in on the action. I had the runs. So after having to be redirected FOUR times to endocrinology, I got a hold of a nurse who said the doctor had read my message but hadn’t had a chance to respond as of yet. Hadn’t had a chance? But I left the messages days ago and they usually say just 1-2 business days to get back to you. That’s how it usually is anyway.

When I got up there was a message from Chris saying that the doctor contacted me online and that I didn’t have to call her back. So I picked up the doctor’s message, and she still doesn’t seem to think that the dosage increase is affecting my anxiety, from what I understand, though she says extra labs can be done. At least I think that’s what she’s saying. I asked her to confirm that it would be okay to go Saturday to the lab and if she still wanted me to go to the lab the week before I see her as originally planned.

She also mentioned seeing my PCP. Not sure why, but I already have an appointment scheduled with her for early December.

Regardless, she may be an expert, but I know my body. I’m not saying it’s 100% responsible, but I really believe it’s got a definite hand in it. The timing is just too coincidental. I was right the first time around, so why would I be wrong now? I’m sure worrying about it doesn’t help either, but when they get me close to normal it does seem to affect my anxiety.

But fine. I’ll continue the 88s as she advised, I’ll go to the labs, and we’ll see what the numbers say. Worst case scenario, I can just skip one day a week and that’ll put me back to 75s. If the numbers are too high I’ll just tell her I may occasionally “forget” to take it.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2015 Tom upgraded to Mac’s El Capitan, but I’m still using Yosemite. El Cap just doesn’t seem to have any new and exciting features I really need. What would be nice would be if Firefox wasn’t so damn slow, but since it has more features I need, I’m kind of stuck with it for now.

No anxiety yesterday. My heart did race me awake, though, and today I’m borderline anxious but it’s backing off. Really starting to wonder just what the fuck it is I ever did to deserve this on-and-off suffering I’ve been going through for over a year now. As soon as I think I’m over it for good, back it comes. I’ll give it a few more days and see how I feel. I might call the doctor’s office on Friday or Monday. The wacky diet may have had a big hand in my anxiety, but I can’t rule out the dosage increase yet either. The biggest telltale sign of hyperthyroidism is rapid uncontrollable weight loss, a symptom I haven’t had. Nor have I had a booming heart, the runs, or a decrease in appetite, though my appetite is down a bit and I’m not holding weight as easily as I usually do.

So while it’s unlikely I’ve been flipped from hypo to hyper this doesn’t mean it can’t make me a little anxious. Or can it? That’s what I hope to find out. What’s almost as frustrating as the anxiety itself is not knowing for sure what’s causing it. It’s hard to help ourselves when we don’t know where to begin. Stopping fasting was a start, though. That definitely seems to help. If it is the meds at all, I don’t know if I’ll adapt and the anxiety will eventually go away for good, or if it will still go away if something else is causing it. It’s hard to believe, for whatever reason, that one could suddenly develop an anxiety disorder like this, but things do change with age.

Speaking of doctors, I got a weird message in which all that was said by automated voices was that the call was on behalf of (then they say my name) and that I could press 1 for customer service or call their toll-free number at my convenience. I would normally ignore calls like this but since my name was used, I first wondered if it was connected to whoever’s been using my name and number, according to that guy in Auburn.

But then I looked up the number, which is supposedly the payment center of my medical group, and other people wonder if it’s a scam of some kind. I think it might be because never in the message did they identify themselves, and I don’t know why they would be calling us about money. We either pay in person or online if they don’t send us a bill. I’ll run it by Tom when he gets up and see what he thinks. I only just discovered the message recently. Goes to show how much more I’m online than on phones.

I hope his leg is better when he gets up. He bumped his shin really bad while picking up the second 98-pound toilet. They’re sitting in the laundry room waiting to be installed this weekend with hopefully not too much drama along the way.

Still think it’s kind of weird that no one got back to me regarding my messages about the anxiety. You know I love to spy on people, and she’s been pretty consistent with her Facebook game-playing. Even when she was in New York she was playing games. But this daily habit has ceased to exist lately.

Given that she has only 13 friends, 3 of whom could have 2 accounts and be the same person, I wonder if she’s the loner type when she’s not working or if she’s just not a very well-liked person. Her tone and attitude on the job suggest she may be a real bitch in her everyday life.

I have always been a loner myself and have always enjoyed spending most of my time alone. Not all of it, but most of it. I’m more productive that way. But lately, I wonder if I would feel better and more secure if either Tom was home all the time, or a couple of people lived with us (that we both knew, trusted and felt comfortable with) and someone was always home. I don’t know, though, because sometimes the anxiety kicks in when Tom’s home. His presence certainly helps, but it doesn’t prevent it completely.

Andy's not doing much better either. He’s frustrated because he stopped losing weight, and within less than a 24-hour period, both his refrigerator and his washer crapped out. His washer is fairly new, too. I really feel for him. When we lived in Arizona it seemed that our stuff was constantly breaking. As soon as we fixed something, something else would break.

Not sure if I’m going to be doing this year’s NaNoWriMo because I’m struggling to come up with ideas. I’ve got 10 more days to figure it out if I’m going to.

Still having loads of fun creating boards and pinning pictures on Pinterest, as pointless as it may be. Then again, almost everything we do in life seems pointless at times. It’s just a fun thing, sort of like putting together a puzzle of a picture, only I’m putting together a “puzzle” that consists of many, many pictures.

During the millions of times I woke up, I remember bits and pieces of interesting yet senseless dreams. I was sitting at this weird desk in what almost looked like a giant warehouse. I was working at a computer when I looked up above me and saw several cobwebs and what looked like this strange fungus dangling from the ceiling. I hunted for a vacuum to suck it up with, but couldn’t find a vacuum hose long enough to reach them, or anything stable to stand on.

I know that I also had dreams involving Charlotte and Molly, but I don’t remember much of them. It seems like I might have been walking somewhere when I crossed paths with Charlotte. She kept asking me for a favor but I couldn’t understand a word she was saying.

The Molly dream might have had to do with us writing in paper journals.

I also had a dream that I was out riding my bike and rode by Andy's place. His front door was open and I knew he was hauling groceries in from his car. I stopped when he spotted me and said, “I know you weren’t expecting any company, but since I happened by, need a hand?”

I don’t remember what his answer was, but the most interesting dream was the letter sent from Stacey that she meant to send to someone else. That was the sexy bitch of an apartment manager Andy and I both had to deal with back in the early 90s down in Arizona. The letter contained about five non-digital photos. There was a guy standing by a pool in one where Stacy had written, “My friend Dave.” Then there was a picture showing these battery-operated fish swimming through her pool. Neat idea. :-)

I planned to write her back and ask if she wanted me to send her the letter and pictures back, or if she wanted me to forward them to someone.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2015 What a shitty night last night ended up being. It was absolutely horrible. After I ate the first time around the anxiety backed off, but then it hit me again and it eventually turned into frustration, which turned into depression. I was literally in tears. Then I took a lorazepam and laid down for about an hour but didn’t sleep. Naturally, I felt better when Tom got up and we discussed it. Both he and Aly think it’s the diet and not my medication.

I have totally stopped the diet altogether because one of us is right and I need to find out who it is so I can fix this. Again, before about a year ago, I never felt these kinds of emotions. I’ve been depressed at times, but I never had this kind of anxiety. I’m also not accustomed to feeling any negative emotions without a damn good reason either, like after losing a pet or something like that. Even when we were dirt poor I didn’t have this degree of anxiety. As I was telling someone recently, I’d rather be broke than go through this. Both are hard to deal with, but being poor was an easier kind of hard. It was more straightforward. There was no mystery to it and you knew that even if it may take time, someday it would end or at least not be so bad. But I’m not 100% sure what’s causing this anxiety and I don’t know if this is something I’m going to suffer with on and off for the rest of my life for what. Today’s been good so far, though.

