#two of my coworkers were arrested this week and one went home after a mental breakdown

[midnight-rice]

ok tumblr really *has* broken my speaking mannerisms, at work I found two cup lids that had melted together inseparably and muttered "this, too, is yuri" as if that's a normal thing to say on a sunday morning

[thisisawonderfulusername]

let's save the world

season two, episode one

five hargreeves x reader

summary: after getting stuck in 1963, you think you’re alone again, until five comes back with the news of another incoming apocalypse.

trigger warnings: cursing, mental instability

word count: 3k

a/n: it’s a biiiiiit shorter but the first ep of the second season was more of an exposition so it didn’t have much lol. i did my best to get more, but i did cut out luther’s bit at the end, as i’ll be putting it in the next part :P hope you like :D

as you look around at the others, you see their younger selves, and you wonder if the same thing will happen to them, before a large flash blinds you.

suddenly, you’re falling out of the sky.

you land on the ground below you, falling to your knees and barely saving yourself from falling forward by planting your hands in front of you, you feel the stinging on your hands and knees that already tells you that they had been scratched up from the impact.

“holy shit.” you breathe, pushing yourself up to stand, brushing off your hands as you look around you. when you see that you’re the only one in the alleyway, your eyes widen, and you quickly spin around in a circle, willing anyone to be there, but none of the siblings are.

your breath gets caught in your throat as you feel your eyes sting with tears that try to escape. “no.” you whisper, suddenly freezing as you look out at the road in front of the alley, shaking your head. “no. this isn’t happening right now.” your voice cracks as you stumble forward, onto the sidewalk where passing pedestrians look at you with confusion.

“they’re around here somewhere.” you mumble to yourself, wiping away the few tears that managed to fall from your eyes. “i just have to find out where here is, and then i’ll find them.” you nod to yourself, taking a deep breath as you look around.

walking quickly down the sidewalk, you come across a newspaper machine. your eyebrows furrow as you look at it. you definitely haven’t seen one of those in a long while. you lean forwards slightly to get a better look at the preview of the paper inside, your lips parting in surprise when you see the date.

september twenty-third, nineteen sixty-three.

you take in a deep breath, looking up and down the street at all the people passing by. you should have noticed that something was wrong. the way people were dressed was different, the buildings that lined the road were older looking and you didn’t recognize any of them. looking back to the paper, you sigh when you see that you’re in dallas.

“alright, this is fine.” you whisper to yourself shaking your hands out, “everything’s fine. five will show up eventually.”

running your fingers through your hair, you turn on your heel and go back to where you came from, sitting down next to the dumpster in the alley with your slightly bloodied knees pulled to your chest.

“all i have to do is wait.”

-

that was two months ago. two months ago that you fell into this unfamiliar world, two months ago that you sat in that alleyway for days waiting for literally anyone to show up, fall out of the sky as you had.

once you grew too hungry to stay any longer and nobody had showed, you decided to give up. if they weren’t going to come around then, they would find you when they did. or you would find something that lead you to them.

you couldn’t starve on the streets, so you had gotten a job. for the first time in your life, you were working a normal job to earn money. not traveling through time to assassinate people and make sure time went on as it should. it was a small cafe, the nice old lady who owned it, margaret, who was maybe in her sixties, took you in when you asked if there were any cheap places she knew of to stay. there was a small apartment above the cafe, which she let you stay in in return for working there.

you had already gotten used to this life, even changing out of that stupid uniform, replacing it with some clothes that you had found (or perhaps, stolen from a store nearby). you even got rid of the idea that any of the others would find you. you thought that you had gotten stuck in time without five, somewhere far away from him, just like what had happened when you got stuck in the apocalypse.

it hurt to give up hope again, but you couldn’t wait around for another forty years with the fantasy that you would be saved from a nightmare of being stranded in an unfamiliar time without anyone you knew. maybe you still had a daydream that one day five would walk in, asking for a cup of coffee before realizing it was you behind the counter with a notepad in hand.

imagine your surprise when that actually happened. of course, it wasn’t exactly like that, but it was close enough.

it was a slow day, only a few customers in the shop, and you stood in the back room with the other girl on your shift, stacy, chatting about the people that came in. margaret poked her head into the kitchen to see you, a small smile on her face. “y/n, there’s a young boy out there asking for you.” she walks past you to grab something from the pantry, presumably making someone’s order.

your eyebrows furrowed in confusion, and stacy nudged you with her elbow, “you have a boyfriend you didn’t tell me about?” she grins, and you roll your eyes.

“not one that i know of.” you mumble, walking out of the small kitchen, your gaze immediately catching on the young boy she was talking about. your eyes widen at the sight of him, and you believe your in a dream for a moment. “five?” you step past the swinging gate of the counter, slowly walking towards him.

he has a small smile on his face, his dimple showing as you hesitantly bring your hands up to hold his face. “i guess this is where i say, ‘surprise.’“

“holy shit.” you can’t help yourself from planting a kiss on his cheek before you crush him in a hug, unable to stop your laughter from the joy you’re experiencing. “it’s really you!” you pull away, your hands resting on his shoulders, “you fucking asshole! where have you been? it’s been months!”

shaking his head as he looks to the tiled floor for a moment, he chuckles softly. “i just got here. sorry to keep you waiting.” you bite down on your lip, your hands slowly moving down his arms before dropping to your sides.

“i thought i lost you again.” your voice is barely above a whisper and you feel the tears building up your eyes, “god, i thought i would have to wait another forty years.”

you don’t realize that the tears had escaped and were running down your face until he quickly wiped them away. “well, you didn’t. but... there is some bad news.”

sniffling, you look at him with confusion written all over your face, “i mean yeah, we’re stuck in the sixties. that’s pretty bad.”

“that’s not the only problem we have, in fact there’s something even bigger than that.” he stands from the stool and you step back slightly, waiting for him to explain. “we have another apocalypse to stop.”

you stare at him for a moment, your shoulders slumping slightly. “fuck. another one?” you look back to the door to the kitchen, seeing stacy looking through the small, circular window in the wood, before her head quickly ducks down as you look. “i’ll be right back.”

you go back through the swinging gate and push the door open with your hip as you untie your apron, throwing it on one of the counters. “i have to go.” you look between the two waitresses, and they both look at you in confusion.

“jesus, y/n. one boy comes by and your hopping out of here?” your coworker is surprised by your sudden need to leave, and you sigh softly. “never thought you were the type to run away with a guy.”

“trust me, i’m not.” you chuckle, already backing up towards the door, “this is an important one, though.”

margaret sighs, but she has a small smile on her face. “alright, you go then. when will you be back, dear?” she grabs the apron you had thrown without care, taking the notepad out and folding it up nicely.

frowning slightly, you look to the side. “i don’t know.” you tell them softly, fidgeting with your fingers as they practically freeze in their spots.

“well,” the older woman clears her throat, slowly nodding. “i hope it will be soon. wouldn’t want you just disappearing on us.”

you bite the inside of your cheek, giving a small nod. “i promise it will be soon. maybe even within the week, i just have something i need to do.” you sigh softly, “so i’ll stop by some time.” you didn’t know if that was a lie or not. even though it hadn’t been long, they had become your only friends in this place.

with a small wave, you’re out of the room, and you look to five. “let’s save the world- again.” you laugh lightly, following him out of the cafe that you had called home for a few months. “you have any idea where your siblings are?”

“i know where diego is. might be a bit hard to get him out, though.” you look at him with furrowed eyebrows and he pulls out a folded up piece of paper, “check it out for yourself.”

you take the paper from him, seeing that it’s a page from a newspaper that had been ripped out. as you walk, you unfold it, seeing the mug shot of his brother. you chuckle at the text.

disturbed man with multiple knives arrested outside ten twenty-six north beckley

you fold the paper back up and give it back to him. “he made this pretty easy for us, didn’t he?”

“sure did.” he sticks the ripped page back in his pocket, “let’s pay him a visit.” he grabs your hand and you guys disappear from the street, no doubt leaving confused pedestrians behind.

-

as diego is escorted into the room, you grin slightly at his appearance. he had changed a lot. his hair was longer, now down to his chin, and his stubble had grown out into a full beard. he no longer wore his outfit decked out in knives, as it had been replaced by a white t-shirt and pants.

“five. y/n.” he looks between the two of you, slowly taking a seat across the table.

“hey, diego.” five nods at him, “you look good in white.”

leaning back in his seat, the disheveled man gives a bitter grin. “about time you two showed up.”

“how’d you know we’d be back?” five asks, an eyebrow raised.

“because that’s the kind of shit you pull.” he leans forward over the table, his eyes narrowed at the both of you.

“where are the others?” you question, not wanting them to get into some kind of argument if that was where this was leading. it’s not like you could sit here for hours.

he looks at you for a second, “they’re not with you?”

you press your lips together, a bit disheartened from the answer. you expected that the siblings would have found each other, but then again you weren’t hoping for too much.

five sighs, looking to the white walls before turning his gaze to the table. “we’ll find them.” he looks back up to him, “how long have you been here?”

“seventy-five days.” he stares down, tilting his head to the side slightly, “landed in the alley behind commerce and knox.” five says the names at the same time as him, pursing his lips and nodding as he glances to you. diego raises an eyebrow, “what about you?”

“got here this morning.” five straightens his uniform jacket, and the other man looks at you.

“you don’t look like you got here this morning.” he points out your outfit, which was no longer the same uniform you had stolen from either of the girls’ old wardrobe.

sighing softly, you look down at the sweater you had taken for a second. “i got here a few months back. didn’t know you were in here, though.” you chuckle, looking around the visiting room, “probably would’ve come to see you before now. nice place.” you grin.

diego grunts slightly, looking back to five. “how did you find me?”

five lets out a breathy chuckle, pulling the newspaper page out of his pocket. “disturbed man with multiple knives arrested outside ten twenty-six north beckley.” diego falls back in his chair once again, a grin on his face as the younger looking boy pushes the paper across the table. “that’s lee harvey oswald’s house.” he points out, his eyebrows raising. “care to explain?”

diego laughs softly, “let’s just say, dallas law enforcement has not been supportive of my attempt to stop the assassination of...” he leans over the table, his voice dropping in volume, “john f kennedy...”

you roll your eyes, leaning in just as he had. “that’s because it hasn’t happened yet.” your voice is at the same level as his as you raise an eyebrow at him.

“and it’s not going to happen. not on my watch.” he shakes his head before taking a quick glance at the guard standing in the corner of the room, watching the conversation. “look, i’ve been shaving down the bars in my room. another day or two and i’ll be out of this place, then i’m gonna stop oswald and save the president. you want in,” he gives a discreet wink, “say the word.”

five narrows his eyes at him, “listen to me very closely, you gibbering moron. you are not gonna do a goddamn thing.”

“why not?” diego challenges, tilting his head with a grin.

“because we have to stop the apocalypse.” you mutter softly to him, and you realize that you all probably look suspicious with how you’re all leaning so close together. you would question it if you were either of the people watching, but they didn’t so you ignored it.

“no shit,” he speaks through gritted teeth, “but that doesn’t happen for another sixty years.”

five sighs softly, “not that apocalypse. this is a new one, it followed us.” he glances to the table, “i’ve seen it. nuclear war, in ten days.”

diego grins after looking at him for a moment, laughing softly as he sits back in his chair. with his arms crossed over his chest, he looks between you two. “and i’m the one they locked up, huh?” he shakes his head, “fine, i’ll play along. what causes it?”

five scoffs, “i don’t know.” he tells him in exasperation, taking in a sharp breath through his teeth, “maybe some looney-tuned asshole with a hero complex tried to save the president and screwed everything up.”

“so you’re saying it worked?” diego raises his eyebrows, a triumphant smirk on his face, “i saved the president? i knew i could do it.” he nods as he looks back and forth, his eyes wide. he really had gone crazy in here, and it showed. he balls his hands into fists as he looks at the two of you, “okay, okay, i’ll help you-” five is about to sigh in relief, but he continues, “-after i save the president. then you swing us back a few decades so i can slit hitler’s throat with a butter knife.”

you nearly bang your head into the table, not wanting to hear all of his nonsense. “this is why you’re locked up.” you mutter quietly, barely audible to either of them.

five clicks his tongue, “you know what?” he stands from his seat and you quickly follow suit as he grabs the guard’s attention, “my brother is plotting an escape, the bars in his room have been shaved down.”

the two men don’t waste any time in pinning him down when he tries to jump across the table at you two, seething in anger. you almost felt bad, hearing his cries for them to not use ‘the needle’, but then again, he had gone crazy.

five leans towards you, “we’ll be back for him.” you nod, sighing softly as the crazed man passes out.

-

taglists

main: @horrorklaus

tua: @rasberrymay @noodlextrash

five: @anapocalypseinmymind @five-hargreeves-official @insatiable-ivy @coffee-e-addict @xplrreylo @fandomfreakff @colie-babi

lstw: @aspiringwriter1 @thetrashypanda423 @lilacs-lavender @wow-lookit-all-the-fandoms @ohmyitsfaith @xplrreylo @fandomfreakff @onedollarduck @sleepygal124 @faith-quake @stripedchickens @youcandalekmyballs @pettyjayy @libidinexx @bts-chub @theoriginalkat @flowertoty @whenyouwantdeath

[rainy-day-gracie]

Old Friends 8

So I’ve decided to make the last two chapters of this series like a two part finale almost. 9 and 10 will be the last chapters of Old Friends :(

But I do have more in the works, so don’t cry! Just enjoy this fluffy chapter with Spencer and the team. :))

Spencer Reid x Reader

Chapter 8:

JJ grabbed me by the arm as soon as I walked into the bullpen. 

“Explain to me why Henry is telling me that, I quote, ‘Uncle Spencer is in love with the smart lady.’?”

I just stared at her with wide eyes. “Um, I don’t know, maybe you should ask Spencer.” I tried to get away without grinning, but she kept her grip on my arm, a sly smirk on her face. 

“When you guys babysat Henry he definitely picked up on your flirty little banter, and now he’s constantly talking about how Spencer is so in love with you.” JJ let go of my arm and gave me a knowing glance. 

I was trying to keep from laughing hysterically. “How old is Henry?”

“He’s three.” 

Calming myself down, I walked past her to my desk. “JJ, I’m just going to be honest…” I looked her in the eye, faking seriousness. “I have no idea what you are talking about.”

She gave a groan of frustration as Prentiss and Garcia walked past. “What are we talking about?” Prentiss saddled up next to me. “Are we talking about how you and Reid are totally hooking up?”

Garcia gasped. “Yesterday I heard them talking about their favorite French movies… the language of love!”

I raised my hands in the air in mock surrender. “Oh, you caught me! We were talking to each other, whoa!”

All three of the women rolled their eyes, and I could tell they weren’t leaving until they actually got something juicy. 

I sighed. “Okay, I’ve spent the night at his place a few times. Nothing happened,” I added quickly after seeing their scandalized faces. “We just eat ice cream and I crash on his couch. After what happened a few months ago, sometimes it’s hard to be alone.”

They all looked suspicious, but eventually they dropped it. 

I didn’t tell them the total truth, but they didn’t need to know details. 

Yes, we’ve kissed a few times, so what?

After a few minutes of working at my desk, a fresh coffee appeared next to me, and Spencer quickly was walking away. I giggled softly, watching him wink at me from across the bullpen. 

I heard Morgan snort as he was walking up behind my desk. “What, Morgan?” 

“Something fishy is going on with you and pretty boy over there,” Morgan pointed over to where Spencer was sorting through different files. 

“Something fishy? We’re old friends, you know that.” 

Morgan smirked, clearly unconvinced. “Old friends, my ass.”

We all came to attention when we saw Garcia power walking across the catwalk in her heels. “Minions of the BAU, you have a case!”

__

The stunt that I pulled, ignoring Hotch, happened almost a month ago and he was still pissed. I could read it on his face, and it was almost comical to see this normally stone cold leader so heated. 

“I think Dad is still mad at me,” I whispered to Prentiss, and she laughed out loud, drawing the attention of everyone in the briefing room. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Spencer with his little sweet puppy smile, the smile he wore when he was happy. 

“Ladies and gents, you are going to San Francisco where there have been three very strange murders, I direct your attention to the photos,” Garcia pointed to the screen. 

She wasn’t lying, the murders were extremely strange. One crime scene appeared to be in a tunnel with a male and female victim. The other crime scene was a medieval execution, a woman hanged using a classic noose. Suicide was ruled out given that her hands and feet were bound and her apartment showed signs of a struggle. All of the victims were in fancy medieval clothing, corsets and all.  

“The only thing connecting all of these kills is the elaborate costumes. Clearly our unsub has a flair for the dramatic. He wants these bodies to be found.” Spencer looked over at me as I cleared my throat. 

“There’s something familiar about these murders, I just can’t put my finger on it.” Looking at the photos, something was ringing in my head but I couldn’t figure out what it was. “Probably the work of a single unsub, the medieval wardrobes practically screams individuality.”

“What I’m worried about is the rate of kills. Two victims in three days is almost a nonexistent cooling off period.” Hotch stood up and scanned the room. “Wheels up in 20. Reid, come see me for a moment.”

Spencer shot me a glance and followed Hotch into his office. 

“That can’t be good.” I muttered to JJ, and she nodded inn agreement.  

__

“So he stabbed the female victim at the first crime scene, and poisoned the male. Those are two completely different MOs.” Everyone was still puzzled at the crime scenes on the plane. Morgan had almost an angry look on his face. “And he hangs the single female? It doesn’t make sense.”

I shook my head. “I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve seen this before.’

Prentiss raised her eyebrows. “I don’t think any of us have seen anything like this before.”

Spencer was sitting in the window seat next to me, surprisingly not saying anything. At the back of my mind I wanted to ask him about what Hotch called him in for. 

“I never thought I would get to kiss you again,” Spencer whispered gently. His arm around my shoulders on his couch felt so much like home I forgot that we were also coworkers. 

“Well, you did, so it’s okay,” I smiled up at him and turned back to the TV. In these few short weeks of being a couple again of sorts, my mental health has improved more than in the last six months. Someone would touch me and I wouldn’t flinch anymore, and the nightmares of that damn basement lessened. 

Everything was so easy with Spencer. There was still the same connection of kindred spirits we’ve had since college, and we would talk about the most random, nerdy subjects.

Damn, he made me happy. So, so happy. 

“Everything good?” I murmured to Spencer on the plane. 

“Yeah, it’s okay,” Spencer gave me a reassuring side smile as Hotch began giving assignments. 

“Prentiss, Morgan go to the latest dump site. Look through it in the killer’s eyes. YLN, Reid, go to the station and interview families. Rossi and I will go to the ME. JJ, take care of the press.”

I suddenly got it. Hotch was putting Spencer in to babysit me. That’s what they were talking about. I gave Spencer a look, and he glanced away awkwardly. 

__

“So the first two victims were Rosie Greenlin and Tom Janney, they were both in their early twenties, dating, college students.” I shook my head as I walked up to Spencer. “Parents don’t know anything except that Rosie and Tom were in love, clear as day.”

Spencer sighed as he scanned the crime scene photos. “Betty Wright came from a wealthy family, and her parents say she’s always been very outspoken but kind.”

I furrowed my eyebrows. “Rosie and Tom both came from wealthy families as well. Could he be targeting the rich?” 

