#yes it has been 5 years since i was in crisis therapy and im still complaining about the people i got assigned to

[gay-jewish-bucky]

shitty therapists when you can't logic your way out of inherently illogical mental illnesses

[pivsketch]

bunch of basil stuff from earlier this year and then some. like taggart's compilation of sketches, the earliest/roughest stuff is in the upper left hand corner and it kinda develops from there.

also a page of him back when he was afterburner. almost a totally different guy

Basil facts™ -------------

this got so long. im sorry. he is the main character and my special quiet weird moody boy so of course i have to throw him under the bus to talk about all his psychological problems. im grabbing and shaking you, reader. its important to know that basil sucked and now he still sucks but slightly less and in a different way

"Reformed hyper-competitive asshole" who now exclusively hangs out with the least competitive man of all time (Taggart)

He was a parkour guy in middle/high school and was extremely dedicated about it. Downright passionate. He started a group with his friends and it somehow became kind of a big deal? His parents found out he was not doing respectable sports activity and they moved after his sophomore year, which he will never forgive them for doing. He later got extremely mad about how his friends were running the group without him (lol. get it. because they… sorry) and he had this incredibly messy falling out with them. He has not done or talked about parkour since because he is just that bitter about it.

Both of Basil's parents have very serious careers in business and/or management and the personality types to go with it. Being raised by neglectful control freaks with high standards did not do Basil very well. Also, uh, see above. Unsurprisingly, he thoroughly estranged himself after he became an independent adult. Also unsurprisingly, Basil grew up to be quite an asshole!

It was one of Basil's friends who actually wanted to get into wrestling, Basil just tagged along with him to wrestleschool for moral support (and because he had nothing better to do). He ended up getting really into it. Really really into it. His friend accused him of coming along just to show him up (which… was not entirely untrue) and they got into a big argument about it. His friend quit, Basil stuck with it, and eventually got accelerated into the intermediate class (which Taggart and Chip were in).

He used to have a seasonal crab fishing job, which he quit when he got into wrestling, and then he quit wrestling, so he went back to his seasonal crab fishing job, then quit it again to mill about at home. Nowadays he occasionally helps Taggart do work at their wrestleschool (since they spend so much time using the facilities there anyway). Is it technically wrestling? Yes, but not to Basil, because he's "just helping his friend out." Whatever helps him sleep at night, I guess!!

He still really likes wrestling, but he refuses to do it anymore. He fully psyched himself out of it because he realized that, despite everything hes done in his adult life (estranging himself from his folks, roughing it out on his own, working miserably on a fishing boat for years) he still grew up to sound exactly like his parents, who he hates. You know, just a bit of a majorly crippling life-identity crisis. He'd get over it faster if he just talked with anyone about it or went to therapy (but he wont) (because then what about the story??? the plot??? the narrative??????). Instead, he's just locked himself down into some sort of holding pattern as he tries to casually and nonchalantly absorb how to be a different (better?) person from Taggart, who is the kindest and nicest person he's ever known in his life. Is that love or what? Well, probably not to Basil, because his parents never really taught him that. lol. lmao. he has so many hangups

Basil's known Taggart for like ~5 years now which is probably the longest time he's ever been friends with someone without having a disastrous falling out. Good job Basil! Keep up... the good work... heh :)

He's fine with either bay-zel (like the herb) or bazzle (like the name). For a time he used to arbitrarily pick one or the other just as an excuse to give people shit for getting his name "wrong."

[medranochav]

my moms been living with us for 4 months now. her stay was initially tolerable but is now triggering and I find myself regressing in a lot of ways. Her grief has evolved into torment and per her m.o. she'd like for her issues to take first priority. Except, my sis and I are grown now, and as a therapised household (literally we've all been in counseling, babies included) though we still lean on each other for support, we ultimately don't function codependently.

And beeecause that's not how we grew up, I think my mother is now having to contend with the reality that she has to do the emotional work of surviving her many traumas (and currently her many dramas) on her own. We support her but we can't fix it for her.

Currently, it's a crisis a day and she's spiraling into mini catastrophic states everytime. Which was sufferable at first because despite my labored support, I still maintained my boundaries and didn't adopt her distress as my own. The problem now is the increasing frequency with which these crying spells are taking place. Not to mention the fact that she's been doing so in front of the kids; something that would normally be acceptable because my sis and I make space for feelings (even our own) in our home. The difference being, we do so responsibly. We listen, we talk, give affection and/or space but always with the fundamental knowledge that our emotions belong to us individually and only we can be accountable for them. A gentle reminder that though part of a unit, they still have agency and accountability.

This interdependency makes way for a more compassionate exchange. Whenever they see us cry or be vunerable, the kids have the wherewithal to approach us without attaching themselves to our emotional circumstance. It's an empathy that perceives our emotional reactions as relatable but still not their responsibility. I've seen our work proven time and time again.

One example is when my sister's [redacted] died and the boys spotted her crying on the couch. Without being prompted, they approached her independently, commiserated, hugged and kissed her and shortly after went back to playing on their electronics. It was such a graceful display of emotional validation that demonstrated their love for her without sacrificing their own desires in doing so. Truly remarkable, that at ages 5-8 they maintained boundaries while still being there for their mom.