Let’s just say that extreme diets make me sick or mess me up emotionally, and I have no willpower to stick to the reasonable ones. Alli messed up my stomach and skin, low carb makes me gassy as hell, and IF diets love to play on my moods/emotions. The so-called reasonable ones? They just leave me hungry and moody. A bit sluggish too, for the few days I can stand to actually stick to them.

I didn’t diet yesterday but the day before I did. Also, the day before yesterday I didn’t have any anxiety at all, while I dieted the previous day. So it seems to affect me the day after I diet. If I diet tomorrow then I’m likely to suffer the next day. Not worth it. Not worth it at all.

I’m kind of surprised the doctor never responded to my messages. I’m pretty sure that they’re obligated to respond to them, so I wonder if something’s up with her. Even if there was, why hasn’t any other doctor contacted me? Well, if stopping the diet doesn’t continue to make me feel better, I will call them and ask to go to the lab so they can check my numbers.

The only negative thing I feel today is an achy crown. It does that at times, but it doesn’t feel like it’s loose or anything.

Been using LiveJournal since 2008 and I'm still learning things about it. That number rating I’ve been going by is my all-time rating, not my daily rating. Today I am in the 7286th position while my all-time rating is now up to 12,785. And all because I started answering the daily questions I only recently discovered, LOL.

Yesterday evening was chilly, so I wasn’t out riding for long. I went out for 15 minutes an hour ago, and later I’ll spend 5 minutes strength training various body parts and then hit the treadmill for 10 minutes.

Last night I dreamed we just moved into this place and it was horribly cluttered. Tom went out to run an errand that had to do with something financial. Some financing or payment connected to the place. While he was gone I took the opportunity to try to sort through our stuff. A cat suddenly appeared and I assumed it was Simone. She was rubbing against me affectionately and purring away. I then said, “This time you’re here to stay no matter how much I suffer.” Then it suddenly hit me that Tom was taking an awfully long time to return.

MONDAY, OCTOBER 19, 2015 Didn’t sleep all that well. The traffic decided to wake me up this time around, and then I woke up to pee, and then for no apparent reason at all.

I was a little surprised to find that my endo never got back to me online. They usually get back to me in a day or less, and if they can’t, another doctor does. I had no anxiety at all yesterday but today I was borderline, so I ate earlier than planned. Tom thinks it’s connected to the diet but I don’t know what to think at this point. I’d rather stay fat and feel better if that’s the case, but rather than decide to quit or diet, I’m just going by how I feel day by day. I will say that the anxiety did pass in less than two hours after I ate a frozen dinner of cheesy rice with chicken and broccoli and had some fresh strawberries for dessert. So I got a good balance of carbs and proteins. Maybe my dear hubby is right after all. He is a very smart guy. So I guess it’s either be fat or be anxious. I’ll take the extra cushion, thank you.

My LiveJournal user ratings are now 12,921.

Again I had snippets of very strange dreams. In one I brought my PCP three or four vials of my blood supposedly for future blood tests. She asked why I brought them and I told her I brought them because she asked me to. Then she insisted that she never asked me to bring any such thing.

In another dream, I opened the front door of a house that seemed to be in a remote and mountainous setting. The mountains weren’t as steep or as green as they were when we lived in Auburn, but they gently sloped downward and off into the distance. I couldn’t see any other houses at all and I looked at a particular spot across the street and imagined Alyssa living there. I was thinking of her last night, so maybe that’s why I dreamed of her.

Next, someone was looking for somebody, and as I was telling them where to find them, I mentioned having a crush on them, not knowing that the woman I was talking about was standing right behind me. Who knows how well they took the news, whoever they were, because that dream only lasted a few seconds.

In the last dream, I opened a small box that was filled with bottle caps and Styrofoam peanuts and I wondered why the person(s), whoever they were, kept returning the caps of the bottles I gave/sent them.

I placed the box down and looked around the room I was in. There were about three twin beds side-by-side along one wall and my own twin bed was on the opposite wall facing the other direction. I realized the room was an absolute mess and I demanded that those who slept in the room put all their belongings on their beds because I was about to vacuum the floor.

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2015 Just checking in to the sound of thunder. Earlier it was the faint strains of polka music coming from the clubhouse. Yes, once again we had a live band here (Oktoberfest), and once again I’m thinking about how I came here to escape what I just can’t escape. Someone drove by with loud music a few times yesterday, and today it’s the band. Fortunately, they don’t have live bands playing here as often as they do landscaping and other annoying things. It didn’t last as long as the last band they had.

I decided to try my best once again on the IF diet since I’m probably going to feel anxious at times anyway. Diets have never made me feel anxious. Only this damn evilthyroxine has. It got bad enough last night that I decided that rather than wait and call (and risk the nurse misinterpreting me), I’d leave the doctor a direct message online, and I did. That way it’s in my words and she can tell me directly if she wants me to go to the lab. I’m stable at the moment, but I just never know when it’s going to hit me. It turns itself on and off at random. At some point in the night, I realized I was no longer anxious. It just clicked off light a light switch. Maybe part of that is because I lost myself on Pinterest. I try to do things to distract myself and my mind from dwelling on it when it hits me.

Pinterest has been around a while now, yet last night is when I got really into it for the first time ever. At first it seemed pointless and I didn’t really get how it worked, but it’s a great way to create picture collections. Pics are one of my hobbies, especially nature and animal pics. They have every subject under the sun there to search for, plus I downloaded their tool to allow me to pin pics from all over the web.

Tom printed out a little holder for a thing that can recharge our trash bin’s batteries. This way we don’t have to keep going through batteries. I scold him and tell him he should’ve gotten just a basic pail. We don’t need a motion-censored one. :)

No new toilets this weekend cuz one of them isn’t due to arrive till the 22nd, and he would like to install them both at once. With me helping, of course. :)

Andy got kicked off of Ask and accused of using a bot. Well, not only would he never want to use one there, but he probably couldn’t figure out how to create one any more than I could put a Rubik’s cube together. That’s just not the guy’s thing. So we swapped messages and pics in chat on Facebook till he discovered his account was accessible again and we returned there. Because we sometimes make funny comments/answers, the system probably thought it was a bot cuz it seems like gibberish to outsiders. We’ll randomly grab half a sentence off the web somewhere and the other has to finish it in a goofy, funny way.

Tried Kiwi berries for the first time. They’re ok. Not bad, but not great. Aly recommended golden raisins for lightheadedness caused by low iron, so I put those on next week’s grocery list even though I’m not big on “boogers.”

Last night I had a dream I moved in with this family who had a girl of about 16 or 17. She was so unhappy about my moving in and had other family problems that she ran away. About 5 years went by and I overheard someone talking about finding her to tell her that her father was dying. I was glad the girl had run away because I knew we wouldn’t get along, but I was also worried about her as well.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2015 We got a pretty good thunder and rainstorm late last night at around 2am. It rained a bit today too, and we hurriedly took off on the bikes to go “rain riding.” We were hoping to ride through at least a little drizzle, but sure enough, it cleared up. The roads are all dry now.

Feeling flashes of anxiety again, but I don’t know what to make of it. I’m feeling it more emotionally than physically. My heart isn’t booming or racing up a storm or anything like that. I just feel odd feelings on and off that again, just don’t seem normal for me. I guess it is now, though. It’s hard to describe the feeling and it’s as subtle as it is obvious, but I guess it’s anxiety. It’s just that fleeting feeling of unease, dread or doom. That’s the best I can describe it.

Eating does seem to help, and at first I thought that since I was dumb enough to go riding on an empty stomach, I just needed to eat when we returned and I’d be fine. But I continued to feel it intermittently. It’s hard to believe this is all about food since starting the IF diet, but to find out for sure, I decided to swap eating times. I was to wait until I’d been up 8 hours before I started eating, but then I decided to eat during the first half of my day instead to see if that helped, but it hasn’t made a difference.

