#thread ;; river pearson | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

bloopbloopsworld · 5 years ago

Text

Merry Christmas @littlestarofthewest!! I hope you enjoy this little charthur fic I’ve cooked up for you!

Summary: After Sean’s rescue, Arthur and Charles go on a ride in the woods

–

The air in the camp was joval and bright tonight. Pearson had cooked the biggest pot of stew he could make while Lenny started a fire and Uncle pulled out the booze. Arthur could hear Dutch’s braying laughter, who had one arm on Sean’s shoulders and a bottle of gin in his hands, all the way from his tent. During Sean’s rescue, Arthur had been shot and was attempting to now patch himself up. The bullet grazed him, luckily, but it still stung and needed stitches. Sean had seemed disappointed that he declined their invitation to their party but Dutch reassured him as he guided him to the campfire with the others instead. Ever with the words, Dutch was.

Arthur gritted his teeth as he poured some liquor onto the wound, the tequila running down his arm as he hissed in pain. Despite the stinging, he began the suture. The bullet had hit right across his upper arm, making it difficult to stitch himself up. He grunted as he ignored the ache starting in his other arm and dug the needle into his skin and back out. He was on his third stitch when a shadow was cast down on his tent, blocking his light. He looked up to see Charles, arms crossed, a concerned look on his face.

“Do you need help with that?”

Arthur chuckled dryly. “Yes please. Thank you kindly.” Charles took a seat next to Arthur and took the needle from his hands, making them brush against one another slightly.

“Here, face me.” He turned, accidentally knocking their knees together.

“Sorry.“

"You’re alright.” Arthur coughed as Charles began his stitches. They sat in silence for a moment, listening to the campfire and singing of the others. It would’ve felt peaceful if not for the sharp sting he received every minute and the nervousness he suddenly felt as Charles did his work on him. He hissed once more as he dug the needle especially deep during one stitch.

“Sorry. Are you alright?”

“S’fine.” He muttered. Charles continued and Arthur swallowed the pain. He could feel Charles’ rough fingers graze on his skin every few seconds, making him shiver. He gripped his bedsheets as he put in the final stitch and set the needle down.

“Done. Let me clean it up for you.”

“No, you don’t have to do that.” But Charles had already gotten up and grabbed the cloth from the shaving kit and sat back down.

“Turn to your side.” Sighing, Arthur obeyed and scooted around, now having Charles to his right. As he dabbed the cloth on his blood covered stitches, Arthur bit his lip, almost in frustration.

“Hey Charles,” he began slowly, “do you wanna go for a ride?”

“A ride?” He dipped the cloth into a cup of water. “This late?”

“Just to clear the mind, it’s been a long day for all of us.”

“I don’t think the others will want to leave.” He looked to the group near the fire.

Arthur lightly touched his fresh stitches. “Then just you and me go then. I’m tired of people.”

Charles swatted Arthur’s hand away from the suture. “Let them heal. And okay. Let’s go, I’ll get my horse.”

–

The moon lit their path as they slowly guided their horses down the grassy trail and onto the road. Crickets chirped quietly, and occasionally, a frog croaked. But besides that, the night was still. Arthur clicked at his horse, her neighing back. The horse’s hoofs beat into the ground, showing their trail on the dirt, and creating a sound that now soothed Arthur whenever he heard it.

“Not a soul out tonight.” He said.

“Best time to ride then, don’t you think? No lawmen, no bounty hunters, just you and nature.” Charles took a deep breath in. “Take it in now, Arthur. By tomorrow, there’ll be horses and people kicking up dirt and things will be restless once again.”

Arthur looked out to the river. The moon reflected off the water, making it seem as if the currents carried diamonds. “Moon makes it seem like our own little paradise.”

“I wish it was. Then maybe this whole mess would be put aside.”

“Yeah…” He gazed up at the stars who seemed to be winking at him. “Charles…” He hesitated.

“Yeah, Arthur?”

“Do you–” A deer emerged from the brush and shot past the horses, waking them from their trance. Charles’ horse neighed and moved backwards while Arthur’s reared in shock, bucking him off. Arthur yelled in surprise as he crashed to the ground while his horse took off into the night. His head spun wildly and he looked up to the sky again to find the stars now seemingly laughing at him.

“Arthur!” Charles jumped off his horse and outstretched a hand. “You okay?” Arthur took his hand and pushed himself off the ground. They were close now – Arthur could smell Charles’ dotted short and long midnight hair: they had the faintest scent of soap, leather, and the wood that he always disappeared into. Charles himself was looking around for the deer but it had vanished along with whatever had scared it. He looked back to his companion.

“You okay?” He asked, his eyebrows creased in worry.

“Yeah, yeah. Jesus, where’s my horse?” He looked around into the forest.

“Seems to have run off. I’ll help you find it. C’mon, it can’t have gone far.” They began for the forest, Charles leading his horse, rein in his hand, and Arthur by his side.

“Girl!” He whistled, cupping his mouth. “Here girl!” Charles leaned down and picked up something off the ground. He brushed the dirt off it and handed it to Arthur.

“Here, your hat.”

“Thanks,” said Arthur taking. He steadied it on his head and whistled once more. “C’mere girl!” There was a whinny from the forest and they pressed forward. They followed the makeshift path recently created, littered with crushed grass and snapped twigs and branches to a small clearing where Arthur’s horse stood, shaking its long mane and braying.

“She seems to be fine.” Charles said as Arthur soothed her.

“Yeah, looks like it,” he said taking the rein. “Damn, I’m gonna have a bruise from that fall.”

“Let me have a look at it.“

Arthur shook his head. "Naw, I’m fine, honest.”

“What if your stitches reopened?”

“Charles I’m sure it’s fine–” Charles gave him that look. That look that always told him it was time to shut up and drop it. That this was happening. He sighed. “Okay.” He plopped down and sat on a nearby boulder. Charles knelt down next to him.

“I’m gonna need you to take off your shirt, Arthur.“

He swallowed. "Right.” Slowly, he took his shirt into his fingers and pulled it over him. It covered his arms now before he pulled it all the way off and draped it on his lap. Charles positioned himself behind him as Arthur lowered his head in hopes that maybe that would hide his cheeks that were beginning to burn. First, he checked his sides, making sure that no bruises had began to develop. Next, he began to run his fingers once more across the fresh stitches. Charles mumbled something Arthur couldn’t catch and sighed deeply.

“They’ve reopened.” He said. “I don’t have any supplies on me, so we’ll have to fix you up back at camp.”

“I think I have needle and thread in my satchel,” Arthur offered, now looking up, fiddling with his shirt. “Some whiskey maybe too."

"Okay, hold on.” Charles stood and grabbed the satchel that Arthur had left lying next to the stone and dug in its insides.

“Check the second pocket.” Arthur called. He eventually fished out a needle and thread and a half empty bottle of whiskey and set the bag down. He kneeled once more, set the thread and needle down, and pulled out a cloth from his pocket.

“This might sting.”

“I’ve had worse.” Charles just shook his head and unscrewed the cap. He plugged the top of the bottle with the cloth and turned the bottle over. He set it down and gently dabbed the cloth onto the undone stitches. Arthur flinched but let him continue. It was a while before he finished again and it was a while before Arthur felt like he could finally breathe again. Charles readied their horses as Arthur pulled his shirt back on, fumbling with the buttons that seemed to refuse to button back up.

“Here.” He hadn’t even noticed that Charles had come over and was now standing in front of him. He took the small opening of the shirt and pushed the button through the first, then second, and so on. They didn’t speak for what seemed like ages to him. It seemed impossible to anyway. There was something that Arthur couldn’t put his finger on. The air between them felt thick, filled with something that felt familiar yet he couldn’t name.

“You’re too kind.” he said, attempting to make a joke, hoping to cut whatever thick emotion filled them. It wasn’t anger or awkwardness. Just a tension that seemed to go unnamed. “Doin’ all this.”

“You can repay me some other time.” Charles replied.