Spencer shrugged, out of ideas for now.

“Hey, did Hotch pull you aside so he could tell you to babysit me?” One look on Spencer’s face told me yes. “He’s afraid I’ll go rogue again.”

Spencer looked guilty and spoke slowly. “He’s just making sure that you don’t…”

I raised my eyebrows when Spencer trailed off. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. I’m not mad, I just wanted to know, that’s all.”

A police officer came into the room as I finished speaking. “There’s another one. Dylan Walker, stabbed then submerged in liquid. But here’s the weird part, he was submerged in a barrel of wine.”

Spencer pulled out his phone. “We need to get everyone here. We’re not going to catch this guy by splitting up.”

__

After everyone got back to the station, we ordered food and threw out ideas. 

“It’s probably this guy’s first time killing, could the varied MO just mean he’s seeing what he likes?” Morgan had the same puzzled expression from earlier, as did most of the team. “Betty Wright was found hanging from a tree on an isolated hill and the coroner said she’d only been there about an hour.”

Spencer shifted in his seat and moved his hands. “The dump sites seem to be crucial to his fantasy, but we just don’t know why.”

I hadn’t said anything since the team got back. “Oh my god,” I whispered, looking at the crime scene photos. “A malmsey butt… a public execution… two deaths in a tunnel…”

The team just stared at me. “What is it, YFN?” Spencer asked. 

I tapped him on the arm, completely astounded that I figured it out. “Remember when we went to see King Lear in college?”

Spencer’s eyes widened. “Cordelia was executed by hanging.”

I nodded at him, standing up and looking at the team. “She was executed because she valued love over property, so her father killed her. Betty Wright was known to be very outspoken. Clarence in Richard III was stabbed then submerged in a malmsey butt, or a barrel of wine. Romeo and Juliet both died in an underground tomb, Romeo poisoned himself and Juliet stabbed herself. Rosie and Tom died in a sewage drain underground in the exact same ways.”

“He’s recreating the written deaths of Shakespeare,” JJ concluded. 

“The medieval clothing ties all of it together, the costumes he puts his victims in were common among royalty in Shakespeare’s time.” I looked to Hotch, who wore a microscopic smile on his face. Good job, he seemed to say. 

__

The unsub was Devin McCoy, a former Shakespeare director who lost his job two weeks ago for assaulting one of his actors. Hotch insisted that I stay at the station while they made the arrest, and I grudgingly obliged. Devin came with little resistance, saying that he was creating the art that his actors couldn’t. The whole thing looked like a bad movie when they dragged him into the station. 

Hotch pulled me aside as we were packing up. 

“YLN, I have to say that you did a fantastic job in this case. You saw something in the murders that no one else did, and we would’ve been here a lot longer without you.” I fought the urge to happy cry. Hotch has never complimented me like that. 

“Thank you Hotch. Does that mean Spencer doesn’t have to babysit me anymore?” I asked hopefully. “I have the green light again?”

Hotch gave me a rare smile. “Yes, you have the green light again.”

__

The plane ride was quiet. We took off at midnight, and with the five hour flight, we were all dreading the next day at work. 

I was sitting next to Spencer, who was reading Romeo and Juliet. “How can you read that after the case we just had?”

He looked up and shrugged. “Last time I read this play was in Spanish, so I figured I would read the original English instead.”

I gave him big doe eyes and made a pitched tone. “Oh, Spencer! Spencer! Wherefore art thou Spencer?”

He chuckled and turned away from me. Across the plane, I saw JJ and Prentiss laughing to themselves, most likely at our dorkiness. I smiled and winked at them. 

“I know JJ and Prentiss are watching, otherwise I would kiss you.” Spencer whispered to me, still looking down at his book. 

“Who cares about JJ and Prentiss?” 

His eyes shot up to mine, trying to see if I was joking or not. I gave a devilish smirk, and he laced his hand in my hair. 

Spencer kissed me sweetly, and we pulled away when we heard the applause of everyone on the plane.

“Finally!” Rossi exclaimed. “I’ve been pretending to sleep for 45 minutes!”

@itsarayofsunshine @thesailbells  @squirrellover1967  @softpeteparker @parkeroffline

[theshadowofme]

Well, it’s Bell’s Let’sTalk day, the day where we are suppose to talk about mental health and encourage people to come forward and seek help if needed. It is also a time to share our own stories about our battles with mental health. Today, I will share some more of my journey.

Well, I started my journey into policing back in 2004. Graduated from Depot, and was posted to Northeastern BC. This is where I learned policing, an oilfield town where the government employees were on the low end of the pay scale. When people asked me what policing an oil town was like, I always would say, “it was a great place to learn.” And it truly was. As a new officer, you got exposed to everything. Which was also a negative, as you got exposed to EVERYTHING.

My final year there was my first exposure to an in custody death in the summer of 2007. We received a complaint of a person acting erratically and attempting to smash windows. The long and the short of it, upon arrest, involving five officers, the person went into medical distress, ultimately passing away at the local hospital. From this, I got to be the subject of an investigation, and experience a Coroners Inquest. The outcome of the inquest was that the person passed away from excited delirium, something at that point in time, officers were not trained how to deal with people suspected of suffering from excited delirium.

Shortly after these events, I transferred to my next post, a three person post in the interior of BC. Two weeks after trasferring to this post, the organization changed their policy on on call and what was suppose to be only on call between shifts every once in awhile changed to being on call for probably 5 out of every 7 days of a week. Ultimately I was on call for three months straight at one point. I know that there are members that have gone longer, but this was my reality at the time. Unable to leave town, even when I wasn’t scheduled to be on shift as I was on call for the member that was working that day. Between dealing with no down time and having not processed having a person dying in custody, I started a downward spiral to the lowest point I have ever been in my life. At this point there was no talking about trauma in the organization or PTSD. I still remember the part of training where the mental health discussion was “you’ll have bad days, but you will get over them.”

At my lowest point I seriously contemplated suicide to the point that I had my pistol out one night at work wondering what it would be like. My life was so out of my control at that point that I felt that the only thing that I could control was whether I lived or died. Ultimately I did not do it, but at that point, I saw no other way out and just didn’t care anymore. A week later, I was off work as I couldn’t deal with the stress anymore. It is very disheartening as an officer when your supervisor takes away your service weapon and sends you home.

I started the process of recovery and was diagnosed with PTSD and Major Depressive Disorder. This started the journey of medications and treatments. Medications always seem to have interesting side effects for me. One I didn’t sleep, one my symptoms got worse, and one had other umm... side effects. Sleeping pills either didn’t work or made me into a drooling mess at their lowest dose. After six months I was deemed fit to return to work, which I did. After another year in that office, I transferred to Northwestern BC.

With my transfer to Northwestern BC, I made the vow to myself that I would talk about my experiences to the people I worked with to hopefully prevent anyone from going through what I did. Ultimately, by helping to remove the stigma within the office I worked, it helped others trust me to come to me with their problems and ask for help. I continued this through the rest of my career.

As I have written about in my previous posts, this lead to the week of hell. This time I was better able to read what my head and my body was telling me and deemed that once I was done two commitments I was going off again. Ultimately I was off for two months before I returned to work as I actually enjoyed my job there. Once back from being off, I transferred in the fall of that year to Southeastern BC, my current home. This also involved having a new family doctor.

After two years here, my doctor started to ask me if I wanted to be put off work due to all the things that were going on in my life. She just kept saying to me, “I don’t know how you keep going.” My psychiatrist was also saying the same thing to me as well. At this point, reading my own body and mental state, I was confident that I could continue on. I was able to continue this until another trauma event happened, followed shortly after by becoming the person in charge of the office that was short staffed. I fought through this until I wasn’t able to anymore. I decided that when I was driving to work in the morning and feeling like puking on the way that I shouldn’t be there as I was a liability to the public, my co-workers, and ultimately myself. As the person in charge, I didn’t have anyone to report to locally, so this time around, I locked up my own service weapon, turned the keys over to the exhibit clerk and called the district officer and advised them that they needed to have someone come and run the detachment. I have not returned to work since.

Approximately 5 years ago, I got really sick of being told I had a mental illness and started telling people I had an injury. Most people that I tell this to agree with me and it helps remove the stigma of the source of our problems. As it is Let’s Talk day, I will advise all three of my readers to talk about it. Whether you are suffering, or you see someone else suffering, talk, but remember, sometimes the best way to help someone isn’t by talking, but by listening. Or it could be as simple as giving a recommendation of a psychiatrist. Providing a ride to someone to their appointment because they aren’t able to at that point. So lets remove the stigma and tell our stories. Let the world know that we need the help and let our coworkers know that we are there for them. If you need to talk, PM me. If you already have my number, call me or text me. I would rather talk to you than talk about you at your funeral.

My song selection today is very appropriate as sung by JT and CS. Justin Timberlake and Chris Stapleton. I fell in love with it when I first heard it as it is very true, the greatest way to say something is to say nothing at all. This has so many meanings today. It could mean that when I was at my lowest, by not saying something, I was saying a lot. But coming out the other side, I decided to put myself in the middle as the song says. So without further ado, it is “Say Something.”

Cheers all, and remember, Let’s Talk About it.

[post-itpenny]

Changes

Some mafia AU. Tagging both @clownsgobeepbeep and @grotesquegabby since your characters are mentioned. Also, we get to learn a little about what Magpie used to do for the mafia.

Vespers had heard many a story about Aunt Magpie when she still “worked.”

Magpie has been one of the best contractors in the city. Vespers recalled hearing how she could send a bullet clean through a man’s ear canal from a hundred yards away. That she once had to take out her target in a room full of police, successfully doing so without getting caught and using only a safety pin and a slice of grapefruit.

She was who they sent to take out anyone who needed discretion. High profile members of other gangs, influential people of the city, cleaning house amongst their own ranks. She could create a weapon out of anything and could kill anyone with anything in as quiet and efficient a manner as possible. She was their angel of death.

But the aunt Vespers remembered from his childhood always came home exhausted, bloody, and sad. She had at some point started to hate her job no matter how good at it she was. She was miserable, just as miserable as she was now.

Vespers took one step into the antique shop and flinched at the sight of his aunt. She stood behind the counter gripping a cup of tea, her eyes red and puffy, her white hair had been hastily thrown into a bun. He doubted she had been getting much sleep. Magpie had been devastated upon hearing the news that her brother planned to allow Maggie to be arrested, relieved when she learned someone had sent a lawyer to get her out (someone had also paid for her hospital bills and Vespers suspected that one might not have been the D’Vitts.), but Maggie had been expected to resume working as if nothing had happened. Considering her injuries work wasn’t even an option for the next several weeks. Maggie had been angry and frustrated as she fumbled through one or two jobs before suddenly announcing she was leaving.

When they heard she now worked for the Bluebloods it came as both a surprise and a slap in the face.

Magpie was terrified for her adopted daughter, Peregrine insisting that Maggie not even be allowed to come collect her belongings made it worse.

Vespers ran his hands through his hair as he stomped upstairs into the small apartment his aunt used to share with Maggie, going into the kitchen to make a fresh pot of tea. He couldn’t help but notice a bag sitting in one of the kitchen chairs. He wondered if perhaps his aunt planned to try and bring Maggie some of her belongings but shook his head at the thought. After the bridge stunt the Jester crew had grown quiet, message received.

Almost.

Jack himself had been spotted the next day directly across the street from the shop. The sidewalk was crowded so taking him out was a no, but ever since Magpie was nervous to leave. Peregrine arranging so there was someone guarding the place 24/7.

Vespers gripped the edge of the countertop as he waited for the kettle to boil. He was so angry at Maggie for abandoning them, especially when Magpie needed her the most. But at the same time, could he blame her?

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

In a small but crowded restaurant two men sat talking. Their conversation was hushed, one clearly nervous of being overheard. But there was nothing to fear, families sat around them and the occasional group of coworkers taking a quick lunch. The business they discussed was safe.

Neither man noticed the woman who sat in a nearby corner. No one ever did.

It was something the old woman had taught Maggie, you aren’t noticed if you are not noticeable.

She sat hunched over a cup of tea and a pastry. The redhead looked rather down and out with one arm in a cast and sling, one foot propped up. Not much of a threat at all really.

She took a sip of tea, and listened. It didn’t matter how loud the restaurant was, that was just a matter of tuning out the background noise. So she listened to the nervous man give information that was never meant to be said and Maggie took mental notes that she would have to write down later. She was thankful this job was so easy, Maggie could walk now but too much was painful and she still had another week or so to go in the cast. A small pin could be seen peeking out from under the sling that held up her arm. Black wings on either side of a halo that was designed like thin rays of light. The star at the center a series of broken half circles.

She shifted uncomfortably at the thought of the thistle tattoo that was between her shoulder blades. She was relieved Blueblood didn’t make her get another tattoo, but she was conflicted as what to do about her old one.

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

Vespers was heading out on a job with three of his men. Not having Maggie there to be lookout made him nervous. Her ears had been vital and without her tracking if the police were coming would be a lot harder. His easy days of having a window to get out of trouble were long gone and he didn’t like the change.

He stepped out the antique shop and headed towards the waiting car. Not noticing a little boy slip out the door behind him and go the opposite direction. All Vespers could think was how close this job was going to take him to the edge of D’Vitt territory. Coraline said she was planning to cash in his favor at a later time but the suspense of it still made him uneasy. The thought of possibly running into Stella D’Vitt did not put him at ease either.

Vespers slid into the car with a grumble, “I do not make eyes at him.”

One of the crew looked back at him from the front seat, “sorry boss what did you say?”

“I didn’t say anything, now turn around and drive.” Vespers snapped.

It was going to be a long night.

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

It was early evening and a little boy with large glasses entered a tea shop. At one table by the window sat someone who had been expecting him.

“Hiya Atlas how have you been doing?” Maggie asked with a warm smile.

Atlas passed her the bag he had been carrying and climbed into the empty seat at the table. “I’m alright Miss Maggie. Aunt Magpie told me to tell you that there are two sets of clothes, your hair brush, and- and, I’m sorry I didn’t write it down.”

“Its alright bud. I mean I’ll know when I open it yes? How about I order you a sandwich ok?”

Atlas nodded, “do they have grilled cheese?”

Maggie smiled, “I’m sure they do. Now what book are you currently reading four-eyes?”

Atlas chuckled, “mom says you shouldn’t call me that. But I’m reading Sherlock Holmes! It's about this detective and his doctor friend and they solve all kinds of cool crimes and-”

Maggie smiled as she listened to Altas rattling on about his new book. He was so smart and didn’t deserve half the stuff he had to go through via his parents jobs. Vega and Joseph wanted him to go on to university, to get out. She didn’t blame them one bit.

“So can I ask a question?”

Maggie blinked, her thoughts pulled back into focus. “Yeah sure kid what's up?”

“Mom said you and your new boss argued lot whenever he visited. Why work for someone you don’t like? Don’t you like my family anymore?”

Maggie cringed a little, “it's not that Atlas I’m honest. I’m still friends with your parents and Vespers, I care a lot about your aunt. But I didn’t have a place anymore and my new boss is a jerk he really is, but it's good pay.”

“Why is he a jerk? Does he ki-”

“Not here, you know better,” Maggie insisted. “Now I need you to do me a really big favor and take this to your aunt.”

Maggie passed Atlas a small envelope, he could soft yet rectangular contents inside. He gave a firm nod, feeling a sense of pride knowing Maggie trusted him enough to be delivering money.

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

The job went well, they had a close call but the new lookout had proven himself.

Vespers sighed as he entered the manor that served as the family home. He had to shoot at close range and was saddened to see the blood and gore all over his suit.

Juno walked by and gave a smirk, “you look like hell. Hope your boyfriend didn’t catch you like that.”

Vespers grimaced, “I don’t know what your talking about.”

Juno laughed as she walked out the door. Where she was going Vespers had no idea and quite frankly he didn’t care. He went up to his quarters, getting cleaned up before going into the moth room.

It was a section of the sitting room of his area of the house. A tall glass enclosure filled with branches of mulberry leaves, lamps, and a dish of water. Dozens of moths flitted about while growing caterpillars munched away on the provided leaves. On the floor were several empty cocoons, Vespers collected these silken treasures and packed them away. He would send them to be made into silk thread he could then have made into whatever he wanted. He admired the lovely wings of her precious pets, their lives so short but their beauty something even the most stunning of ball gowns could not compare to in his opinion. He sneered, far better than sharks, or the smile of someone related to someone with pet sharks.

Vespers shook his head as if to chase away the thought, he really needed to get some sleep.

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

Maggie entered the cheap motel room she was currently renting. It was far from glamorous but it had a bed and a shower which was what she needed. Maggie was in fact aware of what was happening with Magpie, the plan now was to send as much of the money she earned that she could spare to Magpie who would then go to a realtor and buy a place as far out of the city as possible. Maggie had left her savings with the older woman and while Magpie very much did not like who Maggie now worked for she was not about to turn down an opportunity to get out once and for all. They had arranged things with Joseph and Vega to help with everything, even allowing Atlas to act as go between Maggie and Magpie.

In the bag Atlas had brought was indeed two new sets of clothes and a hair brush. Maggie also found a set of bobby pins, a few packets of tea and-

Maggie gave a small sob. At the bottom of the bag was a brand new boa.

It was beautiful with shiny black feathers that were so soft to the touch. Maggie cringed at the thought of Magpie going into either of their savings to get this for her, but the money could be replaced quickly thanks to her higher paycheck and the sight made her feel just a little more like her old self again.

[missmentelle]

In a previous ask you talked about how you got into working with disadvantaged kids, and how they often connected to you a lot better than their assigned case workers. Do you think there's anything particular that has made you so well suited to the job/made the kids connect with you? Is it a learnt skill or did it just happen that way?

I don’t want to talk myself up too much, but I do think my personality played some role in it. In person, I have a pretty relaxed, easygoing demeanor in real life that I think a lot of the kids responded to really well, and it made it easier to cope in a chaotic environment with constant emergencies. We had a handful of staff that just didn’t work out in the time I was there, and a lot of that was just down to them not being a good fit. People who were rigid and needed a lot of order and predictability in their day didn’t tend to last - a lot of them successfully went on to careers in other mental health settings, but front-line mental health work with homeless and high-risk youth was not the right fit for them. I also found it really easy to match the energy of the kid I was dealing with - I was good at figuring out if a kid needed a really soft, gentle approach, or if they needed someone to tell them outright when they were being a little shit and they needed to smarten the fuck up. I think that might just be something that comes naturally to me. 

