#thoughts abt recovery from trauma and finding peace in change...

[chernabogs]

Hi, there 🌼

I saw the event and I wanted to take advantage and do my own:

GN Reader x Silver

Promt: if you tell me yours, i’ll tell you mine

Take your time and no pressure, your blog seems so beautiful to me, thank you 🌠✨💐

Thank you!

RESOLUTION

Inc: Silver, GN!Reader, Lilia (mentioned), Sebek (mentioned) Warnings: None save for a bit of post-overblot struggles WC: 2.4k Summary: It reminded him of the cottage he lived in with Lilia, and perhaps that’s why he never tore his gaze away from it once. He wanted that halcyon paradise to be the very thing he saw each time he closed his eyes.

There once was a gallery in the Valley, tucked away in a small village that lay nestled a few miles out from Black Scale Palace. The village itself is of a slow-living sort—people move at their own pace, most stores close by sunset, and the most excitement it draws is a yearly festival that he attends religiously for a peaceful break. The gallery reflected this sentiment. It was only one floor with paintings done by artists within the Valley adorning its walls. Lilia sent Sebek and him, when they were both still young, to this place with the instruction of sitting still and staring at a painting for an hour without breaking focus.

It was meant to be a lesson in resilience. Sebek lasted only a few minutes before he became fidgety and annoyed. But Silver remembers it as one of the few rare instances where he didn’t feel tired doing a task. He had sat before a painting of a landscape; florentis it was, with a blue, blue sky and the greenest grass he’d ever seen. There was an old brown barn at a slight angle on a hill with a bucket of flowers outside of its door, which had a window shaped like a crescent moon with a warm glow coming from within. A part of him wondered what the rest of the landscape looked like beyond just the snapshot he was granted. 

It reminded him of the cottage he lived in with Lilia, and perhaps that’s why he never tore his gaze away from it once. He wanted that halcyon paradise to be the very thing he saw each time he closed his eyes.

The gallery is gone now. It shut down a year after that assignment due to a lack of funding to keep it operational. He wasn’t too surprised to hear this is the case—a lot of things end with shuttered windows and padlocked doors in Briar Valley. Although the nation itself can hold steady in the international sphere, intranationally it’s a decaying cadaver of outdated beliefs and bygone days. He figures Malleus will be the one to fix it. He hopes Malleus will be the one to fix it. 

Someone needs to. 

With the death of the gallery, so too came the death of that painting within. A part of him mourned it for the sole reason that he wished to see it once more. That tends to be the case with things once they’re gone—you don’t grieve for the loss, but rather for the opportunities you missed leading up to the moment. 

Still, days continued in the end, and he soon grew from the enraptured boy to the individual he is now. The painting became a blur of colours and misinterpretations in his memory until it finally reached the point where he struggled to recall the original piece to begin with. What was the barn like, again? And the flowers? Were there clouds, or was the sky clear? 

He hardly knew. It hardly mattered. In a realm of over-blots and grief, the angle in which an old barn leaned was the last thing on his mind. 

___________________________

It was the summer of his third year that it did come back to him. Many things had happened in the past few months that sat heavy in his mind—the revelation of his bloodline, the consequences of his prince’s despair, and the pending departure of the man who he actually considered his father. It had been overwhelming to the point that he felt like he could hardly breathe. He had support, of course—those who had gone through similar circumstances with over-blots were quick to be by his side. The reassurances were effective in nullifying most of his anxiety, but a small part still held residence in his chest, gnawing away at his mind in the night as sleep, for once in his life, evaded him. 

He’s standing in the cottage with a cardboard box at his feet and a faint frown on his lips. From the kitchen he can hear something rattling about before a familiar face pokes around the corner. 

“How many mugs does he have, seriously?” 

You look despondent as you hold up three ceramic mugs in each hand, causing his lips to twitch into a faint smile. 

“Father is a bit of a collector, you know,” he hums softly as he looks back at the pictures in the box by his feet. It feels cathartic to be able to call him father in front of you; after the events of the over-blot, you knew the reality of their relationship now, and so keeping a ruse of mere friendship was pointless. “Which is why he assigned you and me to clean up this mess. If he was here with us, he’d be trying to stop us from throwing anything out at all.” 

Indeed, with Lilia preoccupied at Black Scale Palace dealing with the last few Senate meetings about the incident, now is the only time you had to clean up the cottage to a degree. 

