#when you go after something shallow and meaningless you’ll never actually win in life you’ll just feel empty

[aly-s0ares]

its come to my attention now that im less public about having meltdowns and begging for *one specific persons* attention because i thought i *deserved better* than to be treated like a joke or a toy someone could just throw around whenever they want, that im getting less attention from men.

like yall can’t try and play the knight in shining armor to try and get into someones pants so you just don’t even try and honestly that’s pathetic. you shouldn’t have to try and love bomb someone vulnerable into liking you.

i feel complete and utter disgust that these men think i’d be down to hook up especially in a bad time. i’m not easy, and i don’t play games.

[fictionalmenmistress]

Writing prompt I just came up with, since this has been on my mind recently with certain stuff going on:

Aren't I enough?

So here we go. A self insert, korean idol oneshot. (FILL IN your own name, and the idol of your choice) *gender neutral*, ANGST, but redeeming ending with touches of fluff. A rollercoaster of emotion and pain, but you'll feel better in the end. Real relationship struggle stuff right here, realistic for the industry.

"Aren't I enough?" You muttered.

The words just kinda slipped out, as you stared up at the stars. You had been hearing your boyfriend talk about how depressed and purposeless he's been feeling without the cheers of his fans surrounding him. For months and months, he's been this slinking shell of himself, admittantly and utterly void at the loss of interaction with his fans.

"I need to know that they love me." He would say. "I need it. I'm empty without knowing if they really love me."

Those words kept echoing through your mind. And the lack of response in his eyes, the emptiness of emotion when you confessed your love over and over again, as sincere as ever. It was like they were all he thought about.

But... he had always said you were his world before. That all he needed was you. So to hear that he felt empty without the screams of millions of other women filling his ears... it made you... sad. Like, that intimate promise was broken.

"What?" He asked.

"Aren't I enough?" You repeated, glancing at him sitting on the porch beside you.

"Its not that simple, baby..." he murmured, with confused and defencive eyes, searching your own with his gaze to find the root of what caused you to say that.

You kind of understood. You always did your best to understand. After all, he was a trainee fresh out of sophmore year of highschool. This was how he was trained to function. He's always been popular, he's always dealt with acceptance from large crowds... and you hadn't. You were alone, used to being alone. You never liked it, but it was just the way your life panned out. You were the outcast... no particular reason other than feeling socially awkward.

And when you both fell in love, you felt like you finally had someone. Someone worth spending life with... who understood you.

Just him, thats all you needed. And, you wanted to accept it, for him, that he needed gratification from others... especially being an idol, with that being his only source of love intake for so long. But why was it so hard?

Why did you choke on your tears, feeling like your existance had no weigh on his life?

That the shallow, worshiping, fleeting screams, of a handful of meaningless faces, was more meaningful to him than looking into the eyes of the one that loved him? The one that he supposedly loved?

The one who knew him intimately, inside and out, emotionally and physically? Was he taking you for granted? Were you being as selfish as you felt you were?

You were so hurt... guilty about even feeling hurt. But at the same time, a part of you fought the guilt, feeling justified and angry.

This is about him, not me. I need to be there for him. He's hurting... but how could he actually feel this way if he loved me? I have a right to be upset! But... how could I say that? Ugh...

I... I'm hurting too...

He stared into your eyes, with a searching, meticulous gaze.

What do I... do?

"Tiger... I want to be here for you." You began, with a waver in your shaky voice. "But... its clear that I can't help you anymore."

"What do you mean?" He asked, leaning forward in his chair. "Why do you look so upset?"

He really didn't know... but, would it be selfish to tell him? It just burst out after that, as you broke down.

"I tell you I love you every moment of every day. I worship the ground you walk on, I make your favorite food so your never hungry, I gaze into your eyes and assure you everything will be alright, I CUDDLE you close in the night, I MOVED IN WITH YOU ACROSS THE WORLD, AWAY from my family... I WANT TO SPEND EVERY MOMENT of my LIFE, with YOU!" You shouted, before taking a deep breath.

"I thought I meant something to you! I thought it was..." you sniffled, as he sat silently, eyebrows intensely furrowed. "I thought it was us against the world. Bonnie and Clyde. I was the only one that understood you the way you understood me..."