I was also younger and a lot less burnt-out than a lot of the other staff. Some of my coworkers had been at this job for a long time, and even though we were given generous time off, it can get to a person after a while. I was 22 and fresh out of college with no real responsibilities beyond “pay rent” and “try not to eat Skittles for dinner 7 days per week”. Some of my coworkers were trying to raise children, get through divorces, care for sick partners or aging parents, and cope with their own substance abuse problems while also doing this incredibly stressful job. When you’re already exhausted from dealing with your home life, you just don’t have the energy to also put in 110% effort at an emotionally draining job. I wasn’t necessarily more skilled than my coworkers, I just had a lot more to give because of my life circumstances. Also, unlike a lot of the other staff, “homeless high-risk kids” was my first choice for the population I wanted to work with. Several of my co-workers were hoping to work in other mental health settings - like eating disorder clinics, or in programs for lower-risk youth with learning disabilities - but jobs are easier to come by in the extreme high-needs sector because there’s so much burnout. For me, the job was a crucial step in my career, and not just a holding pattern while I waited for something I actually wanted to open up. It made it easier to really invest myself. There was a lot of learning involved, though, and I definitely got a lot better the longer I was there. One of the most important things for building rapport with these kids was just learning not to visibly react to the things they said. They were used to having adults and authority figures freak out when they disclosed child abuse, sexual assault, heavy drug use, or any of the details of their living situation, and it made a lot of them cautious about opening up. Having other people respond with a big emotional display made a lot of them uncomfortable, and it meant that they had to stop focusing on their pain to manage the other person’s emotions. The best thing we as staff could do for them was just listen attentively without an emotional response, and act as if everything they were saying was perfectly reasonable. That’s something you get better at over time and with experience. The first time someone tells you they robbed a gas station at gunpoint, it’s hard not to react. The fourth time someone tells you, it’s kind of no big deal. Some staff had a really hard time ever perfecting their poker face, but most people learn pretty quickly. 

It also took a while to learn how to guide these kids without instructing or lecturing them. It’s really hard to watch someone make bad decision after bad decision after bad decision, especially when you feel like you know exactly what they should be doing instead. When a kid comes in and tells you they’ve gotten pregnant by a stranger for the second time, or they’ve been arrested again, or they’ve been kicked out of their housing placement for bad behaviour, part of you just wants to grab them by the shoulders and yell at them to make better choices. It can take a long time to fully realize that these kids have grown up in very different situations than you have, and they think in very different ways than you ever had to. Most of the kids I worked with thought only about the immediate short-term. They’d grown up their whole lives having to hustle for survival, often not knowing where their next meal was coming from or where they’d be sleeping that night. Asking them to think about “next year” was like asking them to think about “in the year 2147″ - you can’t ask someone to make sensible long-term plans when their immediate basic needs aren’t being met. Helping these kids involved a complicated game of leading them toward resources, helping them make connections between the short-term and long-term, and forgiving them when they screwed up again. This is something I got dramatically better at in the span of two years, and it’s still something I’m working to get better at. 

Hope this answers your question (and doesn’t make me sound incredibly conceited)!

[randomfactsandinfo-blog]

William MacDonald: Australia’s Gay Jack the Ripper

William MacDonald, later “the Sydney Mutilator,” was born on June 17th, 1924 in Liverpool, England, and his life was pretty uneventful until he was conscripted for the British Army as a nineteen year old in 1943. He was transferred to the Lancaster Fusiliers, after which he was brutally raped by one of his corporals in an air-rade shelter, an assault that traumatized him for the rest of his days. He was honorably discharged with exemplary conduct in 1947.

While still a teenager, he was diagnosed as an erratic schizophrenic, and was then committed to the Scottish Crichton Royal mental hospital, and was treated with electroconvulsive therapy daily. Soon after his arrival, his mother arranged for his release.

In the year 1949, he emigrated from England to Canada, but his crimes did not begin until he moved to Australia in 1955.

Soon after his arrival in Australia, he was arrested and charged with indecent assault on a male person and two counts of gross indecency after he grabbedf the groin of a police officer in a public bathroom, but was placed on a two-year good behavior bond. In 1961, he settled in Sydney and cemented his identity as a gay man, frequenting meet-up spots for other gay men like him.

The murders started in Brisbane in 1960, with the death of Amos Hurst, a 55 year old man MacDonald befriended outside Roma Street Railway Station. MacDonald invited the man for a drink at a local pub, and then took him back to his home for more drinks. When Hurst throughly intoxicated, MacDonald began to strangle him, and he started to haemorrhage. Blood poured from his mouth all over MacDonald’s hands, and then he ended it by punching him hard in the face, which ended up finally killing him. Amos Hurst’s body was examined by a coroner and it was declared that he died of natural causes because of his documented history of heart disease.

The second victim was Alfred Reginald Greenfield, who was found completely nude in the Sydney Domain Baths on June 4th, 1961. He was stabbed over 30 times, and his penis was completely severed from his body. He was peacefully sitting on a park bench in Green Park across the road from St. Vincent’s Hospital in Darlinghurst when MacDonald offered Greenfield a drink and lured him into the Domain Baths, offering him even more alcohol after that. He patiently waited until Greenfield passed out drunk, and then stabbed him 30 times. The first blow severed the arteries in his neck, killing him. After Greenfield was dead, MacDonald pulled down his pants and castrated him, throwing the severed member into the Sydney Harbor.

Victim #3, 55 year old William Cobbin, was found in a public bathroom in Moore Park, stabbed repeatedly and his groin mutilated just like Alfred Greenfield. MacDonald was strolling down South Dowling Street when he met Cobbin, and proceeded to lure him into Moore Park, where they drank beer in the public restroom where he was found by the police. Before he attacked Cobbin, MacDonald pulled on a plastic raincoat, and then used an uppercut motion to stab him in the neck with a hunting knife, severing his jugular vein as he sat on a toilet seat. Cobbin desperately tried to defend himself by putting up his hands to block MacDonald’s blows, but he continued to strike him, drenching the stall with blood. Following his signature, MacDonald severed his newest victim’s penis and dropped it in a plastic bag with his weapon and left the scene.

William MacDonald’s fourth victim, Frank Gladstone McLean, was killed on March 31st, 1962. His lifeless corpse was discovered in suburban Darlinghurst, New South Wales, and was almost stopped by an approaching family. Just before the murder, MacDonald bought a new knife from a sports store in Sydney. Leaving Oxford Hotel in Darlinghurst, he tailed McLean down Bourke Street, and struck up a conversation with him, convincing him to have a drink with him just around the corner in Bourke Lane. Upon entry of Bourke Lane, MacDonald plunged a knife into McLean’s throat, and he was unfortunately too inebriated to effectively fight back. MacDonald proceeded to stab him in the face and punch him. MacDonald heard the coos of the baby belonging to an approaching family, and promptly hid to avoid being seen. McLean was still alive, barely breathing and bleeding profusely by the father, who then went with his family to go get help. When they were gone, MacDonald stabbed him once more, killing him with a total of six stab wounds. He again removed his victim’s genitals, bagged them, and got rid of them the next day.

MacDonald’s final victim, 42 year old Patrick James Hackett, was murdered on Saturday, June 6th, 1962. He was a convicted thief, and had just been released from prison. MacDonald took him into his home (an apartment above the new sandwich business he just started) for a friendly drink. When Hackett fell unconscious from intoxication, MacDonald stabbed him straight through the neck with a boning knife he used to prepare sandwiches for his customers. After the first blow, Hackett awoke, and pushed MacDonald’s knife into his other hand, slashing it. He then struck Hackett in the heart, killing him instantaneously. Though his victim was already dead, MacDonald kept stabbing him, until his entire apartment was dripping with buckets of blood. His weapon was blunted, so he couldn’t carry on with the ritual of castration, so he just fell asleep next to Hackett’s corpse.

When MacDonald woke up, the blood from last night’s massacre had mostly dried and even soaked through the floorboards, almost on the shop counter downstairs. He cleaned up the mess as best as he could (which was not much), dragged the body under the shop, and went to the hospital to get his hand stitched up, telling the doctor that he wounded himself while making a sandwich. Fearing police detection, MacDonald fled to Brisbane. Three weeks later, the neighbors complained of a putrid odor emanating from the sandwich shop, calling the health department, who in turn notified the police. The cops found the rotting corpse of Hackett on November 20th, 1962. The corpse was already so decomposed, it was impossible to identify. It was misidentified as Alan Edward Brennan, William MacDonald’s alias. His old coworkers from working at the post office even prepared a service for him.

William moved to New Zealand, though once he got the itch to kill again, he returned to Sydney, where he ran into one of his old coworkers, John McCarthy, who recognized him immediately. He ran off and fled to Melbourne. McCarthy tried to inform the police that MacDonald is alive and well, but they didn’t believe him, so he went to the Daily Mirror newspaper to speak to crime reporter Joe Morris, who believed him. He wrote an article headlined “Case of the Walking Corpse.” Upon further examination, they used fingerprints to ID finally ID the body as James Hackett. The stab wounds and severed genitalia linked to the Sydney Mutilator’s other killings.

Sydney police obtained a police sketch of MacDonald, which was sent out to every newspaper in the nation. At the time, he was working as a porter under the name of David Allan, trying to disguise himself using dyed hair and a mustache, but to no avail. He was instantly recognized by his coworkers. William MacDonald was arrested as he went to collect his weekly paycheck on May 13th, 1963.

In questioning, he immediately confessed to his crimes, reporting that his insatiable need to kill stemmed from the corporal who raped him as a teenager, causing him to exact his revenge on strangers at random. As a man with schizophrenia, he said that the voices in his head told him that his victims were actually the corporal who assaulted him. “I thought when the corporal attacked me, he took my life away. So I thought I’d destroy his sex the same way.” He also said that the imaginary voices taunted him at night saying, “kill...kill...kill!”

William MacDonald was charged with four counts of murder, and was committed for trial on August 15th, 1963. The trial began in September, and he pled not guilty on grounds of insanity, reinforced by the psychiatrists. He testified in great detail about his crimes so vividly that some of the jurors fainted and had to be carried out of the courtroom. The jury found him guilty, but denied his plea of insanity, sentencing him to life imprisonment. He is the longest serving inmate in the South Wales prison system. He reported that his life had greatly improved in jail, having become a vegetarian and a lover of classical music, and due to his exemplary behavior, he was recommended for release. However, he became very institutionalized and begged them not to release him. “I wouldn’t last five minutes out there,” he said. He expressed his fear that he would kill again if let out.

He spent 52 years behind bars before he died of natural causes in 2015.

[eddievee]

Gay and Sober

I’m intimidated by the thought of writing about this. There are multiple reasons as to why I perhaps shouldn’t express these thoughts. However, I have a problem. I have a problem and I feel as though trying to articulate it will help me cope. It is my hope that friends and family members will read this and understand my struggle. Maybe they or someone on the internet could also find solace in my story.

Basically, I have a drinking problem. Call me an alcoholic. Call me an addict. Any term under the umbrella of substance abuse likely applies. I write this at twenty four. Looking back over the past liquored up eight years of my life, the most traumatic experiences and biggest setbacks I’ve endured have had to do with alcohol. I pinned a guy in my dorm to the ground at eighteen and nearly got expelled from university. I went psychotic at twenty-one, experiencing auditory hallucinations and paranoid delusions. My psychiatrist deduced that it all transpired because I went off of my psychoactives cold turkey and started to self-medicate with wine. That turn of events forced me to withdraw from school for almost a year. In that time, I left random objects on my university president’s doorstep and nearly got arrested for trespassing. I also showed up drunk to the undergraduate library after withdrawal from classes and had to be escorted out by police. My relationship with alcohol is distinctly self-destructive and volatile. In March, I got hit by a motorist after a night out of drinking. I had recently quit a managerial position after over two years working there, lined up a prospective job with greater pay, and a couple of my coworkers bought me Jack Daniel’s as a farewell present. I wrote a goodbye letter that evidently still has a place of honor in the store. It was a bittersweet goodbye, but I was leaving a staff that I knew was going to miss me. From my end, that feeling was mutual. I also had a solid positive reference in my back pocket from my time there. I was ecstatic. To leave a job I really didn’t like was fabulous. To feel as though I was moving on in my career was even better. It was time to celebrate, of course! So, I imbibed. I guzzled hard liquor by myself and went to my usual haunt. I drank more there and tried to ride home on my bicycle. That’s when it all happened. The injury was severe. I sustained contusions on both sides of my frontal lobe and cracked a few bones in my skull. Emergency services were called and I was rushed to the hospital. There, it was determined that I was at a .27 blood alcohol content. Had I consumed a couple more drinks that night, I would have been legally dead. At the hospital, I was put into a medically induced coma and given a room in intensive care. The coma lasted roughly a month and I received inpatient physical, occupational, and speech therapy for another month before discharge. Multiple doctors, nurses, and therapists told me that based on the severity of the injury, I was expected to be discharged by November. I remember visiting the intensive care unit after being moved to the rehab unit. Multiple doctors and nurses who managed my case expressed verbal and physical disbelief that I was standing and walking. Several entered the unit for their shift, saw me, and would throw their hands in the air and turn around before greeting me. I don’t know the totality of their experiences in medicine, but I imagine several of their cases don’t end up walking and talking a month after coming out of a coma. They were unquestionably shocked to see me so relatively well.

Basically, I almost died. Mortality was clarified for me in March. The physical toll alone was nothing short of traumatic. In spite, I’m happy that my recovery has gone so unexpectedly well. I’ve gained 25 pounds of muscle back, I was discharged from outpatient therapies after two weeks, and I’m now looking at the possibility of returning to work. However, I’m not totally well right now. Despite all of the strides I’ve made over the past three months, I know I have an immense amount of work to do to get healthy again. However, I’m ill at this point for reasons unrelated to the somatic impact of my auto accident. The psychological consequences of my injury came later and asymmetrically. With the physiological component consuming most of my time, energy, and focus initially, I simply didn’t know how what happened was going to impact my mental health. With BPD on my diagnostic record, I’ve been depressed, anxious, and occasionally psychotic for much of my adult life. I’ve been in and out of psychiatry and psychotherapy since I was 18 years old. I’ve been hospitalized for psychological reasons twice. Having a degree in psychology and women’s studies, I know the annals and the phenomenology of mental suffering. Through both talk therapy sessions and undergraduate study, I am familiar with coping mechanisms and understand quite a bit about mental illness as a whole. With that said, the knowledge doesn’t necessarily lead to better mental health outcomes for my own struggles. I shouldn’t be drinking at all. In certain traumatic brain injury cases, to consume alcohol is to possibly have a seizure. I also developed blood clots in the hospital and was put on a powerful blood thinner. I’m off that prescription now, but it could have had complications with hard liquor. None of that kept me away from the bottle. I experienced a radical shift. Prior to the injury, I was working overtime hours every week and dating someone I was passionately in love with. He had a key to my apartment after one week of love drunk stupor. Suddenly, I was unemployed and single, my boyfriend breaking up with me in a hospital bed. It was jarring. That particular adjustment was perhaps as traumatic as the injury itself. I had free time and loneliness and ample opportunity for self loathing. Libations were perfect to indulge that stress and sorrow. Got a problem? Pour some plastic jug vodka on it. Let’s Popov off. I mentioned that I had a history of making serious, lasting, and self destructive decisions by drinking prior to March, but I was always able to control myself. I could stop. Now, I can’t. I can consume an entire fifth of eighty to one hundred proof liquor in one evening. If there’s some leftover when I wake up hungover, I drink it that morning. I can’t handle my liquor anymore. I’ve permanently damaged some friendships by sending weird and alarming text messages when I’m blackout drunk. Normally comprised of suicidal ideation, they’re pathetic pleas of “kill me.” Alongside the profound lack of self control, that depth of depression is what’s particularly alarming to me. I don’t want to get sober, but if I keep going like this, I’m going to die. It’ll be at my hand or with a broken bottle. Maybe both. At the least, my liver will fail or I’ll withdraw into delirium tremens or develop Korsakoff’s amnesia. Something. I’ll say again: I don’t want to get sober. However, little of that has to do with alcohol’s effects on my brain and body. Those certainly are factors, but it’s not the bulk of the story. I don’t need a drink to get through the day. It’s fun to be drunk! I like to party. I like relaxing inhibitions, but I don’t need a drink to function. The social and celebratory elements of drinking make it harder to leave behind. I’ve quit abusing other substances in the past because I was almost always using by myself. I like people more than I like drugs. Alcohol is different because that line between people and drugs is blurrier. There’s a distinctly social component to drinking that bears salience to my life. I’m gay. Bars and clubs, the spaces relegated to LGBT people by dominant culture, are centered around the sales and consumption of alcohol. That’s a fact. I’m also a drag queen, who are hired in part to facilitate that commerce. Alcohol was in the room when I first started to meet other gay guys at sixteen. Its omnipresence throughout my gay young adult experiences make it that much more difficult to go without. Booze is sometimes like an old friend; it has been my chaperone for years.

To leave alcohol behind would make me profoundly anxious, thinking that I would be leaving my friends behind too. My community matters to me. If there’s anything that the experience of surviving traumatic brain injury has solidified in my mind, it’s that I matter to my community as well. I’ve made friends in these spaces for years now. The gay bar has been a critical component to my sense of self and I’m terrified to lose that. A friend of mine might read this portion and roll his eyes. He once told me something like “People you party with are not your friends. They’re people you party with.” That may be true, but it’s connection. There’s a multitude of research literature on how social connections lead to better life expectancies and health outcomes. Unhappily married people tend to live longer than content single people for a reason. I don’t know how to mesh sobriety with my network of relationships in the nightlife scene. These people have welcomed me and held me, laughed with me and wept with me. I’ve devoted so much time and energy to drag performances to express my love and gratitude for my community. I don’t want to be without the people I’ve met in part through drinking. I wouldn’t be here without them. At the same time, many people in my nightlife existence know that I have a problem. I went out the other weekend for a going away party. After leaving the club, I went to my friend’s place and had a 2:00 AM conversation with another friend who didn’t accompany us out to the club. He’s mentally ill, but high functioning, and deeply empathetic. We relate. I asked him about our friends’ perception of my alcoholism. He expressed that even before my accident in March, people would notice how drunk I’d get on a regular basis. He said that some people get that drunk “every six months or so.” With me, it was “like every other week.” He went on to comment on my overall melancholy and bleak outlook on life. He said, “Sometimes, when I see you, it’s like you woke up and happiness wasn’t even a possibility.” Being a depressant, alcohol feeds into my psychological dependency for crisis and sorrow. RuPaul asserted that Katya, Brian McCook, had an addiction to anxiety in season seven of RuPaul’s Drag Race. I feel that. I’m realizing just how intensely accustomed I am to feeling depressed. In drag, I’ve rejoiced in sorrow on stage for years. On multiple occasions, I’ve walked into the bar in full drag makeup and the first thing I hear is “what’s wrong?” It’s not even that the glass is half empty. For me, the glass was never there. To be sad is almost comforting in its combination of introspection and self pity. It’s especially affirming when you feel as though you have a right to that lowness. As Bright Eyes once said, “Sorrow is pleasure when you want it instead.” That pleasure has grown old. I want to do more than just survive in spite of crisis. I’ll say this: I don’t know if I’m going to get sober from alcohol. In my recent brief attempts at sobriety, I’ve recognized just how much temperance culture permeates United States media. You’d be challenged to walk down the main street of any major city and not see at least one advertisement for liquor. The push and pull relationship of Puritanical abstinence from indulgence and the American civic duty of reckless consumption is powerful. That relationship is also undeniably profitable. With that said, my pro and con list of continuing to drink is getting grimmer. What I need to do becomes more obvious after each fifth of bottom shelf whiskey, with each morning I wake up hungover, and within each inebriated, suicidal cry for help. To those of you who have been on the receiving end of my substance abuse, I’m sorry. My brother recently found me in my apartment, eyes rolled in the back of my head from drinking to excess. I’ve fallen down stairs at the local gay bar, making an absolute fool of myself. I’ve said alarming, dreadful things in person and online that I regret terribly. In total, I’ve damaged relationships that I’m never going to repair. The problem is when I’m alone. If I’m at the bar and not drinking around you, don’t think it’s completely because of what I’ve expressed here. More than anything, just know that I have a drinking problem. It exists unarguably within and outside the context of my near death experience. I wrote that I was unsure of how to simultaneously be sober and be present at the spaces where I’ve made loving relationships. This is my attempt. Know that I want to be around, but I simply can’t do it like I used to. I need to get sober from alcohol. At the very least, I should. It’s going to be a tall order, but less lethargy and fewer depressive episodes sound fabulous. Thank you.