“I’m not too sure. He seemed onboard with the clean up idea.” You come shuffling out of the kitchen with your own cardboard box which, by the clanking inside, tells him that you’ve stashed away most of the ceramics. “I think he’s looking for a clean slate as well.” 

Silver falls silent at that comment as he sets aside a few more old books and documents. It wasn’t just him who found some change in the aftermath—Lilia and Sebek had experienced flips in perspectives as well. His brow furrows slightly as sunlight streams through the window with flecks of dust dancing in the rays. Each time he sets a document into the box, more of that dust rises to greet the light. “I suppose so.”

He hasn’t felt tired since everything that happened despite the issues at night. In fact, he feels painfully alert as he glances towards you. You’re shuffling the boxes around by the front door with your own focused expression, trying hard not to bump too many of the valuables. 

“I think we should take out what we have so far. If we keep adding more, we’ll end up walling ourselves in, and then we’ll need to escape through the window or something.” You point out in humour as you gesture at the many boxes by your feet. He assesses the situation and then nods in agreement before closing the box of documents. 

But he doesn’t move quite yet. He can hear you opening the front door with a huff as you carry one of the boxes out to the cart beyond. His attention goes towards the sunlight, and he watches it embrace the hardwood floors he kneels on. His fingers go out to touch the spot warmed by this. He remembers many moments on this floor—from childhood to now. He remembers the voices of people he once knew, the scents that the passing seasons brought, and the anticipation of his fathers return whenever he went on his trips. 

Silver withdraws his hand and picks up the cardboard box with a sigh. This too, shall pass. 

_______________________________

He’s greeted by the sound of cicadas screaming in the nearby trees as he emerges from the cottage. You’re already gone, having set off for the cart ahead while he was lost in rumination on the floor. A small sigh escapes him as he follows your footsteps in the dirt. Your ability to keep moving ahead is something that he admires—and he’s come to rely on you to tether him in place, so he doesn’t keep sinking into the river of memories pulling him back. Gratitude is hard to express at times, and he wishes he could express it to you more for all that you’ve done for the entirety of his family. 

“Did you get lost?” Your voice is teasing as he emerges from the treeline. You’re leaning against the cart with your arms crossed, your lips pulled in a small grin as you watch him approach. He smiles slightly once more before setting the box inside. 

“Somewhat,” he replies, half in humour and half not. He pushes back the strands of his silver hair as he turns to look down the road beyond. It’s a dirt path leading towards the nearest village—and the second-hand store that these items are inevitably going to. The horse that’s meant to attach to the cart grazes mindlessly on the nearby plain. This, combined with the warm air and the faint scent of flowers, creates a peaceful moment in the swirling chaos of the past few months. 

“Somewhat?” You muse as you brush past him, nudging his side with your elbow before tossing a wry smile his way. “Try not to wander off—we need you to be able to get the horse moving.” 

Silver huffs a small laugh as he watches you walk back towards the cottage. His hands come to rest on his hips as he turns back to survey the valley beyond. The rolling green hills are familiar to him, as is the tree line, and he can feel himself relaxing further—

Before his gaze catches on a structure in the distance. 

For a moment he doesn’t focus on it too much, until it catches his gaze again, and he begins to pay attention to it a bit more. It’s a large structure that looks to be dark brown in colour and leaning on an angle. His eyes narrow, then widen in surprise, and before he knows it, he’s already setting off in the direction of the abnormality. 

Perhaps he should have waited for your return. Most certainly, he should have not left all those valuables unattended in the cart, even though only Lilia and him live out this far. But the lure of what he sees up ahead is far too great to ignore. It’s a barn. 

It’s the barn. 

He can tell as he gets closer to it. The bucket outside of the front door, which has a window shaped like a crescent moon on it. The flowers in the bucket are gone and there is no light coming from within anymore. The grass around the front porch is overgrown and there are vines now climbing up the sides. The structure itself is far more decayed as well; it leans heavily to the left, and he can see gaps between the planks of wood that comprise its body. It’s an old, worn being, which has withstood the test of time for far too long. But it still is the very structure that he saw.

He draws to a stop a few feet away as he stares at it in disbelief. Despite the changes, florentis it still is, with a blue, blue sky and the greenest grass he’s ever seen.