"You know I love you-" he casually began, like its a cold, statistical fact, and not an emotional promise.

"I'M NOT DONE!" You shouted, finding it harder to contain the tempest of emotions bottled inside. "I wanted to MARRY YOU! Have your babies, GROW OLD WITH YOU! And... I can't even fill the void of you not being able to perform infront of people. Those women don't even know you... AT ALL. You never see the same fans twice, there's no intimate, REAL connection, to a specific person there." You rambled, picking anxiously at your cuticles to try and cope with the confrontation. "But, we had that. And yet its like you preffer them OVER me! Like, you could live without me fine, 'focusing on your career', as long as you had your fans. But the moment you actually met someone to spend your REAL LIFE WITH, you couldn't LIVE without your precious audience!"

"Wait, you're JEALOUS?" He defencively yelled.

"YEA! I GUESS I AM JEALOUS! Because I clearly CAN'T give you what you need!" You shouted back, sobbing.

The two of you stood to your feet as it escalated.

"I NEVER SAID THAT!" He barked.

"YOU DIDN'T HAVE TO! You said enough!" You snapped back, turning to leave the porch.

"WAIT A SECOND!" He demanded, pulling you back to face him. "What do you mean, WANTED? You DON'T ANYMORE??"

"DO YOU?!" You snapped, whipping back around to face him.

He froze, as you slowly approached him, maintaining a cooler composure in your voice.

"What would you do? If I birthed us a baby, and you ended the fame life, like you promised?" You calmly said, as you stared intently into his eyes, as tears continued to pour down your face. "You'd sink into depression, and hate your spouce. You'd resent your baby, and you'd collapse into a man who sees his life as one that ruined what he could have had. You'd be a shell of yourself. All because you don't have the cheers of your DOTING fans... NO. The love of the people who care about you most would never be enough."

It felt like you spit a knife. You were satisfied, rushed with the adrenaline of saying what you wanted to say, even though you regretted it as soon as it left your lips. This wasn't about winning an argument though...

Oh no... what had you just done?

His face was blank with shock. You could see tears well in the corners of his eyes, as he gently removed his hand from your arm, dropping it to his side.

He finally brought himself to glance away, rolling his jaw with a dropped open mouth, as he took in a shaky deep breath.

"I... I shouldn't have said that..." you whispered, glancing down in shame. "I..."

"No, don't apologise. That's how you feel, isn't it?" He calmly said.

It was always a little concerning, the way he seemed so calm when he was the most upset. That was when you knew you really screwed up.

But his voice... it was gentle, not direct, like it usually was.

Things were silent, as you mustered up your strength to continue.

"If I can't fulfill you in the way you need most... perhaps we weren't as perfect for eachother as we thought. I can't keep seeing you suffer... it makes me feel helpless when I have no way to soothe you. If I'm not enough, I'm just... not. And, that's okay. Someone else will be... just... it will destroy me if I stay. You're being torn apart. I'm being torn apart."

You didn't want to say it, but... it was what would be best, at least, for now. For the both of you.

"I'll call up your OTHER soulmate (*his best friend and bandmate*), to come be with you, since that always seemed to help before I came along. But, I think its best... if we..."

You hesitated, about to say-

"I don't WANT space." He interrupted, reading your mind and gulping. He glanced down into your eyes. "I don't." He whispered.

"Tiger..." you shook your head, refusing to get stuck in those deep eyes, that would make it 1000 times harder to leave.

"What I WANT, is help. I need... professional help, Y/N." He vulnrably whispered, glancing down before you shamefully.

"What?" You whispered, completely lost at the confession.

"I DO love you. I love you more than life itself. And you complete me in ways no one else will... I guess, I've just been talking more about my problems than showing you how much it means to me that I have someone I can share my problems with, and walk with." He began, blushing a little. "I never thought..."

He cleared his throat, gathering his courage to take your hand into his own.

"I never stopped and realized how this was hurting you too. The show doesn't mean more to me than you do... and I'm sorry that I've led you to believe that."

"Hon... no. I've failed you." You murmured, taking responsibility.