“Alright then, what exactly would you like?” Silence followed that question. Charles finished buttoning his shirt and looked up at Arthur. They stared at one another, a million thoughts entering and leaving Arthur’s mind a second. His cheeks began to glow a bright red. He leaned forward and he could feel Charles’ breath – hot and slow. He looked Charles in the eyes as if to ask him. Charles nodded. Arthur, hesitating for a moment, stood a bit taller, on his tippy-toes, and placed a kiss on his lips. It was quick and light at first, as if he was afraid someone would find them out in the middle of the woods. But after Charles kissed back, it was all over. He pulled Charles’ shirt down, bringing him closer, closing any space that there had been between them. Charles wrapped one arm around Arthur’s waist and used the other to cup Arthur’s face. It was deep and full of the turmoil and emotion they’d been feeling ever since Charles had walked into camp and shook Arthur’s hand. The kiss was only broken for a few moments to catch their breaths before they re-entered the fray.

It was something Arthur had been wanting for the longest time. With all of Charles’ touches and every advance, he thought that he was going to soon burst. It was only the feeling, the fear of uncertainty that held him back. Would Charles ever accept him, the feelings he had for him?

He had his answer tonight.

Finally, they broke apart, breathing heavily and exchanging glances. They held onto one another, swaying in the moonlight for a few moments, in silence. Charles played with Arthur’s hair that he had been growing out while Arthur let his head rest on Charles’ shoulder.

It was Charles that eventually pulled away, after whispering, “it’s getting late,” cupping his face gently.

Arthur sighed, nodded, and broke away. He took his satchel and strung it on his shoulder while Charles smoothed down his shirt, clearing his throat. Arthur wanted to do it again so badly, but he knew that Charles was right. "Let’s go then.” They climbed onto their horses and began back into the wood, riding closer to one another then they had before. Charles’ hand brushed next to Arthur’s and after no complaint, he took it and intertwined their fingers. Arthur sighed, a hole that had been dented into his soul now feeling as if it was being refilled. He looked up to the sky as they left the clearing and saw the stars winking once more.

#rdrsecretsanta #charthur #arthur morgan #charles smith #rdr2

49 notes · View notes

last-tambourine · 5 years ago

Text

I am intimate with dirt

"I am intimate with the dirt,” she wrote of the Netflix pit. “It has infiltrated everything. It is all over me and under me. It is Love Canal, sewage from the Mississippi, cigarette butts, marijuana ash, slave remains, rats, mice, Three Mile Island, Mount Etna, Mount Saint Helen, Dust Bowl, Adam, Eve, serpent, Satan, Chernobyl, Berlin Wall, acid rain, asbestos, uranium, geraniums, 9/11, 7/11, Donner Party, bird beaks, pigeon claws, squirrel tails, gerbil puke, hamster wheels, insulation, Saran Wrap, Mason Pearson bristles, dental floss, Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Mafia hits washed up from the East River, syringes, works, the residue at the bottom of the empty bag of dope, coal waste, cookie crumbs, broken bottles, rusty nails, Bataan Death March, Manila massacre, Boston Tea Party, frog legs, goldfish, mutant ninja turtles, alligators from Florida, red algae, yellow fever, Agent Orange, bubonic plague, gold teeth, silver spoons, copper wires, iron ore, Crest with fluoride, whitening strips, stripper tips, dollar bills, twenties laced with cocaine, subway tokens, expired MetroCards with unused fare, tickets to see Star Wars in 1976, bicentennial souvenirs, gutta-percha, cat guts, doll parts, golf balls, tennis racket strings, cashmere socks, polyester, rayon, pylon, nylon, Mylar, warped vinyl, scratched CDs, crispy leaves, shredded lettuce, tarnished keys, queen bees, xerox paper, pepper spray, Prozac pills, poppers, pooper scoopers, hula hoops, leis, fecal matter, aborted fetuses, snot, rot, cots, bots, shot glass shards, broken windows, chimney smoke, dice, playing cards, poker chips, lollipop sticks, toothpicks, used tissues, dirty handkerchiefs, bandanna threads, kite pine needles, kite strings, toilet water, wolf fangs, sunburn peel, hangnails, cavities, skin, scabs, split ends, fur balls, chicken bones, dissected cadavers, wisdom teeth, crash test dummies, Big Bang, Little Miss Muffet, Humpty Dumpty, Rip Van Winkle, bog wood, petrified forest, oyster shells, freshwater pearls, blood diamonds, Star rubies, asteroids, primordial ooze, love letters, promises kept and broken.”

#elizabeth wurtzel #cancer

1 note · View note

kittywriites · 2 years ago

Text

closed ;; @fatedtragedy — based on these tags & THAT ONE POST where muse a wakes up to find muse b covered in blood but it’s not theirs bc whoops they’re a murderer and they got interrupted !!!

It wasn’t unusual for River to wake up and find Xiomara’s side of the bed empty — she liked going on late night walks, exclusively alone, and he’d long since gotten used to that. What was unusual, however, was shuffling into the kitchen to find her standing at the kitchen sink, covered in what looked remarkably like – “Is that blood?!” He was fully awake and at her side instantly, eyes frantically searching for the source. There was so much. “What the hell happened?! Are you okay?!” One hand grasped her red splattered face as the other went about a gentle but frantic search for an open wound down the front of her body. “Baby, what the fuck happened?”

#thread ;; river pearson #river ;; xiomara #fatedtragedy #I WINGED IT OK

5 notes · View notes

nobodiesheartlessshitblog45 · 6 years ago

Text

Simple Moments Scars.

RDR2 Fanfic

Emma road into near town to pick some few for Susan.

It had a been over month since she went out on her own, so it felt good to be independent again, and riding into did sound like a great idea.

She walks into a the store, pick up some Black thread, Needles. For reason Mr. Pearson asked herto pick a skillet.

Emma walked into the store, as she was looking around a few people were eyeing as she was she was browsing the shelfs

An elderly gentleman was standing next to her giving her disapproval look, eye the scars and eyepatch.

Emma: ... ... (looks at her) Hello? Can help you?

The man gives her discussed look and walks away. Emma stood there for a few moments, and found the black thread and a skillet, and brought a the items up the Clerk.

Emma: Hello. (Smiles sweetly)

Clerk: Hello, Ma’ma. How are y— Oh, my! I mean, did you did what you were lookin’ for?

Emma: (forces the smile) Yes, sir.

She payed and walked out the General store in a hurry, feeling eyes on her she walked out.

Emma: ... (thinking) What the hell is everyone deal?! It’s like I have two head!

She looks at herself in the shop window, seeing her the right side of her face large scared covering her and eyepatch over stitched eye.

She sighs and begins walking down the sheet.

There people all around, walking by going about her day. A few people would stop and give her odd looks.

Emma just ignored them and walks down the sheet, taking her time looking around. Looking into the shops and market place.

She was walking on a stone bridge.

She stops and removes her eyepatch, and itches her sares. She looks out at the water, and some few men, fishing in a boat

She leans over the edge, and smiles peaceful. A moment of calm washing over her.

She watches as she saw a few ducks swinging by, when she heard a whispers from a 2 young woman standing near by.

They were well dressed and were looking at Emma with some form of discussed, some jewelry on, and their hair was nicely done.

Woman 1: Look at those scars on her face Isabella. Hideous. And... is she missing an eyes?!

Woman 2: My lord, how can anyone walk looking like that. Girl has no shame, Jessica, no shame at all. Lord help that girl.

Emma stood there, looking at the water, and truns to look at them.

Emma: I can hear you.

Jessica: Ahhhggg! Look at her face, Isabella! It’s so disgusting!

Isabella: (walks up to her) Who do think you are walking around like that in public place like this?

Emma: Um... Because it’s public, dumpass.

Isabella: This place is only public for upper class. Not ... Well, people like you.

Emma: Excuse me. (gets angry) The hell do you mean people like me?!

Isabella: Just look at you. Look at your face! (points to Emma’s right side) How can any woman walk around looking like you and be proud. You’re a distance. You’re ugly, you’re repulsive. You are absolutely disgusting! You should ashamed about yourself looking they you do!

Emma said nothing only places a hand her right eye.

Then Jessica pops up from behind her sister.

Jessica: Stop talking to her. She could be the devil himself...!

Emma: ... ... Boo!

The two girls let out a horrifying shrieks, alerting one of the nearby officers.

Officer: What’s going on?!

Emma: (calming looks at the officer) I was minding my own business when these two-

Jessica: (butts in) T-This ... thing was trying to attack us!

Emma: ... ... Seriously.

Isabella: It’s true! She’s out of her mind, and tried to attack us honestly Christian women!