“Oh…” he whispers to himself. Suddenly he’s a child again, sitting on a wooden bench with his friend fidgeting to his side. His father’s words of resilience echo in his mind and a part of him feels compelled to just stand here and stare for an hour or so, drinking in that halcyon paradise until it’s all that he’ll see when he closes his eyes. 

He once wondered what the rest of the landscape looked like beyond just the snapshot he was granted, and as he turns, he finds that lingering question finally has a response. 

He can see the treeline and the edge of his family’s cottage just beyond. He can see the cart, and the horse, and you—trekking through the green, green grass towards him. You wave one hand, and he waves back, still partially in a daze as he does so. 

“Please don’t go wandering off like that!” You call out as you approach. “I still remember you telling me about how there are bears in these woods—you really had me thinking you finally lost a battle with one.” 

“Sorry,” he murmurs as he looks back to the barn once more. The sun makes it cast a long shadow down the hillside, exactly like the painting still. It’s so surreal that his mind is still running to grasp it. 

“Are you okay?” Your voice changes from teasing to slightly worried as you stop before him. It’s a tone he’s become accustomed to hearing from you—worried, caring. Your eyes betray that very concern as you give him a once over. He feels that familiar need to reassure you as he nods. 

“I am, I am.” He soothes you as his hand comes to touch your arm briefly before dropping back to his side. He doesn’t wish to overstep. “I just… wished to come see this building for a moment.”

He doesn’t elaborate, and he can see the calculating thoughts this withholding generates in your mind. “If you tell me yours, I’ll tell you mine.” 

Thoughts, he realizes. You’re talking about what he’s thinking right now. Another smile plays on his lips as he shakes his head. 

“I just figured something out, that’s all.” 

This comment is a gentle shut down towards you, and he appreciates it when you look at him for a moment longer before nodding your head. “Alright. Well, if you’re done figuring out the world's secrets, can you come help with the horse?” Another smile appears on your lips, and he feels a sense of warmth as he sees it. “I’m not ready to accept a hoof to my face just yet.” 

“I should really teach you how to handle horses.” He sighs softly as he gestures for you to go ahead. He hears you laugh as you turn and set off back towards the beast you seem to be struggling to tame. When he goes to follow, he pauses for a moment to look back at that barn.

A thought occurs to him then. Lilia isn’t much of a painter—Silver knows this from his childhood when he would recruit his father to colour with him, and Lilia had a habit of constantly finding himself drawing outside of the lines. So, he knows for a fact that Lilia wasn’t the one to paint the scene. 

Then who painted the picture? It’s just him and his father who live out this far. He doesn’t recall ever seeing an artist's name on the painting when he was young, but perhaps the memory was too far gone to recall. 

A faint frown plays on his lips before he turns away and begins walking once more. He supposes that, with one question resolved, there are still many more left unsolved. 

[flying-elliska]

Ellie I’m so sorry you’re going through this but I actually want to say thank you for posting so openly about your diagnoses and struggles because I am going through something very similar, and it’s actually helped me reach out for help with my mental health. I’m 32 and after my moms death last year I am discovering that not only am I fairly certain that I have ADHD but, I’m starting to realize that I have spent my whole life dealing with Emotional Incest from my mother and that’s something I do not know how to even approach.

I have literally felt like I’ve been going crazy and functioning in the world is becoming harder and harder each day. I feel like I don’t have a handle on anything and I am constantly overwhelmed to a point where I don’t know how to cope but seeing you dealing with this is giving me some hope. I know I’m probably not the only person you’ve helped indirectly so please know that you’re not only helping yourself but you’re encouraging me and probably others to do the same. I really hope you find some peace and happiness today.

Anon 💖💖💖 thanks for reaching out, it means so much. I actually had a good (but exhausting) day - I confronted an acquaintance about him being a clueless asshole to some of my other friends, which I don't think I would have had the guts to do in the past. So maybe not peace and happiness, but definitely some satisfaction.

First of all I am very proud of you for reaching out and I am glad I could help in whatever small way I could. I am also sorry for what you went through and still have to deal with. I know it sucks. I am right there too rn in feeling how much it sucks. I think it's an important step to recognize that. IT FUCKING SUCKS. Because personally for a loooong time I was just pretending everything was fine, making excuses for the people who hurt me, but I was just running myself ragged and feeling so hollow and splintered and just.... And coming to a point where i'm finally looking these things in the face, and all that buried crap resurfaces...it's honestly one of the hardest things I have ever had to do, just putting some of these things to paper, trying to do this all month, it's so ughhhhhhh fuck man. It's ugly work, I hate it, but at the same time, sometimes, it feels empowering too and like I am returning to myself and picking up all these shattered pieces and recognizing that part of me that suffered and deserved better that I tried so hard to deny and deaden. Reclaiming my ability to control my own narrative.