They're also there for one another but it's seldom a sinking ship. And when emotional support is rejected they respect that as well, without taking it personally [tbh that has more to do with concepts of mandatory consent that we impart on them, but as is evident, it applies. #intersectionality] It's an ongoing practice that I'm proud to be a part of, considering the kids have codependent figureheads in both their maternal and paternal families. WE'RE TRYING TO BREAK CYCLES HERE.

Yes, our home is a safe space for emotional processing but always leveraged with the emotional balance of self reliance, awareness and resiliency. The kids have proven to have the capacity for this and through teaching them, so do we.

It's human to have outbursts, but my mother's pattern is proving to be less intrinsic and more deliberate. She needs an audience in order to experience catharsis. A potentially reasonable behavior except for it's her only one. So it's imbalanced and seeks refuge in the reliance of our total empathy.

Furthermore she's disingenuous in her emotional performances. When approached out of concern, she responds with the proverbial, "I'm ok." Like, its subtle but super manipulative to say that, when we can CLEARLY see she's not. The kids see and hear her, the least she could do is not gaslight them. And I'm not saying her tactics are successful but it exposes the bby's to unnecessary dysfunction and covertly teaches them to assume the responsibility of communicating her emotion for her. She's also non verbal and unpredictable and tho not at her best rn [like, literally who is? this year has wrecked us all] she and we deserve proper communication.

The mind games are soul sucking and triggering for me in a way that is not for my sister. Though we share a mother, the repective versions of her that we experienced as children differ greatly.

My sister's the eldest and spent the first couple years of her life as the only child to a very young mother living alone in America after being displaced by the civil unrest in her native El Salvador. By age 3, with the addition of a new baby sister (my moms 2nd) she was sent to a country fully at war. My sisters would spend the next half decade of their lives in sunny wartorn tropics, watched over and raised by our family of four women. A blissful antithesis to their future with our mom. Upon the return to their forgotten country of origin (USA) and severed from the only family and community they've ever known, the girls were whisked away by a mother they barely remembered and a baby brother they had never met... marking the beginning of my mom's descent into single motherhood.

My mom resented having a brood of kids, namely her 2nd and 3rd, who's father was abusive and absent. Don't know much of the facts outside of what she would ritualistically berate my siblings about during her brutal tantrums -as if it were their fault they simply existed. The second born, my other sister, left home at 12 and has been estranged ever since and the third, my brother, has recently severed bonds abruptly claiming a new life with a woman he's known barely a year yet now calls wife. Proving that despite being raised by the same woman we all had different mothers.

Since my siblings endured a childhood with a volatile, violent woman who managed her emotions thru physical abuse... when she wasn't, she was neglectful of them, turning her attention onto me... the youngest (four years removed from the rest of the pack). I bore witness to said abuse until I was 5, when it was litigiously exposed, forcing her to abandon corporal punishment and rely solely on mental/emotional abuse. That's the version of my mom I got.

I was 10 when my sister left for college. Just my brother and I remained. Similarly to each other we both lived in service to our mother. Whereas his duties were more physically laborious, mine consisted of full on emotional labor. I spent most of my childhood navigating a homelife that was so saturated and occupied by my mother's opera of a life, that there was no room for my feelings, thoughts, desires or identity. I was her plaything, a person sans agency. My age and vulnerability proved advantagous when grooming me. I learned to behave in ways satisfactory to her needs. I was made to react to (and collect) her emotional distress, endorse her judgements of others, perform well in school as a testament to her rearing, and accept her violations of me as normal. I was a shackled spectator, whose own emotions were mere reflections of her dramatizations. I was tailored to be the MOST convenient. So I kept secrets and coped alone. I knew just enough abt myself to remain human but lacked the vision to actualize it. And because emotional abuse is so insidious in its indoctrination, I was really none the wiser until I too moved away years later.

I'm almost 30 now and I'm a mess. I can't establish enduring relationships, I'm fat, I'm broke, I'm debilitatingly avoidant, socially inept, codependent, confused and lack significant self worth. I spent the past decade delving deep into undoing all the work done to me to keep me a reliable supply for my mother and coming to terms with all the time lost in doing so. I've had glimpses and proof of another life but this year sent me back to old coping mechanisms and devastatingly familiar relationships. I read that by its very nature, all pandemics have to end and I thought I was strong enough to share a definite time&space with my abuser for the foreseeable future.... but with no end in sight, I kind of really wish I had established a clearer version of myself and where I stand in this family, to her.

Similar predicaments flung us both to the south and having her here is like a screen forging images of the same dysfunction I exhibited upon my arrival 7 years ago. There's so much I wish I could tell my former self, namely, "it's not your fault. you're not alone. you don't have to try so hard and tomorrow is another day" And perhapz it's this layered vision of myself as seen thru her that compels me to want to save her, but doing so requires me to get too close to a flame I've yet to extinguish. Im not foundationally sound enough to go up in flames and rebuild afterwards, I need a few more rounds of therapy for all that. I'm a stitch away from coming apart at the seams. Weak construction, but I'm still standing. I have more life to live and can't risk the breeze of my mother's chaotic whims to topple what's taken years to forge. I love her, because she's the only mom I got and because she's the kids' only access to our motherland. How can I reconcile this version of me with this version of her?