Emma crossing her arms, rolling her left eye.

The officer was trying to comfort you two woman door, and looks at Emma, and gives a disgusted look he notices her scars.

Officer: Ma’am, I’m gonna ask ya too leave.

Emma: Huh?! What...?! I didn’t do anything...!

Officer: Leave, of I’ll have to arrest you for disturbing the peace...

Emma stood there looking at the The officer, and the two girl, who gave her smug look.

Emma: ... ... F-Fine... I’m... I’m going.

She picks her bag, and begin walking away, down the bridge. As she was walking away, and trying to hold back tears.

She walks down by the river, and stood, drops the bag, picks up a rock and throws in the river.

Breathing angrly before sitting down the ground shaking.

Just then a family of ducks were walking, Emma saw them, and thought for a moment and reached into her and pulled out a bread ripped off a chunk and began feeding the duckings.

The duckings ran right over where to Rose drop the small bits of bread. The began eating

Emma then held out her, and the little ducklings were eating out her of it.

She smiles and watches the family of ducks and hen noticed a pare od of boots, lying on ground near bushes.

Emma raises brow and walks over or the boots, and looks into the bushes.

Arthur was lying there, on his back, not moving.

Emma smiles and laughs to herself, shaking her head in amusement.

Emma: ... Well, this isn’t a surprise. Hey! Arthur!

Arthur says nothing, he rolls over on to side and grumbles softly.

Emma: C’mon, you big idiot, raise and shine~. (kneels down and shake him)

Arthur: (groan) ... Shhhhh... I’m dyin’, come back later...

Emma: Heheheh. We’re in public park. You’re gonna get in trouble if a lawmen finds you passed here. Get your drunken ass up, Morgan.

Arthur grumbles, but slowly sits up, his head was pounding, the sun Burning his eyes. He looks around confused.

Arthur: ... This ain’t my tent...

Emma: No shit. Now c’mon.

She helps Arthur to his feet, Arthur takes a few steps and falls over.

Emma: (starts laughing) Haha. I guess you boys must had fun last night.

Arthur: Ugghh, I don’t even remember what we did... Hahah. Ow... hehe. (places hand on his head) Aw shit, I lost my hat. And The rest of fellers.

Emma: I’m sure they’re around or in jail, and we can get you a new hat. (pats him on the back) I can help you look for them.

Arthur: Y-Yeah, later... Give me a moment to regret my Life decisions.

He sits down, and sees the little ducklings walking up to him.

Arthur: (smiles) Hello there, little ones. Where did you come from?

Emma: They my new gang.

Arthur: Heh. Is that so?

Emma: Yep. I decided to start my own outlaw gang.

Arthur crakes a smile and she sits down next to him, and hands a some bread. Arthur takes it and they start feeding the ducklings together.

Arthur holds out his hand letting the little duckling eat the the bits of bread.

Arthur looks over, and sees that Emma seemed to be sad and lost in lost.

Arthur: You okay, Em?

Emma: Hm? (looks at him) Yeah. Just... thinking.

Arthur: Okay. Ya wanna talks about?

Emma: ... Not really.

Arthur nods and two said nothing for a bit and sat down watching momma duck and thelittle ones go into the river and swim off.

Arthur: There gose your gang.

Emma: Yep. They were good members.

Arthur: Heh. Who are you here with?

Emma: It’s just me. I needed a to get away from the camp a bit.

Arthur nods understanding where’s coming from, slowly stands up, and stretche.

Arthur: I should, whoa, (stumbles) find the other’s.

Emma: Mind if I come with?

Arthur: Sure. Always enjoy your company, Em.

They two walked together, Arthur’s head was still pounding.

Arthur: Ughhh... You wouldn’t happen have an coffee with ya?

Emma: No, sorry, cowboy.

Arthur: I feel like was run over by a train... Twice.

Emma: Who were you with? And what did you guys do?

Arthur: Um, Hosea, Charles, Sean, Uncle, Karen, Lenny went back I believe... Some fellers were givin’ Karen a hard time and ... Well, needless to say we took care of’em, and that’s all remember.

Emma juat smiles, when they heard someone calling their names, Hosea, Javier and Charles coming over.

Javier had few hickeys this on his neck, a shit eating grin on his face.

Emma: Mornin’, boys.

Javier: And a mornin’ to you, Emma. You look absolutely ravishing today~.

Emma stairs at him, and looks at then for a few moments, forces a grin.

Charles noticed, and picked something was bothering her, but stay quiet as she and Javier talked.

Emma: Soooo, got lucky?

Javier: Hoho! You have no idea. I am a ladies man. I can understand the feelings of women.

Emma: Pfff, yeah! Sure! (walks pass him)

Javier: I do!

Emma: Whatever. Morning, Charles. (walks up to him, kissing him) Morning, Hosea.

Hosea: Mornin’, Emma.

Javier gives Emma a sour look, then two beautiful called out to him for a balcony.

Woman 1: Raul, do you really have to go?

Woman 2: Stay with us! We can work things out!

Javier stood there, gives a devilish smirk, walks up pulling his hat over face.

Arthur just rolls his eyes and walks away lighting a cigarette, Hosea and Emma give each side ways glances and Charles just stood there, kind of amused.

Javier: I’m sorry, rosas delicadas. But I must go. It was a magical night, and I will not forget you.

He takes his hat, bows his head, turns on his heels, walking away in a dramatic way, while the girl calling to him.

Arthur: Do you even remember their names?

Javier: I cannot remember. But (smirks) Ya see, my good friends, I’m lady’s man... I’m a gentleman of Grace the dignity.

Just then his starts rumble, his face gose green.

Javier: OH FUCK!!! (rans to the edge of the water, and starts dry heaving)

Hosea: ... A man of Grace and dignity indeed. (starts couching)

Emma looks at him worried, places her hand on his shoulder.

Hosea: I-I’m fine, dear. (gives her smile)

Emma: Are you sure? Y-You’ve been coughing a lately.

Hosea places a on her over the side of her face, smiling at her gently.

Hosea: My darlin’ Emma, I’m more than fine. Try not to worry about me.

Emma nods and his gives her kiss on the fourhead, then looks at Charles.

Hosea: Keep eye this one, Mr. Smith.

Charles: I will.

Emma: Well, I’m the only with one eye, so I can keep an eye myself easily.

Hosea: ... That’s not funny.

Arthur: It kinda is. (standing by smoking a cigarette)

Hosea give Arthur a look, who shrugs.

Emma: I’m gonna look around town a little more.

Charles: I’ll come with you.

Emma smiles and say their goodbye to Arthur and Hosea who going to looks for the other.

Arthur: Hey, Charles.

Charles looks at him, Arthur looks at Emma who was walking ahead of Charles.

Arthur: ... Make sure she’s okay for me.

Charles: I will.

And the two walked as poor Javier was standing by the river.

Javier: I-I’ll, ugh, be here... ... ... I hate my life... (starts to vomiting again)

Charles was walking with Emma, looking around. They didn’t say, Charles looks at Emma.

She facing the ground, a somewhat sad look in her, her shoulder were tense.

Charles: Somethin wrong.

Emma: ... No, I’m fine.

Charles: Emma.

Emma: I-I don’t wanna talk about it, Charles! Just leave it be.

Charles takes her hand gently. takes her hand.

She stop, and starts shaking, sniffing, she slowly turns to him, crying.

Charles reaches out and whipping away the tears, and takes to her to the near by wooden ear so they could get some privacy.

Making sure the far away enough. Charles looks at her.

Charles: Emma, you don’t have to hid anything for me. You can tell me.

Emma: It’s (whips her life eye) ... stupid.

Charles: ... (lifts up her chin) It ain’t stupid if botherin’ you.

Emma looks at him, then looks to side, feeling embarrassed, she takes a few moments.

Emma: O-Okay, if I tell you what’s bothering me, promise me you will not laugh.

Charles: I would never. You can trust me.

Emma: ... (takes a few deep breaths) Do... Do you think I’m ugly?

Charles was takes aback by this.

Charles: No. Never. W-What made you think that?

Emma: Ya know just... a random question. No big deal. (smiles)

Charles gives her sympathetic look, them Emma finally talked him about those dump rich girl said about her and scars.