"NO, Y/N, I've failed YOU." He corrected. "I'm... broken. I have an unhealthy attatchment to fame, and I didn't even realize it until you told me that."

"I've just been stuck going through the motions, isolating from you." He whispered.

"No, I should have been there for you more, I should have done whatever it takes. I made this about me," you muttered, not wanting him to take all the guilt and responsibility. You wish you could have handled it better than you did.

"You WERE." He assured, placing your hand against his chest, as he stared deeply into your eyes. "Your breaking point was a wake-up call... it should have never gotten that far. I'm sorry I did this to us... to you. Please, I don't want to lose you..." he whispered, full of sincerity.

You held your breath.

"But... what if I'm not enough? Later on?" You sniffled, trying to hide your quivering lip. "I don't want to hold you back from being fulfilled, if I'm not the one for you... if someone can do better than me and we just don't know that yet..."

"You're rambling," he whispered, as a bitter-sweet grin pulled into his tear-trailed cheeks, tucking your hair behind your ear. He always had loved it when you rambled...

It had been so long since he's looked at you like this... touched you like this... you forgot what it had felt like.

"You are the one I love. You are the one I want to spend the rest of my life with. I'm just... struggling." He cried, hesitantly breaking down. "I'm... I just need some help and time, baby. I see that I need to work past this."

The fact that he saw missing the crowds as something that needed to stop so he could keep you... it suddenly hit you. That was enough to fully grasp that you did, in fact, still mean something to him. That you weren't less important, since he chose to keep you, instead choosing the crowds over you walking away.

"Please... let me have another chance. To make things right, to heal back to where I once was. I want to take care of you, I want to stop feeling this detatchment anxiety... I want to be free from this so we can have a private life together." He pleaded. "You're right... it does feel like a rush to be on stage. But its fleeting, and empty after. I got addicted like a drug, the high then the massive low. You... you're my rock. I am comfortable and secure with you. I love you, and that lasts. I took you for granted because of that... and I'm so sorry."

You stared into his eyes, as the rising sunlight began to illuminate the sky. After a moment of taking in his words, you pulled him closer and kissed his lips. The both of you kissed so intimately, so desparately... like it had been years. He kissed you deeply, as you kissed him. It was apologetic, and loving, and hungry, and desparate... and it was beautiful.

After a moment, you slowly broke away, gently leaning forehead to forehead.

"I'm sorry too. I'm sorry I lashed out on you." You cried, pulling him into a tight hug. "I love you, of COURSE I'll give you another chance!"

He began to cry too, quieter than you, since his personality was more reserved, but just as emotionally. And you held onto eachother like that for the next couple of hours. Just... together. Mending. Healing slowly.

Its going to be a long road, but as long as you walked on it together, you felt reassured that it would all be worth it.

Important lesson:

Its not your job to fix them. Its just your job to love them. Communicate. Be forgiving, but remember that you need to feel loved too. Don't neglect yourself if your certain there's no end in sight, but be there for eachother through your seasons of hardship. You can make it, if you both truly love eachother and try.

I hope and pray the best for you and your significant other. I hope you'll keep fighting and make it through, if its worth fighting for.

[notesfromthepen]

Gardens, Gangstas, And Freedom

This prison is different than the other joints I've been to.

    Last year they started a garden club here. For ten dollars, you get a 10x10 foot plot of land, a bag full of seeds, and something productive to do in an otherwise meaningless existence. In order to be eligible for this club, you have to be a year ticket free (no disciplinary infractions), and that's about it. Well, other than a willingness to get dirty and do some work. Oh, and you have to donate ten pounds of your harvest to a local food pantry at the end of the season. Win-Win.

    When I got here last year, I was still heavily affiliated, (if you know what I mean) and though I had been looking for my way out for sometime, I still had one foot in and one foot in the lotus position. Basically I was too busy being affiliated for extracurricular activities. A year ago my concerns were slightly heavier than watering plants and pulling weeds.

    Well a lot has changed in the last year. None more important than finally cutting all ties of affiliation with any organization in here, well other than the notorious Garden Boyz!, that is. (No, but seriously; I have to watch what, I say. Everything is monitored) With my decision for complete independence secured, I was now free to do anything I wanted.