I still worry it’s the dosage increase. Coincidently or not, these are the same feelings I had several months ago, though I don’t see how my numbers could’ve been that far off every time I’ve felt this way. All I know is that I never felt this before last year and I sometimes worry that last year’s trauma has given me a whole new and permanent anxiety disorder. I just might not feel anxious every day, though. Tom doesn’t think it’s the meds. He thinks I’m just worried about the meds and that I’ll settle in after another month or so.

The only other symptom I feel at times is tingling in the lips and that’s another symptom of anxiety right there. But WHY? Is it me? My eating habits? The meds? Something else?

I know I’m not in any danger or anything like that, but this isn’t a very pleasant thing to live with, so I really hope it backs off. I’ll message my doc if it doesn’t.

Had a dream I was in an RV or some other large vehicle when we ended up lost at the end of a dead-end road tightly flanked by trees, much like we did when we moved to Oregon. As Tom got out of the RV to check out the best way to get turned around, the RV’s brakes released and started moving backward with me inside of it. Neither of us seemed too alarmed, though.

Did I expect to hear landscaping and projects here? Yes. Just not nearly every day. Did I expect to hear car stereos blast by the bedroom THREE times in one day? No, not at all. Really, if you can't escape this shit in a retirement community where CAN you escape it? I doubt most of them are people who live here but more like people visiting or who work here. Still, the owners should remind them that this isn't the ghettos.

Later…

No way. Just no way. This anxiety I’m feeling, which is worse today, is almost certainly connected to the new dose and not the diet I was doing. It’s got to be. I ate more yesterday and today, yet I’m still having symptoms of anxiety. I’ll be damned if I’ll put up with this shit again. I’m calling the doctor’s office on Monday as Tom suggested since even he can't be entirely sure of anything. Not even a lorazepam has helped. I should have known better. I was feeling fine on the 75s and that’s where I should have stayed. All that should matter is how I feel and not their damn numbers. When you don’t feel good, then screw the numbers. I really hope the booming/racing heart isn’t next.

What I’ve got to find out is whether or not this medication can cause anxiety even if your numbers aren’t bad. I mean not bad in a certain way. I can’t believe my TSH has dropped too low, but I wonder if my T4 could have gone a little higher. She will probably send me to the lab to find out, but I’m thinking I’m going to have to dose back down to 75.

Another reason I’m starting to suspect the medication (besides the fact that it’s getting worse) is that no diet has ever made me feel anxious before no matter how extreme it may be. It can make me sluggish and shaky, but it’s never made me anxious. I swear this isn’t normal for me. Not even in the worst of times in life. Things I worry about can be on my mind, they can mess with my sleep, and they can sometimes give me the runs, but these flashes of anxiety I feel well up in my chest… that just shouldn’t be happening. Not unless it’s possible to suddenly become this way for some reason.

I’m just tired of suffering on and off and wondering what the hell I did to deserve it. I was doing so well for months, and now it’s back. Again, being poor was easier. It’s frustrating and depressing to have to once again deal with anxiety I’m not used to. This isn’t like when we stress or worry over something that eats at our minds. This is worse.

One of the toilets hasn’t arrived yet, so we might just install one of them tomorrow.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2015 Got a lot done today… laundry, making out the grocery list, cleaning, etc. Now I can finally relax and do some writing. I could skip my workout with all the physical activity I’ve gotten today doing things around the house, but I don’t want to. I like riding and getting some fresh air.

Tammy left a message and I first decided I’d call back in a week or two when there was less going on. Remember, we’re installing new toilets this weekend. They’ve arrived at Home Depot and all we have to do is pick them up tomorrow.

But then I realized she’d be there for me if I wanted to talk. She always makes time for me as soon as she can, and I knew that a 10-15 minute chat wouldn’t kill me as much as I prefer Facebook to phones.

She had both good and bad news to inform me of. I’m thrilled to learn she and Mark recently quit smoking and I hope they STAY quit. Yes, she will suffer for a while, and yes, she will gain weight cuz her metabolism is about to take a hit, but the cravings will pass and the weight can be lost later on.

The bad news – and I didn’t know this – she’s had diabetes for years. I know of others who had it, changed their eating habits, lost weight and got rid of it, but it might not be that easy for her. She can eat right, but the steroids she has to take can cause both weight and water gain, and she’s exercise-challenged cuz of her knee and arthritis.

It gets worse. She needs an insulin pump and her damn insurance has denied her cuz her numbers are too high.

What. The. Fuck?

When it comes to state, government or medical insurance, I am sooo sick of them not taking care of their own. Meanwhile, if you’re a foreigner or you’re in another country, they’ll give you EVERYTHING. It’s totally beyond fucked up.

So she has diabetes, our mother had it, and our grandfather had it. That means I could be next, even though I’m not that big and I’m pretty active. Still, she inspired me to get a good 20 pounds or so off. I think I might be able to do it now that they’ve got my thyroid meds regulated and I’ve found that IF diets work for me so long as I don’t overdo it. They can make me weak, shaky and moody and therefore I sometimes have to eat earlier than planned. Still, like with quitting smoking, you usually have to suffer a bit to make changes in life.

She and Mark, like us, are doing projects around the house little by little. Their place is a lot newer than ours, but they still want to customize it to their tastes. I guess screens need to be replaced every few years there cuz of the storms. Meanwhile, we still have our 32-year-old screens, LOL. She isn’t worse than us in all ways. She’s never needed heat since she’s been there, the lucky girl!

She wants to go on a cruise someday, too. I think she’d love it. This will be our second one. After the first one, I thought it was a hectic pain in the ass since we lived in such a tiny town that we couldn’t fly to and from. We had to Amtrak to and from the airport. But after the shit we went through upon moving here, I realized how much fun it was after all, though yes, cruises are rocking with all kinds of wild and fun adventures. It’s like a giant playground in the middle of the ocean. If you want to relax, don’t go cruising.

Got some goodies arriving tomorrow, including a realistic miniature chipmunk. That was an add-on for just a few bucks. I can add it to all my other animals. I also want to get the skunk and possum.

The hairpiece came today and I wish it hadn’t so I could’ve gotten a refund. Dumbest waste of money yet, even if it was just $5. I can’t get it to stay in place.

My LiveJournal ratings are still rising. I’m now at 13,148. I changed themes and couldn’t find the old one afterward so now it has a new look.

I dreamed my cyber friend Christine adopted a baby, and the pill dreams are back, too. This time I went to shake a pill into my mouth and ended up with a whole mouthful which I was struggling to spit out. I’d never be so dumb as to shake a pill from a bottle full of pills into my mouth in real life, though.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2015 I couldn’t believe I was out well after dark riding my bike in shorts and sandals in mid-October, but I was. I’m loving this endless summer! They’re still claiming we’re going to get a lot more rain from January through March, but I’ll believe it when I see it.

Tom needed to get some vitamin C on Amazon, so we also got some goodies while we were at it. He got when he usually gets… Computer/electronics-related stuff. I got some wall stickers to replace a couple of wall stickers in the hallway. They’re silhouettes of birds on branches with a few flying around them.

When I went to apply a 31” sticker of a figure skater I accidentally “twisted” her ankle. She’s also got a kink in her knee. I also have a sticker of a giant eye that I’m kind of sick of.

I also got a couple of bronze lady figurines from this series I’ve been collecting. Got about a dozen now, all in different poses.

Every now and then I check Mary's pathetic tweets just for shits and giggles. This is the one that let her crazy ex kill her baby and that I stupidly let use me to type her “story” from jail. I worked my ass off and didn’t get shit in return. Actually, I did get something. I got falsely accused of bashing her in my blog (better be careful what you accuse people of lest they actually act on it in the future), she blocked me on Facebook, then she unblocked me, and that was when I told her I was done with her. All she does is suck whatever she can out of people.

Anyway, she’s ”overwhelmed” and “miserable.” Oh, poor baby. She must not currently have a bad boy to use to buy her things. I’m honestly surprised she hasn’t gotten knocked up since her release.

She is otherwise intelligent and a great writer, so it’s too bad that she has to be so selfish and paranoid and befriend people under false pretenses.

