#which includes addicts and other people who Arent in good places in their lives and understandably may not be very nice

[bluehairedspidey]

"boone would hate gannon because he talks too much lol"

boone:

[legalize-necromancy]

yk im reaaaaal tired of people acting like cities are inherently less racist/bigoted and completely writing off all rural areas as racist/homophobic monoliths with nothing worth saving. where is the empathy for these communities?

to say fuck rural areas and whatever else, youre saying fuck my family, my friends, their families, and all the people of color who call these places home. these communities that are already incredibly neglected but people dont care about these towns/villages/rural areas or the people in them, they just want some feeling of superiority over the “unintelligent hillbillies”

like of course racism and bigotry exists! im a black nonbinary queer who lived in small towns in central illinois for 20+ years, this isnt naivety, i know bigotry well but the thing is it exists everywhere, including cities. to act as if it’s exclusive to rural areas is disingenuous and i can smell the classism a mile away. this isnt even touching on the queer communities in cities right now but the same applies to it too.

this is also not touching on media which almost solely represents these places as truly irredeemable.

so again, i understand they arent perfect and there is much work to do but i understand these places in an intimate way that the people who want to write us as unsalvageable cannot( white liberals i am especially looking at you). i have plenty of nightmare stories: being pulled over by cops after school just got out and i didnt even make it off the high school’s property, addictions and violence thats taken friends and family, but i can also talk about the way the most community ive ever felt to this day, outside of my own family, was in the trailer park my friend levi lived in, walking through the woods identifying plants and animals and animal tracks with friends, hanging out in abandoned trailers in the middle of nothing teaching each other guitar, the farm my grandpa had and all the joy and wonder that brought me. i cant talk of the good without also speaking of the bad but thats just life isnt it?

im in my feelings and i know for sure im not saying anything someone hasnt before, maybe im saying nothing at all, but though i live in a city currently, i will never stop loving my little ol mining town in the rust belt and the rural areas that raised me and the ones that are home to the people considered disposable, uneducated, and unworthy of grace or help. im just exhausted from constantly having to experience the contempt people have for rural communities.

[the-bjd-community-confess]

More Divaz confos

Mod: Round two of these, previously: link. There’s some interesting customer reviews in this batch (5 and 8) which may be useful to readers.

1.Vic3mage "the secret bjdivaz vip group is just pictures of boxes coming in and going out". Yeah, between the bitching about d0llshe, asking people to post on doa for them, dunking on ex-customers, posting pics of random doll parts that they can't identify which doll they're supposed to go with, whining about how little money they make, whining when ppl e-mail them, whining. Yeah, other than that it's just boxes, and alpacas u can buy off amazon anyway lol.

~Anonymous

2.The butthurt users crying and guilttripping under every Divaz confession who have never been seen before elsewhere on this blog are extremely unsuspicious and unproblematic and definitely unconnected to Divaz and unbiased in every possible way

/s

~Anonymous

3.idk shit abt bjd1vas but v1cemage i can absolutely tell you the shit about ch0o is 100% accurate, fucker's got a long, long history of being an awful little man that stretches well beyond his involvement in the doll community. between the two i'd still trust bjd1vas over ch00 ch00 the fool any day!

~Anonymous

4.The Z3st and Div4s thing is really silly and both entities were being shady but did they really have to take the DZ waiting room down with them? :( He had even made a separate thread about it......

~Anonymous 

5. RE: BJD Divaz

I’ve been a customer of BJD Divaz since they first started, when it was only run by Chart3rline. I even contacted other BJD companies trying to persuade them to work with Divaz as their US representative. Most declined because they didnt like D's commission fee, but I was able to persuade a few of them.

I asked them to purchase a doll off DOA because I couldnt afford the asking price, and while they did, I found out later that instead of agreeing to purchase the seller's price, they negotiated the price to be lower. This significantly cheaper price was not passed down to me. I paid the full price +the commission fee based on that full price. I am disappointed I was not told this. This is when I stopped viewing them as a "friend" and instead, as a business. I dont hold this against them, it’s context to what Im going to say later.

I’ve stopped purchasing from D after my recent order from them. This company usually takes 3 or less months to make a doll. I’ve ordered the doll from D and it took 11 months. They let me know it arrived to them in March and that it will be shipped soon, except it only shipped on July, and only after I sent them several "reminder" emails. Before people in the comments try to put the blame on me for not sending a reminder soon, please keep in mind that I acknowledged the email in March and confirmed everything and they keep stressing to not send them emails because they are busy, I’ve emailed once every month since. I’ve since switched to ACBJD and Ive been happy with communication and the dolls ordered. I imagine ACBJD gets the same amount of emails, but they dont berate their customers if they email more than once.

I regret when people wanted a D0llshe, but not deal with him, I always recommended D. I would warn people of ordering directly and instead go through D. They assured buyers they would be handling communication and all the efforts so they wouldnt worry, except they didn’t. A person that I’ve recommended D to, who surpassed 2 years, keeps messaging me for help because D wouldnt reply to their emails. She is respectful, sweet and a timid person, not a Karen. This person, emailed D without a reply so would email a week later, only to be told that their email would be pushed down to the bottom if emailed again. No response, so she goes to FB and IG, who both tell her to email because they arent the person running orders. Finally got a response that they would get their refund, after D0llshe sends D's payment, but minus the PP fees. 3 months later and theres no refund, only a promise of them getting it later. Why is the customer missing out on fees when they have no doll? Customer emails d0llshe and he says he cant offer refund, because they didn’t order through them, which is understandable, but when all options are out for a customer, do you blame them for chargebacks?

If anyone files a chargeback, D will be blacklisting them from every company they rep, as in blacklisting you from buying direct from those companies. I urge everyone who has negative experiences with D to email the companies they rep instead of venting on confession blogs, and writing your experiences on social media. Make it count and send letters to the companies they represent, and please provide proof because they will try to make you out to be a liar.

Speaking of, they made vague posts on cl0ver singing for charging paypal fees, and that they offer guarantees as an official dealer, except when offering refunds, to non delivered products I might add, they are keeping the fees, and offered no help with d0llshe, even before they ended their dealership with them. Someone on DOA was told to not email them unless the wait time surpassed 1.5 years. They are even so petty that they post screenshots with the full name and address (dox) of the customer on purpose and then delete it out a day later as if they just realized their "mistake".

Before you try to make excuses for them about the fires, keep in mind, I am dealing with a business. The lower price negotiation with the DOA sale, I am in no way obligated to give them a pass or treat them as a friend when they made it clear that our relationship is strictly business. Their issues, are not my issues. D0lk got dragged for not shipping in time, others, including artisans, got dragged for being so late with communication and sending back refunds for cancelled orders. Why does D get to be exempt?

The supporters are the worst part of this, because of instead of being honest so D can improve, they support them for being "real". For example, look how micemage words it, to make it seem like this criticism is from one person, when there are people on addicts who didn’t have good experience. Check the bjd dealers tag here, you will see the supporters in the comments going off on any and all criticism of D. Some have sane comments, but the majority are cult like and try to identify the person venting as if it’s one person. Addicts deletes threads with criticism asking people to instead direct it to their feedback group; which lets be honest, no one is going to do because its "not that bad", and most dont want to join a new group, which is mostly dead.

This is my first and last confession on D, I’ve emailed each company they rep and told them my experience as well as contacting the 3 month wait company, with screenshots of my order, how they handled it, and the excuse they used to put blame on the company for being so late (package arrived march to D, 4 months to be shipped is on D, not the company). I’m not using company or order details because I know they are petty enough to try to identify me and publicly shame me like they have to others. This and the threat of suing is why not many people like to go public with their experience. They just keep feedback neutral, move on and never deal with again.

~Anonymous

6. Listen, I can't take you seriously in regards to BJD!vas because you're posting on a confession blog. If you were serious, you would have posted in buyer beware groups, DoA reviews or the board to get things resolved, or you would have made a complaint to the BBB. And your language makes you come off more as someone with an agenda rather than someone who is trying to warn people. If shipping is the issue, stop buying with standard shipping and pay the extra price for express shipping. I saw one of you complain that it sat with them for 20 days; that's probably because you're not the only one and they more than likely have a queue to check and then ship out. Do mistakes happen? Yes, because we're human. I've been in this hobby for a few years now and it seems like most people know you're going to have to wait, sometimes even outside the expected wait time. And shipping something as big as a doll is a timely endeavor. I shouldn't have to say that.

My point is simply to stop complaining on an confession board and either take it to the places previously mentioned. Posting here behind the anonymous mask makes you sound like a petulant child who didn't get their way right away.

~Anonymous

7.My only issue with BJD Divaz is how I never get any updates. Every email, they tell me to join their facebook page for status updates. I dont have a FB and I dont want to create one. I bought my doll through their website, updates should be posted on their website, or they could send me an email. That isnt asking much.

~Anonymous

8. Since there seems to be a lot of either "completely negative everything sucks" or "everything was sunshine and rainbows" confessions about bjd!vaz I thought I'd chime in with a neutral review.

PROS

-They were always polite and professional in their emails, and gave me very detailed answers to my questions.

-I got exactly what I ordered, so no mix ups or missing parts or anything like that.

-I think them being forthcoming about personal issues (only one person on staff, illness, the flooding isue etc.) on social media is good, since it keeps customers updated as to why there might be delays.

-If you live in the US their shipping is very reasonable.

CONS

-Reply times were varied. Sometimes it could take over a week, sometimes a couple hours.

-My order took about 10mo which, when comparing to other people who ordered through the same company around the same time, was about 3x as long as if I bought it direct and 2x as long if I had gone through a different dealer. I get some of the waiting time is out of their control, but it was kind of ridiculous.

-They dont necessarily ship the same day they send you a tracking number. I wish they said something like, "Here's your tracking number, our pickup is Xday so it should start moving after that" just so I could be aware.

All in all no major complaints. I got my doll and all that. Their lone employee is clearly overwhelmed. I hope they hire another person, if only to give the one a break.

Truthfully, I most likely won't buy through them again. I'd rather pay the international shipping and go direct, than deal with the extensive wait time. I'd still recommend them to someone looking for a very long layaway, though. I paid in full, but if I had a 12mo layaway I would've never known they weren't ready to ship my doll until month 10.

~Anonymous

[modernlcve]

little info dump of lizzie’s la muses

ADELAIDE LINDHOLM  :   they still need a last name but . whatever. i was gonna make her like really boring n a lil mean but. i changed me mind. she’s still uninterested in fame but im pulling her out of management she did it for like 3 years and then realized it brought her nothing but stress and pain so she quit and is doing temp work for the time being she’s trying to figure some stuff of her own out but deflects it onto still trying to boss around her siblings all the time. this sounded more interesting in my head. know it all, bossy, putting on a front of being in control of her miserable life

plots for her include  :  former clients she completely abandoned when she snapped, im working on more but sometimes... being a big sister is a full time job am i right girls

ALISON COLLINS  :  a woman at a crossroads . wants to follow her big artistic ambition of [redacted] but it just hasnt worked out for her yet so she’s teaching elementary art classes at a Hippie School to pay the bills til something comes her way , but its hard to be the edgy artist type when u got the school breathing down ur back and checking 2 make sure ur on the straight and narrow.

plots for her include  :  another big sister im ltrying to think of plots for but . sometimes things arent easy you know. she could have art circle friends who make fun of her for Selling Out and making pipe cleaner crafts for a living now

BRUNO VARGAS  :   i’m copy pasting the fc meme. he bought a “capitalism is unsustainable” sticker off of amazon. prime example of that “little confused but he’s got the spirit” meme. he threw himself into the social activism scene after he dropped out of college and ran away to the city to really make something of himself. he really wants to do good things for good reasons his heart is in the right place he’s just a dumbass. grew up in a traditional catholic military family but hasn’t had contact w them for a minute. lives in the fold because he thinks its cool 2 force people 2 hang out with him. works for an indie underground news publication.

plots for him include  :  yeah  maybe i am still stuck on the boyfriend/girlfriend plot. im not married to it being bf n gf if it just works 2 be 2 gfs or 2 bfs anyways. plot would be that one partner bruno has had longer and has openly been with for a minute now. second partner would be more recent and bc of that less of the whole official We’re Together :) kind of thing. both partners would know he’s seeing other people, but he hasnt gone out of his way to specifically out either of them, p2 just knows about p1 bc they were openly w bruno whereas they arent yet. if that makes literally any sense

COLE EDWARDS  :  bit of a weirdo. she does something behind the scenes i was thinking like set design because thats something that weirdly really interests me. anyways shes a doormat but in a different way than molly could be read that way she really just likes to be involved in things and help people. ~quirky~ but one day , she will snap. u can tell when u see her at craft night and she gets so much hot glue on her hand but doesnt even react. its like she cant feel it... feel better cole...

plots for her   :  cole could work for laguna beach or as the mystery novak stepsib im not married to her being on the show or not yet. i figured she could be fun there because she would be a light addition to all these Reality Tv Bastards u know. her bg and plots will fit whichever subplot i use her for so . tba

HOLLIS MESSINA   :   kill him NOW .   hollis is a bad man. not to godmod michele but in my head their parents are also like weird arsty types not necessarily famous but always very into the arts all thru their childhood. they grew up eating a lot of kale and maybe thats why hollis is the way he is. he’s vapid and very insecure because he wants so bad to be cool and funny and talented and suffers from major impostor syndrome which contributes to his online shopping addiction. take a nap hollis...

plots for him  :  we know im always looking for a plot where my musician writes a song about how crusty their ex is and their ex doesn’t appreciate it, or in general just maybe someone who got past the Phony Fakeass Cool Hollis act but then he decided to be very mean to them because soemtimes it hurts to let people in

JAMES ZAMORA   :  instagram model and youtuber. new media thot. she makes beauty, fashion, lifestyle, and travel related content. her entire brand is being A Sexy Little Trollop for people to envy. came from humble beginnings believe it or not, but she will never tell anyone that. as far as they need to be concerned shes been toddling around in heels since day one. lives in the fold because it makes for quirky content but once a month she threatens to get the hell out of here.. no one knows why she stays..

plots for her  :  frankly between the Novak Boyz and the mean girl squad im happy w her plots for now but shes always around to *cheryl blossom voice* create a little chaos if needed...

MOLLY SEKULIC   :   for the first week he lived at the fold noah thought she was a ghost :0  jadede film school student who thought she would get to do real documentary work at a place like b*zzfeed news but got put on projects shes not as passionate about 2 put it kindly. constantly planning her escape from the fold and worth it and all of that but 2 depressed to actually put any of it into play so she just sticks around and hopes one day she’s tapped for something with Substance

plots for her  :  she just doesnt get out much. shes got her Horrible sons (alec and [redacted]) and the girlies she hangs out with at the fold so shes not a completely friendless loser. with muses also working in film i think it could be fun to have a plot where they went to school together/worked on a project earlyo n together but now shes doing this and is embarrassed to talk to them abt it not that its even that real of a plot..