Emma: ... I-I know. It’s really dump, and I don’t care what other’s think normaly but... Lately my ... I’ve noticed that people would give me weird looks when I walk down the sheet, and... and what those girls said... I (sniff) I can’t help feeling very uncomfortable about the way I look now. (starts to cry)

Charles looks at her, reaches out and removes her eyepatch, and kisses her scars.

Emma blinks, and Charles just smiles at her.

Charles: Beautiful. You, Emma Rogers, are just so damn beautiful. Scars and all.

Emma stood there, a tears falling down her face, the left side of her eye.

Charles pulls her into a kiss, and stood on her tippy toes, the a loud female moan could hread.

Charles: Oh~. Darlin’, I definitely made you feel better.

Emma: T-That ... wasn’t me

Karen: Huh?! Who’s there’s?!

She pokes her out from behind bushes and tree. Charles and Emma started at her.

Karen: Oh, it’s only two... Um, mind if ya ... ya know... git.

Sean: ... Karen, love~... Why-Why did ya stooooopp~.

Emma: ... ... We’re leaving.

Charles: Yeah.

The two walked out the woods and back into town. The both of them stood there, looked at each other, began laughing.

Charles smiles warmly has Emma had the beautiful smile on her as she was laughing so hard.

The hread their names being called and saw Javier walks over.

Javier: What’s so funny?

Emma: Haha. Nothing. Just... stay away from that area. Karen and Sean are having sex over there.

Javier: ... ... But the hotel is down that way. (jerks his thumb behind him)

Charles and Emma shrug and the they walks away, as they were walking Emma spots the Isabella and Jessica walking near by.

Emma: ... ...(smiles Evily) Javier, Charles, can I borrow come of clothes?

The men look at and each other.

The two rich women were making they’re down to the park, laughing and talked when they heard something for the bushes.

Jessica: What in the world was that?

Isabella: It could be a squirrel.

They kept walking, but when now and then they would hear loud footsteps from behind them.

Isabell: W-Who’s there! (turns around) You... You best back away. Our daddy is a rich lawyer!

Just then they was a loud evil which Like catliing sound, the and figures steps out of the woods behind them.

The woman scream, when has Emma had Charles hat and long jacket , Jacket’a and Poncho and hat, Arthur’s Black bandanna covering her.

Isabella: W-WHAT... WHO ARE YOU!!

Emma: Heheheh~! (in creepy old woman voice) I’m the Witch of The river... The trees of Speke about two of the most beautiful girls in the land... AaaaHehehehhehhe!!!

The two girl held each other, both of them white as ghost, while Arthur, Charles and Javier stood hidden behind trees, trying not laugh.

Isabella: A-A which?!

Jessica: Oh, lord, a-are the devil’s mistress?!

Emma: ... ... Um, Yes. I am! And I have for your—-

Jessica: AAAAAAAAGGGHHHHHH! SHE’S GONNA TAKE OUR SOULS!!

Isabella: PLEASE DON’T OWN SOULS!!!

Emma trying not laugh, keeps her Javier hand his hands over mouth, Arthur leaning against and the tree, grining at the show, Charles was still watching smiling watch Emma almost braking character.

Emma: NO, FOOLISH MORTAL, Pff... I’m come for your fresh! I wish become as beautiful as thee, unless...

Jessica: Unless...?! Unless what?!

Emma: Let me think...

Isabella: Tell us!

Emma: DON’T PISS OFF THE RIVER WITCH, YOU RICH BRATS!!

The girl screaming again, and began ripping off their jewelry and throw the purses at her.

Isabella: TAKE EVERYTHING!! WE’RE SORRY!!

Jessica: THIS IS GOOD!? PLEASE DON’T OUR BEAUTY!!!

Emma: (brakes character) Holy shit... Yeah, this is good. I’ll take it.

The the men began rawring with laughing. Isabella and Jessica were shaking.

Isabella: What’s... What’s the hell?!

Emma: Oh?! (Gose back to creepy old lady voice) THOSE AER MY HELL DEMONS!!! GO BEFORE THEY DRAG YOU YOU HELL!!! OR EAT YOU EEEEHAHAHAHHAHAH!!

The two girls yelled screaming and ran out the woods.

After making sure the were Emma bursts into laughter, Javier falls onto the ground, howling, Arthur whips his eyes, and Charles was holding onto the tree, trying to breath.

Javier: Oh Dios... oh, haha. An excellent performance, Emma. Well done. (claps)

Emma: Thank you, thanks very much. (bows) Haha. Yeah, now can you help me take all of this. I’m sweating like hell.

The men were laughing, and help Emma remove all the clothing.

Arthur: Oh, wow. Look this. (picks up one of necklaces) Dutch is gonna be a happy man when we bring this back home.

Emma: Ah, it feels good to working again, scaring the shit outta people and get pity revenge.

Charles chuckles and kisses her, and keeps watches, they gathered all the money and jewelry, and ran off before the lawmen showed up.

Needless to say today was very good day.

#rdd2 #rdr2 charles #charles smith #rdr2 javier #rdr2 arthur #arthur morgan #rdr2 hosea #female oc

7 notes · View notes

jbuffyangel · 6 years ago

Text

Boom: This Is Us 3x09 Review: (The Beginning is the End is the Beginning)

Well now that’s a twists I didn’t see coming.

Let’s dig in...

Jack and Nicky

Jack has spent the last two weeks trying to clean Nicky up. It’s not going great. Nicky off drugs is no more amiable than Nicky on drugs. As I said before, he’s no picnic. But traumatized people seldom are and what they need is someone to never give up on them. For Nicky, that’s Jack.

But Jack is running out of time. He has 48 hours to clean Nicky up before he’s put back on his old base. Jack informs Nicky about the ticking clock after Nick punches Jack square in the jaw. DON’T HIT JACK NICKY! IT’S JACK!!!

Jack takes Nicky to a spot across the river. The town they are stationed in looks small from a distance. Jack tries to explain to Nicky Vietnam will be a distant memory once they get home.

Source: @livelovecaliforniadreams

Unfortunately, a Jack Pearson speech is not going to fix Nicky. I think it’s important for us to see that there are problems not even Jack can solve. He’s not God. Jack is just a man trying to save his brother.

But a “distant memory” isn’t how war, drug abuse and PTSD work. Even Jack had difficulty coping with Vietnam once he returned home. He tried to bury his pain and it became the source for his alcoholism.

Source: @livelovecaliforniadreams

So, if a man like Jack is traumatized from war what has it done to someone like Nicky? Someone who is gentle, sweet and, shy. Someone who doesn’t have a reserve of emotional strength like Jack. Someone who is unable to cope with his fear. Vietnam broke Nicky the same as it did Jack, but only one Pearson boy found a way to hold himself together in Vietnam. Only one Pearson boy put himself back together once he returned home.

Nicky: I don’t want to get clean, Jack. I see it all again when I get clean. I’m not gonna complete the mission.

This is probably the most heartbreaking line of the episode. We cannot save those who do not want to be saved. Nicky wants to be high. He wants all his memories washed away in a wave of euphoria. The drugs take the pain away and all Nicky wants is to stay in that place no matter how short a time. It doesn’t matter to him that he’ll keep chasing the same high, but it will become shorter and less intense. It doesn’t matter to him that he’ll need to take more drugs to have the same effect. None of it matters to Nicky because he’s an addict.

Jack returns from a mission to find Nicky missing. Then, there’s an explosion. A boat blew up with one of the men on it. Of course, Jack believes it’s Nicky and he dives into the river to save him. However, we never see Jack arrive at the wreckage or pull anyone from the water. The camera simply cuts away.

STORY TIME. So, before my husband and I began watching the episode he said to me he believes Nicky is really alive and he didn’t die in the war. I mocked him, quite thoroughly.

Me: You are nuts. That’s the crap Arrow pulls. This is This Is Us.

Husband: He’s totally alive.

Me: You are totally wrong and delusional.

Then, Kevin’s guide tells him he never found a record of his uncle’s death. I said to myself, “Well it was Vietnam. It’s completely possible they missed a body.”

Source: @livelovecaliforniadreams

And then we cut to old man Nicky living in a dilapidated trailer. My husband just quietly gloated. Now I have to eat crow for the next decade. Thanks a lot, writers.