    So, I signed up for the garden club.

    I paid my ten dollars, and was assigned a 9x8 foot patch of dirt. My dirt. Sure I got shorted on the square footage, but this is prison: you rarely get what what's owed to you.

    Most of the women in my life have dabbled in gardening, whether it was growing corn and squash on an empty plot of land in the neighborhood, or a couple of potted tomatoes plants on an apartment balcony. I however, have never grown anything, with the exception of a massive weed plant behind my parents house, and a laundry list of bad habits. So, since marijuana seeds and cigarettes weren't included in the brown paper bag, I had to begin my gardening career knowing next to nothing about growing these plants.

    What they did give us in the paper bag was stuff like: head lettuce, white and red onion bulbs, pearl onions, carrots, cabbage, spinach, straight cucumbers, green peppers, banana peppers, beets, radishes, egg plant, zucchini, squash, beef steak and cherry tomatoes.

    It was up to us to choose what we wanted to plant in our limited space; a twinge of freedom. But as all you Green Thumbs know, there's plenty to do before the seeds actually go into the ground.

    Before we were allowed to enter the garden area, located in the center of the compound, we had to wait for the words: "Garden Club," to appear on our daily itinerary. I don't know what took them so long, but for weeks after signing up, and after being issued our plots, we were forced to sit, idly by, while the growable days of the season slipped past. The only people allowed in that fertile patch of land in the center of the prison were a handful of 'Yard Crew porters,' whose job it is to help manage all the gardening related duties. The Green Thumb Mafia.

    Some of grizzled Garden Vets, from the previous year, told us rookies that before we could plant anything we still had things to do. We had to 'turn over' our plots, go on a search and destroy mission for grubs, root out the insurgent weeds, carpet bomb our soil with 'milky spore' to kill the locals, and finally we had to section off our plots with tiny wooden steaks and yarn.

    With so much left to do before getting to the actual business of planting veggies, and with valuable time ticking away while we were held back by the rules of engagement, a few of us decided, in line with prison etiquette/corruption, to pay the bribe, proposed by one of the garden porters to start prepping our plots for us.

    The going rate for the deluxe treatment was three dollars, which included all the preparations mentioned by the Garden Vets, plus some extra compost, and access to plants not included in our starter bags. All in all it cost me a bag of instant rice and two Ramen soups. Which left me a dollar short, but I assured our corrupt/opportunistic garden porter that I'd get him the other dollar at some point in the not so distant future. I figured 'two bucks' in food to get a jump on planting season was well worth it.

    This was Pay to Play prison gardening.

    Finally, we all got our Garden Club itineraries. The next day, armed with my MP3 player and a brown paper bag of bulbs and seeds, I marched out to war. But first, you have to stand in line at a tiny, sweltering, shack to get your uniform. Some poor garden porter slowly roasts to death while handing out the fluorescent vests we're forced to wear in the garden area, and any garden tools we might need.

    Make it to the shack early enough and you'll get a decent vest. The best ones are made of a silky orange mesh, like a basketball or football jersey. They're light, loose, and comfortable. Show up too late and you'll be forced to wear one of the bright pink pull-over vests. These wiry torture devices are made of some sort of rubbery plastic, starched into a rigid square shape. It makes you look like some sort of cheaply dressed, flamboyantly gay, Halloween robot. Or you could just let your plants wither and die from dehydration. It's a hell of a choice, and I've often found myself lowering that abrasive pink contraption over my head for the sake of my garden.

    I got my vest, (one of the good ones) and with the crumpled brown paper bag in hand, I headed to my garden; plot 72. Inside the bag were fifty white onion bulbs and the assortment of seeds that I would use to bring my garden to life. And in case I'd forgot that I was in prison, all of the seeds were tucked inside pieces of paper, origamied in the exact same way that heroin dealers fold up their dope. I doubt the tomatoes seeds at Home Depot look like packs of heroin, but what do I know?

    With Bob Marley wailing his songs of redemption through my prison issued headphones, I got down in the dirt, and with a little help from my veteran friends, I started mapping out the plot, and planting the future.