NOAH FITZGERALD  :  i wrote an intro for him in fold and im just gonna link it here. tldr hes very shy,, be gentle,, he wants to be liked and validated which is a common theme for me becuase yeah maybe in my core i dont believe anyone pursuing art does it for any reason but validation i sure know i do 

plots for him  :   he’s got a little going on but other fun stuff could be musicians he jams with that could catch onto his and bradys Scam, maybe some other dorks to commiserate with ive obvisosuly not got as many ideas as i let on huh,

WYATT SONG   :   gay writer bitch. came from money so he’s just casually pursuing writing full time minus the time he spends on the show (bit less than everyone else just because watching him sit in his home office and do nothing for hours just isnt interesting) but i kinda like the idea of him being a Villain within the show like idk what dynamics we were wanting to set up but i feel ike since he’s more reclusive than the others and when he is around hes Annoying he could be someone the show kinda frames as Not Likable which mostly doesnt bother him but . stings a little

plots   :  someone whos really nice 2 him off cam but plays to that villain thing on cam, which could work for a few muses on different levels like a friend whos just flighty to someone he’s ~ secretly dating ~ bc it would mess up the current plot of the show if they were fucking just yet

[tylerwritez]

Saturday, June 19 2021

I dont know how I feel about the day yet cos right now its only 10:13. I dont post these exactly on the days I write them, but I write them on these exact days nonetheless.

My throat still hurts, my ass hurts, oUch,.... I'm sure you know why. Like, when you suck dick, it takes throat strength to make sure you don't fucking vomit everywhere and like. I OBVIOUSLY dont have that strength since I had to wash vomit outta my hair this morning

Hes so hot tho oh. My god.

Whatever. New day. So we talk about new things.

Star seems kinda sad but I dont really know why? She said on her story that people dont really go outta their way to talk to her... idk. I shot a good morning dm and now I'm here. I made my bed. Packed up my shit. Every time we pack things up my parents rage cos they always find shit they dont want to see: monster cans, evidence of my self harm, etc.

We have 1 more week then school is OVER and I move outta this house cos of the divorce. Jay will be gone too... I still have his insta, but I might ask for his number... just in case. I always get weirdly attached to people I fuck even if there was never any romantic part of the relationship. We are just friends.

Apparently we are going to the pick n pack today with my friend let's call her Zara. It's notfar off from her real name but whatever. Basically pick n pack is where you go to a vegetable garden and pick vegetables

I have a test soon but idk if I'll study for it. I NEVER really put work into studying or pay attention in class and I'm holding an 82 average. I got a 39 once, so once I retake that quiz I might be in the 90s. Sorry Mr. Renal, I simply can't bring myself to care about your class 😢

I LOVE my art class tho. It's just doing ART!!!! ART TIME!!!! Art is the best and I would post some of mine but my irls would proabably find me then. Like my name isnt ACTUALLY Jude Shepard. I'm just using it as a penname and also cos that's what they called me in my dream. But other than that everything I tell y'all is real. I'm making buttered toast rn.

3:38 p.m.  sat june 19th

I've decided to include a song recommendation with every entry. Today's recommendation: A Match Into Water by Pierce The Veil

Okay so it turns out we didnt go to pick n pack with Zara. Instead we went to downtown... White Ave. It was sunny n we walked a bit, got lemonades and a bit of candy, went into stores, idk. BUT. The notable part of this is that next to the farmers market there were all the usual activist groups: falun gong, vegan, whatever... but one of them looked like it was a LEFTIST GROUP, possible marxist.

I wanted to talk to them so badly and wanted to see how I could help the cause. See, I'm a communist. AND IM NOT HERE TO DEBATE THAT. I'm here to talk about my days. Anwyays I wanted to talk to them sO BADLY. but my parents wouldn't leave me alone. And like. I hate political discussion with them. They just upset me and they get mad and I CANT AFFORD TO MAKE THEM MAD. I play everything that goes on with me on the Down Low, I dont talk about anything about myself because if I do, I get less freedom in my life. They have control in my life, so I have to appease them. Because of this, I unfortunately did not get to talk to the communists :(

Hopefully they're still there next time... I'm kinda mad >:(

Also Star replied to my good morning text... I told her to have fun shopping since that's what she told me she was gonna do... she just said "thanks" and I was concerned because THATS NOT HOW SHE TYPES? I feel like shes sad over something but i dont know what.

The day me and Jacob did stuff, I was supposed to walk her to her bus stop like I always do. But I didnt (duh) I took Jacob home.

But IT WAS ONE! DAY. And I told her my dad called me over so.... I apologized too and she seemed mad at herself, but in the way that's intended to make you feel bad.

I dont understand her sometimes. I LOVE HER. DON'T GET ME WRONG. I love her so so much shes such a great supportive funny attractive girl! But soemtimes she gets upset and I can never tell why: is it the depression? Is it me? Is it soemthing else entirely? And she'll never tell me.

Whatever, I'll ask her how she is tonight and maybe we can Talk :/

I might never tell her about Jay... :P I might never tell ANYONE about Jay. It's our little secret I guess >:))))))

Man see? I'm no saint. I guess that's what'll make this blog worth reading. I'm a bit conflicted about the whole thing cos I KNOW this is morally not right but. I'm doing it anyways. What can I say? I'm used to lying and hiding things for my benefit. I had to do it to survive and now? Now I do it for funsies.

I'm gonna pack some more stuff, TTYL ♡

UPDATE: we had to go look at houses for the move (since my parents r divorcing) and I didnt get to pack much of anything yet

I'm definently over my cal limit today...

        Cold sweet or carbonated drinks help with my throat pain so I'm downing them like they're NOTHING and since we have no zero  cal cold drinks I'm DEAD... and no, water does NOTHING.

Jeez, its raining out.

And FUCK JAY cos hes still on my mind.

Its 4:11 p.m. now.

Its now 7:56 p.m.

I kinda feel like an edgy main character in an edgy movie rolling up to the park and sitting #alone in the Treez like the emo band music video protagonist I am.

Sometimes its exhausting to talk to people I care about in a serious way or that I talk to in a more sincere manner like Star and Jay and others. Even if they're just friends. If our interactions are serious and not really casual and usually play out like long deep conversation, I feel like to respond to or even read their messages, I need to have like an hour allotted to conversation. Soemtimes I see the messages early and have to pretend I didnt see em cos I dont have internet to respond or time to respond its. Funny. Idk.

Anwyays I'm binging chocolate in a park alone and like. Rotting my fucking teeth OH WELL 🤷🏻‍♂️ whatcha gonna do.

Its 8 now so I should head home. I just biked to the s4ve 0ns to get my dad white choclate but. If I'm going to s4ve 0ns... YOU BET YOUR ASS IM GONNA STE4L SHIT. THAT PLACE IS EASY AS FUCKKK.

Also I'm kinda addicted to sh0pl1fting. The THRILL I get from it is so insane. It's fun! And you get free stuff! I know If i get caught I'm risking a lot. I'm aware. But I dont really care. Every step I take nowadays is risk taking. So why not take more?

I dont care about nonsense therapy. Fuck that.... actually I'll explain why i dont go to therapy for my shit:

1. I cant

2. I don't trust it

Anwyays yeah.

My throat still hurts. Idk, I just like to be in the sun and shit ALONE.

ALONE! It's so funny to me how now I like my time alone but as a kid I'd proabably kill for some positive attention. Well... it's more complex than that, but I wont go into it tonight.

Pls watch me die of diabetes soon from eating all this fucking chocolate.

My parents said to stop drinking monster and I wANT THEM TO TRUST ME so i can go out with my friends... but also I shoulda got monster outta spite. Heart palpitations my ASS.

Tonight I'll be talking to Jay AND Star. At the same time. Which is awkward... Which is MY OWN MESS TO CLEAN UP. I actually accept full responsibility. But also its awkward.

Whatever. I'll sort it out.

My parents arent being as complicated as usual. I guess they're tryna reverse all those years of... emotional neglect i guess? Something.

Something. Which isnt nothing.

But also I think they're guilty over the divorce. Like. Today my dad was like "do u ever feel sad? Blah blah blah... how do u feel rn" and I was like smiling tryna play off his question like it was absurd and I said "uhm idk... *fake laugh* normal?"

THE TRUTH WAS THAT I WAS A BIT CONFUDDLED ABOUT WHAT I WAS GONNA DO REGARDING. LITERALLY CHEATING. ON MY GF. WITH SOME DUDE IN MY ART CLASS. JUST FOR SEX.

But then he was like "this isnt normal." And he looked all sad.  But on my way to the park here, I thought about it a bit more. And actually... it IS normal. The divorce rate is smthn like 60 percent in the states and 40 percent in canada... which is where I live.

Yknow... if my irls find this,,, all I have to say is sorry. Be as mean as you want.

I've already accepted my fate as a degenerate scumbag anyways lol.

Actually... how DO I feel? Hmm... laying in this field.

Urgency.

I have a lot of stuff to do.

Physical pain, but that's not. A FEELING.

I guess anticipation to TALK TO PEOPLE.

Regret from my binge... I better get home.

You know what's so funny to me? I cant purge on my own... but dick makes me vomit. Like the one time I DONT want to throw up, I do. Damn okay.

Well its 8:18 so I'm going home maybe. Soon. For now, I think I'll stay a little longer.

Yknow one thing I didn't expect to be sore was my arms... which I used to prop myself up to... yknow, suck Jay...

I still remember he said: "you're trembling." And I was like FUCK because I thought the trembling was HIM... •_• it's okay though I'll learn to do better.

Idk tho... I feel comfortable with him. Even as nervous as I am and embarrassed to be. Naked. In front of soemone else. And such. He makes me feel comfortable. Look, I did my best, DUH of cOURSE I did my best, I'm the type who will work hard at stuff even if they're getting hurt. I didnt mind honeslty. My goal in that part was just to make him feel good. Equal exchange, yknow? He did the same thing to me.

But like, he can tell when I gag and he tells me not to hurt myself and of course I keep going, I'm not about to SToP. But. I dont kNOW. Him talking to me like that makes me feel a lot safer doing stuff like that you know?

I like when he starts kissing me and touching me like he cant contain himself its almost animalistic and VERY FUCKING HOT

I feel like I talk about him too much but you gotta realize that was my FIRST time

1. Sucking dick

2. having MY junk sucked

3. Having anything put. Inside me. (It was just his finger but stILL)

So yeaH. Of course I'm gonna talk about it. A lot.

He said I was adorable. He said he likes how, when he leans over me, I take in a breath... how he could make me flinch.

THATS HOT ISNT IT.

I feel like I'm getting lost in his charm when I shoULD be tryna fix shit with my girlfriend. She seems sad and I'm worried.

But there isnt much more to say until I DM her tonight...

I really fucked up, didn't I? I totally fucked up and now my brain is all confused. But I have to remember that Jay is only about sex. He would be nice to cuddle, since hes fucking HUGE and I'm kinda on the short side, but he doesnt talk to me out of love. He does it out of lust. And yeah... I really only want sex from him too. But like. Star and I are COMMITTED. We got our feelings wrapped up together. Emotionally and romantically.

So. I should proabably like... stop fucking with Jay. Tell Star what I did. And hope she forgives me. That's the morally correct thing to do.

But like... do I EVER make the morally correct decision? No. Not really. I'm a piece of shit. Whatever. Its highschool anwyays we arent mating for life. IM NOT SAYING WHAT I DID WASNT BAD. IT WAS. VERY BAD.

but I'm gonna keep making bad decisions.

I DO FEEL BAD.... but look. If we're being logical about this and tryna maximize my benefit here,, I should keep Star as my girlfriend and TREAT HER WELL... but with Jay as a fuckbuddy on the side. Hes leaving the school soon anwyays so then we'll hang out less...

That's my plan, anyways.

I KNOW I'm a bad person. I'm aware. But it's just a fact of life.

I'm cheating with my cards here in so many places: stealing, lying, cheating, disobeying my parents, not paying attention in class.. IM KIND OF AN ASSHOLE KID. Idk. It's kinda whatever to me. I'm fucking harry Houdini, okay? I can get out of anyhting. This isnt me being cocky... I have historically gotten out of MANY tight situations, even some that risked my life, and I'm still here. I think I'm a walking lucky charm or SOEMTHING

Welp, we know if gods real I'm going to hell.

I dont really care. Idk. I guess I'm just at that risk taking phase in.my life. That doesnt  justify anything... but it explains it. And it's possible to explain without justifying.

Man,,, I guarantee whoever reads this blog is gonna hate my guts.

Whatever. It's my fucking journal/diary lol.

I can sorta say whatever I'd like.

It's funny because I always thought I was trustworthy and had no commitment issues BUT HEY I GUESS NOT.

I keep telling myself, cut him off, YOU AVE A GIRLFRIEND, FESS UP AND APOLOGIZE... but then I picture his STUPID smirking face and I CANT.

Maybe I am in love double.

Doesnt matter if I am... i still did a bad thing.

DAMN.

Well... I'm headed back home now. 8:41. I'm gonna pack my shit, change, watch youtube,,,, I guess I should check my google classroom and like. do my fucking homework... cos I haven't done it yet.

Then I'll update yall.

11:51 p.m.

Hey guys I'm back with an update.

I talked with both of then... star doesnt seem interested in having an actual conversation,,, shes just talking  about  random bs. Which is fine but I dont rly get what shes saying half the time COS SHES NOT BLUNT ENOUGH. and then the other half shes going on about how much she hates life. Like.

I do love her. We've bonded. I AM concerned about her. But sometimes I feel like she doesn't really try. Like I can talk her down from suicide all I want but everything I say is wrong and cliched and based off my own experience with suicidal thoughts and like... my mentality has always been sorta toxicly masculine. Push through, and push through alone. I CANT ALWAYS HELP! And it makes me feel shitty. Idk. She'll be okay, I know so cos of her story posts and drawings.

I feel bad but I know I can't help much. We talked a little. Idk, we didnt get anywhere. I love her but shes acting in a way that tells me soemthing is wrong but I CANT FIX THAT THING. SO. yeah, theres not much to say. I wish I could take away all her pain but I can't.

I talked to Jay as well... I DONT KNOW WHATS HAPPENING BECAUSE I LIKE HIM SO SO MUCH. SO MUCH. HES LITERALLY PERFECT. sexy, kind and super considerate, he always makes sure I'm comfortable... I dont KNOW,,, hes sweet.

Hes not romantically interested in me. Which is a bit sad. Sometimes I want to tell him "I love you!!!" But then I remember that we are, in his words, friends with benefits. Fuck buddies. Two horny teenage boys who just wanna fuck... and be friends. That's all. That's us. We aren't romantically involved nor will we ever be. I hate how my brain gets so attached to anyone I fuck... especially since I kinda see Jay as an "older brother" figure, which makes no sense until you actually meet him and vibe with him... and like,,, I've always wanted that?