This is absolutely a twist I did not see coming as evidence by my overly confident mocking. I have no idea how Nicky survived Vietnam. My initial guess is he faked his death and went AWOL. I don’t think Jack knew he was alive, but it brings up a lot of questions. As shockers go this was a spectacular one.

Kevin and Zoe

Is Kevin making a documentary with Zoe? I don’t know how I missed that, but apparently I did. His comment about getting a good ending makes a lot more sense to me now.

It’s cool to see Kevin walking the same roads in the same towns his father once was.

Source: whitefluffyyeti

I was certain the man still living in the village was going to be the injured boy who Jack helped. Yeah, I was 0/2 this week. I’m not great at guessing This Is Us plots. lol The conversation proved fruitful regardless. This is a transformative trip for Kevin. I don’t think he sees in all the ways just yet. He’s getting answers to questions he wasn’t even asking.

In some ways, Vietnam became what Jack said. It looks completely different with a little time and distance. Kevin sits down with the villager and he’s hoping he will recognize either the woman in the photo or his father. The villager recognizes neither, but the conversation goes in a direction Kevin wasn’t expecting.

“They both hid their war stories. They both pretended to be okay for their children.”

Two sons, whose father’s were once enemies, have a chance to sit down and discuss who their fathers were. Kevin and this villager have very little in common, but they have this thin thread that connects the past and present. One day we are enemies on a battle field. The next we are drinking tea and sharing stories about our loved ones. It is a crazy, wonderful and frightening world we live in.

As disappointed as Kevin is not to get any answers about the necklace, I think Jack would be profoundly proud of his son. Kevin found the answer Jack wanted him to find. The necklace was Jack’s reminder to hold onto his humanity no matter the circumstances. The thank you was a constant reminder to be a good man, which gave Jack purpose. By sitting down with that villager, and sharing stories of their fathers, Kevin found the humanity his father searched so hard for in Vietnam. Kevin connected to the little bit of peace Jack had during his time at war.

But discovering Jack’s brother Nicky is alive? That’s the BOOM ending Kevin wanted for his documentary.

So much of Kevin’s search is focused on the woman wearing the necklace in the photo. Kevin is almost driven by fear that there was another woman his father loved and he held on to her for all these years even while married to Rebecca. We know the truth though. There is only one woman in Jack Pearson’s heart and it will always be his Bec.

Vietnam has never been about a woman for Jack. Vietnam is about Nicky Pearson. Kevin is going to find the brother Jack lost years ago. Jack’s son is going to do what he couldn’t. Kevin is going to bring Nicky home.

Source: @livelovecaliforniadreams

Kate and Toby

I just need good things for these two, particularly since our marital rocks Randall and Beth are headed for a rough patch. I want Toby and Kate to enjoy this pregnancy. I know how impossible that is. There wasn’t a day of my pregnancy I wasn’t absolutely terrified, because I had a miscarriage. My pregnancy with my daughter also became an absolute nightmare and I wish in those earlier days, when I wasn’t so sick, I had been able to enjoy more moments like Toby and Kate had tonight.

Kate doesn’t want to be surprised about the gender of the baby. I feel you girl. One of my few happy days of pregnancy was finding out we were having a girl. Toby and Kate are terrified knowing the gender will make it more difficult if they lose the baby. But Toby eventually comes to conclusion that it will be devastating if they lose this baby too. There is no protecting themselves from that pain, so they might as well enjoy the pregnancy while things are good.

And things are good. They are having a boy. Of course, they will name him Jack. I accept no other suggestions.

Source: @livelovecaliforniadreams

Kate also decides to finish her degree after she is turned down for a job she’s perfect for, a chorus instructor, because she doesn’t have a college degree. I cannot describe how insanely challenging it is to continue your education when you have children. It’s not impossible, but it is difficult. So, Kate should absolutely use this time to finish her degree.

Rebecca and Tess

Soooo… Kate outed Tess to Rebecca. My initial reaction was NOT COOL KATE.

But then I thought about it. I realized if it were my child, niece or nephew I would want someone close by to know so they could keep an eye on the child. If Kate lived nearby she probably wouldn’t have said anything. Telling Rebecca may make Tess hesitant to trust Kate going forward though. Bottom line: Kate betrayed Tess’ trust, but she did it out of love and concern. Sometimes a child’s privacy has to be sacrificed in order to protect and help him/her.

I love Rebecca because she’s just so damn earnest. She is a beautiful 5’7” column of love. Rebecca so desperately wants to help sometimes she oversteps. She almost always backs her way into help. Rebecca screws up the opening move, but she lands the dismount.

Carrying secrets does way on your soul and body. Rebecca has had her fair share of secrets. It’s kind of a Pearson family trait to bury your feelings deep and I admire Rebecca for trying to break the cycle with her granddaughter. Tess decides to tell her parents largely because of her grandmother’s advice and experience.

Randall and Beth

Oh boy.

Randall has his first city council debate and even though he gets his mojo rolling it takes awhile. Unfortunately, his campaign manager informs Randall he is just too far behind Sol Brown and he’s going to lose the race.

Source: @livelovecaliforniadreams

Tess tells Randall and Beth she might be gay and the three have a touching heart to heart. They are parenting goals. Randall and Beth sit down to regroup and drink some wine. Beth finally tells Randall she wants him to drop out of the race since they have so much going on around the house. Beth didn’t anticipate much of an argument since he’s losing. After all, Randall promised her that if the race ever got to be too much for the family that he would drop out.

Unfortunately, Randall does not keep his promise. He tells Beth has to see this through.

Wow. Just… wow. I don’t think being married to a Pearson is always the easiest thing because these children are occasionally narcissistic. We’ve seen it with both Kate and Kevin. Randall was our shining star though and he just came crashing to the ground.

I don’t think Beth was ever jazzed about Randall running for city councilman, particularly for a city I think he lives at least 45 minutes away from. But she put on her supportive wife hat and went out campaigning. She even tried to make Randall’s dream her dream. It didn’t work.

Things have changed though. Beth finally mentions their finances and how they’ve had to dip into savings to make “the dream” happen.

Blessed be to Jesus someone finally addressed the bills. They are officially not the Rockefellers. I couldn’t figure out what the heck was going on. Then add in Deja and Tess’ emotional upheaval and Beth’s unemployment… she is absolutely right. There’s a lot going on right now.

But here’s the kicker – none of those “things” going on right now directly relate to Randall. He’s not the one in emotional upheaval or unemployed. Randall is fine so Randall is going to do what Randall wants to do. However, I have a feeling if the shoe was on the other foot and Randall was in emotional upheaval or lost his job the whole household would grind to a halt to help him through it. Or at least Beth would.

I don’t understand how Randall can say his family will always be his number one priority, when Beth outlines all the ways this campaign does not prioritize the family. Randall is very clearly putting his campaign before the family. So, as of right now, the campaign is more important to Randall than how his wife feels or what his family needs. Of course, he made promises to potential constituents, but the promises he made to his wife and daughters is more important.

I talk a lot about balance in a marriage. Marriage is never 50/50. It’s more like 60/40 or 30/70 or 90/10. Our needs shift in a marriage. One partner is giving more while the other is receiving more. What’s important is the support shifts along with the needs in the marriage and that’s what makes it 50/50. One partner cannot carry the supportive weight 100% of the time. That doesn’t make for a healthy relationship.

I believe Randall and Beth have a healthy relationship and an outstanding marriage. However, I think there’s been a continued focus on Randall for quite awhile. All for good reasons, but now is a time where the needs have shifted and therefore so should the support. But Randall isn’t shifting. He’s not giving the same as he’s received. The spotlight needs to shift to Beth and Randall refuses to take a step back. And Beth has every reason to be pissed.

The flash forwards reveal the “she” everyone is going to visit is Rebecca. There seems to be some apprehension on Tess’ part, so maybe Grandma isn’t doing well. Rebecca would almost be in her eighties. Also, the way she described her bones aching in present day felt like some kind of clue to whatever medical issue may be going on with Rebecca in the future.

Tess tells Randall she will call her mother in the car and then it cuts to Beth standing on a balcony watching ballet dancers.

Source: @livelovecaliforniadreams

She is obviously running her own dance program, since her assistant called her boss. So, Beth’s passion is dance and she found her way to it. YEAH!!! She remembers to bring “Pin The Tail On The Donkey,” a Big Three birthday party tradition, so maybe it’s Rebecca’s birthday. The flash forwards seem to imply Randall and Beth are not together, but I don’t believe that for a second. I think the heaviness comes from whatever is going on with Rebecca and not from marital strife.