[pansexuanarchy]

Answer them all!

1: is there a boy/girl in your life? Yes and no2: think of the last person who hurt you; do you forgive them? Yeah I do3: what do you think of when you hear the word “meow?” I think of cat???4: what’s something you really want right now? Constant stream of attention5: are you afraid of falling in love? Terrified6: do you like the beach? Eh its alright7: have you ever slept on a couch with someone else? Yes8: what’s the background on your cell? A picture of a guys head opening up and it says "never stop learning"9: name the last four beds you sat on? My bed, my dads bed, my moms bed, my friends bed10: do you like your phone? Its cool11: honestly, are things going the way you planned? Not exactly but that's life12: who was the last person whose phone number you added to your contacts? A coworker 13: would you rather have a poodle or a rottweiler? Rottweiler14: which hurts the most, physical or emotional pain? Emotional pain 😢15: would you rather visit a zoo or an art museum? Museummm16: are you tired? Constantly 17: how long have you known your 1st phone contact? Probably forever 18: are they a relative? Yeh19: would you ever consider getting back together with any of your exes? Yes 20: when did you last talk to the last person you shared a kiss with? Not sure if youd count it but I guess this morning21: if you knew you had the right person, would you marry them today? Yeah I would22: would you kiss the last person you kissed again? A million times 23: how many bracelets do you have on your wrists right now? 2 if u count my watch 24: is there a certain quote you live by? You do what u gotta do25: what’s on your mind? How adult life is so fucking shitty and I have to be ok with it26: do you have any tattoos? I have 327: what is your favorite color? Purple28: next time you will kiss someone on the lips? Who knows...29: who are you texting? My frandsss30: think to the last person you kissed, have you ever kissed them on a couch? Yeah31: have you ever had the feeling something bad was going to happen and you were right? My anxiety is bound to be right at some point 32: do you have a friend of the opposite sex you can talk to? Yes33: do you think anyone has feelings for you? Yeah lmao 34: has anyone ever told you you have pretty eyes? Kinda often tbh35: say the last person you kissed was kissing someone right in front of you? I would probably have a mental breakdown tbh36: were you single on valentines day? Nope37: are you friends with the last person you kissed? I like to think so but idk by the way shes been acting 38: what do your friends call you? Jay39: has anyone upset you in the last week? Not in particular 40: have you ever cried over a text? Yes41: where’s your last bruise located? My ass42: what is it from? Bug bites 🙄43: last time you wanted to be away from somewhere really bad? This summer 44: who was the last person you were on the phone with? My best friend45: do you have a favourite pair of shoes? I guess my docs??? But I dont wear them much in the summer 46: do you wear hats if your having a bad hair day? I wear hats all the time47: would you ever go bald if it was the style? No48: do you make supper for your family? Sometimes49: does your bedroom have a door? No50: top 3 web-pages? Tumblr Facebook and Instagram51: do you know anyone who hates shopping? Meeee52: does anything on your body hurt? Everything always 53: are goodbyes hard for you? Depends on the person 54: what was the last beverage you spilled on yourself? Coffee55: how is your hair? Long and luscious 56: what do you usually do first in the morning? Take a shower 57: do you think two people can last forever? I guess its possible58: think back to january 2007, were you single? I was 759: green or purple grapes? Green60: when’s the next time you will give someone a big hug? Hopefully tonight after work61: do you wish you were somewhere else right now? In bed lmao62: when will be the next time you text someone? Probably later today63: where will you be 5 hours from now? Hopefully home64: what were you doing at 8 this morning. Taking a shit65: this time last year, can you remember who you liked? Yeah66: is there one person in your life that can always make you smile? Maybe67: did you kiss or hug anyone today? I hugged someone today c:68: what was your last thought before you went to bed last night? Man I should really go to sleep earlier 69: have you ever tried your hardest and then gotten disappointed in the end? My whole life 70: how many windows are open on your computer? Like 571: how many fingers do you have? All of them?????72: what is your ringtone? The arrested development theme song73: how old will you be in 5 months? 1974: where is your mum right now? Puerto Rico 75: why aren’t you with the person you were first in love with or almost in love? Toxic toxic toxic 76: have you held hands with somebody in the past three days? No77: are you friends with the people you were friends with two years ago? Barely but yeah78: do you remember who you had a crush on in year 7? A girl named Brianna79: is there anyone you know with the name mike? Yeah my old suspension school dean lmao hes the homie80: have you ever fallen asleep in someones arms? Dont remind me...81: how many people have you liked in the past three months? One.82: has anyone seen you in your underwear in the last 3 days? My dad lmao83: will you talk to the person you like tonight? Probably not84: you’re drunk and yelling at hot guys/girls out of your car window, you’re with? That's fucking gross wtf85: if your bf/gf was into drugs would you care? Depends on the drugs and as long as they share86: what was the most eventful thing that happened last time you went to see a movie? The theatre applauded87: who was your last received call from? My bestie 88: if someone gave you $1,000 to burn a butterfly over a candle, would you? Hell yeah89: what is something you wish you had more of? Reliable sources of love that I can trust90: have you ever trusted someone too much? It's my biggest problem91: do you sleep with your window open? Nah I have fans and AC92: do you get along with girls? Yeh93: are you keeping a secret from someone who needs to know the truth? I dont think so??94: does sex mean love? Definitely not95: you’re locked in a room with the last person you kissed, is that a problem? I wish we were so we could finally talk96: have you ever kissed anyone with a lip ring? Yeah I think so97: did you sleep alone this week? Sadly98: everybody has somebody that makes them happy, do you? Yeah I guess I do99: do you believe in love at first sight? I thought I did100: who was the last person that you pinky promise? My ex.

[starlighting-with-vixx]

Series: An Unexpected Casualty

Title: Marigold - Part 1 Characters: Poppy/Reader, Monsta X Warnings: dumb cops, crooked cops, drugs, death, Wonho, stupidity Genre: Multifandom AU, Dramedy, Tragedy, Romance Word Count: 4300 (the long ones were a bit much, right?) Summary: Everything you hate about your life occurred on a Monday. Tuesday through Thursday is filled with chaos, and internal conflicts happen on Friday. That leaves just two days to brace for it to happen all over again.  Author’s Note: The first part of the fourth installment in the Unexpected Casualty series/universe. This is the last group. Enjoy! –> View All Chapters <–

Victory was so close you could taste it. There was only one man left to find and you weren't going to let him get away without a fight. He was headed towards the exit and you were prepared to ambush him as soon as he entered your vision. Your finger hovered over the trigger as you heard him approaching and you readied yourself to spring on the count of three.

One… Two… Thr--

“Poppy!” A pair of hands slammed down on your desk startling you and causing the words ‘Game Over’ to flash across the screen of your laptop. Not only was your record tanked, but also the losers you were playing against would continue to brag about their unexpected win for weeks.

You were brought back to the deafening noise of several telephones ringing and the shuffling of papers on nearby desks. Two years ago you could have said you loved the sound of the police station, but after a series of unfortunate events you hated the place and very much wanted to quit. Unfortunately, you were too damn good at your job to find something else to do and you couldn’t necessarily leave the people that had helped you get through the most difficult time in your life. They too had suffered a major loss along with you.

You looked up at the man that had caused you to lose your number one ranking. “What did I tell you about playing video games while on the job?”

“Nothing,” you replied. “Because I don’t work for you, Kihyun.” You rolled your eyes and unhooked your controller from your personal laptop before closing it and shoving it underneath your desk. Personal gaming was a direct violation of work performance, but it was an exceptionally slow day at the precinct, so you wanted to pass the time. Besides, if the Captain--the only person you answered to-- hadn’t said anything about your behavior then you guessed it wasn’t a big deal. “What do you want anyway?”

“That's Sargeant Kihyun, Poppy.” He dragged his finger across his badge that let off a slight twinkle underneath the fluorescent bulbs of the precinct.

There once was a rumor that he shined it every night right before he went to bed, which was later proven to be an accurate assumption when he pulled out the buffing paste one day after a suspect was brought in and knocked it off his shirt with disorderly conduct. It was like his existence was under attack with the way he dove under a desk to retrieve it. Kihyun had only reached Sargeant status about three months ago when he was promoted to work on a long unsolved case that had recent developments.

The unsolved case was none other than the murder of your late boyfriend and colleague, Officer Lee Minhyuk. Two years ago on your birthday your boyfriend of three years had taken you out to dinner to celebrate. Unbeknownst to you, a red light had been aimed right in the center of your forehead while you were enjoying your meal. So your boyfriend, as truly in love with you as he was, valiantly jumped in front of the laser pointer and took the bullet in your stead.

It was still unknown as to why you had been targeted, but thanks to Kihyun, the precinct was able to connect Minhyuk’s murder to another one of a local young woman that had occurred a month after. Each case had one similarity, a single red bullet was found in both victims. Through undercover operations, Kihyun was able to track that lead to a group of assassins infamous in the underground networks of the area due to that staple piece of evidence. His accomplishment had earned him his fancy new title and he never missed a moment to rub someone's nose in his success.

Even though Kihyun had recently been promoted, nothing really changed in terms of justice. The murders were still left unsolved and there had been an increasing number of weird deaths around the city, some involving red bullets and some not. The team of assassins was almost impossible to track down. It was as if their existence was entirely fabricated. The precinct had a visual on a potential suspect, but the guy practically vanished out of thin air, so they couldn’t keep an eye on him--and there also wasn't enough evidence to prove that he was even a part of it in the first place. The only thing that changed in the past three months was Kihyun’s increased insistence on making your life miserable. He thought he could boss you around now that he had a new title, but like him and everyone else that worked there, you had to attend combat training, so you knew how to kick his ass if necessary.

Most days you truly believed he was being a complete ass towards you, while other days you chalked it up to him still grieving that his best friend, your boyfriend had died. When Kihyun had first gotten to the force five years ago, Minhyuk was his first partner and the two became the best of friends as they arrested drug dealers, petty thieves, and parking violators; and they threw just about everybody that was minding their own business on the wrong side of the street behind bars. Their boredom caused an overuse of resources that resulted in a financial strain on the precinct and required the Captain to send ‘suspected’ criminals home with hand written apologies every day.

The two were inseparable even when Kihyun moved to the crime scene investigations unit as a detective where he could make better use of his skills. Their close camaraderie resulted in you and Kihyun becoming close friends, as well, once you and Minhyuk started dating. Kihyun was even the one that urged Minhyuk to ask you out. But after his death, Kihyun’s attitude toward you had started to shift and you sometimes thought he blamed you for what happened.

He dropped a huge stack of folders onto your desk. “I need you to double check all these case files and see if we missed anything in regards to these frequent murders around town. There has to be some kind of connection.” He placed his hands firmly on his hips waiting for you to acknowledge his request.

You looked at the behemoth of papers on your desk and realized it was the same stack of files that you had checked three days ago. The same stack you were told needed to be checked and ran against the evidence database, collated, and then filed alphabetically but also in order of occurrence. You had spent six hours filing those folders in the precinct’s prehistoric file room, which was filled with cobwebs and dust because everything was digitally formatted on a computer for faster access, and mostly everyone liked the ease of using the computer. However, as soon as Kihyun was promoted to sergeant, he suggested that paper copies should not be ignored because he didn’t trust computers enough to keep everything safe and accessible should the system be hacked or shut down. In your mind, that was actually code for being technologically inept.

The only reason it took you six hours was because someone had spilled hot coffee all over their shirt and needed help shedding off said shirt before he caught first-degree burns. Luckily, you saved him from any possible injury and in return he thanked you by pinning you against the wall of paperwork and helped you shed your own blouse. As a result, re-reorganizing most of the old files had to be done since the two of you had knocked them off of their old, rickety shelves.

“Poppy!”

“What Kihyun?!” You had apparently zoned-out. You had been doing that a lot lately. It was a result of lack of sleep as you replayed inside your mind an impromptu tryst with one of your coworkers. Plus it was Monday and you fucking hated Monday’s.

“That’s--whatever! Did you hear what I said?”

Anyhow, none of those basic clerical duties were in your job description and you had no business even doing them the first time. You were a technical forensics specialist—a more modern term: a hacker that worked for the police. And a damn good one at that. You shoved the stack back toward Kihyun and watched as he knitted his eyebrows. “I checked these on Friday per the Captain’s request before I left. There's no connection between any of these cases and the new cases. Dates, suspects, evidence, nothing correlates.”

He shoved them back toward you. “Well check them again. You might have missed some-”

You shoved them back toward him again and this time a little more harshly causing your utensil holder to fall off your desk. “I didn't, Kihyun! I'm not checking these again. If you really want them checked then ask the kid over there who's been doing nothing but twiddling his thumbs all day.” You motioned toward Officer Changkyun who had just graduated from the academy. The rookie cop was hired around the time Kihyun was promoted and was already causing trouble with his ‘shoot in the air to scare, ask questions later, and hope you didn’t hit an artery’ mentality. His behavior was chalked up to the fact that he was a dorky drug dealer Kihyun arrested once that the captain decided to reform by making him work in law enforcement.

He looked up from the desk upon hearing his name, quickly tucking something into a drawer on his desk. “I have all these speeding tickets... and accidents... I have to report. I'm behind on my work.” He said in a very relaxed and even tone. You knew what his demeanor meant as you facepalmed. The guy was definitely high on whatever that was that he hid away. You sighed trying to figure out how the precinct got so messed up.

“Fine!” Yelled Kihyun causing the rookie to flinch and you to roll your eyes back into your skull. Damn, he was so dramatic. “I’ll check them myself. I can't get any of you lazy ass people to do any real work around here. No wonder crime rates are skyrocketing! We don't do our jobs!” He grabbed the stack and fumed towards his desk, rushing past Detective Hoseok who quickly spun in a circle in order to avoid another coffee catastrophe on his apparel. You prayed he wasn’t en route to your desk and tried to hide your face from him with your hand. But that was a waste of effort because he could clearly see you from where you were sitting. You had been avoiding him since the “re-filing” because he was the let’s-talk-about-our-feelings type and you were the forget-it-ever-happened type. Plus it was Monday. Your nerves were already bad.

“That's not true!” piped Changkyun. Oh, he must have not inhaled the strong stuff considering he was still coherent. You had labs that tested those type of things but he had yet another weird mentality of ‘I must be one with the streets’, so he tested the confiscated materials himself.  “We just found out who’s been tagging the highway en route to East Port!”

Kihyun stopped in his tracks and turned around toward Changkyun. “Yeah. We did. And then you let him run away because you were stoned and we never saw him again!” He threw the files on the rookie's desk and slammed open a seemingly random folder. But knowing Kihyun, it was the exact folder for the case mentioned because he memorized the order of how he stacked the files. Yes. He was that extra.

Hoseok simply shook his head and he continued to walk towards your desk. Your body betrayed you as you tensed up and couldn't lift your butt that was firmly placed on the chair. You had nowhere to go to be honest. The chance of escaping was very slim. The captain should let you have five lunch breaks a day. That would have given you ample enough time to hide from your sexual frustration—er, Hoseok and the rest of your idiot coworkers.

Hmm, five lunch breaks a day? The captain would never go for it, you thought. But as Hoseok continued to approach with a big grin appearing on his face like he had been dying to see or speak to you for the past three days, you changed your mind and decided to try your luck anyway with the captain. Quickly bolting from your desk, your boots clacked loudly against the tiled floor as you brushed passed Hoseok, who barely had time to open his mouth because he had to secure his coffee from spilling for the third time.

You safely made it towards the the captain’s office and rapped on the door before hearing a brief ‘it’s open’ in return. You opened the door and found your captain, Son Hyunwoo sitting on the edge of his seat, papers in disarray across his magnolia stained desk. He had his hands stretched out in front of him as he gazed at them like they weren't his. He was known to act super strange when he hadn't eaten, and by looking at the clock sitting on his desk it was about feeding time.

Son Hyunwoo had been captain since you joined the force five years ago. His father was Chief of Police of the city, so he was a shoe-in for the higher rank once he was deemed suitable for the position even though he was still young. He was number one in his trainee class and had the most arrests during his time as a lower ranking officer. He kept the precinct afloat for the most part, things only getting a little hazy after Minhyuk’s death. He tried his best to keep up the team morale but there was only so much healing that could go on at the time. Now he had to deal with the recent increase in crime, finding the person responsible behind the death of one his best officers, and keep both of his teams functioning simultaneously--his precinct and his wife and two toddlers.

Deciding that your conversation would be best heard if he had food in his stomach, you reached into your pocket and pulled out a granola bar you were saving for later and placed it on his desk as you sat down in the chair in front of him. You hated seeing your captain when he was hungry, he wasn't himself and the precinct would always be momentarily off balance. However, giving him candy was a direct violation of Code 514 from the annoying book given to you at the ethics training your precinct was forced to undergo every year: bribing city officials for special services. But you didn't care, half the shit that went on in that precinct was unethical.

“Captain? I have a request.”

“Mhm.” He replied without looking up from his hands. You pushed the granola bar even closer towards him, figuring he hadn't noticed it was there.

“I was wondering if I could have two lunch breaks? I'm still...emotionally unstable to be at work and the stress of the job and my coworkers, namely Kihyun,” you said his name under your breath, “is all starting to get to me and--”

“Okay.”

“Wait what?” That was too easy. “Are you sure?”

“Mhm.” He  was still looking at his hands, his eyes growing in size as if he was looking at sixteen fingers instead of eight. You picked up the granola bar and placed it underneath his hand, prompting his eyes to grow even wider and look at you. You noticed his pupils were dilated and he had slight perspiration above his left brow.

Considering his current state you decided to push your luck. “Umm…How about three lunch breaks? I think I’m still healing.”

“Make it five! Just to be sure.” He gave you a wonky smile before narrowing his eyes and then opening them wide again. You were about to make another comment thanking him for his surprising generosity when Kihyun burst through the door with obvious distaste on his tongue.

“You're giving her five lunch breaks?! I loved Minhyuk just as much as she did! He was my best friend too and I'm still hurting! As sergeant of this precinct I must interfere! This-”

“Back off Kihyun! This doesn't concern you!” That prick was eavesdropping on your talk with the captain. He most likely had his ear to the wall to listen in because that was the kind of shit he did.

“The hell it doesn't! You can't just get special treatment while the rest of us work our asses off to solve crimes around here. We work as a team and you're a part of that team.”

“And I will work. But I will have five lunch breaks.”

“That's impractical!”

“Five lunch breaks for you, too!” shouted the captain, scaring the hell out of both of you as he slammed his giant hands on his desk and continued to look at them like they weren't his. You were starting to become concerned about him.

“Alright. Cool.” replied Kihyun with a smirk forming on his lips like he had just proven he could be just as persuasive as you.