Tommorow I'm gonna ask for him to come over to watch a movie... but idk if I should actually ask because my parents kinda hate me now for fucking up so much. I'll do my homework and clean my room first... which will take up all my time proabably :( it's okay. Maybe some other time :(

I dont want him to lose interest in me though.

.... its 1:56 a.m.

Okay. Okay. I'll say it. I love him.

Goodnight, tumblr.

-Jude

[jazzmckay]

fallout 2 liveblog, lads. got distracted with things and took awhile to finish this post up but it is finally here

this is incredibly excessively long. fo2 is like 5x the size of fo1 and i just ramble a lot more this time too

seriously i just popped the text into word out of curiosity and this is 10.5k ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

- the beginning is so vastly different from fallout 1 and its great. there are a couple cinematics, including a chilling introduction to the enclave, and an introduction to the elder of your tribe, in contrast to the one with the overseer in fallout 1. super cool, feels fresh. also the upgraded game engine is def noticeable. starting in a tribal village instead of a vault is rad

- so, fallout 2 is not messing around. the TUTORIAL kicked my ass so bad i ended up restarting it lmao i was able to figure out what i was supposed to do alright but the combat was brutal until i got a technique down. also this was my favourite part:

- early fallout games, a summary:

- checking out everything in arroyo was nice. tons of little things to do and people to chat with, some of which are stated to be relatives of the chosen one which is neat. i already feel more connected to home here than i did with vault 13 in the first game, while still feeling like character creation is fully up to the player; they arent IMMEDIATE relatives, its just a “this is a family and community” feeling without forcing certain close relationships. real good. it doesnt force you to act a certain way because of relationship bonds, but it does make arroyo feel like home

- most notable things i did in arroyo: rescued a dog named smoke from some geckos. bless. the geckos kicked my ass pretty easily too, i ended up sneaking past half of them to get the job done; fought some sentient plants in the shaman’s garden. interestingly, these are similar to the plants you find in vault 22, zion, and big mt. how did big mt.s death plants get over here

- off to the first town; klamath! i helped a guy guard his brahmin. i bought everyone a round at the bar. nearly got killed by some more geckos

- also stumbled into a crashed enclave vertibird (fun fact, in fallout new vegas, one of the enclave remnants members, daisy whitman, says that the only time she ever crashed a vertibird was by klamath so we can assume this is hers), complete with some corpses. one of them had a keycard on them and i have no idea what thats about but im guessing itll be important eventually?? guarding the vertibird was a damaged robot

- between that and this quest ive got to kill some “rats of unusual size” im starting to encounter all the references fallout 2 is known for

- its time to d-d-d-d-d-d-d-duel

- the rats ALSO kicked my ass. everything is kicking my ass. normal rats are fine because you can manipulate their action points but anything bigger than that is tough and the boss itself, was REALLY tough especially because i only had one gun and the gun only had one bullet

- so, i took a break and went back in town to pick up my first companion: sulik! he’s really awesome i love talking to him. my charisma is 7 so i think that means i can have 3 companions but theres way more than that in the game and i want to travel with all of them at least a little but i have a feeling im not going to want to ask sulik to leave hes my good pal. 

thanks, small child

- anyway sulik and i ended the rats it was good. other than this one mishap:

- got to the den which was initially pretty unsettling. in the time between fo1 and fo2, jet has been invented and most unnamed npcs in the den are addicted to it. there’s a slaver guild on one side of town. also, all the kids in the den try to pickpocket you when you pass them. atmospherically, fo2 is a lot lighter than fo1, but the subject matter is much more mature. that said, i started going around and picking up little errands i could do for people and theyre all very nice. not as scary as i thought it would be. i rescued a guy from the slavers and got a new companion: vic! when im much better equipped, i am coming back here and killing the entire slaver guild, no doubt about that, but sadly i still have barely any decent equipment for myself, let alone anything to equip my companions with

- theres a ghost hanging out in an old house and she wants her locket back. ghosts exist in fallout. cool. got the locket and she turned into bones, which i then went and buried in the town graveyard. i checked out all the other headstones and they were incredible here are some of my favourites

- a guy in the junkyard is willing to sell me a car if i bring the right parts. i can have a CAR 0: definitely dont have the parts OR the funds yet but...... im coming back for this car

- while heading for vault city, i discovered modoc, a quaint farming town going through some struggles due to a drought and a farm up north that is apparently run by ghosts and is decorated by dead bodies. wild

- lots of the quests here required some sleuthing and running all over the map talking to people but i think i got it all figured out. turns out the bodies are faked to scare people away and the ghosts are just some people living underground under the farm. i managed to resolve things peacefully and now i think modoc will be okay, yay!

- i got myself into an eating contest, also, here’s the eventful part of it. i will let anyone reading this experience what happened for themself

this reminds me of the time mass effect tells you just how many balls krogan have

- continued on to vault city and man just. a real roller coaster of an experience. at first, vault city looks like the most safe and stable settlement ive seen in fo1 or fo2. its very clean and organised, its well populated, it has good defences, has a more elaborate (reminiscent of the old world) social structure etc. a GECK was used here and id say part of this areas purpose in the game is to show you what youre actually trying to do for your village

however, vault city is full of self-righteous, bigoted, slaving assholes. “outsiders” are kept outside the bounds of the inner city until they can get a day pass and theyre searched before they can go in during the day, if they make it that far. there are slaves but the people claim its not slavery and get mad if you call it such. i hate these people. 

and they sent me off to a ghoul inhabited town because the power plant the ghouls live in is infecting their water and its pretty understood they want me to kill the ghouls and destroy the plant or whatever. no sir. 

- so yeah vault city sucks BUT I RAN INTO companion number 3: JOHN CASSIDY!!

hello soon-to-be father of one of my all time favourite fallout companions!!! welcome to the group

- headed up to the ghoul town, gecko, to see about this malfunctioning power plant. its so good and refreshing after vault city, i love this place and all the people in it so much. here comes a lot of screencaps of chats i had with some lovely ghouls.

harold again!!! and since fo1, he’s gained the famous tree, herbert, or bob or whatever. 

this ghoul, lenny, came from necropolis and also saw the vault dweller. i believe hes a potential companion but i couldnt ask him to join, either because i already have 3 or maybe my reputation in gecko isnt up yet. hes excellent though and i will come back for him when i have a convenient chance to leave a current companion somewhere safe

i love this

ghouls are so good

relatable, my dude!!! also you can play that card game with this chap. i did so and won. now i have two sets of cards. im the king of games

idk why but this is so fucking funny to me. that ghouls in general can just go on an epic power nap and be assumed dead. and that this ghoul in particular just wanders off and sleeps for ages. i got a quest to find him. he was at the den and in a coffin and one of the citizens was convincing people to pay to see a “mummy” and honestly? honestly. this is one of my favourite fallout quests across ALL games, maybe. its so funny. heres a bit of it:

you tell woody to leg it and he just thanks you and bolts. incredible

- I GOT THE CAR (feat. vic, cassidy, and sulik)

- we drove in the car down south. i’m aiming for ncr territory because a) i think thats where the main questline advances and b) im ready to see tandi again, who at this point is like 96 years old i think. super excited. however, new reno is on the way so i thought id pop in and check it out real quick, not intending to stay and do anything yet but then SOMEONE STOLE MY BRAND NEW CAR.

- getting my car back cost me almost all my money. god damn

- anyway i took off right after to the ncr and then vault 15 to move along the main story. once again, the khans are causing trouble and really the only option is killing them. i guess the khans change a lot between the early games and new vegas. certainly explains how frustratingly anti-khan the ncr is in new vegas though. in rare ncr playthroughs i get so mad about how the ncr treats a potential alliance but. man, i know the history now. getting to see where faction tension came from helps, especially since in new vegas you mostly hear about bitter springs, not all the crap that happened before that to make the tension more two sided. im still mad at the ncr and think they could stand to be more civil after what happened at bitter springs but its still interesting to know how things progressed. the khans caused trouble in the first two games but eventually chilled out and the ncr still hasnt gotten over it

the fight with the khans was VERY difficult. lots of them had automatic burst fire weapons id never even seen before this point and it took a handful of times to get it done to my satisfaction. BUT this is where i encountered my first sniper rifle, my preferred weapon in the first game, and it proved just as useful this time around

- i looked up how long i had before all the dream sequences (id only gotten the first by this point) because i was anxious about the “time limit” and it turns out i have all the time in the world to mess about so main questline went on hold. time to drive around to all the places i bypassed earlier and return to other places to finish things up. also it occurs to me that the chosen one had probably never even seen a car before leaving the village?? they just fucking buy a car and cruise the wasteland in style despite having no prior knowledge of cars. i cant believe the companions willingly get into the car with them. other than sulik who i imagine is down for whatever. i love sulik

- stopped in broken hills and hit someone with my car. remember how i literally just said that the chosen one doesnt actually know shit about cars

broken hills is great, its super mutants, ghouls, and humans all living in peace and the sheriff is marcus, who you see in jacobstown in new vegas!! you also find out marcus’ backstory a bit more. in nv he does talk about naming jacobstown after a friend but you get the longer version here, which is that jacob was actually w/ the brotherhood of steel and they were fighting each other but so evenly matched that they ended up just talking and becoming friends. everyones very nice and its a neat town. theres a scientist with a scorpion hes experimented on to make it smarter and stuff and you can test your own intelligence, agility, and perception against it. i won agility and perception but failed to beat the scorpion at chess rip. the main quest here requires getting something from new reno though so i moved on. ill get back to it on the way back south

- dealt with some raiders i wasnt properly equipped for earlier (the first time i checked them out i barely made it past the many many traps and the scorpion den). went back to vault city to let them know the raiders were dealt with. they made me a citizen after i fixed the power plant in gecko and tbh i hate that the npcs here call me citizen now i hate this place lmao that said, i left vic here, in his daughters shop. as far as i know, companions will just wait exactly where you leave them even if you never come back, they dont actually return to any kind of daily routine but in a roleplaying sense i like the idea that ive parted ways with vic here so he can try to work on his relationship with his daughter. after that, i went and got lenny, the ghoul from gecko whod been in necropolis when the vault dweller blew through. cassidy keeps says he smells. shut the fuck up, cassidy. also vic used to complain about sulik and that is why hes the first to get cut from the crew, js. 

- finished up a couple things in gecko and modoc then headed for the den. got a monty python reference special encounter

i got too caught up in it and forgot to screencap the last question oops. but they asked for the prerequisites for a specific perk, and the potential answers were various levels or agility points. i think i guessed agility 6 but i was wrong and i died lmao

- got back to the den and killed all the slavers finally. feels good man. the citizens seemed pleased. one of the bar owners even paid me for it

- suddenly started getting this mysterious message even though i was standing in the middle of the street and my cursor wasnt even on “tell me about things im pointing at” mode. i have no idea what this means

- went down to redding. the first thing i see is this kid

- as if that werent enough, a bartender and a shopkeep both refused to properly speak to me and kicked me out of their places just for having a ghoul in my party. redding is on my shit list

- its a mine town and i was asked to help get one part of the mine up and running again. theres a chip missing and also the mines are full of “critters”. it turns out redding is kind of the place where the politics between multiple factions starts to become more noticeable. there were hints of it between vault city and ncr, but redding is a small town with literal gold mines underneath it, and the chosen one gets to decide who to put in charge of the mine once they get it back in working order: the crew that wants redding to join the ncr, a faction thats aiming for expansion and prosperity and ruling out as much criminal behaviour as they can, or new reno, a vice city ruled by a bunch of competing families living in casinos and bars. considering the one time i went to new reno my car was immediately stolen i think id be in favour of the ncr side even if it were the ncr as they become in new vegas. there has been an undertone of “the ncr wants to bring as many towns into the fold as possible and enforce their laws across all of the state” in other places, but you get more of an active say in it, here. a precursor to the major mojave changing choices you get to make in new vegas

- i got a bit ahead of myself there with the politics and rpg game design talk. i didnt even mention yet that the critters in the mines were aliens

yeah. THOSE aliens. at first i thought it would be just a little easter egg and the rest of the critters would be a mix of rat variants or maybe id finally see some deathclaws but nope its all aliens

they were kind of reminiscent of deathclaws though. they were certainly on the perceptive side and while they didnt hit as hard as a deathclaw, it was easy to get swarmed by a lot of them and still take lots of damage fast. for the first time while playing the classic games i had to pull a stealth move. i do it occasionally in new vegas but kind of felt like in these old games going in alone was a quick way to die. but it worked wonderfully. i left my companions on one level of the mine and then me, my sniper rifle, and my mediocre but decent enough sneak skill went and cleared out the rest with no trouble at all. aim for the eyes and all that. im not sure how sneak criticals work in these games but theyre effective

also i inspected one of the corpses just in case there would be more flavour text and just

fair enough.

- once i finished up small quests in redding, i continued to new reno. i kind of still didnt want to do anything there tbh it all kind of seems like Bad Karma stuff going on here. but i needed that one part in order to help out broken hills. pretty much got the thing and left again, just like last time.

- finally got a deathclaw! in was in the mine where i fixed the broken hills air purifier and it was called “lesser deathclaw” which makes sense because i killed it in one shot. a very easy first deathclaw encounter

- after finishing up most of the broken hills stuff i went back to the ncr because id literally only done the main quest and then taken off again. except everyones like “well we have this problem but dont ask me about it youll need to talk to this specific dude” and I Cannot Figure Out How To Get To Him

- so instead i drove west until i hit san francisco just for the hell of it. i just wanted to know where it was. and also i want to get into the brotherhood asap for power armour and special stat implants tbh but the brotherhood dude asked me to fucking infiltrate navarro alone and im not super prepared for that, first of all, and second of all i really feel like anything to do with the brotherhood and enclave is solidly “act 2″ stuff and this is fallout so you can do whatever you want but for the sake of a good First Time Playing story progression it makes sense to finish the whole vault 13 geck thing first u kno

- but those ncr quests were bothering me and so i went back and continued trying to figure out what i was missing, which ended up being that im just. allowed to ask the guard to be let in. i could have sworn the previous time i tried to interact with someone on the other side of a force field i got the “you cannot get there” message so i just ASSUMED... BUT. not in this case, it seems. before i even got to that though i did the caravan run for him thats available through a merchant in town and thought that would be fine and easy and might make working for the dude easier. in the first game, i escorted a caravan once and we just had to kill one pack of raiders and that was it. nothing to worry about. [freeze frame] little did i know this would be the worse mistake i ever made

- first of all i got the second dream sequence just as we left ncr. pretty sure im still several months away from the last of them but it did remind me that Time Is Advancing, SECONDLY there were like 6 encounters along the way and two of them had super mutants & abominations, one of them had multiple deathclaws (tough ones this time), and the others were raiders and such. it was all i could do to keep myself and my companions alive, especially against the super mutants holy fuck. after a truly harrowing journey, we made it to the caravan destination, redding, and we were without the car. i never thought i would miss the car so, so much. walking from redding back down to ncr took FOREVER and the encounters were near constant. once again, keeping everyone alive was not easy. cassidy especially was having a lot of trouble; one of the encounters included him getting absolutely swarmed by centaurs and having to run out of combat while saying things like “my heart is giving out!”. HARROWING. eventually we made it to new reno, which is about half way between redding and ncr to do some trading and take a damn breather, but we still had just as far to go and time was ticking faster than it had since we first got the car. everything happens so much. i think overall, this took like 2 months. before the brahmin run i was like “i have SO MUCH time” but after the brahmin run i was like “okaaaay time to get back to the main quest then i guess”. not to mention that i felt like doing something Different after that, so in the end i never even went to talk to that one dude

- so!!! vault 13. the vault has new inhabitants and i love them

hell yeah!!!! they were all so nice and cute. i was even allowed to go into the deathclaw mother’s cave and talk to her, though my companions had to stay outside. there were some humans living here, including a mother and daughter who’d found safety with the deathclaws, a person who’d been at vault 15 before and i had a pleasant talk with, and a terribly depressed man whom the deathclaws were trying to help, even by way of medication. these deathclaws are so good they are So Good. 