Beth and Randall are going through a rough patch right now, which happens in a marriage. This feels like a bomb going off right now because there are some long simmering issues Beth and Randall have to deal with coming to a head. However, I have no doubt they will work it out though.

I’d start by apologizing Randall.

Stray Thoughts

Kevin is my travel soul mate. I’m a planner too.

I want a shirtless selfie. How do I get a shirtless selfie Kevin?

Copacetic? Annie is like 5! Mini genius alert.

“Return it like Serena.” YASSS SISTER.

A city councilman shoveling my driveway? Randall gets my vote. SOLD.

#this is us #jack pearson #nick pearson #this is us 3x09 #this is us reviews #this is us season 3 #this is us season 3 review #randall pearson #beth pearson #randall and beth #jack and nicky #kate and toby #kevin pearson

61 notes · View notes

kittywriites · 2 years ago

Text

[[ closed ;; @lunarrscribbles ]]

“No, seriously, you were my first heartbreak,” River insisted with a nod. “You moved away, and twelve-year-old me was like, ‘Love isn’t real!’ and then I just never recovered.” he shrugged matter-of-factly before his face broke into a grin at the joke. Maybe it hadn’t been quite that dramatic, but he had had the most pathetic little crush on her. “Okay, so maybe it wasn’t that bad, but I did totally worship the ground you walked on, and wouldn’t even let my parents try for a new babysitter after that.” he chuckled. “I knew they’d suck in comparison.” he said with a grin.

#thread ;; river pearson #lunarrscribbles

3 notes · View notes

lewisjblake · 4 years ago

Text

You must reply to at least 2 classmates’ threads. Each reply must be 200–300 wo

You must reply to at least 2 classmates’ threads. Each reply must be 200–300 words. Please include a bible verse that coincides with replies. APA format, work cited and referenced Hays, D. G., & Erford, B. T. (2018). Developing multicultural counseling competence: A systems approach (3rd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson. ISBN: 9780134523804. Classmate 1: Paige After reading through the…

View On WordPress

0 notes

serenexanon · 4 years ago

Text

You must reply to at least 2 classmates’ threads. Each reply must be 200–300 wo

View On WordPress

0 notes

qualityhomeworkanswers · 5 years ago

Text

Psychology homework help

Reference Book: Niles, S. G., & Harris-Bowlsbey, J. (2017). Career development interventions (5th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson. ISBN: 9780134286303.

Niles & Harris-Bowlsbey: pp. 63–83, ch. 5

Thread of 250–300 words Each thread must include at least 1 citation in current APA format.

This module/week’s forum centers on the presentation “Career Counseling with Children.” View the…

View On WordPress

0 notes

binsofchaos · 5 years ago

Photo

‘I Believe in Love’: Elizabeth Wurtzel’s Final Year, In Her Own Words

Introduction by Garance Franke-Ruta. Jump to the start of Elizabeth Wurtzel’s essay here.

The late Elizabeth Wurtzel was best known for her memoirs and essays, especially Prozac Nation and Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women, but after attending Yale Law School in her late 30s she also enjoyed having a voice in the political arena. She was as much an original there as everywhere else, and between 2010 and 2012 she wrote a series of pieces for me at The Atlantic.

A feminist and a New Yorker who had really lived, she looked at the world in a different way from all the boys on the bus in Washington. And she was funny. She would send long text messages written on her smartphone while she was walking through Washington Square Park, an emissary from a more vivid and creative world than the boxy K Street buildings I would pass en route to my office in the Watergate. Sometimes her stories would come in like that too, texted in graf by graf, and I’d knit the passages together in what seemed like the right order and ask for some connective language. The thoughts were always razor-sharp; the understanding of human nature acute.

Over time our editing relationship moved into a long-distance friendship. We met for dinner at a restaurant in Chelsea, outside of course so her dog could be nestled at her feet. She had somehow managed to find a lipstick with my name on it — Guerlain’s Garance — and purchased us two tubes encased in elegant silver that sat heavy in the hand. She wore hers to dinner, and when I went to the restroom, I changed my color too, making us lipstick twins. It was how she was and in many ways the secret to her success: In addition to being wildly talented, she overcompensated for being so difficult and never totally in control by being astonishingly thoughtful, and kind, and, well, seductive. She was a seductive personality; hard not to love even as she could be hard to be close to.

When I started working at GEN this fall and living in New York full time, I reached out to her. “I’m in remission!” she’d said brightly when we first reconnected, three years after last seeing each other and nearly five years after she first learned she had the BRCA gene and breast cancer. We drank red wine on her balcony overlooking a giant earthen pit in the ground: The future NY offices of Netflix. We went to dinner at Il Buco on Bond Street (her suggestion); I could feel she was lonely. She and her husband Jim Freed had separated and were in the process of divorcing, a not so happy ending to the happily ever after story she had been astonished to stumble into in 2015, and something she was still figuring out how to write about. She started sending me things she had written as we talked about her writing a piece about Gen X politics and the 2020 race.

“I am intimate with the dirt,” she wrote of the Netflix pit. “It has infiltrated everything. It is all over me and under me. It is Love Canal, sewage from the Mississippi, cigarette butts, marijuana ash, slave remains, rats, mice, Three Mile Island, Mount Etna, Mount Saint Helen, Dust Bowl, Adam, Eve, serpent, Satan, Chernobyl, Berlin Wall, acid rain, asbestos, uranium, geraniums, 9/11, 7/11, Donner Party, bird beaks, pigeon claws, squirrel tails, gerbil puke, hamster wheels, insulation, Saran Wrap, Mason Pearson bristles, dental floss, Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Mafia hits washed up from the East River, syringes, works, the residue at the bottom of the empty bag of dope, coal waste, cookie crumbs, broken bottles, rusty nails, Bataan Death March, Manila massacre, Boston Tea Party, frog legs, goldfish, mutant ninja turtles, alligators from Florida, red algae, yellow fever, Agent Orange, bubonic plague, gold teeth, silver spoons, copper wires, iron ore, Crest with fluoride, whitening strips, stripper tips, dollar bills, twenties laced with cocaine, subway tokens, expired MetroCards with unused fare, tickets to see Star Wars in 1976, bicentennial souvenirs, gutta-percha, cat guts, doll parts, golf balls, tennis racket strings, cashmere socks, polyester, rayon, pylon, nylon, Mylar, warped vinyl, scratched CDs, crispy leaves, shredded lettuce, tarnished keys, queen bees, xerox paper, pepper spray, Prozac pills, poppers, pooper scoopers, hula hoops, leis, fecal matter, aborted fetuses, snot, rot, cots, bots, shot glass shards, broken windows, chimney smoke, dice, playing cards, poker chips, lollipop sticks, toothpicks, used tissues, dirty handkerchiefs, bandanna threads, kite pine needles, kite strings, toilet water, wolf fangs, sunburn peel, hangnails, cavities, skin, scabs, split ends, fur balls, chicken bones, dissected cadavers, wisdom teeth, crash test dummies, Big Bang, Little Miss Muffet, Humpty Dumpty, Rip Van Winkle, bog wood, petrified forest, oyster shells, freshwater pearls, blood diamonds, Star rubies, asteroids, primordial ooze, love letters, promises kept and broken.”

Very soon the piece she’d wanted to write about Gen X politics started to slip. The cancer was back. There were so many tests and scans to undergo. I told her not to worry about writing it and was surprised when she filed. She said it was a good distraction from having cancer. She badly wanted to interview Beto O’Rourke, but by the time he arrived in New York City where they might have had a face-to-face — the Gen X skate-punk candidate and the Gen X icon — he was already getting ready to drop out of the race.

She sent me a long piece about her past year, about her impending divorce and her marriage and her mother and Donald Trump. It was from something longer she was working on, she said.

We talked about her writing an additional passage when she recovered from brain surgery and running the piece on Medium. “I suppose I have to add something about this, since so much of the piece is about cancer,” she texted. “You know, of all my failures of imagination, I never wondered what a brain tumor is like. So I could not have guessed it was this atrocious, the dizziness and the pain.”