You gave him a scowl when a gentle knock was heard on the door. Hoseok entered and glanced your way but you averted your gaze and started fiddling with your hair to distract yourself. “Captain. I terribly miss Minhyuk as well, maybe-”

“Five lunch breaks for you, too, Hoseok!”

“Awesome!” He punched his arm in the air causing the coffee in his hand to drizzle down his arm reminding you of the very thing you wanted to erase from your psyche. You needed to get out of there and fast, but your route was blocked when Changkyun strolled in upon hearing the free lunch breaks the captain was dishing out.

“Captain!” yelled Changkyun as he made his way next to you, “I may be new, but—”

“You get five lunch breaks too!”

“What?!” You, Kihyun, and Hoseok turned simultaneously toward the captain. “But he's a rookie!”

“And I'm the Captain of this ship and I say he gets five lunch breaks. As a matter of fact, I'm going to put all this in the system right now.” He opened his laptop and laid his hands on the desk in front of it. The four of you stared silently as he sat motionless, not a single word being inputted into the machine.

“Umm, Captain?” asked Hoseok whom Captain Hyunwoo himself then shushed.

“Can't you see I'm typing?”

The four of you barely had time to discuss the current situation when Jooheon barged into the room. Jooheon was one of the precinct's best detectives if not the best detective considering he was the only one who ever got any work done. He had been promoted to detective about two years ago and even received a medal of valor for his commitment to protecting the city. He had successfully found a drug ring and was on his way to prevent the distribution of narcotics into the city; however, the perps he caught were located at a remote stable and he didn't account for them actually having horses. So he was caught off guard when Rémi the thoroughbred clocked him above his left eye with her hoof. He went unconscious and Hoseok actually made the arrest of the drug lord, which was bitter pill to swallow for Jooheon who had worked on the case for so long.  But he still was rewarded for his services so he got over it. But now he's forced to wear glasses in the field or Kihyun writes him up.

“And the embarrassment continues,” he said looking around the room at you all.

“What are you talking about?” asked Kihyun, planting his hands firmly on his hips. It irked you when he did that.

“I just heard from my buddy down in dispatch that a West Port officer arrested someone all the way here in East Port because none of our men were available. Do you know how embarrassing that is?! And then I find you all huddled in the captain’s office so it makes sense.”

Hyunwoo looked up from his desk. “Sense is a faculty by which the body perceives an external stimulus. We have five senses and every one of mine are on fire right now. I can smell the flames!” His nostrils flared with the last word, causing everyone to look at one another distressed.

Hoseok stared into your soul longer than you would have preferred, so you quickly stood up and placed your fingers on the captain’s carotid artery. His pulse was racing.

“Captain, what did you take?!” You asked a little panicked. If you cared about anyone in that precinct it was the Hyunwoo. He was your brother from another mother. You could always count on him. “Changkyun! Did you rearrange everyone’s sticky notes on their lunch again? I told you people have specific dietary restrictions!”

“No! I didn't! I promise,” replied the officer who made his way closer to the desk. Upon inspection, he noticed a wrapper and a lollipop stick scattered near a stack of paperwork. “Oh, shit!” He exclaimed upon realization of what happened to your captain.

“What?!” Yelled the rest of you in unison, including the captain.

He had a smirk on his face, which, as convoluted as it sounds, meant the captain was going to be all right. Now knowing exactly what was going on, you facepalmed for the second time that day before the next words came out of Changkyun’s mouth.

“Hey, Captain~,” he teased. “You're exceptionally high right now. On a new drug that's being pushed around in the party scenes. It’s like a very mild version of LSD.”

“That is correct. I am Hi. Hello. Good day. Nice to meet you LeSter D.” He made a derpy face and proceeded to spin around in his chair, but Hoseok rushed over and grabbed the chair before Hyunwoo made a third rotation. His arm muscles were flexing on display before you, and you couldn’t help but think he did that on purpose.

Jooheon quickly closed the door not wanting anyone in the hallway to hear what was transpiring in the office. “How'd this happen?”

“Looks like he finally got around to eating the Halloween baskets Kihyun prepared for everyone,” said Changkyun as he pointed towards an orange jack-o-lantern basket of candy on the floor.

Everyone peered at Kihyun who looked just as shocked as everyone else. “Don't look at me! I would never purposefully get the captain high. I mean, I too would like to become captain one day and I would need an outstanding letter of recommendation from him. So of course I didn't do this.”

“Then who?” Jooheon asked, crossing his arms.

“I did.” Replied Changkyun. “I was trying to get Poppy high with these baby drugs from a dude I know. Ease her tension, y’know? But I guess the baskets got mixed up. My bad.”

“Your bad?!” You screamed as you gripped the newbie’s collar in your fists. “Our captain is currently unable to perform his duties, you moron!”

“Poppy! Calm down!” Bellowed the captain causing you to almost jump into Changkyun’s arms.

“See. He’s fine,” said Changkyun. “He’s coming down from his high right now. It's a mini trip. Not long lasting. Plus he's a big dude so he’ll have no side effects. And the stick is yellow, which means it had the one with the non-addictive formula. My guy’s a genius in the lab. There was this one time--”

“Changkyun, enough!” cried Kihyun. “We need to speak in private. Follow me. Everyone else, back to work.” Kihyun ushered everyone out the room and you were the last to follow until something in your mind prompted you to turn around and check one more thing before you left.

“Captain.” He looked up at you as his pupils began to return to normal.

“I'm fine, Poppy. I’ll--”

“No.” You interrupted. “Empty your pockets.”

He stood up and did as you asked. When you gasped at the two lollipops he pulled from his pocket, a look of our shock engulfed his whole face. “I almost brought them home to my kids!”

You moved back towards his desk and confiscated the lollipops before they caused any more unnecessary damage. “I'll do away with these. We can be civil if you want to go home and rest.”

He nodded at you and you stepped outside, closing the door behind you. Upon turning around you were met with a very thick structure against your nose. You realized you were staring at a striped surface that was slightly raised on either side of your face. The surface also held two slightly almond shaped protrusions. Almonds that were always angry, it seemed, because they would never go down. There was no room for you to step back, so you were forced to look up and finally face Hoseok. His cup of coffee was long gone, but you were still engulfed by the smell that was now attached to his person. Your eyes moved up to see him staring down at you with a triumphant smirk on his face after finally cornering you.

“We need to talk,” said Wonho as he turned on his heels and expected you to follow him down the hall. Yet another thing you didn't want to deal with yet you had too or else he would never go away.

“I fudgin’ hate Mondays,” you groaned as you followed Hoseok down the hall.

Welcome to the precinct.

More to come! And it won’t take nearly as long! Thanks for reading! - Cheezy ^_^ & Dearly :3

[thecaffeinebookwarrior]

Hi! I've followed you for a while and you always seem to have really helpful tips and answers to questions about writing characters, so I was wondering if you could help me. I'm writing a character who's a pathological liar, and I was wondering if you had any advice for writing him.

Good question!  Compulsive liars tend to be born from: 

A) childhood abuse or very strict parents that forced them to lie in order to avoid punishment, leading to a cycle of dishonesty that’s difficult to break, and/or: 

B) a personality disorder such as narcissistic personality disorder or antisocial personality disorder.  

Either way, compulsive liars are telling lies to preserve themselves, to get attention, and/or to convey a certain version of themselves to the world.

More “sinister” and organized pathological liars will study the person they wish to deceive, look for weaknesses subconsciously or otherwise that they can exploit on.  

Some lack empathy, and some have an excess amount of it (which often enables them to lie better.)  More empathetic liars will often feel guilty for lying and relieved once you stop asking questions on the subject, whereas less empathetic liars (often on the sociopathy spectrum) can comfortably lie for long periods of time.  These less empathetic liars will often feel little-to-no discomfort or shame after having been caught in a lie, and will often try to use another lie to cover it.

There’s an article containing the confessions of pathological liars and real-life accounts of people’s attempts to confront the pathological liars in their lives here.

Here’s one account of a man’s marriage with a manipulative, sociopathic pathological liar:

I married a sociopath. Of course, I didn’t realize that there were those types of human beings in existence. Near the end of our 2 yr. marriage is when I started realizing she had been lying to me & her coworkers (destroying my character) so that she could attempt to have me arrested on false DV charges. Imagine the realization of this from your spouse. I guess she was through with me, so this was her way of disposing of me. I found out later after meeting her ex that she had succeeded in having him arrested on false DV charges (they didn’t stick, because, well, they were false!) He is a really nice man.

I found out some incredulous lies, some just downright crazy, and some directed solely to destroy my character. When I confronted her with several of these lies she would lie again to cover, or simply state "you weren’t there", etc. The problem is that I spoke with people who were there in the certain instances. My take on it is that one could confront a person such as my ex (who is a validated sociopath ~ by way of psychological testing) until one’s death and not accomplish anything positive. I’ll agree with the one thing that another person stated: When confronted with the truth, there is a long silence.

I have to deal with this person with outrageously horrible behavior because I had children by her. The interesting thing is that she didn’t really "target to destroy" me until she was underway with the second pregnancy. Once I got my feet under me, and started investigating I uncovered lie after lie concerning her parents, my parents, me, my friends, you name it. Nothing was sacred from being destroyed by her lying. I uncovered an affair she had also.

From this experience I may be an incurable cynic on the topic of rehabilitation from chronic lying.

Truth and trust are missing from a liar’s dictionary, and it can’t be penciled in later. My ex uses lies to manipulate people into believing a certain thing or making people act (usually it’s for punitive control, getting what she wants regardless of others, etc.).

Here’s one from the child of pathological liars:

I am pretty sure both of my parents are compulsive liars. My father has been audited several times by the IRS, denied stealing money from me when I was a working teen, and encouraged us kids to lie about his affair -we met his mistress when we were preteens. I think my mom enables his behavior or is a compulsive liar, too. The most significant evidence of their behavior is this: neither my mom not dad will admit that they believe I was raped. After our alcoholic bi-polar brother died in 2004, my older sister spilled the beans that I was raped at camp in 1980 when I was 16. My sister said our brother started drinking because I was raped at camp. No evidence exists to support any rape. My parents use this mythical rape to explain why I spent almost 3 months in a mental health care facility. I am 45 years old now. I found about this horrible lie in 2004—now I understand why my entire family treated me in such a bizarre way. Compulsive lying must be just a small part of mental illness. I am bi-polar and am having success with medical and counseling, but two years ago this chemical imbalance almost cost me my husband and 2 children. I am still praying for wisdom on how to treat my parents who are 75 and 78 and very ill. I know Jesus will give me wisdom and strength to continue loving and respecting my parents and help me not to be a victim of them. Their big lie about me has definitely tainted many relationships in my life.

And one that shows how a pathological liar can be born out of the unrealistic expectations of parents:

I can also understand why a compulsive liar lies. Mainly because I have recently discovered I am one. I truly don’t know why I lie, but I have read the symptoms and I concur that I lie to protect myself. I grew up in a middle class family. I was basically the star student in my earlier grades (1st through 3rd) and mt parents never really let me forget it. I actually began to slack in school a bit, and thats my fault. But as soon as I received my first B my parents grounded me for a long time. (I do remember this.) And from there on they continued to make sure my homework was always done and would never let me leave the house until it was done.

I think that’s when it all started...I began to lie to my parents and tell them my homework was done so I could go play with friends sooner. I’m not sure how but, I as time went on I lied more and more. I, actually to the point where I can lie to myself and believe in false things. I tell my parents that they tell me things, or that they don’t tell me things to get out of a sticky situation so I’m not punished. I do it to everyone now because I’m always afraid of the punishment. I am currently in a great relationship that is slowly slipping away. I truly mean no harm to anyone but my girlfriend is amazing...I don’t know how she puts up with me. I lie about the littlest things. Their family is on vacation and I forgot to mow their lawn...and I was talking to her, I told her that I mowed it...when I didn’t yet, but she didn’t even come home for another week so there was not point in lying.

I am currently seeing help and I advise all those that know a compulsive liar to help them. Because its hard and self-confusing. It’s instinct to lie for us, and it feels weird when I tell the truth...

It’s important to know that not all pathological liars are malicious or bad people.  Some of them are using it as a survival strategy, not a means of abuse.   That said, there are pathological liars who genuinely are abusive and harmful to the people around them, who should be avoided as much as possible (but can be very interesting to write.)

I hope this helps, and happy writing!

[omnical]

I Sing the Body Electric... (2/?)

( Previous - Next )

Summary: Dr. Angela Ziegler knows a few things about Detective Fareeha Amari.

Genre: AU, Romance. Dark humor, supernatural elements.

Characters/Pairings: Angela, Fareeha, Pharmercy; minor: Lucio, Mei

Rating: T, mentions of body gore and third party violence, dark humor.

Links: AO3

Dr. Angela Ziegler did not know what she was doing with her life.

To be fair, she never expected to be haunted by her own insecurities, but Angela supposed reaching her thirties was the primary culprit of her sudden change of heart. She never used to worry, and never used to wonder if she was wasting her life by focusing on her work, until she found it barely made her happy anymore. 

Sometimes Angela allowed herself to sink back into her memories. Mostly whenever feelings of intense sadness came into her mind, unbidden. Memories of when she was a child in her father’s study, wide-eyed and curious about his strange books, and colorful anatomical models with their detachable parts.

She remembered examining them with her pudgy toddler hands, lower lip sticking out as she took them apart --  cillary body, choroid, sclera, lens -- before putting the parts back together again. She liked putting them back together again.

She remembered her parents telling her how smart she was, how good she was, pride lighting their eyes. If she tried hard enough, Angela could still remember their voices. It helped lift her spirits up, sometimes.

However, her parents’ untimely passing did not exhaust love and warmth from her life. She lead a happy and carefree childhood, after her parents died. Her aunt and uncle tried their hardest to fill that silence in her heart with their own voices, and sometimes Angela thought it worked. Your mother and father would have been so proud of you, Angela.

And now, after making a living out of being smart, she became Auntie Dr. Angela, who sent the best sweets and the newest toys despite missing family gatherings for the holidays sometimes.

And birthday parties.

And weddings. Video calls.

Auntie’s funeral.

“It’s all right, my dear. Maybe you can come next year?”

...

Dr. Lindholm found Angela dissociating in front of her computer monitor one day.

He brought her hot chocolate from the coffee machine in the pantry, the beverage watery and clumped up with cheap chocolate powder. And with it, he effectively coaxed her out of her mental calisthenics. She was like a terrified critter hiding inside her burrow. “You always did think too much for your own good.” He said.

She had no one else to turn to, no one else to confide in, until Dr. Lindholm, poorly hiding the hurt he felt after Angela hesitated to tell him initially, managed to make her spill everything with one look.

“When I was your age, I ended up working myself to the bone, too.” Dr. Lindholm grumbled through his words, speaking with a gruff gentleness only a father of seven would have. “Until my poor wife knocked some sense into this hard noggin’ of mine, and I had to look back at myself and what I was missing. But that’s life.”

“Why did you decide to stay?”

“I was happy with my job and I still am.” He answered, tugging his mustache with a thumb and forefinger. “Sometimes you need to figure out what’s best for you, get your hands dirty. But it is different for everybody, Angela. Whatever worked for me might not work for you. These things don’t come with a manual.”

“I see.”

“Guess that means you can do whatever the hell you want.”

“It would be easier if I knew what I wanted to do.”

“Take a day off.” Dr. Lindholm said, patting her shoulder. “Away from all this crap. Maybe that will help clear your head?”

Angela walked to a pub that evening with some of her coworkers, some of them surprised that one of their local recluse bothered to join them at all. She holed herself up against the corner of the pub at first, until Dr. Winston invited her to throw a few darts with him, which was fun despite missing the dartboard the entire time. She also cheered for a losing football team, got into a heated debate about rugby with a baffled stranger, drinking pint after pint. Mirthful brown eyes watched her all night.

After getting ‘plenty pissed’, she went home. Angela woke up with a bad hangover, her mouth sour, and a pulsing headache, wondering if her night out helped.

She felt inclined to disagree after vomiting all over her bathroom floor. It took hours until she mustered the strength to clean up after her own mess.

The next day, Dr. Angela Ziegler deleted her resignation letter, and never thought about quitting her job again.

The steel autopsy table glinted from the bright surgical lights overhead.

When Angela closed her eyes, blinding spots shaped like surgical light bulbs flashed behind her eyelids. She blinked, long and hard, willing them to go away.

When she opened them again, she noticed Lucio was sending her a look over the autopsy table, a pair of forceps in his hand.

“Sorry, I got distracted.”

“I can see that.”

Angela looked down at their patient.

Hi .

Time to get back to work.

An assistant drone whizzed past Angela’s eyesight with a mechanical hum. Its gears and internal mechanisms whirring and clicking, its optical eye taking photographs of the cadaver, and stowing away details for the report; breaking them down into categories. Nails, skin, hair. And while the drone did its work, Angela exhaled, letting a long breath whoosh from her lips.

“February 8, 1:45 PM. Female, forty-eight years old. Found in her living room, seven hours after time of death, which was estimated at: February 7, 10 PM. According to investigation reports, she died from an unwitnessed cardiac arrest.” Angela frowned beneath her medical mask. “Her family wanted to be sure about the cause of death. As far as we know, she was alone at home. No evidence of assault or struggle.”

The patient’s feet were swollen. Taut skin stretched across sharp lines of bone. The corpse’s flesh -- once brown and aglow with the rosy hue of life -- was now ashen and cold. The patient’s face was expressionless, grim. Mrs. Tanner looked peaceful in her final rest.

I am so sorry.

“Assistant drones found some areas of her clothing were singed.” Angela said. “Very slight, almost undetectable. There were no signs of burns on the corpse, either.”

“That’s weird.”

“Very weird.”

“The police reports never mentioned anything which might have caused it.” Lucio said, “Think it’s conclusive evidence, doc?”

“Maybe. If only things can be that easy.”

Angela fiddled with the plastic shield protecting her face. She fixed her rubber gloves around her wrists, listening to it snap against her skin, as if the sound would quell the storm forming inside her heart.

“Okay, I am ready.” Angela said, “Let’s open her up.”

Lucio handed her a scalpel.

…

“Wanna order Italian later, doc?”

“That sounds great. I’m craving garlic bread.”

“I know this place that makes amazing garlic bread. They make their own bread -- fancy restaurants always make their own bread -- so you know it’s super fancy. It’s a walk away from here, but totally worth it.” Lucio said. “Better not have too much, though, people say garlic breath is a turn off for some people. If you know what I mean.”

Angela held the sternal saw aloft. She sent him a dirty look.

“Hey, I'm just saying.”

“We are recording this session, Dr. dos Santos.”

“Nobody but us listens to it, anyway, what's the harm?”

“Ugh.” Angela turned the saw on and began to cut across the sides of their patient’s rib cage.

...

“Need help there, doc?”

“Yes.” Angela nodded. “Take this to the tray, please.”

“Got it.”

“Thank you.”

Working with the dead followed a careful step-by-step scientific process.

“Checking the pericardial sac. Scalpel, please? The small one.”

The other half of the job was to understand the abstract.

“Maybe a towel, too.” she added. “There is a lot of liquid in the cavity.”