- and here we have...... a new companion!!! hello there pal

i had to leave lenny behind in order to recruit goris, but how am i to resist a deathclaw friend? i figured vault 13 with all these lovely deathclaws would be a perfectly safe spot to leave him for the time being [cue dramatic irony if anyone reading this has played the game themself]

- i offered to help the deathclaws fix their computer, because the voice recognition was broken. popped over to new reno, got the thing, went back, the deathclaws love me

- i went right to arroyo with the GECK and discovered that my entire village was killed or taken by the enclave! ay! i already kind of knew this is what happens no matter how long you take getting back with the GECK (ive read that even if you speed run to vault 13, you still always get the last dream sequence after that says everyones dying and even so it wouldnt really matter because the enclave ends up being the problem, not the lack of water and food rip). in retrospect, i guess this means theres no point in rushing and its beneficial to stick around in places and gain as much xp as you can to level up. i suppose if you dont get the car as soon as possible youd run out of time a lot faster. but even if the outcome is the same i still Feel Bad for not going faster in a roleplay sense, you know so its fine im glad i continued as soon as i felt prepared and equipped to do so. in these classic fallout games i certainly felt more compelled to advance the main questline for the sake of the people waiting for me waaay more than, say, the main questline in a game like skyrim. dragons are rising all over the place and killing tons of people and the fate of the realm rests on the dragonborns shoulders? yeah ill be there in a year leave me alone. i like that the urgency in fo1 and fo2 is felt honestly even if you have a lot of time left or the enclave will show up and ruin everything no matter how long you take

- since i was already so far north, i came back south by way of another round trip through the towns with decent merchants to unload some more inventory because im constantly overloaded, cassidy is constantly overloaded, the car trunk has no space, i need to Stop Hoarding. at vault city, goris told me he sensed his pack was in trouble and said he needed to leave. i didnt really think that much of this, just thought it might be a minor thing. it was not a minor thing. 

- since goris left and lenny was also back at vault 13, i stopped in broken hills to recruit marcus. we went back to san fransisco, i left all my companions with the brotherhood guy who wanted me to solo infiltrate navarro and took off on my own

- cue me making the following hard save:

- as expected, the road to navarro alone was not easy. the first time i did it, i encountered centaurs that heavily irradiated me before i was able to kill them all on my own, and then an enclave patrol that just obliterated me. the second time i did it, i encountered the cafe of broken dreams special encounter!! which means i could get dogmeat from the first game :D unfortunately i couldnt keep him. the whole point of this trip is to be without companions, after all, but the cafe stayed on my map so i can go back for him if i want to

- finally got to navarro and was able to convince a guy at a gas station that i was a recruit. he gave me a password, but then when i tried to go inside, he got all “this is private property, leave”. idk what i did wrong but whatever i killed him. it didnt turn anyone hostile because they werent close enough to see or hear it. i think maybe the greeter was directing me elsewhere and i just missed it? it was nighttime, so its possible the darkness made me not see it properly. to reference the enclave remnants quest in new vegas again, one of them (i think its cannibal johnson) mentions the sergeant finding a recuit out of uniform and im assuming thats implied to be the chosen one. i figure there was a way for me to get in on the ground level where that incident would have happened, but instead i went down into the basement and geared up there instead

- infiltrating navarro ended up being on par with exploring the glow. theyre both atmospheric and scary as hell, just in different ways. the glow is more environmental, more “if my rad-x wears off ill probably die of radiation poisoning within a minute”, and navarro is more about being undercover, more “if i say the wrong thing to the wrong person i might reveal myself and be alone against an entire base of enclave soldiers”

- but i pulled it off okay. the first person i encountered was suspicious because i wasnt in armour but when i said i was new they told me to go gear up in the armoury, like i mentioned, which gave me my first suit of power armour and also a bunch of other goodies. i released a trapped intelligent deathclaw, got put on guard duty by the sergeant (who patrols around and will force you back into place if he sees you somewhere else. it was very scary), aaaaand.........

dog dog dog dog!! his previous owner was super shitty and had a soundproof lab because he ran gross experiments. he disabled the robodog for biting him and you can find a part to fix him and also kill the scientist (thanks to the soundproof room no one else is hostile) and take k-9 with you instead :D my dog now, asshole

- here are the overly cautious save files i made while navigating navarro and feeling like things would go bad any second

- got back to san fran, gained access to the brotherhood bunker which is super small, just an outpost really, but it had brotherhood power armour which i immediately passed on to sulik because i desperately want him to make it out of this game alive. and it also had the special stat implant computer and i was able to take charisma right away. i think i must have picked the module up in navarro? i didnt know what it was when i grabbed it so i didnt take much note of it. i didnt even know that in this game you need the modules in order to get the stat upgrades. but boosting my charisma by one did indeed allow me another companion, so i was able to bring everyone with me even though i also had k-9. also the computer had a kind of ai named “ace” and told me they were lonely. god damnit :( ill come visit u as much as i can, ace. they said some really sad stuff about artificial intelligence developing mental disorders god i didnt ask for these feelings

- then the enclave showed up and killed my new brotherhood friend while i was out shopping. enclave can you fucking stop

- decided to go back to vault 13 bc i wanted goris back but the old military base the vault dweller blew up was on the way, so stopped there first

- there were a ton of wolves around and at first they didnt mind me passing through so i got right up on the door and all the rubble from the explosion and then suddenly the wolves all swarmed together and attacked us. wolves nooo

- marcus threw a flare at the wolves. my throwing skill across both games has been very bad and also im stubborn and cant be bothered to equip flares so this was literally the first time id ever seen a flare in use. incredible. thanks marcus for showing me this mechanic i refuse to use myself

- the military base was full of rats, super mutants, and some dead enclave soldiers. we fought through the first two levels but left the third alone because my companions had been taking some heavy hits and were kinda soaking up my stimpacks. didn’t really matter, i got another set of power armour and another stat implant module so i feel like i got the best the military base had to offer for the time being. i can go back later if i really want to. gave the power armor to cassidy. marcus cant wear armor, being a super mutant, and ofc k-9 cant either so i officially had enough power armour for every member of the party who could actually equip it

- made it back to vault 13 to discover that the enclave came by and slaughtered all the deathclaws. ENCLAVE. STOP. all thats left are blood stains on the floors. im so sad. goris was still alive, though, and luckily so was lenny. i was worried for a second that the map would be effectively reset somehow and hed be gone but he was still there. i left marcus with him so they can pal it up in a nice vault that is. now. all theirs. :( and took goris back with me instead. 

- travelled back to san fransisco. i still hadn’t done much in either san fran or new reno. i know i missed a companion in new reno but from what ive heard i wont like him nearly as much as the crew i have now. if i could take another on, id would be marcus or lenny still, so. also i think you can get a robobrain as a companion from a location you only get through a quest but im not sure?? what that is. its fine. again, i really like the crew i have. 

- the captain of the ship that will take the chosen one to the enclave wont chat unless you get some reputation, so i talked to a fella who gambled away his spleen while drunk. yep. another amazing quest, honestly.

not quite on par with the ghoul mummy quest, but its up there man. its up there.

- NOW the captain is willing to chat and tell me what to do to get this ship going. it requires a couple things from navarro and vault 13, and fuel. luckily some of that was already done. unluckily, simply getting fuel proved to be on the complicated side. the main faction of san fran has all the oil and obviously they wont just hand it over, i had to do some stuff for them. they wanted the same item the brotherhood dude wanted and since brotherhood dude just made a copy, i still had the original and could immediately pass it over. cool. the second thing they wanted was for me to kill the leader of the enemy faction. im not normally the type to go in guns blazing without seeing if theres something i can do for the other side and maybe resolve things peacefully, but the hubologists are. unsettling. and remind me of the children of the cathedral from the first game. i did try talking to the leader first and his only offer was to get me to kill the shi leader instead and i wasnt about that so. had some fun shooting my way out of there

- the shi allowed me to have the fuel and now all the citizens in the streets have much nicer floating dialogue. before it was stuff like “are you a spy?” and “leave us alone” but after taking out the hubologists its stuff like “guess youre alright after all” and “you did a good thing for us” so i guess..... thats good. still not sure if there was a peaceful way of handling things or if it really was simply “pick a side” but from the reaction, i think i made an okay decision

- to install the parts on the ship i had to go below deck and found a shit ton of aliens, centaurs, and floaters. it was a real pain in the ass tbh, these enemies are only hand to hand combat so they swarm you and you cant MOVE and its so hard to see whats going on bc the outlines all overlap. they suck. there was a lost person down here as well that i could help back up to the deck

- and with that all squared away, off to the enclave oil rig!

you got it, cassidy. there’s my endgame crew: sulik, cassidy, goris, and k-9. mightve been a good idea to bring marcus instead of k-9 but. dog. his damage output isnt the greatest but sometimes he knocks people over which can be helpful.

- there was a terminal right inside that i could use to disable some defence systems but anything more than that was above my skill level, it seems, and i got locked out. i took a staircase down to the next level and found my tribe as well as the inhabitants of vault 13 whod been there before the deathclaws took residence. we shot our way through a ton of enclave soldiers and scientists but luckily it seems that defence disabling i did meant some robots on this floor never attacked

- that said, i still lost goris almost immediately on this level. while most of the robots had been disabled, the turrets were not and they sure can do some mean damage. one of them took goris out in one hit. rip deathclaw friend

- i couldnt free everyone right away, the leader of the vault 13 folk told me the best bet would be to disable the power generator 3 floors below.

- the next floor down included a maze with electric floors. it was. troublesome. after a couple attempts i ended up leaving my companions outside the maze and working through it myself until i was able to get rid of the electric floors, at least, so we werent all constantly taking damage while i figured this crap out. there were two supply rooms on either side of the maze as well so i got some more useful items AND another geck. ive got two now, incredible. for some reason the guards in both siderooms werent armed at all??? i pretty much stood in the doorway which allowed only 2 of them to get close enough to attack and even then they were punching and kicking which isnt very effective when your opponent is in advanced power armour so. that fight was more time consuming than stressful or anything

- after that is a floor with very powerful enclave soldiers protecting the president. in contrast to the unarmed losers on the previous floor, these guys had energy weapons and miniguns and shit. did not go well the first couple times. i ended up doing kind of a cheese thing which was going down alone, getting a sneak critical on one guard, and then sneaking back up the staircase, ending combat. eventually enough guards were coming over to investigate that sneaking was no longer possible so that method only worked a couple times but after that i brought my companions down with me and we worked our way through everyone whod been alerted. 

- then i stopped to do some healing maintenance before figuring out the best and safest route to the president and............. the game crashed. this was the first time either classic game crashed on me. i dont think it liked me spamming “heal yourself” dialogue with cassidy or something. or maybe its completely unrelated. i HAD been bouncing up and down staircases a lot so maybe the frequent loading was unappreciated

- so we had to redo some of the fight but luckily id been saving a lot bc i wasnt sure if my weird tactics were gonna get me in a rough spot haha

- met the president. killed the president. killed the presidents vp and secretary. fun times. its at this point that you get the most clear idea of what the enclave wants to do: kill every mutant, but not just full mutants but anyone who has been exposed enough to the outside world with all its leftover radiation that theyre “less than human” so basically they want to kill the entire world except themselves and the people who were still in vault 13. it seems to me at this point, most vaults have either opened naturally, been forcibly opened, or have metaphorially or literally self-destructed so yeah good plan, enclave. there is no one left by your shitty standards and also get over yourselves, mutants are the Best. have you seen lenny and marcus? have you?

- when dealing with the pres i tried out a new gun i got off an enclave guard and holy shit

im not as accurate with it as i am with the gauss rifle but damn

- you can convince a scientist in this area that what theyre doing is bullshit and to give you the fev cure and also cure your village/the vault 13 inhabitants before flooding the oil rig with fev to kill everyone else. this seems like its a really handy and useful thing to do but on this particular run, both cassidy and i died and when i went through the next time, this scientist joined in the fighting and i wasnt able to talk to him again. oh well

- the next floor had the power generator. i put an explosive near it and took off. the path back up to the top floor drops you in an area i never bothered to clear on the way in and we were Obliterated. i tried a few times but seriously this floor was tough as hell. i started doing the stealth thing alone again and that is when i discovered that if you dont have your companions with you, you can just walk through most areas because youre in enclave power armour. i am a Fool. everything could have been so easy!!! i could have left everyone chilling on the top floor, gone off to take care of stuff in simple style, and waltzed back out to the boss fight. but it was too late. i had to reload pre-destroying the generator anyway so this time i did indeed leave my companions in peace while i took care of it and it was so much easier. god. goris could have survived this easily if id done this in the first place. oh well, next time ill know exactly what im doing i guess. 

- so with the countdown going and only the frank horrigan fight left, i talked my way into getting an enclave group to join my side. youre supposed to be able to access the terminal here to get his own turrets to turn on him as well which presumably makes for an easy fight but OF COURSE this is the computer i fucked with when i first arrived and got locked out of. i had the enclave group support but let me tell you. they were not the most effective. they were a distraction at first, but i still only made it out of this fight with almost no stimpacks and one less companion. cassidy died here, unfortunately. in the middle of the fight i had to loot his corpse for all the stimpacks id given him because i needed them for myself, it turns out. it really was tough, and i also ended up using chems for the first time. i dont like using chems in fallout, generally, but i was willing to take whatever edge i could to actually finish the game

- a couple of the enclave people on my side survived, and sulik and k-9 were ok as well. we headed for the exit with about 5 minutes left on the countdown to destruction. classic fallout protags really have a habit of blowing shit up

rest in pieces!!!!!