No landscaping or wood chippers running today, but here we go again with the small plane circling round and round. I don’t understand why they do this at times, but when they do it’s kind of annoying.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 14, 2015 It turns out that not eating was definitely what was messing up my moods. I guess my blood sugar got too low. Tom was wonderful about it after work. He let me whine all about it and then he took me out to eat. We just grabbed some fast food from Jack-in-the-Box, but it was sooo good. Never knew there was such a thing as vanilla Sprite before. Going to have to try their peach and raspberry versions in the future.

After Jack’s, we went to a grocery outlet where I grabbed some fresh strawberries and orange juice. I was already feeling a million times better. It seems that the better a diet works, the shittier they make you feel. One doesn’t need to give up on this sort of thing altogether, but it’s definitely best not to be so extreme about it. Maybe do it every 2 to 3 days instead of every single day.

When I researched IF diets it said that it helps toughen you up to hunger and makes you able to withstand going longer periods of time without eating. This is definitely true. I guess it’s like that with a lot of things. Having more pain can toughen you up to it, so this makes sense. You just gotta go easy with it and not get so carried away.

I really felt horrible yesterday and it was frustrating until I knew for sure what it was. When we lose a pet and we get depressed we know exactly why we’re depressed. But I wasn’t sure at first what was causing my anxiety and depression. I couldn’t help but keep thinking that being as poor as we once were was so much easier. That was straightforward. With anxiety and depression, there can be a number of possibilities. Usually, however, I don’t feel any negative emotions without a reason. But until you know what that reason is, it can make it seem even worse.

At the grocery store, I also got a wind chime with three little cowbells. I got this one more for sound than for looks. It sounds different than anything else I’ve got out there. We just have yet to have enough wind to move it.

Today has been amazingly and unbelievably quiet so far. The last two days were horrible with all the landscaping in tree cutting I heard for hours at a time. Today, though, is totally dead quiet. I don’t know that it’s ever been this quiet in the middle of a weekday.

Last night consisted of many quick and senseless, silly fragments of dreams. It was the other way around where it was Fran that was still alive and he was making funeral arrangements for his dead brother Rick. In real life, Rick is the one who’s still alive.

In another dream, I was excited that this woman who made a movie gave it the title I suggested. I was trying to get a copy of it to send to my parents, LOL, who seem to be alive and well and half my dreams.

In another dream, I seemed to have moved in with a woman I was attracted to (Nane?). I don’t know if we were in a relationship or if we were just roommates, but we were in a large room watching a movie when I decided to leave. She said something like, “Yeah, it’s down to just 50° in here.”

I mentioned calling my parents and she made the comment about it only being a few days since I last called them. I said they might be worried about me since I just moved in with her and wanted to let them know I was okay. I asked her how often she would call her own parents and she said every week to 2 months.

As I rose from the couch we sat on, I also mentioned the book I was writing and said, “If we did what I’m about to write about, you would cringe.” At least I think that’s what I said. I’m not entirely sure about the last part.

Then I was walking in high heels along the street and was surprised at how easy it was to walk in them. Some guy walked by and said I should walk closer toward the side of the road. Then he told some girl who magically appeared that her joke wasn’t funny and was suddenly holding a rat that I realized was mine.

My user ratings on LiveJournal are now up to 13,370. It’s listed on my profile page there. I’m probably getting more viewers because I just noticed they have daily questions that I’ve been answering, although my tracker isn’t reflecting much in the way of new activity. This is probably thanks to all the mobiles out there. Trackers are blind to them and since more and more people are using them I don’t see most of my blog visitors anymore.

I sincerely hope the video I shared on my Facebook wall of a rat attacking a pigeon grosses Andy the hell out because he is continuing to drive me crazy with the food talk and it’s more than obvious that he is not a true friend at all. The more I hint or even bluntly suggest he quit driving that subject into the ground, the more he discusses it. Well, that tells me something about him right there; that he’s not a true friend. So I wasn’t just paranoid in suspecting that he truly does enjoy annoying people. Well, anyone who can get off on doing that is obviously not a friend no matter what they may say, and therefore I’m not checking in as much.

I’m even fucking with him at times by using Ask’s constant technical issues as an excuse to delete his questions and comments to me about food. Obviously, I won’t delete them all otherwise it would be obvious, but I do delete some of them and just say that I never got them.

Regardless of the fact that he obviously enjoys annoying people, I still think he has a serious food addiction. His whole life is nothing but Facebook, food, canning and cleaning toilets. Well, I’m sure there are some porn and dreaming of young studs he can never have mixed in as well. Either way, if he’s stuffing the shit out of himself as I suspect he may be, I would be genuinely concerned for my health. He totally overdoes things. First it was cigarettes and pot. Then it was alcohol. Now it’s food.

Heard someone drive by with loud music. It was the black person who lives a few houses down. Figures. I thought it would be the young guy who visits, but nope. It was actually the old lady that lives there. They just can’t drop their ghetto ways no matter where they go, can they?

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2015 I didn’t have an asthma attack, but sure enough, my heart raced me awake at 1:30 AM. Well, I’m not sure if it raced me awake on its own or if the dream I had caused it to do so where I was in a crowded mall or something in some strange place, and lost track of Tom. All I know is that I had to take a lorazepam for the first time since last spring to help me fall back asleep.

I awoke slightly anxious and depressed but with no booming heart. I don’t feel jittery at all. I’m just frustrated because I don’t know for sure what’s causing what. Is it the dosage increase or is it just me? Every time I think I’m home free and I gain my confidence, something happens to pull my sense of security down a notch. Once again I am dealing with a kind of anxiety that I have never experienced before in my life and it gets to me at times. I usually feel confident and carefree, and hopefully I will be feeling that way soon enough and not progressively worsen. If I do then I will have to get to the labs so they can check my TSH, but especially my T4.

It’s frustrating because when I’m not experiencing something bad I spend too much time worrying that I will. I have been anti-psych drugs due to the fact that they can be addicting as well as carry side effects. However, if this keeps up and they rule out my thyroid dose as being the culprit, I’m going to tell that shrink in December to just go ahead and give me a full-time prescription regardless of the possible risks and the fact that it may make me drowsy. I’m sure she’ll be more than happy to too, as that’s how they make their living. They’re licensed drug dealers, in a sense, only they spent time chatting with you while they’re at it. It’s still hard to believe that something that wasn’t normal for me in the past could now be normal for me, but I guess anything is possible.

The good news is that my lungs are like they usually are, crystal clear and wide open. I had a little bit of congestion when I woke up and I worried I might have an attack, but I didn’t. Fortunately, Tom was still home but my mind still went “what-ifing” on me. What if I have a severe anxiety attack when he’s not home or what if I have a severe asthma attack? That attack was the worst I’d had in 10 years. I’m keeping track of everything I feel and experience for my doctors, but hopefully, I won’t have to get in to see them sooner than originally planned.

I’ve lost a surprising 5 pounds in just 6 days. Fasting 8 hours a day may also be playing on my moods. Yesterday I felt both weak and shaky so I needed to eat a little earlier than usual.

MONDAY, OCTOBER 12, 2015 So I survived the night without another asthma attack. Sure woke up a million times along the way, though, but I feel rested enough.

It wasn't even 9 o'clock when sure enough, the weekday racket began. I heard a wood chipper running on and off somewhere.

Not much else to report on this chilly morning that is supposed to turn into a 94° afternoon other than that I had a dream that the cops pulled up to where I was living in the dream, and that appeared to be a strip of one-story apartments or condos. I must have either done something bad or thought the cops might believe that I did something bad because I was definitely not happy to see them. I woke up trying to decide whether or not I should answer the door when they knocked or if I should go run and hide and hope for the best.