Whenever Angela got bored during her trip to and from work, she found herself watching ordinary people mill about in their daily lives. A person showing signs of nicotine addiction. An elderly woman waiting in a cafe who was probably diabetic, her coffee order later confirming Angela’s guess. A child chasing a cat after recovering from a broken leg, maybe two or three weeks ago. They were textbook and precise observations, nearly perfected after years of practice.

Since their patients did not have the ability to speak for themselves anymore, or show discomfort, or express pain, they took it upon themselves to help reveal the dead’s final words. But it was the unpredictable human mind which added tons of variables and what-ifs in the equation; something unseen from the abstract could turn a murder case around and present truths from lies. Their patient’s final meal. Their medicine intake. Past ailments. Angela had a knack for the abstract.

“What do you think so far?” Dr. dos Santos asked, helping her lift a layer of flesh with a large pair of forceps.

Dr. Ziegler, hands deep inside the body’s chest cavity, answered. “Homicide.”

“How’d you figure?”

“Let’s call it a gut feeling, doctor.” An amused wrinkle appeared around Angela’s eyes, revealing the smile under her mask.

“Ha, very funny.” Lucio said. “Are you suggesting a killer clown appeared from her television screen and scared her to death?” He chuckled, “We should send that report to the Chief of Police. Get his grouchy ass storming our office.”

"Wouldn’t that be a sight."

“Speaking of the Chief of Police--”

Angela and Lucio jumped at the new voice.

A short woman, round-faced and perky, smiled at them from behind the autopsy room doors. “I am so sorry for interrupting you guys." she said with a nervous giggle, "How is the examination going?”

“Lucio and I are still not finished with this one, Mei.” Angela said, bowing her head in apology. “Would it be possible if you told Captain Morrison we will finish this after three?”

“Okay,” Mei shrugged, throwing the pair a knowing look. “I guess I’ll tell Detective Dimples to come back another time.”

Dr. Ziegler dropped her scalpel in Mrs. Tanner’s chest.

“Oh, shit.”

Detective Amari was here.

Detective Fareeha Amari.

Fareeha Amari. She was here.

Angela skidded to a halt outside her office door, and took a moment to stare at the twisted knotholes of the wood. Blue eyes, dancing like two fading matchsticks, unable to focus where she was looking until Angela concentrated all her intent on the silver of the doorknob. She had to find the strength to open the door eventually.

Angela worried her lower lip, fingers combing the messy rat’s nest of hair on her head. She tugged at the lapels of her white coat, which smelled of antiseptic and murk from the autopsy earlier. It stank on her skin, under her nose, and her eyes had deep bags under them, as if they were two small ditches dug out by a worn trowel. The scent and look of death always clung to her, but she thought it was impossible to look nice after spending hours in the morgue.

After a few moments shifting her weight between her feet, she willed steel into her bones and pushed the door open. A beam of white light from the hallway’s fluorescent lighting escaped through the gap, and as soon as she opened the door, a person’s shadow revealed itself stretched out onto the rug. She hesitated, her eyes adjusting from the dim room after walking through the hall. Dark clouds covered the sun, the rain pelting her window, overall encompassing her office with a dreary, gray overtone.

When her eyes adjusted to the lack of lighting, Angela’s gaze followed the unmoving shadow to its source -- who was wearing a pair of soggy black shoes.

Her eyes traced up to dark trouser pants, pressed, creased, hiding a pair of elegant, long legs. A coat hung over their shoulders, limp and drenched from the afternoon rain.

Detective Fareeha Amari loomed above Angela’s desk, surveying the mass of documents and towers of folders strewn about. Her head quirked to the side, probably in curiosity, hair dripping with rain water. It was a miracle Detective Amari did not notice Angela leaning against the doorway, her knees folding over each other, wobbling like jelly.

Taking a shaky step forward, Angela closed the door behind her, careful so as not to startle her visitor. She licked her lips, mind racing over ideas on how to greet the detective without looking like a baffled idiot. Just a simple greeting. She had to sound calm, firm, use her customer service telephone voice. That always worked.

‘Fancy seeing you here, Detective Amari. You cut a dashing figure, as always.’

That was horrible.

“Dr. Ziegler,” Angela forced herself to abandon her thoughts, dragging her eyes away from the pair of long legs gracing her office, and into Detective Amari’s eyes. Dark brown eyes, almost black. It left her rooted on the spot, her knees stopped wobbling like jelly. “Glad to see you again, doctor.”

“Fancy dashing you here."

Detective Amari raised an eyebrow, the corners of her lips quirking to an amused grin. “I’m sorry?”

Angela cleared her throat. “Hi.”

“Hi.”

There were a few things Angela knew about the mysterious Detective Fareeha Amari.

First. She had a stress ball tucked inside her jacket pocket at all times. It was orange, like a basketball.

Second. She wore a lady’s suit at work, and sometimes a baggy windbreaker jacket during colder days, instead of a blazer. She wore a pair of jeans and a baseball cap during stakeouts and sting operations. She always looked perfect.

Third. She did not mind being referred to as a they, or a he, or a she. “Doesn’t matter.” Detective Amari said once, “Please call me whatever you like.”

Fourth. A week ago, Detective Amari had a cut on her cheek and a broken finger. Two weeks before that, a suspect made her long nose crooked for a while. Three months ago, she broke her leg after falling off a flight of stairs in the precinct.

Today a broken arm hung over her chest in a sling, and half of her face was swollen and purple like a bowl of bruised mangoes and grapes.

Fifth. Fareeha knew a few things about Dr. Angela Ziegler.

"Please tell me those bandages aren’t hiding anything serious.”

“Got roughed up a couple of days ago." Detective Amari said.

“You should take better care of yourself, detective.”

“I’m used to it, doctor. Occupational hazard.” She smiled, motioning at her cast. “Comes with the territory.”

Angela shook her head and scoffed, trying to keep herself from being charmed by the curve of Fareeha’s full lips, and the grin reaching her eyes. “Oh, nonsense. Let me get you something.”

Detective Amari faltered, “I hope I am not intruding, doctor?”

Angela waved away her weak excuses, and began searching for a towel, a handkerchief -- anything that could help her friend. She ignored a few empty drawers, and quickly closed the one overflowing with rubbish before Fareeha saw her shame.

Finally, she found a hand towel from her tote bag, and handed it Detective Amari with an embarrassed chuckle.

“I guess I should have been better prepared, considering the local weather.” Angela said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “It’s horrible, isn’t it? Always raining, and dark, and...” --   stop talking about the weather, Angela -- “Anyway, I hope this can help.”

“Thank you, doctor.” Fareeha smiled, and took the offered towel from Angela’s hand. “To be fair, it’s not everyday a soaked idiot comes in dripping water everywhere after forgetting to bring an umbrella.”

“Indeed. I mean, you’re not an idiot. That’s not what I meant.” Angela twisted her fingers around each other, resisting the urge to caress the bruises on Detective Amari’s cheek. “And you are free to intrude on my work any time, by the way. I don’t mind.”

Detective Amari opened her mouth, pausing as if she was about to apologize for the second time, before changing her mind. “Thank you.”

“Wuh -- ” Words, Angela. “Would you like to take a seat and tell me why you got injured, this time?”

“Just a group of guys assaulting a kid in an alleyway.” She replied with a tight smile, shaking her head. “We didn’t expect it to turn into a car chase across the square to sixth avenue. Backed them up into a building, where they had friends waiting. One of them sucker punched me.”

“Oh, goodness.”

“I broke my arm after tripping over a rubbish bin an hour later.”

“Sounds... exciting.”

“And a lot of paperwork,” Detective Amari frowned. “Which is less fun compared to a car chase, I guess.” She handed Angela the damp towel after attempting to dry her face. Detective Amari took a moment to comb her hair back with her fingers, dark strands curling over her cheek, making it look both neat and tousled and... “Maybe you should take a seat, doctor? Your knees are shaking.”

Angela felt herself fall into her leather chair, boneless -- she cleared her throat. “So, how can I help you today, Detective Amari? Is this about a case?”

The detective tensed, her mouth turning into a frown as she leaned against the edge of the desk, fingers gripping the edge. “Yes, in fact.” She pulled out a thick case file from inside her suit jacket, and Angela wondered how she kept it dry and intact after running through the rain.

“We got a video clip.”

Dr. Ziegler flipped through case file, her knuckles white as she flipped through the pages. Pictures and reported evidence spread across desk in a mess, all of which she still remembered fresh in her mind, while the newly found puzzle-piece played on her computer monitor in a loop.

“Maybe the recording was tampered?”

“Maybe.” Detective Amari scratched the bandage under her chin. “Our techie couldn’t find anything suspicious in the recording. Or the recorder, for that matter. There were no time skips, no evidence of anything being erased. No tampering, as far as we know.”

“So his wife hid the camera inside the… ?”

“She hid the camera inside his bookcase.”

“Because she suspected her husband was cheating on her.”

“I know what this looks like. Jealous wife murders husband, plants fake or tampered evidence to get us off her trail.” Detective Amari said, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. “It is true Mrs. Finnegan has a clear motive, but why would she give us the recording? She could have destroyed it, and we would have never known it existed.”

“Detective,” Angela pulled her glasses from her nose. She paused, resting the spectacles on her thigh. “Are you prepared to tell me he was killed by an invisible creature?”

They shared a look.

“These strange cases have been popping up left and right.” Angela said. “We were working on another case before you came to visit, and believe me when I say I can’t wrap my head around that one either.” She leaned against her chair with a tired huff. “They all look like natural causes -- our autopsies reveal they are natural cases. Oftentimes we leave it as is and shelf it, but I’m often at a loss. It always feels wrong, somehow. Off. Like there’s something missing.”

“I know.” Detective Amari pushed herself away from Angela’s desk. “I feel the same.”

The detective stared at the wall opposite Angela, deep in thought. After a while, the square of her shoulders deflated. “I just came by to inform you, doctor. Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you think of anything. Invisible men, werewolves, body-snatchers, whatever you guys figure out.” she chuckled, finding no humor in her words. “As long as there's evidence backing it, I’m willing to hear anything at this point.”

“This is something your techie can figure out more than I can.” Angela said. She smoothed down the crinkles of her dress shirt, trying to find something her fingers could be busy with while the detective stood too close in front of her. Their knees were almost touching. “Strange video recordings aren’t my forte, unless...”

Detective Amari froze.

“No.”

“Unless I -- ”

“Absolutely not.” Fareeha pivoted around her heels and began to pace, her hand expressing her words wildly. “May I remind you about the last time you took a plunge? Light bulbs exploded, things floated around, creepy voices. And I think that body moved.”

“That was completely my fault. I forgot to mention temporary reanimation can happen sometimes.”

“You fainted and you stared at your hands for an hour, doctor."

"Now, I don't remember that..."

Fareeha shot her a dry look. "You were talking about yellow eyes.”

“Sometimes they get annoyed.”

“I nearly -- ” Fareeha closed her eyes and pulled away, biting the insides of her cheek. “I won’t let you go through that again. It’s too dangerous.”

“We don’t even know if I will make contact.” Angela glanced at the door in case anyone else was listening. “Besides, last time was just a tiny, tiny oversight.”

“A tiny oversight?”

“Fareeha, please listen to me?”

Fareeha closed her mouth and shook her head in disbelief, but decided to do as Angela insisted. Instead, she grabbed the orange stress-ball from inside her jacket pocket, and squeezed it with an iron grip.

“I have lived with this curse all my life, and I wasted so much time trying to forget it ever existed. I’m out of practice, I admit, but I am ready to keep trying.” Angela said. “Two times out of ten it can get worse. Three times out of eight, nothing happens. But there is a fifty-percent chance of us getting the answers we need."

"With the remaining fifty-percent possibility of the guy’s head spinning around? I can deal with poltergeists, maybe, but not that."

“The body’s head didn’t spin.” Angela groaned. "Look, whatever, or whoever is running around in this city, innocent people are getting killed.”

“And we’ll do our best to stop them.” Fareeha said. “We’ll search for other solutions. Our techie can check the video again, she’s a genius. The toxicology report is still pending. Maybe he got stung by a bee and he’s allergic. I dunno.” she winced. “Contacting crazy spirits should be our last resort, doctor. God, I can’t believe I just said that.”

“And what if there's no other way?”

“I’ll find another way."

“I can do this.” Angela said, almost jumping up from her chair. “I know I can do this.”

“Yes, but I can’t--” Fareeha said with a frustrated sigh, squeezing the ball hard until her hand shook. “I just wanted to update you about the case and tell you what we found. I wanted to make sure I wasn't losing my mind."

"You didn't show this video to anyone else, did you?" she asked, her sentence a statement more than a question. The detective's accompanying silence was enough of a reply.

"I can’t ask you to risk your life again." Fareeha said. "If something happens to you…“

Angela’s shoulders fell.

The rain outside seemed to grow in volume as they both regarded each other, silent and tight lipped. Heavy droplets pelting the windowpane, her desktop computer whirring, thunder rolling across the dreary city.

She didn’t realize she was holding her breath until Fareeha spoke again. “I can't lose you to one of those things, doctor. You are one of the few good friends I have.”

Angela felt her heart flutter. “Well,” she mumbled, inwardly cursing herself for folding under the spell of Fareeha Amari’s words too soon. “I’m, um, same. You are the same, to me, I mean. A friend.” She breathed in awe.

Detective Amari’s lips twitched into a weary smile, tucking her stress ball back inside her coat pocket. “Don’t fret about this case too much.” Her voice deepened in confidence, and Angela felt her back stiffen in attention. “Please leave it to me. I promise we’ll figure something out. Invisible creatures or no.”

“We will.”

“Are we okay?”

“We’re okay.” Angela croaked.

“Good.” Fareeha sighed in relief, “Shit, I need to go. Busy day in the precinct.”

“Of course.”

“Please take it easy, doctor, and don’t do anything without me. My apologies for taking too much of your time.”

Fareeha gathered the case documents from Angela’s desk, shoving it back inside her coat, and began to walk away before Angela could form a coherent reply. “You have my number, Dr. Ziegler, call me any time. I mean it.” Fareeha blindly reached for the door as she turned to look at Angela. Her dark eyes gripped Angela’s attention like a vice, that it seemed to glow under the dim lighting of the room. “Give me two weeks and maybe -- if all else fails -- maybe I will consider helping you do the other thing.”

“How about next week?” Lunch? Dinner? A movie?

An early morning jog around the park?

Oh, forget that, Angela. You can’t jog even if your life depended on it.

Fareeha laughed. “You are, by far, the toughest, most stubborn woman I have ever met. I’ll give you that, doctor.” she winked. “Two weeks, tops, and I promise I will help you.”

“I will take your word for it, detective.” Angela swallowed, her throat pushing down her traitorous thoughts, as if it would spill out of her mouth if she allowed them to stray.

“I’ll be seeing you.”

Angela tensed, her fingers digging into the arm of her chair as she watched the detective pull her door open with nary a backwards glance. “Wait, Fareeha.”

“Yes, doctor?”

Angela faltered, chewing her lower lip. Her heart aching as a billion sentences rolled through her head, most of them spontaneous invitations to places she has never seen before. But wouldn't it be nice if she had? With someone like the detective?

Live a little.

“Thank you.” Angela said, “For looking out for me.”

Surprise lit up Fareeha’s face. Her smile crooked, and her eyes warm. They felt like a hearth in Angela’s cold office.

“Any time, Dr. Ziegler.”

Detective Amari was already closing the door behind her before Angela could find it in herself to speak again. The last edges of her shadow disappearing underneath the frame; and with it, the final traces of her warm presence.

Notes: This took so so damn long, I'm not gonna lie folks, we spent the entire two month hiatus to expand this little one-shot into a hopefully more proper multi-chapter. We had a lot of fun plotting and planning things out, but man... did you know you can watch human autopsies online? Yeah... you can watch human autopsies online, full and very graphic ones. Very educational!

Anyway, unfortunately, we can't promise another prompt update (though at least now I know which direction and style we're goin with this), since I'll be moving apartments sometime around next month, and things will be incredibly busy as heck, but we will most definitely do our best :D

Thank you very much for reading! Have a nice day, everyone~

Edited (24/09/17): So soon! Had to post this very late and caught a few minor errors I overlooked :)

[intheheartofthematter]

So you know and to myself

I hate to bring this up, and there are many more incidents throughout my life, but I think at least this much should be told. Before I worked at the roofing company as Operations Manager, I worked at another commercial roofing company for almost 6 years as AP/AR Manager and a few other jobs when needed... My boss, another owner, would introduce me at times as his Jack of all trades, master of some. (ha. unnecessary interjection, but I’m reflecting too.) My aunt worked there as well before she retired. One day T wanted me to sign her up for a karate tournament (pronoun at the time, will be used). I had a deadline of a little more than an hour left, so I had to ask permission (very strict business) if I could have the form faxed to me, take a few minutes to fill it out, and fax it back. My request was approved. By the time the tournament sign-up form came through on the fax I had very little time left to fax it back. My aunt saw it come through at the same time I did and grabbed it. I gave her a brief moment to look at it, but she started to walk away and take it to her desk. I asked if I could have it, needing to quickly fax it back, and she said, “No. I’m her aunt. I want to read it first.” I said something stupid back, like, “Well, I’m her mom and I need to read it first and get it filled out.” Anyway, after another long minute, with a hmph and a wrinkled up nose at me, she finally handed it to me. Her day ended at 4pm and it was already after that hour. We both often worked late. My day ended at 5. And, at the time my mom was staying with my aunt temporarily while her move to Florida was in process. She goes home, and tells my mom who knows what! and my mom comes to my place of employment, stomps up to the front door with clenched fists, a few coworkers are gasping, saying, “Who is that?” before she opened the door. I reluctantly reply, “My mom.” To sum it up, she stormed in, in front of everyone, and said, “Get your shit! We’re leaving.” I ask her why, is it an emergency, etc. No answer, but her anger escalated, “I said get your shit! You’re leaving with me NOW!” I said, “NO. I get off work in a little while. I can talk to you then.” She then picked up a section of the switchboard, screaming a whole lot at me, and came after me with it, hitting me with part of it. I mostly got out of the way in time. Two people quickly grabbed her arms, forced them behind her back, and dragged her out the door, backward. But as that was happening, she got partially loose and grabbed the door frame, facing me, and said, “Caryl, you’re crazy. You need to go back into the hospital.” (In front of everyone I work with!)... I looked her dead in the eyes, and said, “I’ve never been in a hospital (truth), but I think that’s where you need to be.” Brave of me at the time, because I was still afraid to stand up to my mom. I didn’t meet up with her after that. Anyway, the owner of the company, who always had everyone walking on eggshells, got wind of it from the office manger who saw it all... OMG! He called me into his office the next day. I thought I was going to be fired. He hugged me!!! He told me that he was going to talk to my aunt next, who would be informed that if her sister (not my mom)... her sister... EVER set foot on his property again, he would call the police and SHE would be fired! (Working with her after that was a nightmare, her treatment of me. Noticeable to everyone. She was warned a few times to act professionally towards me or be fired. Rick hired me not long after.)

So...