- cue ending slideshow. to summarise: the arroyo villagers and the remains of vault 13 used the geck to settle a new community together, the den, modoc, and san fransisco simply prospered well, gecko was taken over by vault city because i optimised the power plant and i suppose that caught vc’s interest but vc ended up withering away themselves and were taken over by the ncr so i hope that means my ghoul friends were eventually free again, redding joined the ncr as well, broken hills dispersed peacefully (and we know from nv the super mutants from there settled happily in the mojave), ncr and vault 15 did well and expanded, the vault 13 deathclaws were unfortunately killed by the enclave and the end card kinda blamed me for it :(, new reno stayed exactly the same because i never bothered to do much there oops, and while there were no ending cards for it, we know from nv that the ncr took over navarro pretty shortly after the enclave oil rig fell. 

- and there you have it! sulik, k-9 and i were deposited back on the docks of san fransisco and i now have the option of finishing things i didnt do before (like new reno) and/or exploring around gaining levels until i either reach 99 or im bored. i will check out new reno and prob go chat up some of the major characters who may have new things to say now that the enclave is gone and TOTALLY NOT get distracted for ages by fallout week and replaying the entirety of fallout new vegas which was really great now that ive played both classic games. oops- anyway, picked up lenny and marcus from vault 13 since sadly, my party was halved by the oil rig adventure. in future playthroughs i think it would be kinda cool to assemble all the companions and leave them hanging out in vault 13 when theyre not with me like how you can send everyone to the lucky 38 in nv

- started driving around to places with good merchants again because as always i am overencumbered. i lost some good shit on the oil rig when cassidy died because sulik and i could not carry it :( first stop was ncr for selling shit and checking in with tandi. she wouldnt speak to me and her bodyguard/secretary dude also told me to fuck off. kind of thought they would be willing to comment on the enclave deal but i guess not, fine.

- then back to vault city, where i DID get new dialogue about how awesome i am and was also instructed to go log my exploits in the vault 8 terminals. i put my pip boy in the terminal and got some behind the scenes info as well as a cheeky hint to go look at a certain other terminal which, when interacted with, gave me so much xp i instantly levelled up. i did it twice more and levelled up even more. what the heck. incredible. all this levelling up would have been even better if id had marcus and lenny with me because especially marcus has not travelled long enough with me to completely level up BUT EARLIER ID TRIED TO BARTER and the people CALLED FOR THE GUARDS and everyone WENT HOSTILE because i had a super mutant and a ghoul in my party HEY VAULT CITY JUST A REMINDER I HATE YOU

- whatever. i decided to drive around unlocking the rest of the map even though im pretty sure there are no new locations, it just looks nice to have it all coloured in properly. got some combat encounters on the way and prior to dealing with the enclave i tended to skip ones that seemed too dangerous but now im like COME AT ME this party is 3 ppl in power armour, a cyber dog, and a super mutant, with guns that will disintegrate you. TRY IT

- one of the encounters i got was this fucking incredible thing:

this person just kept saying “oil can” over and over so i grabbed the can off the ground, used it on them, and then they opened up dialogue to thank me, saying theyd been stuck there for ages, and then walked off. lmao what a wild encounter. curious that theyre in enclave armour. did they find the armour and not have training in proper use and management? is this a former enclave employee that just fucked up? who knows

- speaking of former enclave i totally forgot that when i went back to ncr i talked to a doctor there and got new dialogue to ask if he knew about the enclave and it turned out to be dr henry, one of the remnants and eventual residents of jacobstown o: i DID notice they had the same name but i assumed henry would have been at navarro like the rest of them. turns out he had a falling out with the enclave before everything went down and the remnants left to the mojave together

- based on the end clip, i wasnt sure if id find my village in arroyo or not. the voiceover described the new settlement as “miles away from their old home” or whatever but that might have been about the vault 13 ppl specifically, which arroyo IS far away from. also its not like the settlements that disbanded or anything in the slideshow already look like that post-storyline so really i did not know what to expect or if i could actually access my people again. unfortunately, the bridge to arroyo was still destroyed and everything still looked pretty bad up there. so i guess we do not get to know where everyone eventually went

- i still had an outstanding quest in broken hills as well. first of all, a sentient plant wanted to be moved to a different garden which was a simple thing but required a shovel that i didnt have at the time. it was p funny, i went up and immediately used the shovel and the plant was like “dude dont just start digging me up give me some warning first” IM SORRY. but yes i talked to the plant and then moved him and then he gave me a hint on how to defeat that scorpion at chess that i was playing against ages ago. also, one of the ghouls in broken hills is the son of set, the ghoul leader of necropolis from the first game. if you get him a bunch of stuff he’ll eventually tell you the location of some “treasure” that ends up being bottle caps, the currency of the first game. kind of weird that they went back on the bottle caps as currency thing in fo2? i wonder why. glad the new games have caps again. but anyway the chosen one was not amused by getting caps instead of money lmao the caps were in a well so you have to enlist some help and then you get so riled up about it being caps instead of money you forget to help the guy back up

- OKAY. NEW RENO.

- i went to talk to this myron bloke ive heard so much about since i know hes a possible companion and god he annoyed me so fast

- this is the first time ive ever pissed off a talking head enough for the animation to change to their “angry” face i think. i once pissed off killian darkwater in the first game but i have no idea what id done to cause it since it was after id already worked with him and it wasnt nighttime or anything i think it was a bug idk but with myron i was intentionally smartassy with him bc he was just SO ANNOYING and also hes the creator of a drug that has fucked up a lot of people and he doesnt seem to even understand what hes doing?? or care??? not to mention hes got slave labour. when i saw that going in i was kinda feeling like id be more likely to kill him than ask him to join my party (which was already full anyway, i really had no intention of bringing him along) but huffs i dont think theres a quest attached to that kind of thing so it would probably just be considered assault/murder and maybe get more people hostile than im willing to deal with. so. i just left

- so that aspect of new reno sucked as expected but then!!! THEN!!! i became a BOXER! i convinced a guy named stuart little to hire me as the lone woman boxer, he gave me a list of nicknames to choose and i decided on “hurricane” and then i beat the hell out of a guy

this is the second guy i fought, after id gained some popularity and i fucking killed the dude. i killed him. i was really scared for a second that id have to fight the entire room but they didnt even care, accidental death is just something that happens in this line of work sometimes i guESS?? okie doke. but after literally murdering a man in the ring i decided to take a break from boxing

- theres a dude in new reno that i spoke to once ages ago and im not actually sure what his deal is but i talked to him again since last time he passed out and it looked like hed finally got back up. he had new post-game fourth wall breaking dialogue and he gave me a book that acted a lot like the terminal in vault city, it gave me a shitton of xp AND levelled all my skills to 300%, which is the highest they can go. holy shit?? im just. as op as possible now. nothing can stop me.

- so with my newfound opness i decided to start working for whichever of the new reno families seemed the least shitty. the wrights are by far the easiest to talk to; the bishops are practically impossible to communicate with in any meaningful way, the salvatores arent bad but sure do have twitchy trigger fingers, and the mordinos seem sketchy as hell in general and are the ones already mostly in charge. the wrights wanted me to investigate the murder of one of the familys sons and it turns out one of the other families poisoned him. then they sent me to the sierra army depot to look for weapons, presuming there might be a fight with the other families. the wrights seem nice enough, all they really want to do is protect their family, not necessarily fuck everyone else over so. alright. and i really wanted to get to the sierra army depot one way or the other

- it ended up being even cooler than i expected. its surrounded by turrets which didnt stand a chance now that im op as hell, and the doors are super sealed shut so i got to fire a massive howitzer gun at it to blast them open. i felt really cool

- inside are lots of robots but again, 300% science skills means hacking everything without problem. this place has a LOT of amazing loot. most of it is useless to me now but i did pick up a lot of stimpacks and other drugs that are valuable and weightless so why not. i also found a cookie. doesnt seem to have use but hey, i have a cookie now.

- turns out an ai here wants to get out and see the world, and tasked me with making a robobrain body for it. this involved finding biogel and looting other robobrain corpses and such for parts. also there are terminals where you can literally harvest a variety of brains and other organs. i know robobrains and other splicing was being done at big mt. but it looks like a lot of that stuff was happening here, too. ive got a human brain in my inventory now, as well as an eyeball that i can use to give me retinal scan access. im not sure why the eye is just. there. actually. ALSO there are holodisks you can pop into your pip boy to learn about some old world shit and it was actually fascinating. it was all great but as a canadian and a lore gremlin, this was my fav part

there is SO MUCH going on here. so much. god. all the info in these disks was incredible. the entire location was really fucking interesting and i loved searching and reading everything. i saw something about like. viruses/plagues and stuff on one of the terminals but i couldnt see everything before it shut down, im gonna have to reload a save or just. keep it in mind for future playthroughs i guess. amazing

- but back to the ai thing. i assembled “skynet” a robobrain body and was able to recruit them. unfortunately i already had a full party, so theyre still chilling there. eventually ill need to drop off a couple companions at vault 13 or something and grab not only skynet but dogmeat, who is still at the cafe of broken dreams on my map, just waiting for me to return.

- so when i went back to the wrights, they said i was now part of the family and i got to take a name with them just like i did when i became a boxer. there were a lot of really good and funny names available, but since i tend to prefer long range weapons and stealthy combat, heres what i went with

- id had a quest for the salvatores but didnt finish it before becoming part of the wright family and now when i go back to them, theyre pissed and attack me haha WELL ALRIGHT i guess that makes sense but i think that also means im pretty much done with new reno already. i suppose if youre methodical about it, you could work for all the families until the end of each branch, like you can do with the factions of new vegas until you piss them off too much by working with others etc but i did not plan anything going in. its cool though, i like the wights well enough. theyre the only family that didnt outright threaten me or something so its all good. too bad i dont get to see how this would change the slideshow card for new reno in this playthrough. next time, though

- and thats it for real now!! as far as i can tell, ive done everything still available to me unless its something bad karmaish that im not interested in doing in this particular playthrough

- another random thing: since i did a lot of driving around the map just because, a fair bit of time has passed in-game and my age went up. the game actually kept track of how much time has passed and acknowledged my birthday. thats actually SO GREAT

if you read all of this, thats p incredible. this is long as hell. thx ily

that was really a wild ride and i loved it. its so much bigger than fo1, such an enormous expansion, both in gameplay and in lore. the world really does develop massively between both games, and i found the tone shift to be very interesting. the first game, in my opinion, is definitely post-apocalyptic, as the name calls it, and even dystopian. its very dark and creepy feeling, and the music really backs that up. some of the music tracks are creepy as HELL (”the vault of the future” always creeps me out, especially when it plays in vault 22 in nv god and “city of the dead” really does make you feel the way the title suggests). the first game nails a desolate wasteland atmosphere incredibly well. 

the second game, though, is what id call post-post-apocalyptic. there are a lot more proper settlements with a lot more people to talk to and do quests for. in the first game, shady sands is smaller than modoc, the tiny farming village. in fo2, ncr territory is massive and incredibly well off, with vegetation and force fields as security and shit. people are making it work, in fo2. but the further we get from the old world, the more things change, too. tribal culture is a thing. many mutants of the wasteland have settled down well, now that theyre away from the influence of the master. post-war chems have been invented. slavery is a new problem. people have been able to survive well enough that theyve gone back to age old ways of being shit to each other. people do things not to survive but for profit or fame or just because they want to. you, the player, can have sex on multiple occasions in multiple ways for multiple reasons. the world is full of so much again! the first game is about survival and power struggles and adapting to a new status quo. the second game is about living, and about people. theyre both remarkable in their own ways and do such a good job setting a tone both times. honestly, i dont think i can say, at this point, which i liked better because they were both the best at being what they are. maybe after time and more playthroughs ill settle into a favourite but for now all i can say is both of them were so solid in unique ways.

gameplay-wise i definitely found fo2 more challenging, though once i upgraded to advanced power armour and a gauss rifle it felt like i was at the top of the food chain. something i love about fallout games is you usually start out so squishy and end up godlike, which makes you feel like you progressed as a character while progressing through the story and get to constantly do more and more awesome, badass shit. they also improved some mechanics with the companions that made life a lot easier which was great. my only complaint is that there isnt a single female companion. at best you can argue that certain characters dont have a gender (k-9, skynet, technically marcus as a super mutant but really all the mutants get gender coded anyway, i dont recall there being a mutant who wasnt blatantly male or female aligned, so,,) but pretty much katja is the only female companion across both games. but i suppose ill let it slide bc in new vegas they give us an incredibly diverse selection including both a gay man and a lesbian so alright alright. they improved majorly.

anyway. i already want to replay both games lmao. since i did character creation mostly based on what would make life easy and a more blank slate in terms of personality since i like to go into first playthroughs just doing whatever i feel like at any given time, i might like to actually craft a specific kind of character and do some more serious roleplaying. nice

thanks for reading.... again... since i failed to stop talking after the first time i said it. [finger guns]

[bestillmybeefyheart]