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 11, 2015 After a productive day of installing our beautiful new chandelier, bike riding and other things, I ended up having a rather scary night. I got into bed and was just about to knock off when I felt what I thought was a little glob of phlegm stuck in my lungs to cough up. But then I just kept coughing and suddenly started wheezing my ass off and felt as if my lungs were full of mud. It was the worst asthma attack I’d had in years and for a fleeting moment, I considered going to the ER since Tom said he heard they stopped selling Primatene Mist OTC. It shocks the shit out of me just how unexpected, sudden and fierce the attack was, but our little finger reader did say I was 99% oxygenated and my pulse was a comfortable 84.

Tom feels confident I just got too carried away with my obsession for good smells… perfume, incense, wax… and I hope to hell he’s right and that this isn’t the beginning of a whole new problem for me. As it is I’ll be a little nervous going to bed tonight. Pretty sure whatever it was was in the bed because that’s where it started and it eased up whenever I’d leave the room. Also, I did run out of Febreeze fabric freshener and I did spray some patchouli on the bed. So all the bedding will be washed today. All of it. Including the mattress pad.

Unless it keeps happening after refraining from my smellies, we doubt it was caused by my thyroid dosage increase. He found online that asthma can be an indicator of Hashimoto’s (I guess the whole auto-immune thing is connected), but if you’re going to experience an allergic reaction to the thyroid meds (rash, tightness), it should happen right away. Some people are allergic to the fillers that hold the meds together.

The only other thing he read was that adjusting your thyroid meds can affect your asthma meds if you’re taking any, and I’m not. Sure wished I had an inhaler last night, though, even though that might’ve made me more congested at first. If it happens again I’ll contact my doctors. I’m glad I have a better team of doctors than I had last year and that they deal with me in a quicker, more efficient manner, but hopefully, it won’t be one more thing I have to worry about in the end. I’m trying to be positive and not remind myself that most of my problems aren’t short-lived.

I’m still a little shaky, tight and congested, but I am recovering. Hot caffeine and a shower helped a lot. Gonna take it easy today and just see what happens. I just know I’m sick and tired of this fucking on-and-off medical drama.

Later…

Still alive but a bit shaken up both physically and emotionally over last night’s asthma attack. Tom was a huge help whacking my back (pulmonary cupping) to help loosen things up and kick up the congestion, making me coffee… that sort of thing. I just hope it doesn’t happen again! It was scary, but not nearly as scary as when my heart took off on a run last year. I still have on-and-off tightness and when I cough it tastes like shit. All the bedding has been washed, though, and I’ve stayed away from the perfume and incense.

When choosing a cheaper insurance plan that should save us a grand or two per year, Tom noticed I had a couple of notifications on the health site saying 2 of my 4 appointments have been canceled (ear and PCP). Tom suspects the doctors are either going on vacation at those times or there was a glitch in the system. The ear isn’t critical, but I would like to see my PCP so I can get an inhaler that won’t mess with my meds in case of another emergency. Even as a non-smoker, I’m bound to have occasional attacks, though 99% of the time my lungs are crystal clear and wide open.

We ordered new toilets that will hopefully arrive on Friday because Tom will have 3 days off. They’re just basic oblong-shaped toilets that are 16” high. The only fancy feature they have is overflow systems. It’s like what our dishwasher has. They were $150 apiece.

As Tom said, I’m getting to be a real home improvement expert. LOL, yeah, he’s taught me well. Not just in Phoenix and Maricopa, but here I learned more about how carpet is laid. I’ve helped change faucets, change ceiling fans, change chandeliers, and next, we’ll be doing toilets and then eventually floors.

A few nights ago I dreamed I called my dad and told him I had good news and bad news. The bad news was that we’d have to rent a place for a while, but the good news was that the house we were renting was nice and it seemed to be a quiet neighborhood.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2015 I still have over 100 more lessons to take in my Dutch course, so I probably won’t finish this year. Dutch may not be that tough overall, but the spelling is the toughest of any language I’ve ever studied!

Came up nearly 200 places in LiveJournal’s user ratings today.

Chatted with Tammy on Facebook yesterday. She’s really having a rough time of it health-wise. She developed arthritis when she was only in her 20s and got 6 shots in her neck yesterday. That hurts just thinking about it! She also has Fibromyalgia, which I read was very common. It’s where your muscles swell around the nerves, and I guess she may need surgery to cut the nerves. It’s like something up there really has it in for her at least in that department. As tough as it’s been I’m glad she has a beautiful home and doesn’t have to suffer in some uncomfortable dumpy place in a shitty neighborhood with shitty weather. And she’s not alone either, since she has Mark and the girls.

My first 2 weeks on the new dose have been a success and my T4 is now where it's going to be. About 6 more weeks for the TSH to settle in!

I was a little shocked and even a bit worried when Tom told me his pulse was just 45 when he got up. The lowest it’s ever been upon waking up was 49. I told him to tell his doctor about it, which he will see soon. It climbed into the 60s in no time at all, but still, I wonder if that could be something to be concerned with.

I’m just the opposite. Even calm and relaxed my pulse can average about 90.

Later…

My period snuck up on me today without any warning. I’m amazed I wasn’t hungry as hell yesterday as is usually the case the day before my period. Especially since I started an IF diet. I guess I can write about that, though I won’t make this public just yet, since I have no reason to believe that the same thing won’t happen again where I continue to diet but my body refuses to give up more than a few pounds. I’ve been sticking to it religiously, too.

Experience has proven to me that I simply cannot stick to having 1000 calories a day long-term in order to lose weight. I’m up an average of 16 hours as are most people, and trying to spread a measly 1000 cals over that many hours is just way too hard. So I gave up on dieting and assumed I was simply meant to be heavy just like your average middle-aged person. I knew that I would have to resort to something a bit extreme in order to lose weight if I was ever going to. The question was what? I wasn’t about to take any medication and risk side effects, I didn’t have the willpower to starve myself indefinitely, and could never stand the thought of puking up my food, all of which is unhealthy anyway.

But then I read some other people’s journals about IF diets, which means intermittent fasting. This is nothing new and it’s not like I haven’t heard about this before, I just never gave it that much thought. Three days ago I decided to try a 16/24 variation where I don’t eat until I’ve been up for 8 hours. I’m on the third day of doing this. Yes, it’s very hard, but it’s hard in a different kind of way than it was when I’d try to stretch 1000 calories over an entire day. By cutting my stomach’s typical hours in half, which is what I’m doing in a sense, I only have 8 hours in which to consume those 1000 calories. I live 16 hours a day, but my stomach only lives 8 hours a day. This means that I spend those 8 hours eating hourly, and not feeling hungry at all. It sums up to me being asleep for 8 hours, satisfying my hunger for 8 hours, and spending 8 hours being hungry instead of 16 hours being hungry. I could still go to Denny’s or someplace like that every so often and eat all I wanted so long as I did it toward the second half of my day. I chose to fast during the first half of my day because that’s when I’m typically the least hungry.

I also learned that as long as you don’t get carried away with the fasting, no, you don’t lose your muscles and you don’t become dizzy or sluggish. In fact, I’ve had just as much energy as I usually do. I’m actually surprised at just how good I feel on this diet despite being hungry. As with most things, if you overdo it, then it becomes dangerous. Intermittent fasting is said by some doctors to actually be good for the body. It’s a sort of detox for the system. At least this is what research has told me.

Thursday, the day I started this, I woke up at 151.2 pounds. Yesterday I was 149.4 pounds. Today I’m 148.8 pounds. The big test will be to see if I can get under 147 pounds. The last time I was under that amount was when I was sick. My body usually holds its weight and refuses to cross that threshold under other circumstances. At least it’s been that way since 2009 anyway. I should know in a few days. If it keeps working I will decide whether or not to actually continue losing weight. There are pros and cons to both, and both need to be considered. I know I would be healthier if I lost 30 pounds, but now is not a good time to be getting new clothes since we want to save as much money as we can for vacation. I started this more out of curiosity than anything else, and being curious by nature, I am likely going to want to see how far I can take it if I continue to be a success.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2015 Yesterday I ranked 14,099 out of LiveJournal’s top 100,000 journals and today I’m at 13,949. Interesting tidbit of information.