Her recoveries from the relentless march of the disease during her final, dreadful month would prove to be brief.

After her first brain surgery — she had two to cope with her metastatic breast cancer and subsequent complications — which she described as a “brain resection,” she was astonishingly herself. She was funny and poetic and articulate and in good spirits. Still dizzy and unstable — the tumor had impacted her balance center and left her clutching the furniture as she walked during her last night in her own home — but also still herself. She laughed with her mother, who took video and pictures of her in the hospital and helped coordinate, along with Jim and some of her oldest friends from college, a parade of sun-up to way past winter sundown visitors so that she would never feel alone.

And the night before the surgery, Jim was the one she stayed with. He was the one who took care of Alistair, her dog, and her black cat, Arabella. When I saw him in the hospital, he was entirely attuned to her and what she might need so that she could recover and have, in the unspoken best-case scenario, another year.

“I can’t get over how great my husband has been with this. He has made it possible for me to get better and not worry about anything,” she wrote in mid-December, after the surgery. “He loves you so much it’s clear,” I texted back, thinking of how attentive he had been, how he was arranging visits with so many people, that look on his face that you cannot fake. “I think so,” she texted back. “It’s good you see. I love him so much.”

But the past year had been a hard one. This is what she had written about it. She had shown it to Jim too, and he agreed, as did a number of her oldest friends, that she’d want it published. She loved to be published.

I Believe in Love

By Elizabeth Wurtzel

Greetings from the chaotic land of marriage come undone.

The caravansary is dismantling, toothpicks flying everywhere, the bubblegum that held it together is unstuck.

Everything is falling.

My husband moved out at the end of December [2018], as the calendar flipped from last year to this [2019], while I was in Miami Beach, strolling the walkways in the shocking morning sun and under the nighttime Van Gogh sky, away from it all.

I knew he was moving out, but still: I was surprised.

I did not see that the game was over. I did not know the clock was running. I never lose, but I do run out of time. It turns out this was basketball and not baseball.

While I looked away, my marriage fell apart.

I fell off my keel. I lost my kilter. I was a kite without a string.

Maybe it’s better.

It is a peaceful purple without him here. But psychedelic with disarray.

Marriage is an organizing principle. It is flow. It is coffee in the morning. It is who walks the dog. It is HBO at night.

And love. Don’t forget that.

Now I am an ombré mess of a person. I am missed appointments and canceled meetings. I am the thing I forgot to do. I am hanging on by a strand of Drybar dry-shampooed hair.

All day long I have to ask people to forgive me, I am flailing and failing at it all. Forgive me, I beg, as I hope my untweezed eyebrows will. Maybe soon, I will even tug at a few strays.

Or maybe wild is the way.

🖤🖤🖤

I still think of Jim as this sweet person I married. He is my trust fall. He is my emergency contact. He is my next of kin. He is my valentine. He is my birthday dinner. He is my secret sharer. He is my husband.

I do not know him anymore so I do not know myself. Who are my friends? Where is my family? I have fallen into a crevasse of nobody nowhere.

I am estranged and strange, strangled up in blue.

I do not want to feel this way. I am going through the five stages of grief all at once, which Reddit strings have no doubt turned into 523. They are a collision course, a Robert Moses plan, a metropolitan traffic system of figuring it out.

I feel bad and mad and sad.

Is this a festival of insight or a clusterfuck of stupid? I change my mind all the time about this and about everything else.

I got married because I was done with crazy. But here it is, back again, the revenant I cannot shake. I feel like it’s 1993, when my heart had a black eye all the time.

26 is a boxing match of the soul.

I did not expect bruises at 52.

🖤🖤🖤

I have blamed myself. I have blamed my husband. I have blamed cancer. I have blamed marijuana. I have blamed sexism. I have blamed Charlottesville. I have blamed my in-laws. I have blamed several men named David. I have blamed my mother who lied to me my whole life about who my father is.

Who would I be if I did not blame Donald Trump?

I am angry all the time since the election of 2016, like it happened to me, like I was gang-raped by Michigan. I don’t want to be angry, but so there, I am.

Who don’t I hate?

Who won’t I blame?

If you are standing there, I blame you.

It is not conservative against liberal.

It is everybody against everyone. Here we are, in it together, alone.

The problem is not arguments I have with people who voted for Trump, who I don’t know anyway. The trouble is the way all of us who agree about everything are bickering. Oh, the narcissism of small differences.

I remember not that long ago when the world was not political. I was part of landmark litigation that was all about a team of Republicans and Democrats working together. I loved everybody. We were all on the same side.

What Alamo did I not forgive? What Masada did I not get over?

Now there is no microaggression too small for me to scream about so the next four neighborhoods can hear.

My husband does something and I am affronted like it matters.

I am sure he does not know how I feel.

And maybe he doesn’t.

But what does any of this have to do with why we got married? We got married to be in it together. Polarization has even invaded love.

I have anger fatigue. I am sick of sick. Like everyone.

The emotional toll of the world we live in is going to do all of us in.

But politics is not about conflict.

Politics is about making the world a better place.

🖤🖤🖤

How could my mother keep a secret for 50 years? What makes someone do that?

She buried herself in it. She grew a wild Victorian garden with thorny bushes of rose and purple larkspur and red snapdragon. There was a lush meadow of lavender that gave a whiff of Aix-en-Provence en été. The dandelions ran rampant and the daffodils glowed yellow like Big Bird.

But underneath it all, beneath the lilies of the valley and the rows of geranium, there is dirt.

There is a secret.

I am a bastard. I am her bastard daughter.

There are things that come along that are a shock.

I believed something for nearly half a century. It was a lie.

I was conned.

I was wrong about myself.

I did not know who I am.

My mother told no one.

It was a lie she told for so long it became true and the secret faded to no-memory. She misremembered who my father was. She did not think it mattered.

When it all came out in 2016, not long after I got married, just after my real father died, my mother could not see what my hysteria was about. She did not understand why I was stunned.

All the while I was trying not to feel the worst way ever, trying not to be overwhelmed by the explosion, my mother could not figure out what was bothering me.

After all, she is the nuclear physicist.

My mother is like everyone else. She thinks she is normal. She is sure her behavior makes sense. She believes she does the right thing. Since she cannot imagine that this is not the case, she is surprised to find out that, yes, she makes bombs.

I scream at my mother, “What’s wrong with you?!”

I do that and she does not know what I mean.

She says, “Oh get over it.”

Her eyes widen until they look like goggles on an herbivore. She is put upon. She cannot believe we have to discuss this yet again.

“Omigod yet again!”

When will I quit badgering her?

I say, “You lied to me.”

She says, “It wasn’t a lie.”

“Then what?”

“It was a decision!”

Any relationship founded on a lie is doomed. Or not a lie, according to her, which is another lie, a lie about a lie.

That is how it is between us. We are living in the doom.

And yet, we are still at it. My mother and I refuse to give up. She is my only parent. She is all I have.

She made sure of that.

This is the most painful thing ever.

She has made so many inexplicable decisions over the years that I know about, and now I see the ones I did not know.

And yet I love her more than anyone else in the world.

She is it for me. She is in the way of everything. I should be interested in my husband, but how can he compete with how much I want to figure out the Once that started all that is upon a time?

🖤🖤🖤

I was a welter of emotions.

I was so emotional.

When I found out that my father is not my father, that my mother lied to me my whole life, that there was so much I did not know, a bomb dropped in my life. Bombs, really, aerial bombardment. It was the Battle of Manila: bazookas, flamethrowers, grenades, tanks, cannons, howitzers, banzai charges, kamikaze tactics, I was shocked and stunned with feeling.

I did not know what to do.

I became a raging lunatic.

I was a mettle of rage.

My rage is my retinue. My rage is a filthy velveteen train I drag around with me, carelessly. It is my ruby tiara. It is my rainbow and my pot of gold.

My rage is cream. It makes Chock Full O’ Nuts coffee that my grandmother brewed in a percolator on the breakfront in the dining room taste not half bad.

It is the coloratura harmony to my singsong days.

My rage is my conscience. I insist on my right to feel.

But I got caught in a Möbius strip of emotion. I was gone round the bend of scream.

It was stuplimity.

🖤🖤🖤

My marriage is crushed beneath the weight of so much. It is delicate, like all relationships. It is not one of those fine elms that blows with the gusts and does not snap.