Thank you to @liefsystem for the Ouroboros art, please visit their page for more. http://liefsystem.tumblr.com/post/88865477056/ouroboros-snake-one-first-of-a-set-of-two-i-am ---------- This is an Ouroboros, a snake eating its own tail. It's origins are I believe Greek and the name breaks down to Oura (tail) and Boros (eating). This endless circle represents many things, but to me it represents #Benzodiazepines. Why? Well, they for the most part are an Ouroboros in themselves both in what they do and how to create a loop in your life where you get stuck. Some might call it a Catch-22 but I think Ouroboros is more appropriate. Why does this snake eating its own tail represent this to me? It breaks down like this... We, as anxiety sufferers, we seek some kind of relief, and usually end up self-medicating with alcohol or the more abused and used method, via Benzodiazepines. The way Benzos work, they tell your GABA A receptors to shhhh, quiet down, let us do the work for you. And the receptors stop producing as much Gabapentin, causing your body to also have altered glutamate and adrenal levels as well as serotonin levels. So, your normal level is say 100. But when you take benzos, it slowly drops down to say 10, the other 90 is provided by the benzos while they are in your system. Over time, your liver starts to produce an enzyme that helps it to rid your body of the poison faster, and thus you develop a tolerance, and need a bigger dose. If you don't get a bigger dose, you start eventually to go into withdrawal once it's out of your system. And this withdrawal is where the snake eats its own tail. The side effects of withdrawal from benzos include anxiety, fear, depression, mental fog, electric shocks in your brain as neurons misfire, and worse. Your mind at first can tell when what it feels is a legitimate reason to be anxious, vs something silly like sitting on the sofa and suddenly you are at 130BPM heart rate for no reason because your body just leapt into Fight or Flight mode for no reason. It's all chemicals, not real, but it feels 100% real, so does the depression. I never experienced depression before until 2015 when I withdrew from 8+ medications used to heal my GI system. I was having thoughts I would never have, ever. And I had to keep telling myself they werent real, just chemicals, and they'd clear up over time. So, benzos, they do this to you. They go in and tell your millions of GABA A receptors to chill, so they do. And then as your body learns to get rid of it faster, your GABA receptors are still chilling, so that 100 you were at that became 10, is now still 10 without the other 90 to fill in the gaps and make you feel normal. For many people, the withdrawal becomes confused with actual anxiety and can overwhelm you. You think are are having a panic attack or your anxiety is super high because you have anxiety disorder but in fact, it's chemicals fake signaling your body to act like it's got a high anxiety level when it really doesnt. When you get to this point, where you have to take Xanax every 4-5 hours every day all day, you think its anxiety when its actually the lack of the Gabapentin, Glutamate, Serotonin and a Fight or Flight response that sends blood to the areas needed to escape leaving your adrenal system in overload even though you are possibly just quietly watching your favorite comedy. You are not having anxiety, you are having withdrawal at this point. And, ironically, if you were able to stop completely by magic and heal all your Gaba receptors, you'd most likely feel LESS anxiety then you did when you started the drug in the first place. One thing you do NOT want to do is quit Cold Turkey aka CT. This can result in you having Grand Mail seizures, a stroke and death, depending on how much your dose is. Any doctor who takes you off them completely, run away, because they are actually dealing you a deadly hand and you can actually take legal action against them for it, as long as you are dependent and not abusing the drug. Abusers will find most places that drop you do so because you are abusing, and you'll end up buying it on the streets or stealing it or for it, or going to multiple pain management and doctor centers and lying toget your fix. Some people even have their kids and spouse get on the meds and then they take theirs too because their doctor wont let them go any higher in dosage. That is when you are truly addicted and should be very very concerned. So, the snake, benzos, eating its tail, withdrawal, ends up leaving you in this horrible circle where if you stop, you go into withdrawal and have even worse anxiety because your body isn't making all the good stuff it needs to help. And since these receptors are literally in every part of our bodies, you experience symptoms that range from joint and muscle pain, to brain fog, to electric shocks when you close your eyes (which feel like how you feel when you doze off on the sofa and your head falls forwards and you wake up and catch it, imagine being zapped when your head fell forward, that is what its like). This vicious circle does not stop, it actually gets worse if you dont take action to stop it. Your liver keeps getting better at ridding the drug from your system, thus you needing more, and the withdrawal gets worse, making you take more, and you eat your own tail. I have lived life in a state of perpetual eating of my tail for several years now. I've had full on withdrawal every night for several years, Ive had the brain shocks, the muscle and joint pain, and the severe anxiety attacks that cripple you to a point you actually get depressed and think death is the way out and it makes sense. All because your chemicals are out of whack and your mind is lying to you, its telling you what it wants and your body stops knowing which is real and which isn't. This is why many people who stop abruptly commit suicide or try, because their brains are chemically faking them out. And the feelings are so real, you know they are real even though they arent. The only way out of this trap is to taper off slowly at a pace that works for you. There are no quick detoxes, your millions of GABA receptors have to repair and rebuild, wake up and start getting production of Gabapentin and other things back near 100 again. And the worst part, when you finally are done and off the meds, you still can have PAWS (Post Acute Withdrawal Syndrome) and have ups and downs and withdrawal for months or years after. I know no one wants to be reminded of hell, but if you take anything from this post, listen to this... being off these meds is hard, getting off them is hard, but you can do it and find another way to help. And you will find that once off, the anxiety you once felt is lessened or even gone. It's worth trying. Or you will live your entire life eating your own tail.

[alexdmorgan30]

How I Came To "Believe” In Safe Injection Sites

So last night I’m at a town hall event on drug addiction and someone mentions safe injection sites in the audience. My heart begins to pound from having my hand up and hoping to get called on, so I can ask about this, among other topics.  The panel looks around at each other trying to see who will bite first, as it's clearly a controversial topic. Finally, the one “token recovery guy” speaks up, “You know, studies are positive, but people are very opposed to the idea, and the last time we had a discussion about it a fight nearly broke out.”And so, I wanted to get up. And I wanted to have that fight.  But I was taught to cease fighting anything and anyone. What about fighting substance use disorder? I thought my disease was doing pushups? Certainly, this disease is wreaking havoc across our country, especially with the younger generations, and what are we, as a community, prepared to do about it?  Who is fighting on the front lines? While communities claim “not in my backyard” absolution, so do the “anonymous people” who are in recovery in this country. They are told to have no opinion on outside issues. But, to me, this isn’t an outside issue, because the part of me that understands service is the backbone of my recovery, demands something other than pretending that there aren’t options available to people still suffering.  Thankfully, I have met many who are rank and file generals in this fight, however compared to the #’s we could have, it is disappointing, and makes creating change in our communities even more difficult.  Clearly, safe injection options are not a solution, but saying “he or she must not have wanted it enough” when they drop out of the only pathway we are offering, which for mainstream recovery is a 12-step program, is an even less valid answer.  12-step can be successful, alongside other treatment modalities, but it is often seen as “the” solution and not “a” solution.And what about statistics? Research shows that overdose rates decrease around the area of the safe injection site. If this statistic alone isn’t a good enough reason to support them how about that the rate of people who were entering treatment in those areas increased? Look, don’t get me wrong, I was once on the other side of this conversation. I had a lot of misguided beliefs before I entered recovery. I once thought when I was 16 and my drinking career had just begun, that if I could get my dad to give me driving lessons while I was drinking, I wouldn’t have a drinking and driving problem!Clearly being open-minded that my own thinking could be wrong is an important aspect of recovery, and so while I was made to think I should be open-minded about the program, I was indoctrinated to believe recovery was a static black-and-white thing, and that I was a miracle because I didn’t use, and while this may be true, it also underlined another assumption, that those who didn’t make it were not entitled to these miracles.  The idea that there is a level of participation required for someone to enter recovery is not lost on me, but the fact of the matter is, more and more people, especially those from the younger generations, are struggling to find their way in recovery and our answer to the staggering overdose and relapse rates is “they must not have been ready.”  So now what? What do we do with people who aren’t ready? Tell them to go out and give their substances another try? Drugs which could easily kill them in one shot? In my mind, if someone is not ready for abstinence-based recovery it isn’t that they have failed, it’s that they may not have reached that point yet, they may never reach that point, and who are we to say what that should look like.  There are many people who reach a significant “bottom,” only to find themselves using again. Can anyone say, who is honest with themselves, that a “bottom” is what creates recovery? Surely it can help, but there are many who hit that point and beyond, and for those people, while their lives continue to crumble around them, what is available?To me, this is why we need to offer as many solutions to this problem as we can. Not offering alternative methods like safe injection sites, or medically assisted treatment, is like saying to someone who has diabetes they can’t go to the hospital for support, or shouldn’t have to take insulin, they should just use their higher power, and if they can’t clearly, they don’t want to be healthy enough.Change is possible without necessarily being at a point of relying on grace only. While I believe in grace and have my own stance on faith, I believe this “coveted” winners circle of recovery is an issue and is not saving lives, especially amongst young people.Do I believe willingness is an important key to recovery? Certainly, yet how many of us become willing along our path of using? So why would we not want to create opportunities for the people who are using, to not only stay alive, but be near recovery support services?  When someone has a reoccurrence of use, do we no longer consider them in recovery? Therefore, by that logic, anyone who is in active use has the potential to effect this same change in their lives. Hospitals, fire houses, police stations, med express, anywhere, anytime someone wants out of the cycle, it should be as easy as getting a flu shot. It is that easy to get high or drunk.Finding drugs is way easier than finding recovery, unfortunately, we don’t seem to be making much headway on that stat. It shouldn’t be so difficult to get help, and yet it is. Clearly, we have quite a way to go, and so while we stand at the frontlines arguing for much-needed treatment options, housing options, peer support options for people in early recovery, we need to also keep our eye on how we can affect those who haven’t gotten to that point yet.    So, I didn’t get up and fight at the town hall meeting, because I know that the only way change will be affected is if compassion and reason win over misunderstanding and hatred. The only way we can win, and by we, I mean the parents who lost children to overdoses, and by we, I mean the advocates who mentor peers who end up overdosed in alley ways, and never make it home to their families, is if we can convince society that shaming people is not working and giving them opportunities for change are the best ideas we have currently.   I understand clearly that this option is seen as enabling to some. That we are encouraging people to use by providing needles and a safe place to go. The concept is not lost on me, but current models are not working. Prevention talks often fall on deaf ears, and while it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t continue to try to reach people, it does mean we need to get real about whether we are doing all we can do to help prevent overdose deaths in this country. If someone who is opposed has a better idea of how we can get the people in our communities, who are using illicit substances, out of the shadows and into the light where we can see them and help them, please by all means share it.  To me the big bad wolf in this situation is that we would have to admit as a community, that people in our community, have heroin problems. We don’t like to admit that, and unfortunately it's killing people.  I would argue that whatever motives you have for being opposed to this option, check them against the idea that centralizing use as best as possible helps to a.) measure your community and its needs, b.) provide safety and support to a vulnerable part of the population c.) encourage the next step for people to move on with their lives and d.) minimize the risk to police and health care workers responding to overdoses.  One of these reasons alone in my mind is enough to at least give it a try. Saving just one life means so much, especially if it is your child, your brother, your sister or your parent. Sharing this pain with too many people in too short of a time period is how I came to believe in safe Injection sites. Erik Beresnoy is a father, advocate, and a writer on topics that range from recovery, and spirituality to music and philosophy.  Erik has been an active member of the recovery movement since 2008, when he himself entered recovery, and began to not only repair his life but to also seek help repair his community by working to implement new strategies. His current projects include Empowerment Coaching for the Ammon Foundation, and implementing a transformational program in NYC called Dare to Dream for Synergy Education. He is a certified recovery coach as well as a board member for Rockland Recovery Homes. His other works can be viewed at soberspiritmeditation.com.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8241841 http://bit.ly/2Dc0qgz

[emlydunstan]

How I Came To "Believe” In Safe Injection Sites

So last night I’m at a town hall event on drug addiction and someone mentions safe injection sites in the audience. My heart begins to pound from having my hand up and hoping to get called on, so I can ask about this, among other topics.  The panel looks around at each other trying to see who will bite first, as it's clearly a controversial topic. Finally, the one “token recovery guy” speaks up, “You know, studies are positive, but people are very opposed to the idea, and the last time we had a discussion about it a fight nearly broke out.”And so, I wanted to get up. And I wanted to have that fight.  But I was taught to cease fighting anything and anyone. What about fighting substance use disorder? I thought my disease was doing pushups? Certainly, this disease is wreaking havoc across our country, especially with the younger generations, and what are we, as a community, prepared to do about it?  Who is fighting on the front lines? While communities claim “not in my backyard” absolution, so do the “anonymous people” who are in recovery in this country. They are told to have no opinion on outside issues. But, to me, this isn’t an outside issue, because the part of me that understands service is the backbone of my recovery, demands something other than pretending that there aren’t options available to people still suffering.  Thankfully, I have met many who are rank and file generals in this fight, however compared to the #’s we could have, it is disappointing, and makes creating change in our communities even more difficult.  Clearly, safe injection options are not a solution, but saying “he or she must not have wanted it enough” when they drop out of the only pathway we are offering, which for mainstream recovery is a 12-step program, is an even less valid answer.  12-step can be successful, alongside other treatment modalities, but it is often seen as “the” solution and not “a” solution.And what about statistics? Research shows that overdose rates decrease around the area of the safe injection site. If this statistic alone isn’t a good enough reason to support them how about that the rate of people who were entering treatment in those areas increased? Look, don’t get me wrong, I was once on the other side of this conversation. I had a lot of misguided beliefs before I entered recovery. I once thought when I was 16 and my drinking career had just begun, that if I could get my dad to give me driving lessons while I was drinking, I wouldn’t have a drinking and driving problem!Clearly being open-minded that my own thinking could be wrong is an important aspect of recovery, and so while I was made to think I should be open-minded about the program, I was indoctrinated to believe recovery was a static black-and-white thing, and that I was a miracle because I didn’t use, and while this may be true, it also underlined another assumption, that those who didn’t make it were not entitled to these miracles.  The idea that there is a level of participation required for someone to enter recovery is not lost on me, but the fact of the matter is, more and more people, especially those from the younger generations, are struggling to find their way in recovery and our answer to the staggering overdose and relapse rates is “they must not have been ready.”  So now what? What do we do with people who aren’t ready? Tell them to go out and give their substances another try? Drugs which could easily kill them in one shot? In my mind, if someone is not ready for abstinence-based recovery it isn’t that they have failed, it’s that they may not have reached that point yet, they may never reach that point, and who are we to say what that should look like.  There are many people who reach a significant “bottom,” only to find themselves using again. Can anyone say, who is honest with themselves, that a “bottom” is what creates recovery? Surely it can help, but there are many who hit that point and beyond, and for those people, while their lives continue to crumble around them, what is available?To me, this is why we need to offer as many solutions to this problem as we can. Not offering alternative methods like safe injection sites, or medically assisted treatment, is like saying to someone who has diabetes they can’t go to the hospital for support, or shouldn’t have to take insulin, they should just use their higher power, and if they can’t clearly, they don’t want to be healthy enough.Change is possible without necessarily being at a point of relying on grace only. While I believe in grace and have my own stance on faith, I believe this “coveted” winners circle of recovery is an issue and is not saving lives, especially amongst young people.Do I believe willingness is an important key to recovery? Certainly, yet how many of us become willing along our path of using? So why would we not want to create opportunities for the people who are using, to not only stay alive, but be near recovery support services?  When someone has a reoccurrence of use, do we no longer consider them in recovery? Therefore, by that logic, anyone who is in active use has the potential to effect this same change in their lives. Hospitals, fire houses, police stations, med express, anywhere, anytime someone wants out of the cycle, it should be as easy as getting a flu shot. It is that easy to get high or drunk.Finding drugs is way easier than finding recovery, unfortunately, we don’t seem to be making much headway on that stat. It shouldn’t be so difficult to get help, and yet it is. Clearly, we have quite a way to go, and so while we stand at the frontlines arguing for much-needed treatment options, housing options, peer support options for people in early recovery, we need to also keep our eye on how we can affect those who haven’t gotten to that point yet.    So, I didn’t get up and fight at the town hall meeting, because I know that the only way change will be affected is if compassion and reason win over misunderstanding and hatred. The only way we can win, and by we, I mean the parents who lost children to overdoses, and by we, I mean the advocates who mentor peers who end up overdosed in alley ways, and never make it home to their families, is if we can convince society that shaming people is not working and giving them opportunities for change are the best ideas we have currently.   I understand clearly that this option is seen as enabling to some. That we are encouraging people to use by providing needles and a safe place to go. The concept is not lost on me, but current models are not working. Prevention talks often fall on deaf ears, and while it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t continue to try to reach people, it does mean we need to get real about whether we are doing all we can do to help prevent overdose deaths in this country. If someone who is opposed has a better idea of how we can get the people in our communities, who are using illicit substances, out of the shadows and into the light where we can see them and help them, please by all means share it.  To me the big bad wolf in this situation is that we would have to admit as a community, that people in our community, have heroin problems. We don’t like to admit that, and unfortunately it's killing people.  I would argue that whatever motives you have for being opposed to this option, check them against the idea that centralizing use as best as possible helps to a.) measure your community and its needs, b.) provide safety and support to a vulnerable part of the population c.) encourage the next step for people to move on with their lives and d.) minimize the risk to police and health care workers responding to overdoses.  One of these reasons alone in my mind is enough to at least give it a try. Saving just one life means so much, especially if it is your child, your brother, your sister or your parent. Sharing this pain with too many people in too short of a time period is how I came to believe in safe Injection sites. Erik Beresnoy is a father, advocate, and a writer on topics that range from recovery, and spirituality to music and philosophy.  Erik has been an active member of the recovery movement since 2008, when he himself entered recovery, and began to not only repair his life but to also seek help repair his community by working to implement new strategies. His current projects include Empowerment Coaching for the Ammon Foundation, and implementing a transformational program in NYC called Dare to Dream for Synergy Education. He is a certified recovery coach as well as a board member for Rockland Recovery Homes. His other works can be viewed at soberspiritmeditation.com.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8241841 https://www.thefix.com/how-i-came-believe-safe-injection-sites