We’ve got 3 insurance plans to choose from and we’re probably going to go with the middle one. They each have their pros and cons. The third plan is good for if you rarely see doctors or are sick, but our current plan isn’t the greatest if you need a couple of specialists like I do (ear & endo). The only way the middle plan could cost us a lot would be if one of us were ever hospitalized.

So yesterday I’m sitting at my computer when I hear Bob’s blower start up and I’m like, WTF? It hasn’t been a week since he’s blown his place. He never blows himself more than once a week. Then I saw him on the roof. He was obviously blowing leaves out of the gutters.

I stepped out front and said hello. I thought he might ignore me, but he and Virginia (who I didn’t notice right away) were actually very friendly. So I took the time to admit I probably shouldn’t have said anything before, since one does have a right to repair their walkways, they were here first, and I can’t expect my neighbors to be silent 100% of the time.

They were actually friendlier than ever and we had a pleasant chat as I swept down the patio. Can’t deny it felt good to know we were on good terms. I really thought they were mad at me, and well, no one wants hostility so close to home, do they?

They asked when I was going on vacation, which they thought was sooner. We talked about the weather, and Bob asked how my writing was going. He said if I had anything published he wanted to read it. “Good luck with that,” I told him, LOL. He’d need a Kindle for that. What I didn’t tell him was that I highly doubted I wrote the kind of stuff he’d like to read. :)

I haven’t published anything in ages. Just not enough money to be worth the hassle. The writing world is so all or nothing. You either make a fortune (and become famous which I wouldn’t want) or you don’t make shit.

I should finish Rainstorm’s visual editing today. Tomorrow I’ll start the electronic read-through. Then I’ll share.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2015 I caught the mailman yesterday and told him I accidentally gave him a DHL number when he asked if I ever got the package. Our money was refunded actually, and it probably didn’t even make it into the country before it got lost.

I mentioned the nice weather as he placed the mail into the boxes and how he must really appreciate the dryness doing what he does. He said that at least he didn’t have to mow the lawn. He also said he didn’t get why they won’t spend money to bring water down from Alaska while they have no problem sending money to other countries. I don’t get it either. Maybe someday the government will let us in on their reasons why it is so important to give so much money to other countries so that it can finally make at least a little bit of sense to us. There’s got to be some logic to it and it would be nice if they would tell us about it. No one throws away billions of dollars like that without good reason, or at least I would hope.

I walked through a bank in my dreams last night where they were searching for someone who stole 2 million dollars. I was heading to take a train home as I struggled to pull a hoodie over my head when I realized I didn’t have my purse with me. I raced off hoping to hell my purse was still where I left it and fearing I would miss the train.

In another dream, Tom and I were in the car and marveling over how we haven’t had any money issues for years now. I was polishing my nails red in the car of all places. I’d gotten 2 nails polished when we pulled up to one of my doctor’s offices. I sat on a stool in the waiting room and resumed polishing my nails, but after just 2 more nails the stool toppled over and I hit the floor. As soon as I hit the floor, the nurse came to call me into an exam room.

Later…

Andy is continuing to annoy me with the daily food talk. Really, I am so fucking sick and tired of having to know it every goddamn time he eats. He is either seriously obsessed with food or deliberately trying to annoy me. It’s probably a combination of both, but knowing that he knows how constant repetition bothers me yet continues to go on and on about it excessively, makes me question the validity of his friendship yet again. What the hell kind of friend goes out of his way to annoy others they’re supposed to consider a friend?

First he was saying that he was eating some chili that Marla, who’s returning to Cali tomorrow, made while she was there. I ignored it, as usual, by responding with a different subject. 45 minutes later he reports that he just finished lunch.

45 minutes to eat lunch? Obsessed with food or not, I highly doubt it took that long to eat lunch. I swear it’s like he just wants to annoy me, but that will be met with me checking in less and less. Maybe the dumb shit will put two and two together eventually.

He did say one thing that was funny, though. I told him I was proud of myself for figuring out why I lost sound on my computer, but was glad to know I had Tom here as a backup. Then I said, “Maybe you’ll want a BF someday and he’ll be a real computer techie.”

He replied with, “I couldn’t get that lucky. He’ll be a jobless loser living with his mother.”

LOL, I hate to say it, but it’s so true. This was all I used to get as well, and I wonder why that changed for me but not for him. Maybe because he never matured personally or intellectually?

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2015 Decisions, decisions. Do I work in the laundry room today no matter what? Or do I wait and see if Bob starts any shit out there first?

Sometimes I still think maybe it was silly of me to be bothered by the walkway work since he does have a right to do repairs, but then I remember his shit attitude and that wipes any guilt or regrets away.

I’ve been making a point not to run into him so he doesn’t provoke me in any way. If I assaulted someone between 18-70, they’d do a fraction of what was done to me for the “letter.” But an 86-year-old would get me imprisoned for at least a decade or so. Society has a “But they’re defenseless!” attitude. Not a “They don’t have much longer to live anyway,” attitude.

Then again, does he not really have much longer to live? He could easily be fit enough to use hammers and power tools for another 5-10 years, which would be like a lifetime to me, of course.

I hated to do this, but I realized that if something suddenly happened to Tom, I would be so distraught that I would have a hard time thinking clearly as I did what I wanted to do before killing myself and then actually killing myself. Therefore, I wrote out some final steps to take. I still think he’s going to die first, and that means I will almost certainly one day have to carry these plans out on my own, as terrifying as they may be. But death can suddenly sneak up on us when we least expect it. How can I be sure the pigs won’t knock on the door to say he was killed on the way to or from work? Therefore, I knew I needed a clear plan mapped out before my eyes because I sure as hell wouldn’t be thinking clearly as the sadness, loss, fear and anger engulfed and consumed me upon hearing such tragic news. Whether he dies younger or as an old man, no one will be here to calmly tell me, do this, then do this, and then do that. But the list I made will.

Later…

My goal has been to learn at least enough of the basics or beyond in as many languages as I can. But sometimes I wonder if I should perfect my best language instead, which would be Spanish since it’s so common here in the US.

Then I say naw, I don’t think so. If you come to my country, then my language takes precedence over yours, like it or not. You wanna cry discrimination for that, fine. But I’m from here and if you come to my land then you should be willing to learn my language. Besides, I still know a great deal of the language. I was stuck in a jail cell in Arizona with someone who only spoke Spanish and we got by just fine, as did the housekeeper and I who cleaned our hotel room up in Oregon. I don’t use the language every single day, but I still read things online in Spanish from time to time and can understand the gist of what I read. Speaking and hearing another language is always harder than reading, but let’s just say that I don’t expect any problems in Mexico any more than I expected them in Puerto Rico.

Anyway, we went out bike riding. It was chilly, slightly breezy, and very comfortable for a rigorous ride. I wanted to go even faster, but Tom always complains if I go too fast, LOL.

I got an idea on how to make my own treadmill desk so I at least have the option of using the laptop there if I ever want to. Taking two of the old fan blades and stretching them across the rails, I can epoxy them together. Then I can run cable ties through the screw holes to secure it to the rails. Then again, this may look totally goofy in the end, so I don’t know.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 6, 2015 Yesterday was fun, productive, loud and annoying. We went to Home Depot shortly after they opened to look at ceiling fans and toilets. Apparently, the Disabilities Act has caused toilets to go from a standard 14” in height to 16.5”. Not a very good thing if you’re as short as I am, but they do still have some 14’s and that’s what we’ll probably get. We decided on elongated bowls rather than round, but this is still a couple of weeks away.

They charge 100 bucks per toilet for installation, plus 25 bucks for each of the old toilets to be hauled away, so we decided to save $250 and do it ourselves. Except for the carpet, we’ve always been do-it-yourselfers.

We got a new ceiling fan for the living room. It’s the same 52” and the same brand as the old one, only this one is white and it has five blades instead of four. It was $70. Our living room is cavernous, so on really warm days the old one barely moved much air toward the corners. It has three thick frosted light fixtures that are sort of cone-shaped. We put the LED bulbs in it that were in the old one, which should last around 20 years.