So honestly from what you're describing, I think it's very logical that you are having a hard time and feel overwhelmed. Hell, they say during recovery at the beginning it generally gets worse for a while before it gets better. So...even tho it sucks, in a sense, it might be a good thing ? I know it is for me. Much better than previous numbness and dissociation. The pain of truth is purifying - it's so different from the pain of secrets and shame festering in silence. Am I coping very well right now ? No, but I'm learning, and I'm also having these occasional moments of inner reconciliation and mending that feel miraculous ; like that scared, confused inner little girl I used to be feels increasingly less alone and trampled over.

Anyway the good news is that when it comes to ADHD, treatment has a high chance to have a radical positive impact, it's one of the diagnoses where finding the right combo of therapy/meds/lifestyle changes leads to some of the highest rates of positive change. So I really hope you get there.

The rest is...yeah I don't know how to deal with that either, I'm still figuring it out. My relationship with my mother was for so long such a fucking clusterfuck of layers of manipulation, unaddressed generational trauma, repressed grief, good intentions, petty cruelty, inappropriate behavior, unfortunate circumstances and neglect, over projection and blind devotion and gaslighting, enmeshment and lack of boundaries, abuse done for "your own good" with a smile and a reasonable explanation - it made me feel insane for so long, like I couldn't trust my own feelings or perceptions. And every time I felt like I had addressed one layer I hit on something else, to the point where I started to feel like I would never be free of it. I haven't seen her or properly talked to her in like, seven years and still all this time I was struggling with it - it was necessary to cut contact tho, to assert that boundary. And then to keep building boundaries from there, slowly, frustratingly, to keep digging and asking myself questions. I got stuck and lost so many times, but I feel like I'm finally reaching the end of the tunnel, because knowledge is one of the most powerful things in the world.

Real talk, the emotional incest thing ? I think my mother had a similar dynamic with her own father. And she tried to do better, but because she was unwilling to look at the true ugliness of the situation, instead choosing to wallpaper over it with magical thinking, everything-will-be-fine-if-i-convince-myself-it-is, and an obsession with moral purity, she ended up doing a massive amount of damage of her own. And I am not doing that.

There is a radical power that comes with facing the ugliness head on that I am claiming for myself, and it seems that you are embarking on a similar journey. It's a big thing so we can't do it all at once. I think doing sth like this you have to pace yrself, to chew off little piece by piece, to digest bit by bit, to let some things rot and dissolve, to go through many cycles of doubt and indignity and revelation, to hunt for the truth on pure Instinct and desperate need, to claw off a path from the dark and the impossible, to consider incompatible and paradoxical truths, to let every new bit of knowledge work its way through you and make you stronger and stranger and more yourself. To let yrself be a little bit crazy and seething and deranged, to shake loose the confines of what you thought was reasonable, to find gifts and allies in unlikely places. To expose, to open up, little by little, to find scraps of words that turn into full sentences, to take back power by finding the right name of things. And then, one day, we'll give birth to ourselves this time and we'll find the sun-bleached bones of this horror and make it into jewelry. Or something.

You don't have a handle on things ? Good ! It's probable you have had a handle on things for way too long. Your handle is probably completely broken. So I don't know you, but maybe this is good, in all its harsh inconvenient terrifying way. I know I had to throw away the handle I had first to build a new one. And flying loose for a moment which yeah ! Fucking scary. But also kind of badass, in that private way maybe nobody will ever know but you and so it's extra important you give yourself that credit.

Anyway I'm rambling but I do hope some of this gives you some extra validation. I'm here if you want to talk more, including by message. I know it's helped me so much to read abt other people's experiences, so. It's like a chain of courage, and you can be part of that too.

Also books have helped me so much - some fiction, but especially of late 'Tiny Beautiful Things' by Cheryl Strayed - she's an advice columnist who writes about some super gnarly stuff in such a direct, humane, powerful way, it gave me a lot of strength.

Power and solace to you, anon. 🌸💪🌸💪