[pitz182]

How I Came To "Believe” In Safe Injection Sites

So last night I’m at a town hall event on drug addiction and someone mentions safe injection sites in the audience. My heart begins to pound from having my hand up and hoping to get called on, so I can ask about this, among other topics.  The panel looks around at each other trying to see who will bite first, as it's clearly a controversial topic. Finally, the one “token recovery guy” speaks up, “You know, studies are positive, but people are very opposed to the idea, and the last time we had a discussion about it a fight nearly broke out.”And so, I wanted to get up. And I wanted to have that fight.  But I was taught to cease fighting anything and anyone. What about fighting substance use disorder? I thought my disease was doing pushups? Certainly, this disease is wreaking havoc across our country, especially with the younger generations, and what are we, as a community, prepared to do about it?  Who is fighting on the front lines? While communities claim “not in my backyard” absolution, so do the “anonymous people” who are in recovery in this country. They are told to have no opinion on outside issues. But, to me, this isn’t an outside issue, because the part of me that understands service is the backbone of my recovery, demands something other than pretending that there aren’t options available to people still suffering.  Thankfully, I have met many who are rank and file generals in this fight, however compared to the #’s we could have, it is disappointing, and makes creating change in our communities even more difficult.  Clearly, safe injection options are not a solution, but saying “he or she must not have wanted it enough” when they drop out of the only pathway we are offering, which for mainstream recovery is a 12-step program, is an even less valid answer.  12-step can be successful, alongside other treatment modalities, but it is often seen as “the” solution and not “a” solution.And what about statistics? Research shows that overdose rates decrease around the area of the safe injection site. If this statistic alone isn’t a good enough reason to support them how about that the rate of people who were entering treatment in those areas increased? Look, don’t get me wrong, I was once on the other side of this conversation. I had a lot of misguided beliefs before I entered recovery. I once thought when I was 16 and my drinking career had just begun, that if I could get my dad to give me driving lessons while I was drinking, I wouldn’t have a drinking and driving problem!Clearly being open-minded that my own thinking could be wrong is an important aspect of recovery, and so while I was made to think I should be open-minded about the program, I was indoctrinated to believe recovery was a static black-and-white thing, and that I was a miracle because I didn’t use, and while this may be true, it also underlined another assumption, that those who didn’t make it were not entitled to these miracles.  The idea that there is a level of participation required for someone to enter recovery is not lost on me, but the fact of the matter is, more and more people, especially those from the younger generations, are struggling to find their way in recovery and our answer to the staggering overdose and relapse rates is “they must not have been ready.”  So now what? What do we do with people who aren’t ready? Tell them to go out and give their substances another try? Drugs which could easily kill them in one shot? In my mind, if someone is not ready for abstinence-based recovery it isn’t that they have failed, it’s that they may not have reached that point yet, they may never reach that point, and who are we to say what that should look like.  There are many people who reach a significant “bottom,” only to find themselves using again. Can anyone say, who is honest with themselves, that a “bottom” is what creates recovery? Surely it can help, but there are many who hit that point and beyond, and for those people, while their lives continue to crumble around them, what is available?To me, this is why we need to offer as many solutions to this problem as we can. Not offering alternative methods like safe injection sites, or medically assisted treatment, is like saying to someone who has diabetes they can’t go to the hospital for support, or shouldn’t have to take insulin, they should just use their higher power, and if they can’t clearly, they don’t want to be healthy enough.Change is possible without necessarily being at a point of relying on grace only. While I believe in grace and have my own stance on faith, I believe this “coveted” winners circle of recovery is an issue and is not saving lives, especially amongst young people.Do I believe willingness is an important key to recovery? Certainly, yet how many of us become willing along our path of using? So why would we not want to create opportunities for the people who are using, to not only stay alive, but be near recovery support services?  When someone has a reoccurrence of use, do we no longer consider them in recovery? Therefore, by that logic, anyone who is in active use has the potential to effect this same change in their lives. Hospitals, fire houses, police stations, med express, anywhere, anytime someone wants out of the cycle, it should be as easy as getting a flu shot. It is that easy to get high or drunk.Finding drugs is way easier than finding recovery, unfortunately, we don’t seem to be making much headway on that stat. It shouldn’t be so difficult to get help, and yet it is. Clearly, we have quite a way to go, and so while we stand at the frontlines arguing for much-needed treatment options, housing options, peer support options for people in early recovery, we need to also keep our eye on how we can affect those who haven’t gotten to that point yet.    So, I didn’t get up and fight at the town hall meeting, because I know that the only way change will be affected is if compassion and reason win over misunderstanding and hatred. The only way we can win, and by we, I mean the parents who lost children to overdoses, and by we, I mean the advocates who mentor peers who end up overdosed in alley ways, and never make it home to their families, is if we can convince society that shaming people is not working and giving them opportunities for change are the best ideas we have currently.   I understand clearly that this option is seen as enabling to some. That we are encouraging people to use by providing needles and a safe place to go. The concept is not lost on me, but current models are not working. Prevention talks often fall on deaf ears, and while it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t continue to try to reach people, it does mean we need to get real about whether we are doing all we can do to help prevent overdose deaths in this country. If someone who is opposed has a better idea of how we can get the people in our communities, who are using illicit substances, out of the shadows and into the light where we can see them and help them, please by all means share it.  To me the big bad wolf in this situation is that we would have to admit as a community, that people in our community, have heroin problems. We don’t like to admit that, and unfortunately it's killing people.  I would argue that whatever motives you have for being opposed to this option, check them against the idea that centralizing use as best as possible helps to a.) measure your community and its needs, b.) provide safety and support to a vulnerable part of the population c.) encourage the next step for people to move on with their lives and d.) minimize the risk to police and health care workers responding to overdoses.  One of these reasons alone in my mind is enough to at least give it a try. Saving just one life means so much, especially if it is your child, your brother, your sister or your parent. Sharing this pain with too many people in too short of a time period is how I came to believe in safe Injection sites. Erik Beresnoy is a father, advocate, and a writer on topics that range from recovery, and spirituality to music and philosophy.  Erik has been an active member of the recovery movement since 2008, when he himself entered recovery, and began to not only repair his life but to also seek help repair his community by working to implement new strategies. His current projects include Empowerment Coaching for the Ammon Foundation, and implementing a transformational program in NYC called Dare to Dream for Synergy Education. He is a certified recovery coach as well as a board member for Rockland Recovery Homes. His other works can be viewed at soberspiritmeditation.com.

[somedaypast-thesunset]

im in this like .. cycle i guess. 

i want to reach out for support because i feel a lack of support but to express a lack of support offends people around me (despite their lack of support) and i lose even the smallest amount of support i had 

i’m really sad lingering on feeling depressed. and im trying hard to reprogram my brain to see it as feeling depressed and not being depressed because its like acting out the emotion of depressed as your character and i just want to feel it because im not in a movie. 

i had an issue with my roommates dog while being in immense pain from a stupid cyst and literally no one would help. as i laid on the floor in pain i knew no one would actually help. it wasnt until 11pm that he returned a phone call i made at noon and when i said i was in pain he offered to bring me to his house and take me to the doctors tomorrow. 

but his whole attitude had changed like i was really burdening his life now and i guess he was calling to tell me he was leaving like the next day or somethng and now ive interrupted it. of course he didnt “say” this but it felt heavily implied and i never really felt comfortable being around him. he didnt want to show any affection and seemed to avoid it, slept through the day and had us go to bed at 10pm 

he had mentioned briefly that he would take me to the doctors again today but pack up and leave in the evening. this morning it was the same awkward uncomfortableness and he had like little desire to talk to me. i thought like if that was our last night and this is our last morning i guess it really says alot. like i guess if im ever severely injured he will begrudgingly help me in some way but he’ll have a really shit attitude about it and i can be nothing more than grateful i guess?

i told him i would take myself to the doctors. he said okay. i said i was leaving in 10 minutes and he said okay. i sat feeling really sick and i understand, a bit, that alot of this sickness comes from feeling really alone in other areas of my life. so theres like this giant hole and immediate panic when the person who was atleast occupyng space in the hole leaves. but if i had other people i wouldnt feel such panic - i’m thinkng like wow i’m fucked if i’m actually hurt. or if i get sick. like i cant expect any help from anyone even though they all receive some kind of help from other people. i cant even make a call to anyone and express anything at all without them having to go or do something else in their life that im not apart of. and its not just bad timing -  i could wait and wait and im just waiting for someone to make the time for me and i have to be grateful that anyone would set aside even one hour of their day for me and ive not been around other people who understand the complexities of this. like, of course im grateful. im extremely grateful. thats like all i think about for that hour that thank fucking god there was a single human being willing to give me this time so i could even help myself in some way. 

and its not like i dont give this. ive given soooooooooo much of this an got nothing in return. except that i have to feel super grateful for the hour i get in return for my huge investment into their lives. and its like at nooooo point can i ask my mom for 20$. i cant ask my dad what credit card i should get. or if this person is ripping me off. like i get that i can (an will) do all these things myself but i dont even get the priviledge of receiving valid learned advice from a trusted source - i get jack offs and reddit commenters explaining how a mortgage works. or how to buy a car. or the best tips on a driving test. and when im sad and lonely? i get to turn to strangers on the internet or i guess worse, this. even though its likely no one at all will read this. when im really sick? i make chicken soup for myself. i go to the store for myself. i maybe find a ride to the doctors and mabe get lucky the pharmacy is there too so i dont have to ride the bus.when i feel like everything is chaotic? i return to cats. 

but hey - i’m going to be a “stronger, smarter” person right? thats what it all boils down to. lacking soo much will somehow make me stronger and smarter than the next person who already has these things. doesnt that seem so dumb? to me, i just worked 10x as hard to get to the same place that someone else did with half the work. but im “stronger and smarter” for the effort. i think you’re wiser and more resilient. because you become wise through experience and knowledge of the experience - but you can still be dumb as hell. you arent stronger - you just learned to put up with more; that’s resilience. you couldn’t use resilience like you could use strength. it just means you didnt give up. 

and thats not a negative but when you place it in this light i think it conjures a different respect for the lack of priviledges that it takes to reach “wiser and more resilient’. 

right now im really.... alot of things. i feel sad and angry and frustrated and bitter and envious. im trying to respect other peoples journeys but its leaving me really fucking alone. i told him i was leaving and he said bye. that could very well be our last personal encounter and i guess i appreciate that i left it as is. instead of trying to shape it into something it wasnt going to be, i just accepted that this was the choice he was making. of course, its easier to leave when you disconnect from someone/the things around you. 

i personally feel that this is the end of the relationship and my expectation is that he’ll be gone in the next 24 hours. i think i would prefer to leave our last encounter as this. although he “asked” multiple times how i was feeling or why i didnt feel good - i knew that he wasnt even the person to be talking to about it. how could i explain any of this to him? he has really not understood it and its doubtful he ever will. i expect nothing from him now - maybe i did before. maybe i wanted to have something real with him, like how we pretended to have. and i guess he showed his ‘support’ but like - youre leaving anyways. what happens when youre gone? does it matter? 

i cant ask these questions because theyre already answered. nothing happens, life goes on. you got what you got for the time being, be grateful. 

its not just him i feel this way with - i actually feel this way with multiple people ive been around. i cant talk about these things beacause it implies they dont care. and they do care otherwise they wouldnt have given me a ride or a sandwhich or bus change or sat wth me for an hour or smoked me some weed. BUT NONE OF IT MATTERS TO My ACTUAL LIFE. when you give a homeless man a dollar, do you think you just changed his life? like you changed 5 minutes before he had to go ask for another dollar from someone else because not a single person wants to give him actual legitimate help. just smile and nod. 

ths morning his mother literally shut the garage door on me. i have no idea how she did not hear the door open or the garage door open standing 10 ft away but she literally shut the door and i sat in the dark. i said nothing because no one cares. 

and he bitchs and moans about all these things and its like hes just discovering no one cares  and his solution is to also stop caring for anyone but himself. and its like he doesnt even see this because hes ‘going to get better and help so many people’ but hes not. he literally is not. and its infruiating that he cant even signficiantly benefit one persons life and his solution to this is to stop any attempts and focus just on himself before i guess inviting the world in. 

am i not fucking worthy or deserving? i’m not some runaway kid. i’m not a fucking drug addict. i’m not a single mom. if not me, then who deserves to benefit? i guess everyone above. you know, i didnt add to everyone being fucking dead and deserted with severe trauma and ptsd and little coping skills by taking hard drugs and fucking strange men. i didnt have unsafe sex. but i guess i should have so i could have the attention that other people seem to get for these acts. i stayed “strong” and “smart” and i’m alone and struggling. i guess i deserve to be. 

when i say this its not like i want people to immediately become my family and do all this shit with me and include me an talk to me all waking moments. i want this person who has been in my life but has remained in a neutral position by their own decision to remain neutral as i express the lonliness that i feel being in this position instead of take it personal or trying to make me be optimistic about it. i am sitting with a person and still expressing this - optimism is not what i need. nor do i need to argue that this person hasnt fulfilled the needs i have when they consider themselves a ‘friend”. to be a friend now is to remain in the position youve already taken and allow me the space to now be myself - this sucks. its hard. when i speak, no one is really listening. when i need someone, i have to wait until “a good time” which could be days. and its not just one person. if this one person was doing this - fine. it’s sad but bareable. it’s so many encounters that i feel like im in highschool floating through the halls unnoticed. i have no significance or importance to anything. and its not like oh god i have to be loved and have attention but like theres litereally none. there is zero. nothing. 

thats when “anything” looks better than nothing and you get stuck in even shittier situations.