While we were looking at ceiling fans, my eyes casually swung to the nearby chandeliers, and then I spotted one that totally made my jaw drop. I was just like, OMG, that thing is gorgeous! The original chandelier in this place isn’t ugly and it does go with the place, but it’s not me. Once our new gorgeous crystal chandelier I'm surprised was only $99 is installed, I’ll take pictures of the old and the new like I did with the fans.

After Home Depot we went to Walmart where we got a handful of goodies. He got some storage containers for electronic and computer-related parts that will help him organize things better, and I got Emeraude perfume, which has a unique fruity smell.

I also got a beautiful tropical calendar for next year and a semi-realistic-looking vinyl king snake that I placed by the door and wished my mother could come back to life long enough to visit, LOL. It’s not as realistic as my rattler, but it’s enough to jolt the heart of the unsuspecting. We would see these snakes every now and then down in Arizona. The way they move is really cool. There was an all-black king snake that one could easily mistake for an old tire scrap that used to watch us when we would be out and about on the land. It would usually stick its head up out of a hole in the ground. These were harmless snakes, but the Western diamondback, as cool looking as it was, was one to be careful of. Tom came as close to death as he’d ever gotten the night he started to go out and get something from the car only to be greeted by a rattlesnake right outside the door. With the hospital being nearly an hour away, that would definitely not be a good place to get struck.

I also got some scented wax cubes and the most sparkly eyeshadow I’ve ever seen in six different colors. It was the only one there. Am I too old to wear glitter eyeshadow? Yeah, probably. Do I care? Definitely not. Damn, I love being too selfish to care what others think! ;) I wish I had this attitude half a century ago.

Our Walmart purchases were free since we had gift cards.

I also have a couple of collectibles on the way to me from Amazon… a sexy “secretary” and an anime doll.

I’ll write about the shit we came home to later on.

Later…

So the shit we came home to. That would be the very loud process of a tree being cut down behind the house. Yeah, we can’t go much more than a month or two without something going on here, can we? And this is on top of all the landscaping and traffic noise I hear almost daily.

Heard about 6 whacks of a hammer somewhere too, but if it wasn’t Bob doing it just to make me hear him, then I don’t know where it came from. The only sound I’m sure he made was when he was blowing leaves for about 15-20 minutes.

Anyway, they worked on the tree for about 3 hours. Not the all-day event I thought it would be like when they took down a tree next door last year, but it was just as loud, especially the wood chipper. They sawed the branches down, then they tossed them in the chipper, then they blew leaves out of the road.

Unfortunately, I’m almost back on days, so I can just imagine what shit I’m in for today. If nothing else, it’ll be the Tuesday landscapers and God knows what from Bob.

I’ve had a few moments where I thought I felt a bit anxious, but I have otherwise had no problem on the new dose. I wish it were December already. If I can make it to then without incident, then I should be fine.

After dreaming about my dentist selling wallpaper and finding a huge bug with a strange paisley design on it, I awoke to find my hips oddly sore. After I get up after sitting for a while, it’s very uncomfortable. I don’t understand just what I did to get this sore. I helped with the fan installation, but I wasn’t the one climbing up and down the ladder. I just opened and handed him stuff so he wouldn’t have to keep climbing up and down. I did a lot of walking yesterday through the stores, so maybe I just need to do that more since biking works different muscles.

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2015 As of this day I have been smoke-free for 18 years… yay!

As of yesterday, I decided the next series I would watch on Netflix would be Criminal Minds.

About 6 hours ago, we went out bike riding. There was thunder and lightning all around us in the distance, but not a drop of rain here. Not surprisingly, there’s no rain predicted over the next week. Just some clouds with temps in the 80s.

I had a dream I met Aly somewhere. First I was pissed because I forgot my meds. She searched her car but couldn’t find them anywhere.

She was then humming some tune while happily cooking something in the kitchen of what looked like a regular house in which I was standing just outside. Behind her stood a washer and dryer that looked familiar. I pulled out my smartphone and texted her that I think I once had that same washer and dryer. Haha.

Then we were at a hotel and I was pissed again because she brought along two other women she didn’t tell me she was bringing and they never shut up. Every time I tried to initiate a conversation with her, one of the women would butt in.

The following morning I woke up, turned the portable sound machine off that I had brought with me, and found that I was alone in the room. Then I got up to use the bathroom. The toilet lid was decorated with hearts and a little bookcase stood nearby. As I lifted the lid and sat down, I plucked what appeared to be a horror story off the shelf and tried to decide if it was worth stealing since we were leaving that day.

Later…

Many people on Facebook "liked" that I've been smoke-free for 18 years except for my sister and nieces. Figures, too. I mean I knew they wouldn’t. I started to make excuses for them in my mind from them being busy to them having too many posts in their news feed to read through, but that just doesn’t seem like something family should miss. Norma “liked” it and she’s just a distant cousin.

When Tom and I were talking about places we may possibly travel to in the future, we both agreed that Europe isn’t very appealing. Most of it is too old, cold, and crowded. I like tropical places anyway. The only country there that I might consider is Greece. It has some very beautiful sections that really stand out from your traditional European setting. I doubt we’ll go there, though.

It pisses me off just how tight so many of my clothes have become. A year ago, when I was temporarily scared off my thyroid meds, I gained a few pounds that I haven’t been able to get back off ever since, thanks to the incompetent assholes that didn’t care to help me. I keep whatever I put on, so that’s why it’s important not to gain any more weight if I can help it.

There is just no way I’m ever going to have the willpower to stand the hunger, irritability, dizziness, and sluggishness that would come with having 1000 calories every single day for the many months it would take to lose 30 pounds. I might be able to lose it on 1200 a day, but even that isn’t very doable. I really need about 1500 a day. I hate feeling so powerless when it comes to my body, but that’s just life for most people. Nobody chooses to get cancer, break bones, have heart attacks and so much more… including getting so damn fat.

There are things that are a normal everyday part of life, and then there are extremes that continue to make me wonder if there isn’t something up there that has singled me out and picked on me for reasons I’ll never understand.

I consider myself agnostic as opposed to atheist because I have no idea if there is a God or not. Every time I think of reasons that suggest there could be, I am then presented with reasons to suggest just the opposite, and that God is just a fantasy fabricated as a means of controlling others and coping with this thing called life. I don’t know if there’s an afterlife either, and if there is one, I don’t know what it is.

But let’s say there is a God. One that picks and chooses what happens to us, good and bad. What made me turn against God? some people have asked. What was it that finally made you hate Him so much and when?

My hatred grew and my faith faded in stages. Four stages, actually. Funny too, because there are four stages of cancer, the fourth being the deadliest.

Stage 1: When I was struggling to conceive a child back in the 90s was when I really began to stop and take a good hard look at things stemming all the way back to my childhood. The childhood abuse, the constant rejection, not being able to get a woman I really lusted for, sexual/infertility problems, and then money issues, all made me start to wonder. WTF? What is this shit??? Could I really be cursed?

Stage 2: Yeah, I could be. At the hands of a God or just because? Well, I may never know, but when I was legally railroaded in 2000, I looked back and saw a clear and frightening pattern emerge. Everyone who ever screwed me over had gotten away with it. Totally! It was as if something up there had been protecting them all along, and this was when I really felt myself start to turn against God. I’m sure you can imagine what it was like when we lost our home in Arizona and then our land up in Oregon a few years later.

Stage 3: From 2007-2011 we suffered immensely financially and this is what really drove my hatred for any possible God home. We were pushed within a fraction of an inch to having to choose between the streets or death. Both of them would have meant death either way; the question was whether or not we wanted to get it over with quickly or die a slow miserable death in the streets. Our answer was obvious, although we certainly didn’t want our lives to end that way and that young, knowing we still had another 30-40 years left. We lived in a bummy old trailer with shit for space, and we didn’t always have enough money for necessities.