    I got the soil wet and pressed my thumb into the earth, every four inches, in four of the ‘straight-ish' lines I could muster. It was still too early in the season for the tomato and pepper plants, so I filled each thumb hole with a little white onion bulb. I drew two shallow lines with my index finger and sprinkled in the spinach seeds. I used the same technique to make a little rectangle of pearl onions and two rows of carrots. I planted a stash of beets in one of the corners to donate. I transplanted twenty pea plants along the border of my garden and I dropped four newly sprouted garlic cloves, that I scored as part of the bribe, next to the spinach. Before I left, I built a little lattice of yarn for the peas to climb and I watered the freshly planted seeds.

    Crouched down, over my uneven patch of dirt, with music in my ears and mud under my nails, I breathed it all in before heading back to the shack to return my vest.

    Walking back to my unit, as the sun was falling towards the horizon, I felt like I was floating. I mean, I literally felt like I was drifting away. My feet were coasting over the asphalt, and my head was up in the clouds. It took me a minute to realize what had rendered me immune to the effects of gravity: It was the first time in five years that I felt Freedom. I mean real Freedom.

    In the middle of the prison, in my little patch of dirt, with no C.O.s hovering over my shoulder, or telling me what to do, without the sound of cell doors slamming shut and whipping open, without the cacophony of overcompensating voices, disgruntled and aggressive men, yelling at everything and nothing at all.

    In this calm amongst the chaos.

    I felt it.

    Surrounded by garden plots, without a fence, a steel bar, or a single spiral of razor wire in sight, for the briefest of moments.

    I felt it.

    Just listening to music and playing in the dirt, after five years of confinement, I managed to touch the tail of Freedom. It had been so long, that I hardly recognized the feeling. A feeling so foreign and elusive it felt like a distant dream. A type of deja-vu.

    But I felt it.

    So every time I head back out, to a garden that grows taller and more colorful with each passing day, I'm searching for that feeling. In my little patch of dirt, where I use alchemy to bring sunlight and water to life, I'm chasing down deja-vu, I'm looking to float away, and I'm grasping at the tail of Freedom. Just listening to music and playing in the dirt.

___________________________________________________________________

    OK, this isn't part of the piece, I just wanted to tell you what I've got growing in my plot now. It isn't enough for me to annoy my friends in here, with my gardening nerd-outs, I will now bore you all. Feel free to ignore this, unless you're interested in gardening, or bored out of you mind, or you get off on wasting your own time.

This is what I've got:

3x cherry tomatoes plants (about a foot tall)

2x beef steak tomatoes plants (1+ft tall) looking good and hearty! (What have I become?)

3x sugar plum tomatoes. They're babies, I just transplanted them a few days ago.

10x cucumbers. Four of them are getting close to flowering. The rest I just planted. I wanted to wait so I could plan on where to run the vines through.

8x banana pepper plants (small)

8x Bell pepper plants (small)

2x rows of spinach. I already grew and ate 2 rows, I pulled em out once they started flowering and replanted.

1x row of cilantro (had to pull strings to get these. I really wanted fresh cilantro)

1x row of mint.

50x white onions (I was over watering them for awhile)

40x red onions

3x red cabbage (large dinner plate size. gonna make stuffed cabbage!)

3x green cabbage (same)

15x Peas. They're only about a foot tall (everyone else's is 2-3 times the size.) I have 'Pea-size' envy?! but mine are already flowering and I've been eating pods)

2x rows of carrots (the stalks are about six inches)

4x Head lettuce (Can't wait to make lettuce wraps.)

3x garlic plants. (one didn't survive the transplant and the other three aren't really doing much. I think I was watering them too much originally. Most people's (those who have them) garlic are doing the same. I was hoping that they would do better, I was looking forward to fresh garlic.

5x eggplants

1x squash

A bunch of beets.

    This will be the first time in five years that I'll be able to eat fresh vegetables. The lack of healthy food in here is one of the worst aspects of prison life. Being restricted to fifty dollars a month makes it impossible to buy healthy food on the commissary. I can't wait to be able to eat fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts, and cheese when I get out....oh god I miss real cheese!