We are a scattering of branches on the lawn. We are deadwood.

Oh, there is a lot that holds us together, the love and the hours. We got married during chemotherapy. We are bound.

But my husband is not who he was.

Yes, I know: It is always like that. The sorrow of unraveling is the stranger you are facing. What happened? I want to scream. Where did you go?

My husband had a softness. I will not compare it to the feel of cotton balls or the touch of silk charmeuse, because it is better. He was new to love. I could tell. I could see. He was surprised. He did not see me coming. He did not know I was interested. He was alone in a room. His life was small. He had the same six friends he always had. He was shy. He was not brave. He had no expectations.

He was lovely.

The beginning is always like honey, liquid and sweet.

But he was open.

He was not wounded by a million heartaches.

He had not been through it all.

He did not have a wretched past.

He was 34, which is not young. Younger than I was, but a lot could have happened by then.

It had not.

He was fresh.

There was nothing I would not do for him.

There was nothing I did not want for him.

We met in October and got engaged in May.

We knew.

And now he knows he has had enough.

It has been too much.

🖤🖤🖤

Most of all, it is not easy to be married to someone with cancer.

I feel for my husband.

Cancer is so big. Everyone is prostrate before its deadly enormity. It is the answer to every question. It is the reason why. Is it an excuse or is it real? Who is anyone to argue? Cancer is a bully. It is an elephantine disease of body, mind, soul. My husband moved a half a mile away from it. I would love to do the same.

I am stuck until the end.

I do not know what he expected when he married me when I was ill. I am sorry that it has not been what he wanted. I am sorry that I hurt him.

After I got cancer, I was not the same.

I wanted to be.

I wanted my life to go back to what it was.

I was so lively. I was so lovely.

I was so busy. I was so social.

But I could not do it.

No surprise, I changed.

I was withdrawn during chemotherapy and my world became small. It contracted like starvation. It is hard to get back what is lost. It is more difficult still to begin anew.

I tried. So hard. I called. I emailed. I texted. I showed up.

But there was a diminishment.

Cancer is an ecosystem. It is a crime spree.

Things broke. My radius. My fibula. My tibia. My spirit.

My cancer came back a year after it went away.

You think people are nice about it? No.

Cancer is misunderstood.

Everyone says the wrong thing. Which is what they do so much anyway.

Then I say the wrong thing back.

There we are, bumper cars of mismatched words.

I can’t believe the stupid things people tell me in an effort to be kind, about something hard they had to deal with that is not the same as having cancer.

The worst thing anyone can do is tell me they are sorry about my cancer.

I don’t want anyone feeling sorry for me. About anything. Don’t apologize unless you have done something wrong. It is nasty to feel sorry for anyone for any reason because it pushes her away.

Mostly sorry is just a thing to say. Anything else would be better, including I don’t know what to say.

It is always people who are the problem. What else? Our suffering is small compared to our misunderstandings with others, how they fail to give us a break, know what it’s like, judge us fairly, see the world the way we do. It is not even cancer or especially cancer. It is especially this and even that. If you are looking for absolution, you are going to have to forgive yourself.

I have chainmail from years of frustrating conversations, of people who think something bad has happened to me.

I don’t see it that way.

You could tell me everything that’s bad about cancer, like that it’s cancer, but you could not convince me that cancer has been bad for me.

Cancer has made me optimistic.

These are the days of miracles and wonders, of biopharma fireworks, of immunotherapy wow.

I have been saved.

I am miraculous me.

I will skate figure eights into infinity.

I am all claws I am all fangs.

I am not afraid of cancer. I think cancer should be afraid of me.

This past October [2018], I had a tumor in my shoulder bone that was 5 inches: big! It was threatening to break it.

And worse.

My cancer antigens were at 205, when 25 is as high as the level can go.

I had meetings in the World Trade Center while all this was going on. I hate it down there. Skyscrapers as grave markers. It is an ominous place.

When I went for help in Philadelphia at the Basser Center for BRCA at the University of Pennsylvania, only Alistair, my service dog, was with me.

My husband said he had to work.

My marriage had already come undone.

I had stereotactic radiation at Memorial Sloan Kettering. It took only three sessions to zap the tumor away. The treatment saved me, but I have a five-inch hole in my bone that looks like a cave in the Thai jungle.

When my husband moved out, I was still healing. I have a rotator cuff tear and pain from the long way home.

🖤🖤🖤

This is a love story.

Every marriage is a love story.

People who run off to Vegas after knowing each other for 10 days and find a drunk outside the Sands casino to be their witness — they really mean it. Marriage is a big gesture. There is no reason to do it except: love.

It is effusive.

I am sorry I failed.

I am sorry for this confederacy of catastrophe.

I am sorry for it all.

I think that my husband can’t believe I hurt. I know what I’m like: I have a powerful personality, it’s true. But he got me.

He made a vow to love me in sickness and in health.

There was great love between us.

And love is hard to stop.

We made a commitment for when we could not remember why we did.

He decided enough.

I am a monotheist. I am in it for life. I am in everything for life. If you don’t stop me, I will not stop myself. I have the kind of faith that you can only have if you have talked your way out of trouble all along.

I feel so much and too much. Deep in my radiated bones.

I cannot believe it is like this with my husband and not like it was that long ago on Halloween, our first date, which he did not know was a date, maybe it was maybe it wasn’t, he showed up at my door not knowing anything at all.

We were resting on our future arms, we were like people who have never read The Unbearable Lightness of Being, have never seen City of God, have never heard Exile In Guyville, oh what lay ahead.

I remember my husband in the beginning, I know the man I married, I insist he is still there somewhere.

I keep peeling for the pentimento.

Or has this all been a fraud?

Love gone wrong feels like a confidence crime.

That is the worst of it.

Do I have an electron microscope or am I blinded? Do I see more clearly now or is this a distortion? I could ask that about the whole wide world.

Sex and race look different since Trump was elected. We know all the things that we never knew. We were living in a world of trust, we believed we were on a righteous path, that things were incrementally improving, so we did not look so hard into sunlight.

All anything ever is is another way of seeing.

I thought my husband was on my side.

I thought I knew him.

I did.

I don’t.

He changed.

I do not know how to help him.

I do not know how to reach him.

Anything is possible.

I believe in so much.

I am just that way.

I believe in love.

What matters more in this crazy world?

Shame on Casablanca’s ending! I will take the hill of beans.

(This is Garance again.)

Love. Sometimes in our lives when we feel most bereft it turns out that we are not alone at all. It is the kind of cloying Disney sentiment Lizzie might have scoffed at, but it was also the truth with her. She affected a toughness that was both real and a coping mechanism, but which also led her to downplay how sick she was. Even as she was telling me she was in remission in September, spots of cancer had already returned, I have since learned.

“The people who know us when we are not our best selves — what would we do without them? I am so grateful right now for even my mother coming through for me,” she wrote after her first surgery in December. Her mother Lynne Winters and she had a famously complicated relationship, but it was Lynne who took her home to recover both times she was released from the hospital, and who had the difficult burden of having to bring her back, and who sobbed in the sparkling clean MSKCC neuro ward hallway where other parents of too-young-to-die adult children paced forlornly.

“Jim has been the best,” Lizzie texted after the surgery. “I wish you a great first husband. That might be all you need.”

They had, in fact, not divorced. The papers were signed, but not filed. He was her husband until the end, during the final days after it was clear no further interventions would work, when she lay still in bed in what was by then her at least fifth different hospital room, for all the world the image of a big-eyed Renaissance pieta looking heavenward.

“Neurology takes a positive view toward god and prayer,” she had texted after the first surgery. “And relinquishing, which is what god and prayer is about. It is always turning your will over to a higher power and letting the will of the world and not your extraordinary manipulations lead you to your desired result. I always say that, it is my constant prayer: god, if you are out there, watch over me and your will, not mine, be done. That is what will happen anyway, but I pray for release from the dreadful fight.”

She spent her whole life fighting — fighting her parents, society, the patriarchy, social conventions, addiction, depression. But man, did she live big. She had a gift for building love into her life and at the end, her friends built a cocoon of love around her.

And on the morning of January 7, 2020, she was, as she had prayed, released.

#Elizabeth Wurtzel #i believe in love #love #garance franke-ruta #medium #writing

0 notes