After he confronted my aunt, she went home and told my mom, which led to my mom leaving me a message on my answering machine saying that I was disowned from the family due to irreconcilable differences, that I never should have been rude to my aunt like that, blaming me for almost getting my aunt fired, and that she’d be informing the rest of the family that I want nothing to do with them! Me! Not her not wanting anything to do with me! Laurie, already a practicing psychologist in the midst of earning a PhD, came over (we lived 3 doors down from each other at the time) and listened to the message in disbelief. She then reminded me of how my mom had always been like that towards me while growing up (not physically, though), why she always felt protective of me, and that it was time to let her go... don’t respond, don’t play into her games, just focus on recovering emotionally. (And, at the time, I was already dealing with T’s dad threatening me all the time, death threats, coming around, stalking me... having him arrested, his family calling and demanding I drop charges. A lot to deal with, basically.) 

Within a week, my mom started showing up to T’s elementary school, leaving packages, demanding to see her granddaughter during class, and shitty stuff like that. The school called me in for a meeting, wanting to know what was going on, saying that they can’t allow her to come on school grounds anymore, or accept packages, not knowing if a bomb would be in one, lol... seriously! And that they would have no choice but to call the police if she stepped foot on school grounds again. I told them I would let her know, so I had to call her. That didn’t go over well. She blamed me, of course. Her next move was to write letters to my main friends, T’s family on her dad’s side (who I was already distancing myself from), my grandparents, my dad, and a few family members on my mom’s side. Basically, each letter was different... everyone contacted me, one by one, reading them to me. She was trying to turn everyone against me after disowning me. Laurie was livid over the letters she and her parents received, and called my mom to confront her and defend me, also telling her she’d better back off and stop tormenting me or she’d hire a lawyer. All contact with me, and anyone she had written letters to, ceased after that for 3 years! until I received a card from my mom with a card-printed message that read, “I forgive you.” Call me, mom. I laughed. I told Laurie I was going to call her, against her advice. I did. She said she missed being in T’s life and that was the main reason she contacted me again. I told her that we could see how things go, but if she caused any problems or tried to control my life in any way again, she would be the one to be shut out. T was about 5 years old when she disowned me. And after a little time passed, when T was 9, I let her fly out to visit my mom in Florida - when and where the letter with T’s story was written. Since then, when my mom has tried anything with me I’ve immediately distanced myself again - not cut her off. She did some terrible things to T over time, and T won’t have it, only sees my mom on a rare occasion if she’s in town, but no regular contact, ever. My mom doesn’t have an interest anymore since T’s changes, too. My mom basically acts like T doesn’t exist. No love loss on T’s part. For me, it’s harder. It hurts that my child isn’t loved, and disconnected from the family, other than my aunt and brother, mostly due to my mom and her gossip within our family. When the extended family ever sees me, they often forget I have a child until I bring it up. My mom usually looks mortified and I stop talking. We do not have a good relationship at all. And after my mom told the rest of the family that I wanted nothing to do with them, when she and I started talking again, and I was invited around them again, they were confused by it all. Not wanting to badmouth my mom to them, I just said that we had differences, but let them know that SHE disowned me for 3 years, and that I never wanted to be separated from anyone.

And she never has any compassion towards me over anything I had to do or went through with T’s cancer, my dad becoming paralyzed and my role through all the years before his death, and with Alex or anyone since... She wanted to buy the urn for my dad, her first husband, which I accepted. But she didn’t even contact me when my grandpa died and all I had to deal with out of state. They never let me grieve and expect me to bounce back to normal overnight. She only concerns herself with how well I’m helping out my aunt and looking out for my brother, and on occasion starts in on me in nasty and negative ways, saturated in criticism, on how I need to do this or that with things concerning my own life... and then the distancing starts all over again. Keep in mind, this is just a few things in my ADULT life. The things I went through as a child and had to deal with on my own, no emotional support from my mother, yet always defending and protecting her were bad enough. I’m not implying I’m a saint or expect pats on my back, it’s more a description of the behavior of someone mentally abused. 

The most recent, before the trouble brewing now, was when my dad was near the end, the nursing home calling me often because he was refusing to listen to them and accept care, and other things, so I had a lot going on with him at the same time my aunt was in the hospital, then released, in my care again... cooking and serving meals, bathing and dressing her, cleaning up after her, portable potty, the whole shebang, like always. And at the same time shortly after my brother’s incident of being stranded for 3 days, no food and water, on the military base, then had to outrun a fire. His rental car burned completely. I had begged him not to take the trip up to my mom’s in Northern CA, where she lived at the time, because I could tell his medications were affecting him in bad ways, when the tardive dyskinesia was beginning too, but there was no talking him out of it. I later found out that he had planned the trip for Mother’s Day to be the last time to see her, because he planned to kill himself. When he was rescued, he was mentally gone... in part due to the trauma and dehydration of his brain too, off his meds, etc. It took hours before he could remember a phone number, and couldn’t remember our names, for them to contact us. I got the call. His ID and everything burned up in the car. So, after we brought him home, he was bad, like manic and not sleeping, and doing bizarre things like sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night, stripping off his clothes, running from me when I’d try to get him back into the house, arguing, pushing me down and more. He didn’t know what he was doing and I was trying to care for my aunt by myself, take care of the house and animals too, and I couldn’t get any sleep watching them both. So, I called my mom and asked for her help. I told her that I could handle everything but dealing with him too and to please come get him and take him to her house to help him, temporary if not longer. She drives down, sees what I’m talking about, takes him into the ER of our local hospital. They keep him overnight for observation and a psych evaluation. She spent the night there with him. Calls and asks me to pack a suitcase for him because they determined he needs to go into a mental rehabilitation facility, but she comes back with him! And she almost got into lawful trouble over it. When she decided she didn’t want him getting that type of help, after thinking about it, she asked them to release him and they refused saying that it’s been determined he is required to be admitted for the safety of himself and others, and she argued she was just going to take him home anyway... staff stopped her, discussions with doctors ensued, and they let him leave with her because she said he would be in HER CARE and she would get him the treatment through a private facility instead of the one his disability insurance would place him in. Well, she went home the next day without him. When I got upset over it, reminding her that I was overwhelmed as is, and I had called her to come get him, she yelled at me, “GROW UP! You need to take responsibility. He’s your brother!” I yelled back, “He’s YOUR son! I’m your daughter, and I’m begging for your help.” Of course, I got labeled as the loose cannon with a temper, unreasonable, selfish, along those line... getting an earful from her husband later, too, then my aunt and their brother... all because they listen to each other and never to me, always siding with each other, always expecting me to do for them, respect them no matter how I’m treated, and never argue back. It’s maddening. And for the most part, when I stand up for myself, they tend to back off now... but it never lasts... and now while I’m dealing with my own health issues, instead of being emotionally supportive, they’re kicking me when I’m down. I would explain more, and might in small details at some point, but I have a lot to figure out again. Oh! And, when my mom went home, leaving me to care for my brother too, she’d order me around on how to handle it all. Not make nice suggestions, caring at all about me too, but actually get nasty. When I had to take my brother to the psychiatrist and neurologist until he began to regain normalcy, through a lot of changes we incorporated, early on my mom called up his psychiatrist and demanded this and that, and kept calling. He told me that my mom is not allowed to have any part of his care, and that if she continued to harass him or his office he would call the police, which he told her! I didn’t have to that time. She threatened to sue him. More to the entire story, but this whole mess of words, quickly typed, is long enough. It actually opened up a lot of old wounds too, as I kinda told T, in the text, so I’m feeling quiet. I’m stuck in a bad situation that’s about to get worse and I can’t take more. I held off on posting this, but I think I’m okay with sharing here, for myself at least, now.

Yesterday:

Today (had to open read more to show it all)

Oh, I tried pineapple today. Stitch on the table, so I turned  him for a selfie.

[jatamansi-arc]

Okay so like... I sent a message to @illusivexemissary​ about how I watched Gabriel’s introductory episode the other day and was just sort of fucking laughing at it? Because I just... I worked as a caretaker for an apartment building for four years. 

Every single one of those tenants would tell you, and I’m not kidding, “This is a really quiet, nice complex.” It’s a lie. It’s a terrible fucking lie. An apartment complex is never quiet. There’s always weird shit going on. Too many people in too close of a space. You may think it’s peaceful but you have become complacent. 

It’s worth noting that our complex also had a contract with a few agencies to rehome severely mentally ill people permanently, as a means to keep them in the community. So there are some stories here that reflect that fact and, at worst, most of them were just memorable for harmless, if not interesting, quirks. Our cookiecutter tenants were the strangest ones. So let’s jump into my fond memories.

I literally just spent like... an hour digging out my pictures for this, so you’re gonna have a time.

To begin with, before I moved into this apartment complex, I lived in New Jersey. I was the oldest person in the house, at 18 years. This was in 2004. 

My house caught on fire in November of that year. It was also Joe’s fault. Joe was not well liked. We declared war on him shortly thereafter.

But we did drink well under age and party in the house after it caught fire, ‘cause fuck the police.

We also did awful things to people who came to the house for any reason. This is why you don’t let 14-18 year olds live in a house unattended by any parental supervision whatsoever.

But I couldn’t get a job, so I ended up moving back home to Minnesota. I lived in a house for awhile, but shit happened and we ended up losing the housing when my mom got incredibly sick. So, being homeless, we hit the pavement and tried to find cheap living arrangements we could get into ASAP.

We found an apartment complex composed of six buildings that required a caretaker. We paid $250 in rent and worked about “ten hours a week” and it would cover the cost of the rental’s deduction. Seems legit, right? 

No, it was a lie. it was indentured servitude. It was never 10 hours a week and things were always going wrong. But that’s neither here nor there, we decided to take the apartment under the guise of a “it works until something better.”

This was where I moved to:

See all that sidewalk? I had to shovel that five times a day in winter. It was hell. I could have lifted fucking giraffes, okay. Sometimes it snowed clear up to my second floor balcony.

Like what is this madness? This was six feet off the ground, y’all.

Damn right, sad snow blob. But that’s neither here nor there. There was also an exquisitely nice pool:

Oh wait, that was what the pool looked that when I wasn’t the one taking care of it. Five teams of caretakers and not a bloody one of them but me could do this. This is what it looked like when I was in charge of it. 

Do you see anything wrong with this picture? Anything at all? Look at the writing. In the four years I was in this hell, not once did this rule ever come to apply to me. I never was accompanied personally by a jovial Scottish man to the pool. The only eventful thing that ever happened to me was that I caused an elderly Russian man to have a heart attack. Why? Things frequently went wrong with the pool. Sometimes they were minor.

That’s the chemical reader. It’s not supposed to be in the middle of the pool. One of the other caretakers wasn’t paying attention and kicked it in. At least it can be fished out with a net. That yellow cord you see? That’s a vacuum. You attach it to the pool’s natural suction and vacuum the floor and wall of the pool to clear out debris. The pole is literally like 18 feet long, if not more. Our pool vacuum was ancient. It was awful. Literally, it would break constantly and the actual suction device would get stuck on the bottom of the deep end of the pool and someone would have to jump in and get it.

One summer, my boss decided to keep the pool open beyond labor day. In Minnesota, this is an odd decision as September temperatures are only around 40-60 degrees at best, and this story takes place in the first week of October. It’s 7am, the pool opens at 10am, and I’m out trying to do my gig. Vacuum breaks and I scream at whatever gods will hear me because I don’t want to jump into 20 degree water nobody is even using to retrieve the thing. Without any choice, because I can’t jab it unstuck, I strip down to my bra and panties. Outside. On a frigid October morning. I take a deep breath because I know what’s coming, and then dive in. It’s like hitting a brick wall and I finally manage to get the thing unstuck, and surface to discover this 90 year old Russian guy named Petyr standing out on his balcony, giving me a huge thumbs up. I stare, mortified. He stands there the rest of the time, minding me. I rush through everything and go to turn in all the supplies. I come out of the office and there’s an ambulance at the building across the way from the pool. Run over there, still wet but at least with my overclothes on, and try to become informed of the situation. 

Petyr had suffered, most likely, a fatal heart attack. I was the last person to see him alive. I think I may have accidentally killed him. Awkward.

And this is only one thing I experienced, mind you. As the wifi in our building used to say, and it was apt:

Because this apartment complex existed in some sort of quasi-dimension of its own creation, and because why not, there were high amounts of two things. One was white squirrels.

The other was mormons. There were always mormons in the courtyards. Much like kin, their crisp whites, too, dotted the space starting early in the morning. They played soccer. Every day. It was very strange. I had a photo of this but I can’t find it, and that is immensely disappointing because it’s nothing short of hilarious. There was one thing that made them different in my mind, and it was that you weren’t punished with picking up the corpses of the mormons when you were not perky enough for the upper management.

Upper management also learned very quickly that this was a terrible punishment for me, because I wasn’t bothered by it. I once got into a huge fight with the proper manager for this building and she told me I had to pluck out all the dead animals from the pool for my “attitude.” I did this and threw them on her deck, the squeal thud of bloated dead things colliding with the door to her porch echoing through the courtyard. 

She could have fired me for this, but I was the most reliable and dedicated employee she had, so it put her in a bad row if she did. So she tolerated my dead animal rebellion and gave me a set of master keys instead. We would come to blows again a month later, where, as obsessed with cobwebs as she was? Her full moon ass on displace, panties half exposed, as she complained about a missed set on the basement stairs. Asking me, with attitude, and repeatedly if I had seen what she meant. 

It was probably not a wise decision to say, “Not around your fat ass, no.”

Eventually we forged a surprisingly decent relationship where she left me alone and I did my job and was Captain Reliable If Not Disgruntled, and my problems with Management diminished outside of Upper Upper Management. Who was I fairly convinced wanted us to die at any given moment sooner than cost than any more money.

This was a notice we were given when we had to clean and paint four apartments on a July day. It was 98 degrees. I turned on the AC anyway and dealt with the very irate CEO of the company two days later, a man named Ira.

They also seemed perfectly okay not labeling any of the chemicals we used so it was like “hey, want a chemical burn?” No? TOO BAD.

You may be saying, “Felicia, this is pretty funny but I thought this was relevant to the antics that Gabriel was up to in his introduction episode.” Listen, y’all, I’m just getting started. Like, you want some antics? Let’s talk about my coworkers. ‘Cause after being there for awhile, I was entrusted to handle a lot of money and do paperwork. This included filling out and processing applications for both new tenants and our hires. 

We had someone come to do an application for the latter, as a previous coworker got fired for having a lot of sex with the tenants. I probably don’t have to talk about how that was against the rules. But I did the application for this lady that comes in to replace him. Processing said app, after I collected payment and she had left, I noticed this:

I had reservations about this one. Stripper was probably the most legitimate part of her application. Boss hired her due to us absolutely needing someone, but my reservations were correct when she got wasted on cocaine and whiskey and thought she was apparently a superhero and jumped off her third story balcony and broke her leg.

This is just one of them. I saw many coworkers come and go of various lifestyles and interests. We had drag queens who did all their work in full costume. There was another one who was a 4′11″ redhead named Joie that pulled a gun on her boyfriend and then ran him over with her car and then was arrested for possession of meth (and my character, Joie, is named for her.) One, Carleton, was fanatically obsessed with his pet piranhas. It goes on like this.

Bethany, for example, ate crayons and was obsessed with true crime. Andrew had OCD and routinely dismantled the locks on the doors at all hours, and had to hammer a new nail into the wall every day. I know this because I lived above him and heard all of these things. Cameron addicted half of our coworkers on meth, and slept with two of them. Pamela had a nervous breakdown. Rachel was mild mannered and was fired for oversleeping through a shoveling time around 6am on accident, which seemed incredibly pale in comparison to everyone else. And Cathy, the only coworker who seemed to last longer than a year, cut her own fingers off in a freak accident and we had to rush her to the hospital. 

It goes on like this. There are more. There are so many more.

I was painting an apartment once with Cathy, for example, and Teresa, another coworker of mine. We were attacked by a SWAT team breaking in the door. Apparently someone had tipped them off that there had been a meth lab in operation by the past tenants. I don’t know if that was true, but having the SWAT team pointing lazer-guided sights at you is pretty terrifying.

And then there were the tenants. I loved a lot of them, and others I was glad to see go. There were several with alcohol problems that would come to my door at all hours, thinking that my apartment was there’s, and I would have to escort them home. 

There was a man named Mark who had been relocated into his unit by a local rapid rehousing organization. Schizophrenic and without a good response to medication, Mark could be a handful. I never got mad at him outside of his calls at 3am, which I was required by law to get out of bed and investigate, because I come from a family ravaged by the same disease. Mark wasn’t a bad guy by any stretch, but his complaint calls and quirks were amazing. In the four years I was there, I can tell you that he had Star Wars playing 24/7/365. Loudly, to boot, because he was mostly deaf. When I cleaned the building he was in, with him living on the third floor, he would oftentimes come out any say hello.

One time I pulled my egregiously heavy vacuum up the six flights of stairs and pulled open the third floor fire doors, only to discover his entire fridge sitting outside of his apartment. I knock on his door and a disheveled Mark opens the door. I ask why his fridge, obviously, is located out of his apartment. Mark tells me that it is haunted. So at 8am, I offer to bless his fridge to cleanse it of spirits and we move it back into his apartment. He never had a problem with it again. 

A couple weeks later, however, Mark tells me that the apartment across the hall from him is constructing the Death Star and I need to tell them that is a very dangerous course of action. I investigate this complaint, as I was required to, and discover that the tenant across from him has been hanging a few new pictures. I commend them for their good humor on it, talk to Mark and tell them that I’ve talked them out of this, and he is content.

I will field at least five more calls from Mark over the years about various Star Wars battleships being built in apartments.

In the same building, many other strange happenstances came to pass. The #01 building seemed to be a strange place onto itself. 

Birds nested in the windows and would get stuck in the stairwells.

Ants would appear out of nowhere in swarms of the thousands.

There was a strange child in one of the units known as Igor and routinely caused problems for management. 

Someone died and was not found for almost four weeks. Everyone else on staff was too afraid to field this call about an unusual decaying smell in the first floor hallway coming from an apartment, and so it fell to me. I, awkwardly familiar with the odor of decay, did a wellness check. Tenant was not well. Tenant was black and bloated and very much in the worst stages of decay. Upper Management was too scared to handle it, so I was forced to do paperwork and wait for the police and the hazmat team to remove the body. We ended up ripping out the entire apartment from head to toe.

Another time, an apartment next to Mark’s (a third floor studio), was rented by teenage tenants who had clearly never lived alone before. They made macaroni and cheese and caused and oil fire. They then threw water on it and spread it elsewhere. They call me, in their on fire apartment, and tell me exactly that. I ask them if they had called 911, and they inform me that no, they are still standing there in the apartment and just letting me know. I have to, in my booty short pajamas, run barreling through the apartment building while managing a call to 911, evacuating tenants. 

Oh, here’s a squirrel nest. That happened too.

And these are just a few of the weird things. I also found an early 1900′s sewing machine just sitting in the stairwell, abandoned.

My building was another strange place. Perhaps it was because we were the closest to the #01 building that some of the weirdness wore off. Because when we first moved in, our apartment had roaches. It should have been a sign. We didn’t take it seriously. We had it taken care of and never had a problem afterwards, but that’s only because the Universe had other ideas.

Like that there was a transformer looked directly behind the building, that you could see from my window, that routinely blew during any major storm. And not only just exploded like a gunshot, I mean that it routinely exploded and fell down and power lines were down. It was a mess.