Stage 4: Ah, the final killer. That would be last year’s medical scare. It was one of the most terrifying and traumatizing experiences of my life. Even though I didn’t technically have a foot in the grave like I did a few years ago, this was what drove the nail firmly into the coffin. If anything could be up there with more power than any of us could ever have and it chose to sit back and allow for us horror, then I have no respect for it whatsoever. So God… if you exist, fine. If you hate me, fine. But I will never ever forgive you for the pain and suffering which you have allowed to be unfairly and unnecessarily inflicted upon me. Ever.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2015 Sometimes I find that it helps to get my anger toward certain individuals out by fantasizing about violence against them. At my hands, of course, and without ever getting caught. For years I fantasized about taking a huge yacht out in the middle of the ocean along with everybody that screwed me in Arizona. There I would slowly torture them in so many different ways, letting them believe they would be killed in the end. Only I allow them to live so that they are forced to live with the memories of what I did to them unless they so choose to end it all themselves.

My latest mental target is Bob. I’ve been on nights, so for all I know he might have quieted down recently. Still, he really pissed the shit out of me. Not just with his racket being so close to our house, but with his attitude and the way he suggested I consider getting an office somewhere. That was just so incredibly rude. Why doesn’t he consider shutting up?

Because we’re neighbors, I have others do my dirty work in one of my fantasies. In it, I take advantage of the fact that they love to keep their front door open, and a small group of strange men they’ve never seen before suddenly step inside while they’re just a few feet away eating lunch at their dining table. One guy holds Virginia down so she can’t call for help (hey, she’s the quiet one after all) while the others surround Bob and accuse him of owing thousands of dollars in gambling debt which he of course knows absolutely nothing about.

Because he was supposedly ordered to pay up a few times and didn’t do so, the guy decides to go “Turkey” on him. In Turkey, they cut off the fingers of a thief. In this fantasy a guy places Bob’s right hand upon the table after picking up the heaviest object he sees and smashes his fingers, thus disabling him from ever picking up a hammer or a circular saw ever again, but allowing him to live so Virginia doesn’t move and possibly leave me to get someone worse over there.

My guess is they’ll be here another decade. The next people would certainly be younger, but their chances of having kids would be iffy with more and more women being pressured to work rather than have families. Dogs? I don’t know. I thought everybody but us would have dogs here, but given that this is the West and they must be brought in as pets only here, I think that’s why a lot of people don’t bother. They just don’t think it’s right to take a dog indoors.

Even though these are just fantasies, vicious or not, I don’t want to post this publicly. What if? Just what if somebody actually does something to them? Well, I wouldn’t want these fantasies sitting out there for anyone to see at that point. Other than Tom, I’m not even going to share this with Andy or Aly. Just my sister.

I don’t get it. I just don’t get it at times. So many people half his age can barely walk half a mile. I’m sure my parents couldn’t conceive of riding a bike by the time they hit their mid-70s. Yet here’s this 86-year-old who can do anything a guy in his 20s can do. He walks 2 miles a day, rides his bike, operates his little workshop, and goes out every day. Never ever have I seen him take a day off to just stay inside and relax at home. It’s like he has an endless supply of energy, and based on how often I see lights on over there, they only sleep about 6 hours a night. The lights seemed to go off at 11 PM and come on at 5 AM, another thing I won’t say in public. They don’t have a computer, but what if their kids looked me up? LOL… LMAO! “Mom! Dad! The lady next door wants to smash your fingers and she knows when the lights are on, too!” ROTFL

I had to laugh when I saw a Sex Positions adult coloring book on Amazon. But all you would need was just one color… flesh tone. LOL

Tom and I were both looking at different brands of colored pencils and who would have thought there would be so many! Not so many brands, but so many different types of pencils for so many different types of projects.

I have just one episode left of Law & Order SVU on Netflix, and then I will need to find a new show since they don’t have a steady stream of movies I want to watch.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2015 I was up longer than I thought I would be and didn’t sleep as long as I thought I would, so I was a bit tired today.

Cousin Norma shared an article with me on Facebook about these heroic African Pouched rats that can sniff out old landmines as well as tuberculosis. I’ve heard of this before but it’s still just as fascinating. :)

Doing laundry now and looking forward to Tom’s 3-day weekend. Some of it will be spent picking out a new ceiling fan for the living room and new toilets as well.

We visited Tom’s sister in my dreams last night, and on the drive home, I asked him why he thought her house smelled so good even though she had dogs. He said, “Some people use flowers.”

LOL

On with the laundry and grocery list now.

Last night I had that feeling again where my head felt a bit off, kind of lightheaded, and I even felt slightly tight. I know I had a little wheezing and congestion during one of the many times I woke up yesterday because I remember coughing it up when I got up to pee.

I felt slightly bummed too, and the more things go well for us, the more I will return to worrying about the future and who’s going to be there for us when we get old, and how much suffering we might have to go through.

The nights may be peaceful, but there is something that can be a bit depressing about it at times. I guess because it's just all wrong. It's just not normal to be up all night. I should be in bed along with everybody else, but I have been denied that basic human right for half of my life since I can only sleep at night half of the time. But then I would also hate always being on days because then I’d always have to listen to people’s shit around here. Almost always, anyway.

In regard to my sleep schedule curse, Andy really annoyed me with his big mouth by butting into that post Norma made with the rat article. He said something about me going to sleep but he was sure I would appreciate it once I got up.

As I told him in a PM, just like it’s nobody’s business what his work schedule is, it’s nobody’s business what my sleep schedule is.

I realized I don’t have as much of an I-don’t-give-a-shit attitude as I thought I had and would like to have once it hit me just how uncomfortable I am with discussing my sleep disorder. It’s the one thing I’m actually a bit ashamed and embarrassed of. Until people’s attitudes change or it becomes more common, it’s not something I can just easily up and talk about with just anyone. Despite the fact that Norma is a very open-minded individual and would never assume something doesn’t exist just because she may not get it, I have become a lot more private than I was years ago. There was hardly a subject I omitted from my public journals in the past. Not anymore, though. You just never know what information can be used against you in ways you can’t control. Yes, I’m still a big stickler for free speech, and if I’ve got something to say I’m going to say it. However, just because I’m not ashamed that I was in jail since I was innocent and didn’t deserve it, no one needs to know that, do they? Why disclose unnecessarily? It isn’t what they think I worry about with some subjects, but what they may try to do.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2015 It didn’t get as cold in here as I thought it would early in the morning, but it did drop to 72° and I kicked the heat on for a few minutes before going to bed at which time I slept horribly. First, a loud vehicle woke me up because I forgot to insert my earplug, and then it seemed I just kept waking up for no reason at all. No racy hearts, though.

Sometimes when I think how I’ve got a dozen or so more winters here, and in a place with so much traffic, it kind of gets me down. Today was gorgeous, though. Tom and I went out on the bikes early in the evening.

Aly does have the early stages of leukemia and I guess they’re going to continue with the blood transfusions for a few months and inject some kind of medication into the blood while they’re at it. I really hope this gets rid of it!

I had a series of strange dreams. Tom overslept because he didn’t feel well, and then I was getting dressed to go somewhere with my mother. I grabbed a high-heeled sandal and slipped it on my foot. When I was unable to find the other one, I switched to flats and said, ”These are much more comfortable anyway.”

Then I might have been staying in some fancy hotel suite where housekeepers were doing my laundry and changing the bed sheets.

It seemed there was a cat in my dreams, too. Lots of cat dreams since Simone left.

Then two of my doctors were in my dreams. In one dream I was seeing my PCP and I said something like, “It seems there’s one thing after another. As soon as you take care of one problem, you have a new one to deal with.”

In response to that she said, ”We never realize the time in between.”

Then I was in a large swimming pool with my endo and some guy. I was doing all kinds of intricate dives that I wouldn’t have a clue as to how to do in real life. That was the only fun and entertaining dream… watching myself flip, twist and spin through the air and into the water. LOL