[amazingviralinfo]

The great metropolis has always been a magnet for writers, whose scrutiny has laid bare towers of issues alongside its grand glamour

I probably moved to New York because of the New Yorker, Dorothy Parker, EB White, the author Cynthia DAprix Sweeney told Interview magazine recently. Sweeney, now a resident of Los Angeles, spent 27 years in New York nursing her ambition to write fiction. This March, her debut novel, The Nest, entered the New York Times bestseller list at No 3, following a publishers bidding war that ended in a seven-figure deal with Ecco. Sweeney has not only made good on her lifelong aspirations, she has also given New York another telling of one its favourite myths: the literary success story.

There is probably no other city in which an author is more feted than New York, and authors repay its attentions with their own. New York is a city where your MFA class might be taught by Zadie Smith, or Jonathan Safran Foer, or where you might find Jonathan Franzen in your local wine shop browsing organic reds (this happened to me). Instilled with what Joan Didion described as the sense that something extraordinary would happen any minute, any day, any month, New Yorks energy is self-conscious. All its streets are famous, they fizzle with performance.

But it is also a city with its own distinct problems, and, like those of a tabloid celebrity, they are available in print. Thanks to its population of writers, who have made the New York novel almost a genre in itself, the city has been examined again and again in recent years through the trauma of terrorism, market crashes and extreme weather, as well as through changes in its traditional communities. Today, if you want to understand the complexities of New York life, its a good idea to read its fiction. The Nest, which follows a group of siblings across Manhattan and Brooklyn as they attempt to resolve the issue of their family trust fund, covers a fair few New York problems, and follows many other authors trying to portray this incredible, resilient city at the dawn of a new century.

The wealth divide

Vulture describes the siblings of The Nest as belonging to a subclass of Brooklynite the trust fund listless. The Plumb family must come to terms with the potential loss of their promised inheritance, and the incongruence of a New York lifestyle and strained finances. This divide of experience between the very wealthy and the rest of the city is something that is handled with humour in books like Kevin Kwans Crazy Rich Asians (2013), or Plum Sykess Bergdorf Blondes (2004). In Hanya Yanagiharas A Little Life (2015), four friends transcend vast differences to support and love each other over decades despite one of them growing up insulated from everything that money could protect him from, including bigotry.

But inherited wealth is also questioned:Lotto, the playwright protagonist of Lauren Groffs Fates and Furies (2015), is a charismatic but credulous child of privilege: Why cant I write about poor people if I was raised with money? In Sarah Gerards Binary Star (2015), Johns family money enables his alcoholism and allows him to live a directionless lifestyle, which feeds his addiction.

Collective grief

I wanted to tell the story of one ordinary New Yorker who is haunted, not just by 9/11, but the fact that New York City is not only a place of repeated trauma, but of the repeated suppression of trauma, said Teju Cole of his novel Open City (2009). His lead character, Julius, takes us on ambling journeys across the city, reflecting on its past and present. At one point, he finds himself at Ground Zero: The place had become a metonym of its disaster: I remembered a tourist who once asked me how he could get to 9/11: not the site of the events of 9/11 but to 9/11 itself.

Coles idea is that New Yorks grief has been forced into hiding, and this is sensed in The Nest, in which an bereaved ex-fireman finds solace in an object only he knows the true value of. It is also apparent in Jonathan Safran Foers Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2006), where a young boy undertakes a secret quest, in order to process memories of his father. Meanwhile, Don DeLillos Falling Man(2007)opens in New York on 9/11, with the city seen through the eyes of a survivor stunned with shock and fear.

Loneliness and new technology

As new technology grows, so does the anonymity of city life: Midtown resident Tao Lins Taipei (2013) namedrops social platforms including Gchat and Goodreads. Though he spends time with friends, and contacts them constantly via the internet, his writing contains a sort of night-vision numbness that speaks to the millennial experience. In Gary Shteyngarts Super Sad True Love Story (2010), and Jennifer Egans A Visit from the Goon Squad (2010), we see New York in a near future, where social media and e-commerce have taken a dystopian turn.

Changing communities

Though the urban landscape of New York can shift rapidly, displacing whole communities, observant writers watch for the traces they leave behind. Barrett, the fading boy genius in Michael Cunninghams The Snow Queen (2014), notices a smell in his Williamsburg apartment as if the ghost that is the building itself cannot and will not believe that its walls arent still bare, smoke-stained plaster, its rooms no longer inhabited by long-skirted women sweating over stoves as their factory worker husbands sit cursing at kitchen tables. At Ground Zero, Open Citys Julius sees haunted ground: Gone too, was the old Washington Market, the active piers, the fishwives, the Christian Syrian enclave that was established here in the late 1800s. The Syrians, the Lebanese and, before that? What Lenape paths lay buried beneath the rubble?

The pressures of art

Art is everywhere in the New York novel, in physical and spiritual form, and museums often provide symbolic backdrops for narrative; not least for Don DeLillo, who opens Point Omega (2010) in the Museum of Modern Art, and has the eponymous performance artist of Falling Man invited to fall from the upper reaches of the Guggenheim at scheduled intervals. The power of art also comes into play for Theo, of Donna Tartts The Goldfinch (2013),and Tommy OToole of The Nest, who both come across masterworks in the aftermath of disaster, and are lured into the same dangerous and life-altering act.

The characters of New York fiction are often grappling with a desire to be celebrated for their art. When The Nests Bea Plumb, a blocked writer once dubbed a Gliterary Girl, is shamed at a literary party, it reflects a belief inherent in books such as The Luckiest Girl Alive (2015) and The Devil Wears Prada (2006) that success in writing offers a way into capital-S Society. In A Little Life, artist JB frets that his painting career is dwarfed by his friends glittering life as an actor. Meanwhile, in The Snow Queen and A Visit from the Goon Squad, two musicians find their voices late in life and experience the redemption of an audience.

[skyquack-blog]

I am in such a bad mood you guy's A survivor story WiLL FolloW Legit this is a story of triumph and survival... Please read this. If i ever post anything important THIS is it so please for me read this!! This is my story and its pretty amazing. :'( Here i want all ya'll judging me right now to read this and think about it for a moment okay... This is what i wish would happen to you ass holes who cant keep you fucking opnions and scruteny to yourself... Okay!! Go back in time and be essentially a "shut in" with no actual friends to hang out with or talk to mostly because your suffering from certin aspects of schizophrenia that you as well as your family arent aware of... so here we are living under a rock way more quiet than the average human being dealing with weird ass issues like hearing voices and feeling like people can hear your thoughts and feel your emptional states so as a result you shut up and keep to yourself all the time... Then for the first time ever since ever you move to town and get yourself a friend who is mind you border line psychotic but she likes you and shes fun... now 6 months of this and suddenly BOOM your pregnant at 17... your baby daddy dont wanna hang around dont seem to give a fuck bout you even tho he does ect... Spend the next 2 years of your life fighting hard core yelling matches breaking things in a desperate ploy to get your baby daddy to fucking come home... Fight like this hard every day damn near for 2 fucking years b4 you finally give up... Then at 20 i want you to be the single mom of 2 children work every day pay all your own bills take care of and try to raise 2 kids all the while looking back on your bad relationship trying to find a new better more loving and equal partner ship (as a parent so young mind you your only 20)... and now here is for the fun part... Your 22 years old now and you found your self a psychopath... yup full on crazy ass mother fucking manipulative beyond your wildest understanding of manipulation im talking weird mk ultra shit going on and you fall head over heels in love... Great things are stupid as fuck by now but hey your in love who care right??? Well they get even dumber for some unknown reason to you still to this day your kids dad and his family decide to rip your 3 year olkd son away from you and your in a state of total SHOCK and cant seem to even think............ Cant even think........... Your still in shock....... Your son is gone. SEVERAL MONTHS PASS B4 your even allowed to talk to him........ your 3 year old son.... its just you the baby and the psychopath and daily texts from your BFF..... You finally push loosing physical custody and not being abel to have ANY contact with your son of which YOU HAVE COMPLETLY TAKEN CARE OF AND RAISED BY YOUR FUCKING SLEF so deep down insode of you it hurts even to simply think about him but now you get to visit CAUTIOUSLY btw.... Are we done yet??? NOPE!!! Alrigh well now your 23 god damn years old you survived a horrible relationship screaming and fighting, having your 3 year old son ripped away from you DATING A PSYCHOPATH (which has its own uneik set of fucking issues btw like rejection on a constant basis as well as being manipulated into self destruction yourself as well as your life without knowing your doing it) Dating a psychopath.... LOOK IT UP and suddenly out of no fucking ware you go through one of THE MOST INTENSE ONSETS OF SCHIZOPHRENIA most people and doctors could imagine happening to somebody... I mean normally people notice little symptoms like hearing voices and shit... Its already a rare brain disorder but its even less frequent for somebody to go through a full blown psychosis... Thats you... That 1 in 1million out of a billion going through a psychosis RAISING 2 CHILDREN IN LOVE WITH A PSYCHOPATH MENDING A BROKEN RELATIONSHIP WITH THERE CONTROLLING ANGRY FATHER ECT... EVERYONE THINKS YOUR HIGH ON DRUGS AND YOUR NOT.... Also not only are you experiencing this intense onset but your BFF ditches you cuz shes a huge attention whore bitch and suddenly you actually need her to be there ONLY for you and she just cant have that in her life so now your alone in the world... AGAIN!! For several years actually... You spend years recovering yourself your personality your ability to properly communicat eand associate or identify with yourself and the world around you because yeah the onset was that bad... Your relearnign and TEACHING YOURSELF how to human agin (nobody knows nobody gives a fuck) it was bad people... really really bad!!! Okay cool you think you have been through enough so quickly right i mean like within a 3 or 4 year time span you've encountered the worst of the worst for the most part loosing your son giving up week days with you daughter DATING A PSYCHOPATH that stupid relationship that was hugely stressful Did i mention that you were working full time paying all yo bills on yo own taking care of yo kiddow by yourself living essentially completly isolated at least 20 minutes to half an hour away from EVERYBODY you know you indapendent as fuck b4 this onset... SOBER dont even drink!! Your good to go... like good to fucking go... But no during this onset you loose your JOB ($10 an hour mind you that you were bad ass at and loved and ready to retire from) you loose your car you loose your house (for the better part of owning a home you cant live in it anymore) you LOOSE YOUR GOD DAMN MIND LITERALLY its gone schizo psychosis took it from you and held you captive no joke... your insane... considering your an adult now and not a child and your less susceptable to things you should be done by now right... NOPE so your by this point LONELY as fuck and kind of clueless cuz why has life been so hard for me man like i didnt intentionally fuck shit up for myself you know... i really honestly didnt... and you have a new outlook on things which is kind of really uneik considering how things have gone for you, your boundaries thanks to the schizo are all fucked up and off but you have managed to like regain certin aspects of your personality enough to feel strong and confident and your head on going itno life full force with hope and determination you got a year and a half of university under your belt ect... your not done... Your addicted to meth right now... yup whole heartedly consuming the shit out of one of the worst drugs IN THE WORLD right now... You know your addicted (your 26 btw) and your doing your absoulte best to quit (have i mentioned thanks to the schizo you pretty much went a year without physical custody of your other kiddo just so you could actually manage that year and a half in college which killed you every singel day to be away from her so that was hard) well even though your really trying to stop like really trying so hard you call 911 one night and ask an officer for help... okay cool your like a fucking METH ADDICT HERO by all tweeker standards lolz Well you go to some friends for help and instead of keeping it in the family they call DFS and even though you have done EVERYTIHG in your power INCLUDING giving you kiddow to friends of the family to look after while you go to rehab ect... yeah now you actually legally lost custody of your kid... The light of your life is gone... YOU ARE ALONE IN THE WORLD NOW... (both your fucking kids have been taken from you OMFG your entire life has been built arounf being a fuckin parent and now your nothing but a drug addict... they say time dont matter but dang a year on meth and my ENTIRE LIFE DISSAPEARED BEFORE MY EYES) you have nobody and nothing to look forward to on a dily baisis now... what do you do though?? By now youd think with all you been through how lonely you are how much of yourself and your life and the people you love that you have lost youd sink into a full blown life destroying meth addction... NOPE you actually get clean... YOU GOT SOBER OFF METH OF ALL DRUGS against all the odds set before you YOU GOT CLEAN (does anybody care nope) god i mean your not a success story at all by now. Not only have you survived being a single mom at such a young age as well as survived an tramatizing schizophreina onset loosing both of your kids and got away from a PSYCHOPATH but now you have survived a fucking meth addiction... JESUS CHRIST YOUR AN INSPIRATION do people think this about you??? NO not at all... your a looser fuck up crazy weirdo... damn and you thought you were doing good... nope... not yet... All you had through all of this was your mom. figures the strongest person you know is your fucking mom. Like nobody has survived as much shit as your mom accept you by this point. Sooo thanks mom for always being there when i needed you the most.. okay cool so here we are 7 fucking years later things have chilled out FINALLY for sure you got this after all that bull shit your pretty much back to normal and you got shit under control... K well i want you to look around and realize that nobody gives a shit... Your a LEGIT survivor and not one fucking person (welp accept oyur mom cuz shes the only one who really knows) gives a shit and people are constantly judging you thinkning you should have a job and be trying harder at life ect... You not doing the mom thing well enough your not doing the stay at home wife thing well enough your not being a productive member of society ect... Go through all that stereotypical DIFFICULT and CHALLENGING as well as RARE INSANITY and loss and then well and then place yourself under as much scrutiny as you can possibly imagin... Look around and realize that all the people in your life (beside maybe your mom) think your a puriah of the system cuz your living off a dissability check (a whopping $500 a month) a crazy weirdo your nothing but an insane weirdo looser lazy person... The only way anyobody will ever have any respect for you is if you get a pathetic $8 an hour job and pull yourself away from life as you know it now and work like the rest of humanity... GET A FUCKING JOB AND BE A BETTER PARENT BECAUSE YOUR A POS int he eyes of a lot of people close to you... CLEAN YOUR FUCKING KITCHEN AND COOK 9 course meals every single day... Your a looser I feel like dying right now... No joke :/ Im having a really bad fucking day~!!!!! Somebody mail me a fucking gold star okay!!