Not once, but twice, the lines would push down the wooded area’s branches into the #00′s building. This meant trees and shrubs caught on fire behind the building. Thankfully our buildings were brick and therefore hard to ignite, otherwise this was two opportunities for the goddamn building to catch on fire.

My apartment was also a weird place. And I’m not referring to the complex here. This is my apartment. Beaten and abused by so many caretakers before it, the patio doors constantly would fly open even upon a gentle breeze that was stronger than normal. Which is something considering a paranoid motherfucker lived there before me at some point, and there were at least six locks on the patio doors themselves. And another three on the door.

Oh, and one time a glass panel fell out. I had to rescreen the actual doors, too, no less than four times. Because the wood was fucking rotting away.

This is how my cats escaped several times. Because having four bloody patio doors isn’t enough to keep out drafts, let alone anything else. Furthermore, inexplicably, Virginia Creeper lived in my patio structure, and no matter what we did, and we pulled it out dozens of time and even tried to have it professionally removed, it came back and would repeatedly just take over everything. Slowly climbing the building and compromising the structural integrity of my deck.

It produced berries in the late summer and kids would eat them and then end up sick. Kids are so dumb, I swear. Eventually I stopped warning them about this because they kept breaking everything I would put out to try and make the apartment feel a bit more like home. 

Or at least something slightly less like a personal Hell I was financially trapped in for four years.

We had a strict rule that nobody was, obviously, allowed to drive up on the property to unload trucks or moving vehicles. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was the white dudes who thought this one didn’t apply to them. Here’s someone moving into my building. 

There were other buildings, too. There was an ICE raid in the #08 building at one point, though I’m not sure why. And there was a single mom of like eight who lived on the third floor who was fucking hilarious but otherwise this was where the caretakers lived, usually. You already know how that goes.

#16 was there the Upper Management lived, so she kept it quiet. The absolute worst offender was a chronically ill man who would frequently have severe seizures and we would have to keep a close eye on him for his own health and safety. #16 was a great building. The bottom floor was entirely boilers, laundry, and the Assistant Manager’s apartment. Most days she slept late and donned velour track suits, and usually was in charge of changing locks around the complex and occasionally she would bang the vents to try and get the heat to kick on. Kim was great. I loved Kim. Always getting in trouble with Stella, our Manager, for doing the logical thing, she had developed an apathy the rest of us could only admire.

#17 was where most of the rapid rehousing folks were placed. Petyr lived in this building. We had a few other people of note in #17; John was a man who lived in his unit for 3 years and his walls were so dark with nicotine that you’d thought they were just brown. We prayed every day that John would never move out, for as nice as he was. Socheeta stole plants. There was a lady named Kimberly who was a srs artist and had a giant wall sculpture of a vagina as the central focus of her apartment. The most notable tenants were the Ficus family, who would complain about everything. If someone coughed at 2am, the wife would call. If a piece of mail was discarded out of the trashcan, instead of picking it up, she would complain about it. 

There was a woman named Bernice who moved into #17 my second year there. She was a “retired prostitute” as she put it. I literally have no problem with sex work, mind you, but I was called to her apartment about two months later because she had slept with someone and his heart had given out. Apparently this was where the older dudes went to have heart attacks after experiencing something too sexy to handle.

#09 was the last building. Located between #17 and the quasi-dimensional #01, it followed a similar pattern to the two of them. The side closer to the later was generally quiet and the latter was full of oddities. We had one rapid rehouse that was removed after a couple of months for chasing other tenants through the parking lots and throwing patio chairs off his balcony. He called me a kike at one point so I didn’t feel so bad about his eviction. The apartment underneath him, for most of the time I lived there, was occupied at an elderly lady who we never saw. One day, shortly after going on oxygen, she lit a cigarette and her existence was abruptly ended. Cleaning her apartment afterwards was a level of odd and terrifying. I kept finding hair. Everywhere. It never stopped. It seemed weird it survived the explosion, but it did. 

The apartment under her, later, caught on fire. They left a spatula in their oven and also called our office line instead of calling 911. For some reason they felt the need to push the smoking oven out into the hallway where it proceeded to burn away until I could extinguish it, while my mother evacuated the building. We also had a tax agent come every winter and stay to the summer, and she always stayed in the #09 building. She was meticulous. She slept in a sleeping bag. Never had any cookware. It was very strange. We never had to even clean her apartment because the only things in it were a phone, desk, and sleeping bag.

Oh, and there were twins in this building. They were kids. They were named Feloni and Misdermeaner. My mom worked at the closest school back then, but I didn’t, and Misdermeaner’s classroom roster was listed outside. 

Was there any other weird stuff that happened? Oh hell yes. I could write so much more. Like how it would rain on only specific parts of the complex and not others all the fucking time.

Oh, and the day I gave my 30 day notice, there was a double rainbow over my building. Which is a testament to the amount of bullshit I survived for four years. Nonstop, awful bullshit. That was mostly from management.

Like that I was expected to come back even after I was no longer employed there and vacuum and clean buildings. Like, you know, fucking load all that on a bus after walking a half mile with it and back. What.

AND I FEEL LIKE THIS POST IS LONG ENOUGH SO IF YOU WANT MORE STORIES ASK BUT I’M SHUTTING UP FOR NOW I WANT TO EAT DINNER.

[endkrp-blog]

                                                  GUEST FILE.

                                                      name    kim jaeho                                                       d.o.b    01/02/1991 (25)                                                       occupation    former business analyst                                                                             (systems analysis for generic car corporation)                                                       room    402

                                                          welcome to the end.                                                              kindest regards.

— first, we inquire: why?

There’s little that matters enough to relay.

His mother picks him up in his black chevrolet. She kisses his cheeks and asks about the bundle of curly letters in his hands. He promised his cellmate he’d pass them on to his relatives. He won’t, but it’s the thought that counts. They don’t talk anymore after that and she doesn’t drive on the main road to Seoul. The ride feels terribly depressing, and not quite as emotional as he imagined it to go.

His wedding was held in a small chapel in Namwon. Bucolic countryside isolation served as backdrop in the later low quality cellphone videos of their vows. His wife is two years his senior. He doesn’t remember her face, but he remembers what she forced him to feel. What she did to him. During first week in jail he used to imagine him hurting her, because he had to vent his anger some way. He never particularly liked her, maybe that’s why in the dreams he had of her, he never allowed her to speak. She had very distinctive set of demands, back when they lived together. He had to get a haircut every three months, and he had to keep his fingernails trimmed. She wanted to be called four times a day, and liked to keep track of what he ate. He also wasn’t allowed to contact women, regardless of their age or relation to him. A year into their deeply troubled marriage, he realized he didn’t love her. And that he didn’t know why they got married to each other. His college friends who he rarely got to see, trivialized his pains. Clearly, he was crazy for not wanting her. Maybe so, he’d tell himself when they’d lay side to side at night.

Before they got married, he’d tried many times to put an end to their relationship. He wrote countless speeches with her feelings in mind. When he got to read them to her, she’d make a big deal out of not listening. “We are too different,” he’d tell her again and again. “I don’t like myself anymore. You knew this was coming.” And she’d convince him his behavior was inadequate with body language alone. “Please, let’s take a break at least. We need a break,” he had tried one last time, a year before she had decided that they were getting married to each other. She dismissed him, as she always did, and he resigned himself to his fate. The one time he did manage to end things, she grew very quiet and locked herself inside the bathroom for hours. Later when her mother found her, she’d managed to slit her wrists. The doctor explained that the cut had been shallow and that there hadn’t been any real danger. But he had still felt so guilty. After she was discharged she showed up at his parents house and told lies. She said that he was mentally unstable, a recluse, had some sort of narcotics addiction. That she was the only thing keeping him grounded. That she loved him. And when he refused to go back to her, she got him arrested for alleged drug possession. It was the first time she’d gotten other people involved and it had scared him. So they got married. He felt the desperate need to hold onto the belief that there was something out there set on saving him. That’s why he studied his horoscope religiously and occasionally phoned spirit mediums on late night TV, asking for guidance. He also consulted a shaman priest once, but felt empty after the seance and developed a profound fear against drums. So he began planning his escape instead.

His mother drives them down to Daegu. They reach a bus station by dusk. She stops the car and pulls a thick envelope from the compartment. “I can’t take you back home with me,” she says. After a year in prison with no visit right, he notices her hair has grown completely grey. “Your father, he can’t have you near him. He can’t have stress. You know about his diabetes.”

He only realizes he’s crying when his mother starts crying, too. “Where am I going, mom? Where am I supposed to go?”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry but I can’t.”

“What am I going to do?” He thinks of his wedding day, and how his mother loved his wife very much. “There’s money for you. On your card. I’ll try to keep in touch.”

“Mom, please. Don’t do this.” She gets out of the car and takes her bag with her. He sees her climb into a bus. And that’s that.

When they arrested him again, he was at work. They carried him out in cuffs and told him he was to contact his lawyer once on station. His court sessions were hard to sit through. His father in-law managed to break his arm while he was being moved from the courthouse to a small penal institution temporarily. It was weeks of public humiliation before he was sentenced to a year in prison on rape and domestic violence claims. He was told by his lawyer that a year was relatively tame. His wife called him on his third day and said she wasn’t planning on getting a divorce. He refused calls and visits from family after that.

He tanks up and buys a smartphone before driving south. He checks into a few guesthouses, but never overstays his welcome. There’s something unnerving about driving with no destination, and he contemplates suicide on multiple occasions. The first time he settles down is in Jeju. He gets on a ferry, and buys travel guides to keep himself busy. He avoids reading the newspaper or watching TV. Tourist tours and plenty of folklore is enough to have him occupied for a while. He calls his mother twice: their first phone conversation lasts a few minutes in which she begs him not to call anymore. The second time she hangs up before he has the chance to greet her. The thought of loneliness saddens him so much that he runs out to the sea and acts on drowning himself. But he finds the water too cold, and notes that dying is quite inconvenient before leaving.

He arrives at The End at late night, asks for a room and feels absolutely nothing inside.

Life goes on, he supposes.

— then, we wonder: what?

He used to work around statistics, which relied on the subjectivity of cultural whims. His life was dependent on sales and how they were affected by season, economics, trends, and matching figurative PR. Sometimes cars didn’t sell because a celebrity publicly reclaimed the bicycle to raise awareness to charity organizations with unbalanced profit shares. Or because TV would mass spread hysteria over climate change. None of that made much sense to him: the shame of being caught in enclosed apathy nor the forced concern over the environment. And so he went about counting numbers, and calculating the likelihood of college kids taking up loans to buy cars.

He was let go, a year ago. When his wife decided she didn’t trust him anymore. It paid well enough. But he doesn’t miss working in an office very much. The coffee always tasted bitter, and his coworkers always had pricey get togethers after work in sketchy karaoke bars. In The End, he keeps to himself. He hands the receptionist a check every day, then sits in his bed and contemplates life. Though there’s not much to it nowadays. At least he’s allowed to eat what he wants.

— finally, we demand: who?

I referenced The Zahir by Paulo Coelho and the screenplay for Gone Girl while writing down certain aspects to Jaeho’s life. Both are about troubled marriages, and served as spiritual footwork.

NICK (V.0.)

The primal questions of a marriage: What are you thinking? How are you feeling? What have we done to each other?

*

They lie down side by side on the marital bed. Nick is staring at the back of Amy’s head, just as in the opening.

NICK (O.S.)

What are you thinking? How are you feeling? What have we done to each other? What will we do?

“The following morning, I swore to myself that I would not try to find out where Esther was living. For two years, I had unconsciously preferred to believe that she had been forced to leave, that she had been kidnapped or was being blackmailed by some terrorist group. Now that I knew she was alive and well (that was what the young man had told me), why try to see her again? My ex-wife had the right to look for happiness, and I should respect her decision. This idea lasted a little more than four hours; later in the afternoon, I went to a church, lit a candle and made another promise, this time a sacred, ritual promise: to try and find her.”

― Paulo Coelho, The Zahir

[sarahburness]

It’s Not Either/Or: The Power of Opening Your Mind and Seeing Both Sides

“Compassionate listening is to help the other side suffer less.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

In late 2017 my husband and I were both getting ready for work one morning when I casually said, “Hey, I think I’m going to start teaching yoga in the jail.”

Without missing a beat my husband said, “Well, that’s a terrible idea. Why would you do that?”

He gave this comment as a statement, flat and decisive. I had suspected I would get this type of response, so I tried to play it cool, like it didn’t bother me. But it still stung a bit, since I had hoped for his support.

As a long-time yoga teacher, I was excited about the opportunity to serve those who could potentially receive the practice’s mind-body benefits and who also might not have access to or have experienced yoga before.

I knew I wasn’t going to fix them with a single yoga class, but I hoped by connecting with someone who saw them as whole and unbroken, they’d know they don’t have to be defined by their current situation.  

My husband, on the other hand, saw it through the eyes of a police detective who specializes in crimes against children. He has seen the worst in human behavior on levels you and I can’t even begin to imagine. Additionally, he had worked in the very jail I was going to. He knew much better than I, with my dialed-up altruism, what could go wrong.

He is an outstanding human being, as is almost every single police officer I’ve met. His misgivings were based in a reality I had never experienced but one he had the first-hand experience of.

I understood his concerns, but my pride and ego were still hurt because he didn’t support the work I wanted to do.

I went ahead and pursued teaching with the support of the Prison Yoga Project and ended up teaching the female inmates at the county jail.

In the early weeks, my husband and I continued our unofficial cold war and didn’t talk much about what I did. But that didn’t affect my enthusiasm.

I love my work at the jail. My students are as diverse as an exclusive studio’s clientele. I’ve had pregnant women, a mother-daughter duo, young, old, and a few who’ve gotten out only to come back a few weeks later.

I never ask what they’re in for, but their tattoos tell more about their lives than I could read in their record—the deep grief for all they’ve lost engraved in black and smeared faded colors on their skin.

The most common tattoos are in memory of people who’ve died. I wonder if there is something temporarily soothing to literally feel the pain of grief being etched into their skin and buried under the surface. I only have to look at the tattoo on my own wrist in memory of my son to know the answer.

In the months that followed that initial conversation, my husband and both began to soften our stance. I found him to be a good resource for some questions I had about legal procedures or other things that came up, and he was curious about the women and their yoga experience.

Then one day a few months back he came home and shared that a long, emotionally difficult case he’d been working on had wrapped up. The woman was sentenced to one year in the jail where I was working.

He admitted he felt a moment anger that she would be able to take yoga classes after what she’d done. But then, he took a breath, sighed, and said that he would rather see her have the chance to come out better than to hurt any other children. We both softened.

Within a week I too had a moment of questioning my decision to work with inmates. In an altercation with a man who was strung out on drugs and unhinged with violence, one of my husband’s co-workers was injured so badly he needed to be hospitalized. The perpetrator was arrested and taken to the jail where I teach.

It was my turn to be angry and imagine that this man (or someone like him) could’ve hurt or killed my husband. Did I really want to support someone who could threaten one of the most valuable things in my life?

I felt so deeply conflicted. Then I wondered if my husband felt betrayed by me because I was teaching at the jail. Did he feel I was either with him or against him? And did I expect him to be with me in my altruism or else he was against me?

Either/Or and Both/And Mindsets

Life is too often defined as either this or that. And, it seems, when we choose our side we must also choose all the things that are aligned with that side. For example, if I’m a woo-woo yoga teacher then I must be against the police. Our culture increasingly demands that we stake our claim, unwaveringly.

When we fall into the trap of an either/or mindset we shut ourselves off from opportunities, connections, and relationships that could alleviate suffering for people on both sides of the issue.

Either/or thinking is divisive at best. It places us firmly in our own silos, cloistering us in an imaginary us versus them utopia, whereas “both/and” thinking creates community and connection. It allows us to begin to build webs of supports that extend beyond our own ability to impact change.

Perhaps you’ve found yourself in the either/or conflict when you discover that your favorite co-worker supports the opposite political party. You feel your stomach tighten and then extrapolate what else they must believe that you find offensive. These mental games likely result in feeling that you’re at war with this person, resulting in your work relationship suffering.

A great place to start to transition to both/and thinking is to use the Zen Buddhist tenant of “not knowing.” When we open to the fact we don’t know everything about the situation it softens us.

In the example of your coworker, perhaps they’ve been influenced by different life experiences that have shaped their beliefs and opinions about what’s best for our country and the people in it. And perhaps you even share similar values but hold different perspectives about the best approach to honoring them.

When you consider that people who seem against you may also have good intentions, it’s easier to find common ground and work together instead of against each other.

When my husband and I began to see our situation as both/and not either/or it was much easier to see how each of us could positively impact the individual systems we work in and, even in a small way, create healing for those involved.

Recently in my Buddhist Chaplain studies, we looked at systems using Donella Meadows’ model. In her book, Thinking in Systems, she says, “You think that because you understand ‘one’ that you must, therefore, understand ‘two’ because one and one make two. But you forget that you must also understand ‘and.’”

Seeing that my husband’s work is necessary and my work is necessary, even within the same situation, is a powerful force that creates change.

It would be easy to put me in my woo-woo yogi silo and my husband in the cop silo. Instead, we agreed to focus on both our work and how the overlap can be an opportunity to dissolve the hard lines of either/or thinking and look for the places where “and” exists. Then we lean deeply into those places, because these are the tender places of real change.

We need to learn to make our silos more permeable.

One of the other things I’ve learned in my Buddhist Chaplain program is that when we consider the best way to positively impact how a system is functioning, we can start by focusing close in, then zooming out.

If I am standing in the middle of a river I can feel the power of the flowing water, but when I stand on a mountaintop and look down at the same river it can look calm and peaceful. Both of those perceptions of the river are correct, but I’ve changed my vantage point.

When we feel ourselves being asked to take an either/or position we can take a moment to zoom out and in to find balance in our perspective taking. We need to do both, get wet and get distance!

Another negative outcome of the either/or mindset is that it forces us to find blame. When I assume the either/or mindset in a situation, then by default the person who is opposing me must be incorrect and therefore is also to blame when things go wrong. When we are looking for someone to blame it takes us out of accountability for our own actions and it removes us from being empathic to another person.

Without empathy, it is very hard to come from a place of compassion. And without compassion, we de-humanize the other person. The result of dehumanization is believing that the other person is less than us and therefore deserving of whatever bad things come their way.

In the case of my husband and the woman he sent to jail, rather than dehumanize her with an either/or mindset, he saw her as both human and deserving of something good, while she took responsibility for her action.

Each time we choose a both/and mindset over an either/or mindset we release ourselves from having to find someone to blame and we stay connected to our human experience without dehumanizing another person.

A both/and mindset doesn’t mean we have to let go of being change-makers in the world. The world needs change-makers now more than ever. But there will never be peace and compassion in the world if we can’t do both—get in the river to feel the power and climb the mountain to see the calm. As one of my teachers at the Upaya Institute said, “A nudge of calm can shift a storm.” Be the nudge, not the storm.

About Paula Stephens

Paula Stephens, M.A. is a speaker, author, yogi and the founder of Crazy Good Grief. She is studying to become endorsed as a Buddhist Chaplain and currently works as a volunteer chaplain and yoga teacher at a jail near her home in Denver, Colorado. She is also a hospice chaplain, wellness coach, and ERYT Yoga Instructor.

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